OK, let's look at the facts, Rockies fans. Worst record in team history: 119 losses. the worst run differential in BASEBALL HISTORY (-424), and the highest ERA since 1901 -- 6.64! Tied for most losses by a rotation: 93.
[Note to readers: I have been informed to my chagrin by a smart person that the Rockies don't have the worst run differential of all time, merely since 1899. It was the Cleveland Spiders who dun that, posting a stupendous -723.] Per Colorado Rockies on SI, "As for the lineup, the Rockies' .237 batting average was the worst in team history, as was their .681 OPS. Their collective fWAR was minus-3.3 as a lineup, and they scored a franchise low 3.72 runs per game. This resulted in them being shutout a franchise record 17 times."
This is undeniably as bad as it can possibly get. It is historically awful. This obverse distinction is resonant; it will live forever in our minds.
To those of us who listened in, and went to games, this year, it was obvious that we had reached the nadir of our expectations. We came to the field not with the hope of victory, but with the weary resignation of the faithful.
I have been a stalwart Rockies fan since the beginning, and the Zephyrs before them, and the Bears before them. I remember the Sky Sox, ferchrissake.
And yet I still love them. In all of their Charlie Browniest, they played earnestly and poorly, stoically marching through sweep after sweep, sacrificing themselves to the vagaries of the game.
What is going on with this team? It has gone on for years now. It has not spurred a dearth of paying fans. We love the game, and we will come out and watch ourselves lose in a friendly and amicable Denver manner. There's not an abandonment there as there is in other cities.
Evolution is possible. You stick with your guys. But there is something seriously wrong, and we all need to address it. I appreciate the effort, and I am sorry you sucked so bad. We'll work on it in spring, I guess.
Howdy! There’s lots of weird stuff in Colorado history, if
you only root around in the corners for it. This is an extension of a series I
began for Westword, which you can find here, here, here, and here.
The recent unpleasantness has given me a lot of time to go
through my files, and I happened upon my old story notes. There are still many,
many little-known tidbits from the past still out there, both in plain sight
and lost in obscurity. Here are ten more:
Road of Remembrance
Gateway
Highway 287 and
Arapahoe Rd., Lafayette
Two stone-and-brick pylons bracket Arapahoe Road on the west
side of this junction, known as Nine-Mile Corner due to its being nine miles
east of Boulder and nine miles south of Longmont. To understand what they’re
there for, you have to pull over, get out, and peer around to find a plaque
that explains: “In honor of those who served in the World War — Erected by the
Lions Club of Boulder 1928.” Natalie Munio reports that the upcoming redevelopment
plans for the intersection include preserving and restoring the twin cenotaphs.
Doc Holliday’s Grave
Glenwood Springs
Wait a minute. The final resting place of the Old West
gunfighter is a confusing site to see. After a steep but short hike, you find a
memorial to John Henry Holliday (1851-1887). And a headstone (evidently the
third one, the first two being demolished by vandals/keepsake grabbers) that
comments, “He died in bed.” And a disclaimer: “This memorial dedicated to Doc
Holliday who is buried someplace in this cemetery.” It seems they lost track of
just where they planted him, so be aware that your graveside obsequies might be
directed at nothing in particular.
Home of the
cheeseburger
2776 N. Speer Blvd.,
Denver
The Humpty Dumpty Barrel drive-in restaurant (Colorado’s
first) was where Louis Ballast made culinary history when he topped a hamburger
with a slice of American cheese. Oh sure, others have claimed priority — but
Louis copyrighted it. A stone marker sits modestly at the original location.
The empty grave of
Robert Ford
Creede
Robert Ford was not known for his wise choices. As a child,
he aspired to be an outlaw and idolized the infamous outlaw Jesse James. He
joined up with James when he reached the age of 20 (older brother Charles was
already in the gang). Soon the two brothers decided to betray James for the
substantial reward offered for him, dead or alive. On April 3, 1882, while
Jesse was turned away from him, Bob Ford shot Jesse in the back of the head.
The Ford brothers then went to the authorities, and found
themselves charged with first-degree murder. They were tried, found guilty,
sentenced to death — then pardoned two hours later. When the reward money ran
out, Bob made money posing for photos, and starring in a stage show in which he
had to reenact the murder, time and again.
Finally, Ford starting opening and operating dance halls and
saloons. He set up in Creede on May 29, 1892. Six days later, the whole town
burned down. Undeterred, Ford reopened in a tent. Three days later, Edward
O’Kelley, armed with a shotgun, entered the place, called out to Ford, and gave
him both barrels.
Last but not least, Ford’s body was buried in Creede but
later exhumed and moved to Richmond, Missouri. His empty grave is still marked,
and visited by tourists.
Tribute to a cartoon
character
Idaho Springs
Do you remember Steve Canyon? The great cartoonist Milt
Caniff created him after ending his popular adventure comic strip, Terry and the Pirates. Canyon was a
smart, tough, independent air-transport ace and veteran who rejoined the Air
Force during the Korean War. He fought creeping Communist forces and ideas for
40 years.
