I imagine my granddaughter listening to this story of dwellings surrounding a street corner in a few years, when she is old enough to understand the grounds and structures where I stretched through four decades. I would be 70 and she would be 6. “Four Corners” is an intersection on a city grid where residential and commercial properties adjoin, where historical uses and city planning determined the zoning, where poor residents made a life for themselves next to industry, where of late hipster printers and craft food purveyors occupied a warehouse, where liquor and drugs once dictated the lives of addicts, where the police finally took charge of the meth house, and saved the street for families and resident friendly businesses.
Grappa (the name I gave myself after she was born but before she could talk, which my wife finds appropriate since she thinks I drink too much) — already you’re a fine swimmer, Franni, just like your mom. Your daddy didn’t like the ocean when he was a kid. Too many jellyfish bites in Florida when he visited his grandma and papa. But he likes diving in the fresh water lakes and rivers here in the West, and your mom has gotten him surfing and sailing in the Pacific. I expect you’ll grow up to be a mermaid or Olympic contender.
Fran, (the name her parents gave her when she arrived female, rather than Francis named from one of her father’s favorite teachers) — I like mermaids. Grappa, what are these metal caps here by the door?
Grappa — Franni, you know there’re a lot of crazy things around this yard, like the yellow wrecking ball. But those three iron covers hold the secrets to this whole area. Those are the main valves for the “GAS” “AIR” and “WATER” for all of Lake Archer. (We had long collected surplus steel and iron and planted it around the large lot we owned: three covers made a collection, like the ball sculptures, the shoe repair stands, the dandelion diggers, and frog-eye sprinklers.)
Franni — What’s Lake Archer?
Grappa — James Archer owned the water company in the late 1800s, and he wanted to divert water from the South Platte River into a lake as a backup supply for Denver. Remember when we took the inner tubes on the train last summer, and floated all the way home; that’s the Platte River. Lake Archer is what they called that water storage, but they could never count on the flow. They eventually developed this area where the lake was to be located. They had some big plans before the Great Depression dried up people’s savings. Only a few houses were built on this block, and Henry Roth, who built our house, inherited the management of all the utilities; that’s what they call the gas, air, and water for the neighborhood. (I always imagined telling my granddaughter this big fib.)
Franni — How do you own the air, Grappa? It’s all around us?
Grappa — That’s right, my big girl. We’re only talking about compressed air, like the kind your poppy uses to blow the shavings off the wood chairs he builds. Nanny takes charge of those utilities. I only own my bikes and clothes, and my old Vespa, which you can have when you grow up. You’ll be as beautiful as Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday, but doing your own scooting about, not hugging some man, though Nanny has held onto me for a few years now.
Henry Roth built these houses, our house and the two guesthouses where Nikki and Louise live, with his own hands and the help of his sons. He first rented a brick house up on First Avenue, what they call a Denver Square, and then rented the Victorian across the street where Patrick and Delores and Juliet live when he started his family. That’s his house history, from a Denver Square to a Victorian to this Bungalow he built into the side of a hill. (Amazing the things to be learned from City Directories at the library.)
Franni — Where were Patrick and Delores and Juliet, Grappa?
Grappa — They weren’t born yet. This was a hundred years ago — your mom and dad are only forty years old. There was a news photographer who lived there; he took pictures of crime scenes and there’s a photo of their house down at the library. I’ll have to take you to the Western History collection downtown. Floor 5 of the library looks like the inside of a mine shaft, like where Baby Doe Tabor lived. Henry Roth and his young wife Mary and their sons moved into that Victorian house, and he set about building a place for himself right here. But he was a cooper, a barrel maker, without much money. He bought this land cheap because it’s what they call a hollow, or a sloping piece of land. He knew he could build a basement that opened into the yard below. Mr. Roth was a crusty German fellow, who found materials to build his house for only $100. (In 1931, the Denver Post featured an article about his complaints to the tax assessor under Mayor Stapleton, asking why the valuation of his house doubled in seven years.) With his boys, he hauled river rock out of the Platte. He used broken bricks from when they were building Fairmount School — DCIS where you go to school — to fill the walls of the house, and the walks he poured of concrete. See that roof on Nikki’s house, and the round metal lids on the storage sheds — those are all from railroad spike barrels. He got those for free, too, and shingled all the houses with them.
