Settling in at the Ramada Inn on West Colfax for the first week as we waited for our new house to be available, it all became too much for my mother one night. My dad came into the kid’s room and told me he was taking my mother to the hospital. She was having some sort of anxiety attack. At 12, and the oldest, I was therefore in charge until their return. I spent about 5 minutes fretting about this and my mother’s status before falling promptly back to sleep. You can only expect so much from a 12 year old.

In time, we left the Ramada and moved into our house in the northern Denver suburbs, just a block shy of the Thornton city line. From my perspective, life in Denver was a vast improvement. There were no sand storms to withstand, no tumbleweeds to dodge, and grass actually grew on the lawn without much prompting. In Albuquerque our yard was mostly sand, front and back. With sodding after sodding, we never managed to get grass to take hold in that sand and clay for more that a few seasons.

Our neighborhood was far more affluent than where we lived in Albuquerque, though still solidly middle-class in nature. The local elementary school was again within walking distance and there were great new places to explore on my bicycle. One of my favorite places was a small roller skating rink about a mile from the house. Outside the building was a Coke machine that kept the pop so cold that it was partially frozen. There was nothing that could beat that particular treat when you were hot and sweating from riding up and down the roller coaster bike trails of Welby hill.

In my first five years of school in Albuquerque, I was decidedly at or near the top of my class is nearly every endeavor. My first year of school in Denver, the 6th grade, was decidedly different. I found myself playing catch-up in some subjects and school actually became a challenge for the first time. I remember in particular having great difficulty with Spanish class. You would think that coming from Albuquerque, with daily exposure to the language, I would have some good Spanish skills under my belt already. But the words I knew were mostly schoolyard taunts and profanity and, unfortunately, those words were not on the tests. It also didn’t help that the Spanish teacher was a humorless and stern task master. And in Spanish class there was far more effort required outside of the classroom than in any other class.

So I struggled and struggled, barely achieving a passing grade in Spanish by year-end. Its interesting to me that my Spanish teacher and that class are my only real recollections I have of that school year. It was my wake-up call, I guess. I recall seeing a tear in my Spanish teacher’s eye as we said goodbye at the end of the year. The following year would see me at the junior high. I guess he really wasn’t as stern and tough as I thought he was.

Having a very competitive nature (ha, my wife would laugh at that understatement), I was able to close the gap in time and get back to the top, briefly, before the disaster of puberty struck and all hell broke loose. Ah, but that’s a different story…

Here in no particular order are the highlights of what I remember of my childhood in Albuquerque:

1. The sand storms, oh the same storms! We lived on the West Mesa and the wind would whip up the sand so much that I would walk backwards to school so that my face would not get sand-blasted off. But walking backwards sure made it hard to dodge the tumbleweeds.

2. Chasing lizards in the fields to the west of our neighboorhood (now an area of high density housing) and my brother stomping on the wrong tumble weed. A swarm of angry bees erupted from the weed with mayhem on their little minds. I ran fast and managed not to get stung. David, however, was not so lucky and must of had 20 bites on his face and hands.

3. The only thing worse than getting hit by a tumbleweed while walking backwards to school, is seeing one roll by on fire!

4. Smoking bubble gum cigars.

5. Spending every 0.12 cents I ever got on the next Batman comic book.

6. Going to church in the desolate wasteland of Montgomery Blvd., with nothing else around for miles, seemingly. Now this area is very densely populated. Where did the arroyo go?

7. Going to grandma’s house on Lomas – now considered a “combat zone” from what I hear.

8. The yearly pow-wow at which I had to perform with my elemetary school class.

9. Going to the Bernalillo Indian reservation for pinion nuts,  jumping beans and shopping for crafts. Man what a beat place that was. Now I hear there are casinos there and the reservation is rich. Sheesh.

10. The muddy Rio Grande… ok some things never change.

11. Riding the Southwest Santa Fe railroad train (where my grandfather worked) from Belen back into town. My favorite entertainment from those days. I saw a picture of the train station terminal building in a travel brochure while I was there. It looks absolutely unchanged from what I remember. They must be preserving it as a historical building.

12. Performing a backflip dismount at the apogee of a swing on the swing set of West Mesa Elementary School. I think I got in trouble for this when the feat was witnessed by the principal and it earned me a month of schoolyard cleanup duty.

We moved to Denver in 1968 which was a much different kettle of fish.