Hoping for a publicity-induced business boost, the town of
Idaho Springs decided to rename Squirrel Gulch, dubbing it Steve Canyon. They
even got the federal government to shell out $12,000 to build a nine-foot-tall limestone
statue of the new character. The statue’s plaque reads, “This statue is
dedicated to all airmen who wore the uniform of the Armed Forces of the United
States in time of conflict, and who stand ready in the Air Force Reserve and
Air National Guard to fly in defense of their country, should the need arise”
and “The United States Treasury salutes Steve Canyon and, through him, all the
American Cartoon Characters who served the nation as salesmen in the
Independence Savings Bonds Drive May – July 1950.”
Now Steve Canyon is forgotten by all save the last of the
Baby Boomers, but he still stands defiantly, Cold Warrior, hands on hips,
facing downhill.
The mysterious
headstone of Jane Kirkham
Leadville
A solitary headstone lies along the path of the old stage
road from Leadville to Buena Vista, near the present-day intersection of
highways 82 and 24. “My wife — Jane Kirkham — Died March 7, 1879 — Aged 38
years, 3 months, 7 days.” Legend has it that the stage was stopped by a robber,
who was shot and killed during the holdup. The robber was purportedly revealed
to be a woman, the wife of the sheriff or one of his deputies. Supposedly, it
was too embarrassing to bury her back in town.
The ski troopers
Vail and Breckenridge
During World War II, the U.S. Army trained soldiers to fight
in high altitudes and frozen conditions. Camp Hale near Leadville housed 15,000
men, all trained to ski, climb, and survive and fight in winter. The
recruitment and gathering of like-minded soldiers inadvertently led to the
explosion of the ski industry directly after the war. Ski-trooper vet Pete
Siebert founded Vail, and others followed suit, creating the Colorado ski
industry. The statue in Vail is more imposing — 13 feet tall and solemn; in
comparison to Breck’s life-size, more dynamic piece.
Solid Muldoon buried
here
Beulah
This spot marks the last resting place of a masterful prank.
The prankster, George Hull, was a tobacconist from New York. He had experience
at fooling people. He had dreamed up the infamous “Cardiff Giant” of 1869, the
faked discovery of a carved simulacrum of a petrified prehistoric man. Hull’s
trick gulled a lot of folks; P.T. Barnum then made his own Cardiff Giant and
declared it to be the real deal, not Hull’s.
Hull wanted to try his trick again. This time, he made a
plaster-of-Paris mold instead of a sculpture, bought a real skeleton, and
imbedded it, covering it with his creation. The fake was seven feet, six inches
tall and featured a small tail, grafted on in attempt to tout it as a missing
link. This time Barnum was in on it, fronting Hull $2,000 for 75 percent of the
take. Choosing a random Colorado hill, Hull and his cohorts buried the object
and a few months later, on September 16, 1877, a shill “discovered” it.
Unfortunately, the once-burned public didn’t take to the new hoax, and the Solid
Muldoon (dubbed in honor of a contemporary song lyric) soon vanished from
sight.
In 1976, commemorants created a replica of the Muldoon and
displayed it for a few years. On July 22, 1984, the replica was buried beside
the road, near the hill in which the original was interred.
The Manassa Mauler
Manassa
If you’ve ever heard of Manassa, Colorado, it’s because Jack
Dempsey was born there (or you’re into covering the yearly migration of
sandhill cranes). The champion heavyweight boxer held the title from 1919 to 1926,
and was one of the iconic athletes of the era. He started out at the bottom,
choosing fights in barrooms and winning them. His boyhood cabin now serves a
museum dedicated to his memory; only it and a dynamic statue commemorate this
pugilistically talented Coloradan.
Cockeyed Liz’s grave
Buena Vista
Elizabeth Spurgeon (1857-1929) was forced into a life of
prostitution at the age of 13 (her nicknamed stemmed from her appearance after
a childhood accident). Sixteen years later, she bought a property in Buena
Vista, the Palace Manor, and turned it into a whorehouse. In 1897, she married
the town plumber and gave up her profession. Their graves were originally
bordered by plumber’s pipes.
It was the first torch song. It’s only heard in old movies or TV shows these days. The scene is usually a smoky barroom, at the ass-end of the evening. It’s that peculiar time of night when the soused, haunted by their past, call for this maudlin ballad and begin to sob. It’s a running joke in the 1954 film version of A Star is Born, as poor Judy Garland is harassed with, “Sing ‘Melancholy Baby’!”
This drunkard’s tearjerker took only a little longer than 40 years to become a cliché. It’s one of the one-hit wonders in the Great American Songbook, and the only one to be written in Denver, Colorado. Its 1912 birth in my hometown spurred this investigation. A couple of pretty tales have been spun around this song, but the real story of “My Melancholy Baby” is filled with false starts, warring claims to authorship, a scrambling for royalties, and litigation. Failure is an orphan, success has a hundred fathers.
OK, cute stories first.
One: William Frawley is best remembered for playing Fred Mertz on the “I Love Lucy” TV show, but he started as a song-and-dance man. On the May 3, 1965, episode of the TV game show “I’ve Got a Secret,” he revealed that he was the first to sing “My Melancholy Baby,” at the Mozart Café at 1647 Curtis Street. The noted journalists Gene Fowler and Damon Runyon were there.
Two: The composer Ernie Burnett served in France in World War I, was wounded and lost his memory. In the hospital, he heard someone singing “My Melancholy Baby,” recognized it, remembered who he was, and made a full recovery.
I’m unable to confirm or deny the truth of the second story, but the first story is disputed by almost everyone.
Ernie Burnett
Composer Ernie Burnett (originally Ernesto Bernaditto from Cincinnati) and his then-wife Maybelle Watson, who was the song’s first lyricist, filed for copyright on the song, then called “Melancholy,” on October 31, 1911. Despite their efforts, they couldn’t interest anyone in it. (In those days, songwriters carried their songs from one publisher to another, auditioning them.) Finally, Denver club owner and music publisher Theron C. Bennett bought the tune, but tossed the words. He set an employee, George Norton, to write a new set of lyrics. This jerry-rigged song became an enormous hit.
“Come, sweetheart mine, don’t sit and pine
Tell of the cares that make you feel so blue
What have I done, answer me, hon
Have I ever said an unkind word to you
My love is true, and just for you
I’d do almost anything at any time
Dear, when you sigh, or when you cry
Something seems to grip this very heart of mine
Come to me my melancholy baby
Cuddle up and don’t be blue
All your fears are foolish fancies, maybe
You know, dear, that I’m in love with you
Every cloud must have a silver lining
Wait until the sun shines through
Smile, my honey dear, while I kiss away each tear
Or else I shall be melancholy too”
Why was it written? To whom? Burnett told a story abut waiting for a woman (presumably his wife) for eight hours at the train station; Norton spins a tale about being sweet on a Denver waitress. Despite the desire to getting nailed being the wellspring of most romantic tunes, neither of these anecdotes is likely. "My Melancholy Baby" is an inspired piece of hackwork.
When the sheet music was published, it bore a dedication to “Miss Maybelle Watson of Berkeley, California.” Burnett and Watson were divorced by that time; perhaps the publisher sought to assuage Watson’s ego and prevent her from suing for a piece of the royalties, even though her lyrics were replaced by Norton’s.
So who sang it first? Bennett, the original publisher, claims he gave the debut performance of it at his club, the Dutch Mill at 811 16th Street, in 1912 -- not Frawley. Two original copies of the sheet music feature two different artists pasted into the cameo center of the cover – “That Singer,” Jack O’Leary, and “winsome June Le Vey.” At this point, the song was still titled “Melancholy.” It was changed to “My Melancholy Baby” in 1914, and a year later Bennett folded, selling the song to Joe Morris Music Company in New York. Burnett claims he convinced Sophie Tucker to sing it, which began its rise to popularity.
The person who arguable made this song a hit was Walter van Brunt, whose 1915 recording may contain some of Watson’s original lyrics, pushed down into the song to make a second introductory set of lines. This set of words is omitted in nearly every recording of it:
“Birds in the trees, whispering breeze
Should not fail to lull you into peaceful dreams
So tell me why, sadly you sigh
Sitting at the window where the pale moon beams
You shouldn’t grieve, try and believe,
Life is always sunshine when the heart beats true
Be of good cheer, smile through your tears,
When you’re sad it makes me feel the same as you”
Gene Austin scored with it again in 1927, and England’s Al Bowlly in 1935.
Tommy Lyman, a cabaret performer, made “My Melancholy Baby” his theme song during the 1920s, playing and singing it late at night and referring to it as his “torch song,” a reference to the old phrase “carrying a torch for someone,” an unrequited love. Perhaps it’s this specific pathos Lyman imbued it with that gave it its cliché effect on the inebriated.
It started showing up in films – The Roaring Twenties (1939), Birth of the Blues (1941), Johnny Eager (1942), Follow the Band (1943), Minstrel Man (1944). In the 1945 film noir Scarlet Street, director Fritz Lang and composer Hans Salter work the tune into the score and as source music in the film itself, as a theme to which the main characters disintegrate.
In Billy Wilder’s Some Like ItHot (1959), it’s the song that always seduces Marilyn Monroe’s character, especially when essayed on tenor sax. Forty-eight years after its birth, “My Melancholy Baby” ends its effective cultural life as a dick joke.
In the end, Bennett and Burnett reaped the royalties, after legal action against Joe Morris; Norton’s son had to litigate for years to get compensation for his father, who had signed away his rights to Bennett for $20 a week, back in the day. Watson got nothing. Frawley got the credit, and the song may have brought back its composer from the dead. Who knows? If you stick your nose down into the warf and woof of history, it's hard to see more than a tangle of contradictions, unresolvable, unprovable, lost in the past.
In the end, we still have a great song.
SOURCES
Denver’s Old Theater Row
Forrest Hall Johnson
Gem
1970
The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia
Thomas S. Hischak
Greenwood Press
2002
American Popular Song: The Great Innovators 1900-1950
Alec Wilder
Oxford University Press
1972
Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song
Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky
Flats
Kristen Iversen
Crown Publishers
2012
It is very rarely that a complex, decades-long historical
tragedy and an intensely personal narrative can be woven together artfully. In
“Full Body Burden,” writer, editor, and educator Kristen Iversen does so with a
combination of clarity, self-revelation, and readability. That she does so in
my critical eye is even more remarkable – as her childhood story is largely my
own.
Like her, I grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s in the suburb of Arvada, Colorado, eight
miles southeast (and downwind) from the U.S. government’s Rocky Flats
nuclear weapons production facility. She writes, “Some of those new suburban
homes would have built-in atomic bomb shelters, including a show home in AllendaleHeights . . . It was one of fifteen
‘Titan’ showcase homes – homes named after the newly developed intercontinental
Titan ballistic missile – scattered around the country near other nuclear
weapon production sites.”
That was the house I grew up in. The bomb shelter still sits
in my mother’s basement, now crowded with cardboard boxes, Christmas
decorations, 78 rpm records, and miscellaneous keepsakes. There were a double-handful
of government documents stored there, telling us all about how to successfully
overcome Armageddon. They formed the basis for my own magazine-length memoir of
growing up in the heart of the Cold War (“Growing Up Nuclear," 5280 magazine,
April/May 2000).
Iversen’s narrative of course far more comprehensive and
inclusive – in fact, it’s the first historical account of Rocky Flats, from its
star-spangled start to its ignominious finish, that I found comprehensible. Its
convoluted, largely hidden story of secrecy, danger, accidents, Cold War
paranoia, and corporate exploitation is riveting in Iversen’s telling. Her
research is far-ranging and impeccable.
Rocky Flats manufactured plutonium triggers which would set
off the chain reaction inside thermonuclear devices. She describes the urgency
and corner-cutting, pushed along by fear of being outgunned by the Russians,
that characterized the project from the start. As the years went by, cost
overruns, deadly errors, and incidents of contamination were routinely covered
up in the name of national security. Iversen aptly delineates all the players –
from the technicians and scientists to the bureaucrats to those whose families
began to suffer from unexplained cancers in the region to the peace and environmental
activists whose increasing clamor finally forced investigation and shutdown of
the site.
Iversen, like me, was steeped in the ethos of the time. Most
of our neighbors worked at Rocky Flats – high-paying jobs that enabled them to
live the suburban dream of affluence and security. None of them could or would
tell their children, or us, what they did for a living. “I keep America
strong,” was one memorable answer I received.
Iversen has the wisdom not to paint one-dimensional pictures
of the characters in her story. For a time, circumstances led her to working
within the plant itself giving her an irreplaceable perspective. By sharing all
points of view with the reader, she quite accurately portrays the zeitgeist of
an area in which a “Father Knows Best”-type setting is sustained by an
underlying traffic with the deadliest and most morally questionable of dangers.
Speaking of “Father Knows Best,” the other half of Iversen’s
narrative consists of discussing her troubled family life. Once again, parallels
between her youth and mine abound – our families came from the Midwest, our ancestry is Danish, we were raised Lutherans
. . . and our fathers were alcoholics.
The symptoms and repercussions of her father’s addiction are
almost unbearable for me to read. I can verify their verisimilitude. Like her
family, mine coped largely by ignoring the problem (oh, those good old emotionally remote, reality-denying Scandinavian genes!). The shame, anger, sorrow, and guilt she outlines are
heartbreaking; and the convolutions of her relationship with her father, with
its muddiness and lack of closure, are all too familiar.
The big historical picture and the intimate personal one
fuse in a mutually enlightening manner. Beyond my uniquely personal reaction, I
think that this book serves as a fundamental resource for anyone trying to
understand that particular place and time.
How long will it take until the 6,240 acres on the rolling
plains east of the mountains will be safe again? The site has, laughingly, been
turned into a wildlife refuge. Many hidden deposits of radioactive waste lurk
there; meanwhile, housing developments are springing up everywhere around it,
many in the fallout path of past plutonium leaks.
The fallout from a dysfunctional childhood has a big shadow,
too. We strive to overcome our own addictive behaviors, try to heal, and pray
that we don’t pass the curse on to our own children. Personally, I am very
grateful for this book. Isolation is one of the hallmarks of those who grow up
in an alcoholic household. Many thanks to Iversen for making me feel a little
less alone.
I have gathered a lot of info about Denver's classic jazz haunt for decades, and have patronized it for 40-some years now. When I heard about the death of long-time owner Jerry Krantz (above), I just had to whip up a little tribute to him.
The first thing Jerry Krantz ever said to me was, “Get the
hell out of my bar!”
I was 18; my friends and I were wandering around what was
then the bad part of Denver,
looking for trouble. Back then, everything northeast of 18th Street consisted of dive
bars, flophouses, pawn shops and empty storefronts. Hoboes still hung out in
the rail yards, and camped in the brush along the Platte.
The age of LoDo redevelopment was decades away.
We heard the sound of jazz coming out of the
scruffy-looking, neon-bracketed entryway at 1962 Market Street and walked in. El
Chapultepec was and still is an L-shaped, low-ceilinged womblike structure with
an elaborate bar, flanked by a rank of banquettes on each side. The floors are
tiled chessboard black and white, and the space between the booths and the bar
is narrow (were there ever enough seats? The floor was always packed with
standees, the barmaids wrassling their way back and forth to the booths with
drinks). At the end of one arm of the L is the world’s tiniest performing area,
which somehow accommodates a piano and a few chairs.
For the first time in my life, I saw and heard people making
spontaneous music. We had been “exposed” to jazz in school, but this was a
condescending, boring exercise that inspired nobody.
This was exciting, though. We pushed our way into the back
of the crowd. Jerry, however, had a psychic sense of how old someone was, and
of course we hadn’t the guile to try to dress older, or the balls to dispute
him. We got the hell out of his bar and, like many other overflow patrons,
stood out on the sidewalk, listening.
El Chapultepec is housed in a building more than 100 years
old. Its unsavory early history includes duty as a sometime haven for a “floating
brothel” named the Silver Dollar Hotel – presumably the cost of a good time
back then.
On July 4, 1933, Tony Romano opened Tony’s Restaurant there.
Jerry married Tony’s daughter Alice and started working there in 1958; he took
over the place in 1968 and after a time began offering free nightly jazz there.
It’s been much the same since, and now Jerry’s daughter Angela runs the place.
Jerry passed away Tuesday morning, and most of the copy
about him emphasizes his crustiness, and he was indeed one tough customer. However,
he loved jazz and wanted us to love it, too. When we came back to hear the
music the next time, he gruffly told us we could sit in the back room and
listen, where underagers were welcome.
There were rickety wooden booths there, next to the noisy
kitchen, and we spent many, many nights there eating Jerry’s greasy Mexican
food, sipping Cokes and dodging out of the way of the pool cues (improbably, a
billiard table was crammed into the center of the tiny space, necessitating
that diners sometimes lean back or crowd over to accommodate the stroke of
players on some long carom shots).
And we listened. Once again, stories tell of how “everyone”
in jazz stopped in to the Pec to perform, including Sinatra, Bennett, and my
hero, Artie Shaw. I never ran into a one of them. Instead, I heard the locals,
the regulars, those without a big name or following who simply, night after
night, explored the music and made fascinating, beautiful improvisations. This
taught me more about jazz and the strangely disciplined indiscipline of art
made off the top of the head than anything else has.
Now I’m a graybeard who writes about a lot of things,
including jazz. Hopefully, I have sent some customers and potential fans his
way. You could do much worse than to spend a night standing in the crowd on the
parquet floor, listening to the music. Thanks, Jerry.
Benny Goodman and his 15-piece outfit worked at Denver's Elitch's Gardens from Friday, July 26 through Thursday, Aug. 15, 1935. They bombed -- the conservative Denver audiences wanted sweet jazz, waltzes and novelty numbers. Goodman, who had enjoyed success and national exposure via his "Let's Dance" radio band remotes from New York City on NBC, fell into despair here. He thought he would have to disband after finishing his bookings in California. On Aug. 21, 1935, at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, the crowd went ballistic over his hard-driving swing sound , inaugurating a decade during which cutting-edge jazz and popular taste were one.
I was lucky enough to get to write a wonderful feature story about jazz in Denver, past and present. Space did not permit me to go into as much detail as I would like; I have appended below information about local venues for those who want to get out and hear what's happening!
P.S.: If you have more information about local jazz clubs, nights, events, performers or ensembles, please feel free to share this info in the comments section.
Lovely! Thanks so much to the kind folks at EnCompass for commissioning and running this feature story from me on the swing-dance revival scene in Denver -- in their Jan./Feb. 2012 issue.
The folks at EnCompass magazine, the regional publication of AAA, kindly used my story about Denver nightlife in their current edition. I had a lot of fun writing it -- thanks!
When it comes to whether or not you believe in UFOs, it seems open-mindedness makes the difference. But then there are those who get all up in your face to insist that UFOs, piloted by aliens, are here and watching us. You'd get uppity too if you were kidnapped to outer space, probed by cold alien equipment and then returned home with no scars to show for your ordeal other than the hidden mental kind that are only exacerbated by the fact that nobody will listen.
As the 40th International UFO Symposium lands in Denver, Colorado today, those people will finally find themselves surrounded by plenty of believing faces -- maybe even alien spies.
The event, presented by the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) at the Marriott Denver Tech Center, runs through August 9. It is, in the words of its organizers, "an annual gathering of some of the top speakers in their respective fields presenting evidence and research concerning new UFO sightings in the U.S. and Canada, the scientific search for extraterrestrial life, UFO photo analysis, and why we still struggle with full disclosure on this highly controversial subject."
So... are they nuts? It's the first question everyone who knows I'm working on the story asks me. It's underlying everything I read, pro and con, and the questions I ask James P. Carrion, MUFON's International Director.
"We're actually skeptics ourselves," he says. Carrion is a computer expert from Bellvue, Colorado who has been involved with MUFON since 1996, and has served in his present position there for three years. "What we are not is skeptical leaning toward debunking. Too many people dismiss it outright because it doesn't fit their outlook. We want people to take the time to listen and examine the evidence."
The mission statement of MUFON declares that its purpose is "the scientific study of UFOs for the benefit of humanity." The symposium's schedule of events includes seminars on such topics as "MUFON's 10 Step Investigation Process in Detail," "Pseudoscience of Anti-Ufology," and "Politics, Religion and Human Nature: Roadblocks on the Path to Disclosure." (Please note that the symposium is not free - see MUFON's Web site for details.)
Carrion says, "We are a public service, non-profit scientific research organization. We do quality research - we are a very professional organization." The symposium will place an emphasis this year on what is refers to as "the dawn of a new era in UFO research," according to Carrion, including new evidence, new investigation techniques, and the release of formerly classified documents that will bolster the group's databases.
An evangelical tinge seems to color the activities of ufologists. Decades of disbelief and derision have shaped the attitudes of those who assert that the proof of extraterrestrial visits to Earth is there for those whose eyes aren't closed to the possibility.
Take, for instance, the story of John Putnam. He was an author living in Sand Rock, Arizona who spent his evenings engaged in amateur astronomy. In June of 1953, he and his girlfriend, schoolteacher Ellen Fields, were stargazing when they witnessed what they thought was a large meteor strike in the nearby mountains.
The next day, the two hired a helicopter from the local airport to investigate the area where the object fell.
They found a large crater, and Putnam scrambled excitedly to the bottom of it. There he found what he later described as "a huge ball rammed into the side of the crater," which was buried under a rockslide shortly afterwards.
Putnam's story was disbelieved by local residents. The town newspaper ran a story with the headline, "STAR GAZER SEES MARTIANS!" A university professor Putnam convinced to examine the site declined to dig into the crater for evidence.
If this report of a UFO encounter sounds familiar, it's because it's the plot of the 1953 film, "It Came from Outer Space," written by famed science-fiction author Ray Bradbury.
You see the problem? Popular culture has already hijacked the tropes of brave scientific pioneers and the disbelieving mob. Like Bradbury's protagonist, ufologists are treated by mainstream society as prophets without honor. They are asserting what is popularly assumed to be impossible, and stand outside consensual realities.
Does it make them frauds? Not if they are sincere. There is comfort in the idea of the Unknown taking an interest in little old anthropocentric us. Famed psychiatrist Carl Jung published a book in 1959, "Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky," in which he writes, "Something is seen, but one doesn't know what. It is difficult, if not impossible, to form any correct idea of these objects because they behave not like bodies but like weightless thoughts."
But delusion takes many forms. In "It Came from Outer Space," Putnam says angrily to the professor, "I don't know what's odd and what isn't anymore. But I do know I expected you do be more open to the idea than the others. You're a man of science! ... Not witchcraft, Dr. Snell! Imagination! Willingness to believe that there's lots of things we don't know anything about!"
If it's the rest of humanity that's enchanted into disbelief, then the ufologists are braver than we can imagine. Thinking beyond the possible, looking over the edge of reality, is terrifying and thrilling at the same time. There's a sense of righteousness, too, associated with the certainty of knowing a supposedly suppressed truth - an undercurrent of thought that claims that governments and religious organizations are putting the lid on disclosing UFO information for fear that it would release their control of the public.
And is my biased perception springing from my conditioning - namely, "It Came from Outer Space"? "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"? "Contact"?
At one point in the film, Putnam says, "Can I prove it? Even to myself?" More famously, French mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace said, "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportional to its strangeness."
Meantime, MUFON sets up its exhibits and prepares for the advent of the faithful and the curious.
"MUFON continues to provide the best evidence for Unconventional Flying Objects," its press release states. "These respected speakers will provide well researched information on the scientific study of UFOs that will help you to decide for yourself."
(An expanded version of an article originally published in 5280 magazine in 2007.)
“Buffalo Bill’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death”
e.e. cummings
Ninety-two years after his burial on the top of Lookout Mountain, does the spirit of Buffalo Bill still rest unquietly?
William F. Cody lived many lives in one. He was a Pony Express rider, trapper, prospector, Civil War soldier, Army scout, Indian fighter and, of course, buffalo hunter. What distinguished him from his frontier contemporaries such as Will Bill Hickock was his flair for self-promotion.
“He was known as the most handsome man in America, and was the best-known American in the world,” says prominent Denver historian Thomas J. Noel.
Beginning in 1872 with stage appearances in adaptations of the dime novels that brought him national fame, Cody established himself as the archetype of the bold plainsman, complete with fringed buckskin jacket, flowing locks and signature goatee.
Remarkably, he also set in stone the popular vision of the American West. Having hatched the idea of an “Old Glory Blow-Out” in his home town of North Platte, Nebraska on July 4, 1882, which is often cited as the origin of the rodeo, Cody (with the able assistance of manager Nate Salsbury and pioneering press agent John M. Burke) created Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.
From 1883 to 1913, it traveled the world, crafting out of a collection of riding, roping and sharpshooting exhibitions and a band of cowboys, Native Americans, and vaqueros a “national entertainment” that appealed to all classes and ages alike, and delivered the legend of Manifest Destiny as a historical pageant. “Re-enactments” of the Pony Express, Indian attacks, stagecoach robberies, and even Custer’s Last Stand kept crowds that ranged from, literally, the crowned heads of Europe to throngs of orphans, enthralled. Packaged as living memories of a disappearing era, it taught two generations ways of thinking about the West that are still passed along in the media today. “Pahaska” (the Sioux name for Bill, meaning “Long Hair”) was one of the first international celebrities.
It’s ironic, then, that the frontier scout whose reputation as a pathfinder was justly unparalleled should find himself so far from home. In 1907, Cody’s will dictated that he be buried near his namesake town of Cody, Wyoming. However, as the years passed, so did Cody’s business acumen. The debt-ridden showman had placed himself in the power of the unscrupulous co-owner of the Denver Post, Henry Tammen, who auctioned off the assets of the Wild West show in Denver in 1913, and used Cody’s indebtedness to him to force him to act as master of ceremonies for his Sells-Floto Circus from 1914 on.
By the time the 70-year-old Cody died in the home of his sister at 2932 Lafayette St. on Jan. 9, 1917, of uremic poisoning brought on by kidney failure, his will was no longer his own.
It has long been rumored that Tammen, with the aid of a $10,000 bribe to Cody’s estranged widow Louisa, conspired to have him interred against his wishes in Colorado, the better to profit from the late scout’s corporeal presence. Both Cody and North Platte clamored for the right to bury him.
“Everybody realized that it would be great tourist attraction,” says Noel.
Cody’s funeral was held in Denver on a freezing Jan. 15, 1917, with thousands filing past his body in state at the capitol building. His body was then placed in the Olinger Mortuary at 2600 16th St., supposedly under armed guard, for six months, while the authorities waited for the dirt roads that led up the mountain west of Golden to become passable. (The body was re-embalmed six more times.)
On June 3, 1917, a motorcade ferried what was estimated as between 7,000 and 20,000 mourners to the summit of the peak to pay final homage to the “knight of the saddle,” as News correspondent Meredith Davis floridly referred to him. The widow ordered the casket opened, and poems, songs and trumpet fanfares stirred the summer air as attendees filed past the coffin for a final glimpse of their hero. At 3 p.m., the coffin was lowered into the concrete-lined vault; a photograph shows the words “BURGLAR PROOF GRAVE VAULT” embossed on its side.
Just to make sure, several tons of concrete, reinforced with iron rails, eventually topped the gravesite. The undertaker is said to have stated that grave robbers “would have to blow the top off Lookout Mountain” to get at the body. In fact, when his wife Louisa died in 1921, it proved impossible to dig down to his level – so they buried her on top of him, sealing them both in with more concrete.
Meanwhile, Cody’s adopted son and Wild West sharpshooter Johnny Baker proposed in 1920 that the city of Denver allow him to construct a building adjacent to the grave to house Buffalo Bill memorabilia, as well as “the sale of the Colonel’s books, postcards, photographic views, candies, and light refreshments.” The deal was struck, and the “Pahaska Tepee” was built.
Still, the controversy wasn’t over. Serious calls for the repatriation of Cody’s corpse continued as late as 1948, once prompting the National Guard to drive a tank up Lariat Trail Road to stand guard over Bill’s remains.
The museum/gift shop’s rag-tag assemblage was presided over by Baker until 1931, and by his widow until 1956. The city took over the site, and a freestanding museum building was finally completed nearby in 1979. Today, it is presided over by director Steve Friesen, who in 12 years has crafted a more interesting and even-handed display of Cody’s life and legacy than visitors have ever before enjoyed.
“Every once in a while somebody up in Wyoming gets a wild hair going,” he says of disgruntlement over Buffalo Bill’s final resting place. As recently as last year, he states, consultants in Cody recommended a renewed effort to disinter the pioneer.
“They said, ‘You need to get Buffalo Bill’s body here,’” he chuckles, and goes on to characterize the repositories of Buffalo Billiana as sharing “a good-natured rivalry.”
So Buffalo Bill still sleeps ‘neath Colorado skies, trapped under the wife he avoided in life, catching the pitched pennies tossed on his tomb for luck by travelers, still a moneymaker through the auspices of the nearby gift shop, still a showman in death.
“It’s pretty up there,” Louisa Cody reported her husband saying of Lookout Mountain shortly before his death.
Tom Noel chimes in with a wry quote from Voltaire -- “History is a pack of tricks the living play upon the dead.”
Poor Denver. It wants respect! Always has. Yet the happy gloss of its Chamber of Commerce brochures looks like an Easter dress on a $20 hooker – unconvincing.
Visitors are being inundated with facts, figures and suggestions on where to go, what to do and how to fill the coffers of the local merchants. Exhibits, tours, and special events cram the calendar.
The city has long suffered from the most immense inferiority complex in American history, constantly checking the shine on its shoes and the crease in its pants.
But there is a dark side to the Queen city of the Plains. What our apologists fail to understand is that the sleazy, small-time life of Denver is its true, emblematic life. Those of us who know the town can tell you where the real action, danger and excitement is. Unsurprisingly, most of it is near Colfax.
So, strap on. Take money, pain relievers, methods of self-defense, and your Spanglish dictionary.
1. COLFAX VIA THE 15 BUS
See www.rtd-derver.com for schedule and map
Get oriented. The longest commercial street in America, Colfax Avenue sprouts up at the base of the foothills and stretches, straight as a string, practically out to Kansas. The 15 (you must take the local, not the express) covers only East Colfax, but that’s by far the sleaziest part. For a $2, you can ride all day, and watch the dregs of humanity at play. Want to witness drug deals? Want to have a crazy person explained his or her Unified Field Theory to you? Get propositioned in the back? It’s all possible, and they hose it out later.
Runner-up: Hanging out under the Speer Boulevard bridges
2. LAKESIDE AMUSEMENT PARK
4601 Sheridan Blvd.
(303) 477-1621
www.lakesideamusementpark.com
These 100-year-old pleasure grounds are legendary, primarily as a place where scary, dilapidated rides are operated by drug-addled teenagers. Always the cheap alternative to Elitch’s, its state of neglect is inspiring, in a creepy way – and the Art Deco touches are still in place.
3. TWISTED SOL
1405 Ogden St.
(303) 832-1311
www.twistedsol.com
There are any number of talented inkers in town, but Twisted Sol is right down the street from the Ogden Theater and close to many of Capitol Hill’s skankiest hangouts. If the experience exhausts you, you can check into the Royal Host Motel nearby. Check for hourly rates.
4. DIAMOND LIL’S ADULT EMPORIUM
1215 20th St.
(303) 295-2160
At 20th and Lawrence, this long-standing bastion of porn is truly a descent into the Inferno. The pawed-over mags, the dusty blow-up pals and ridiculous sexual aids, the desperate women who entertain in the back – Kerouac could walk in here and not know it’s another century. Abandon hope all ye who enter here – and NO BROWSING!
Hey! Mayor Hickenlooper has basically declared pot smoking legal during the DNC, so load up and light up, kids! Freaky’s is by far the friendliest, most laid-back of Denver head shops (ahem, we mean tobacco-smoking paraphernalia dispensaries). Plus, they have black-light posters so that you can Recreate ’68 in your basement or garage.
Runner-up: Heads of State
6. HANK’S BILLIARDS
5250 W. 38th Ave.
(303) 424-1822
Remember when playing pool was cool for about five minutes? POSERS! Now they’re gone, and you have the pool halls to yourselves again. Of course, most of the old-school joints are out of business now, too. Hank’s, nee Family Fun Center, nee Paradise Billiards, could be the oldest billiards place left in the area.
Runners-up: Table Steaks, any dive with a bar table
7. DENVER DINER
740 W. Colfax Ave.
(303) 825-5443
Where do you go when you can’t go home? This 24-hour eatery has gone through many incarnations, but it’s still the place to get eggs and pancakes at 4 a.m. any number of novels could be inspired just by sitting and ear-flopping the conversations in the next booth.
8. THE ORIGINAL CHUBBY’S
1231 W. 38th Ave.
(303) 455-9311
The Holy Grail of Denver-style Mexican food. (Let the fighting begin.) This modest establishment has a take-out window: The End. No tables, no chairs – most people eat it sitting on their cars in the gravel lot out back. But what you get is fresh, hot, tasty, spicy and cheap – love on a paper plate! The colon-puckering green chile is guaranteed to relieve even the worst hangover.
Runners-up: Las Delicias, Benny’s, El Noa Noa, Pete’s Satire, Taco de Mexico, Senor Pepe’s, Taqueria Patzcuaro, Senor Burrito’s, Tosh’s Hacienda
9. EDGEWATER INN
5302 W. 25th Ave.
(303) 237-3524
I know, I know – Denver has terrible pizza. It’s the altitude. Still, you can’t go wrong in this happy hut of homers. Besides being a cozy refuge for diehard Broncos fans, the thin-crust, tangy pie they serve goes well with the house drink – a large, chilled, cheap glass schooner of Coors or Coors Light on tap! It almost makes the beer taste good.
Runners-up: Bonnie Brae Tavern, Famous Pizza, Pietra’s
10. LION’S LAIR
2022 E. Colfax Ave.
(303) 320-9200
Not ruined yet. This classic dive, the black walls of which are encrusted with weirdness, has hosted more incredible bands than any other alternative venue in town. The cramped space in the place makes it possible to get poked in the ear by a guitar, or catch an errant drumstick as it flies over the bar. The Lair has survived many attempts at gentrification – let’s hope they never take down or clean the garish striped awning that marks it.
11. THE SQUIRE LOUNGE
1800 E. Colfax Ave.
(303) 333-9106
Please get a tetanus shot before entering this most hallowed of shitholes. Your life is not worth a farthing there, you can probably get whatever you need in the bathroom . . . and they sell alcohol as well! Their comedy nights are the perfect training ground for young stand-ups, who face the homeless, the completely faced, and those who want to hear a band instead. Bathrooms are the worst in town!
Runners-up: Too many to list, but noted are Don’s Mixed Drinks, Stadium Inn, Lancer Lounge, Hangar Bar
12. DHMC EMERGENCY ROOM
777 Bannock St.
(303) 436-6000
www.denverhealth.org
Did you like “E.R.”? “St. Elsewhere”? “Chicago Hope”? This is the NC-17 version.
The Denver Health Medical Center is an A-1 institution, but its old nickname, “The Knife and Gun Club” is well-deserved. The victims and perpetrators of mayhem all across town usually wind up here, clogging the corridors with their cries and stench. If you end up in line for treatment, bring a book.
Oh, I could go on for days. Just be sure to look down the side streets, and amble down the alleys. You’ll find the real Denver there.