Back during the Depression, when people were poor and looking for work across the country, he built those sheds, where my bicycles and gardening stuff are stored, so people could stay in them for a few dollars a month. All those sheds had a window, and could hold a cot and a chair. People would use the bathroom right here by the pool. It was smaller with just a small sink and toilet, and a separate door where that window is.
Franni — Could they use the swimming pool, Grappa?
Grappa — That wasn’t here back during the Depression, Fran. It was a driveway and there was a garage for Henry’s truck right where the yellow couch and the Cuban doll is in the sunroom. I met two of Mr. Roth’s sons, one who was nine when they were building our house. He was retiring to Arizona, and his daughter invited your dad and I to lunch to hear her father’s stories about living here. That’s when I learned there was a zip line from the back door down to the spa shed where your climbing wall is now. Mr. Roth dug a deep hole near the front porch and would lower his sons down on ropes to mine the sand and gravel that he used to build the rock walls of the house. He finally realized that was dangerous and could affect the house foundation. The older son I talked to didn’t like his dad much. He said that he never wanted to see any of these rocks again because he spent his boyhood handling all of them.
Roth’s grandchildren who are my age had a reunion here about eight years ago, and they all talked highly of their grandma Mary, but said Henry was kind of mean. Mary used to hand out sandwiches to hobos coming up from the railroad tracks. Henry was the builder, the provider, and Mary was the kind partner, who planted the gardens here. When we got the historic designation, which says this is a famous building, one of the board members of History Colorado said this structure was built in the “hobo craftsman” style, a new term he coined. Henry built a bungalow, a kind of craftsman house, with used materials he found.
All these old lilacs with the purple blooms were planted by Mary Roth, and she twisted the trunks when these locusts were young. That was something they did back then. There were two ponds: one up where the spa is, and the one that I rebuilt many years ago, with the goldfish and the tadpoles. One time, I brought home a white duck from where I worked and gave it to your dad when he was young. Duxter would greet us on the porch when we got home, and during a big blizzard he created his own igloo around the pond. He just disappeared one day — I told your poppy he left for Hanover to join the circus. (I think the dog of a tenant’s sister got the duck.) There used to be a cottonwood near the pond, but it was fed by a septic field we got rid of a long time ago. Once that source of water dried up, the tree died.
Franni — You have so many trees, Grappa. Why would one die, and what’s a septic field?
Grappa — People would just let their dirty water seep into the ground, and that old cottonwood liked to drink up that water. Cottonwoods were some of the only native trees when Denver was built. They grew along streams. Now our dirty water is even dirtier, so we send it down sewer pipes to be treated by city engineers.
Franni — Doesn’t Nanny own the water? You said those valves controlled the air, gas, and water. That must be why you and Nanny are the only people to have a pool and spa.
Grappa — You’re a smart one, Fran. Nanny tells the city what to do with the water, and you’re right, she keeps a lot of it around for you and your sister’s use. People think we’re rich because we’ve lived here so long, and Nanny acts like she runs the neighborhood.
See these logs that make this little fence by the cottage. There was a split rail fence of these hand-hewn logs around the whole property while the Roths still lived here. In 1959, Henry wrote his name in the concrete he poured at the front gate, and then died that night in his sleep on the cool back porch. That’s what his grandkids told us. Mary lived another ten years in the front bedroom where we sleep. Then they sold all this to phrenologists and gypsies, the Georges and Guanieris.
Franni — But there’s a big metal fence around everything. Who are gypsies?
Grappa — Those people who lived here after the Roths and before Nanny and me and your dad were a crazy group. About the only positive thing that they did was build the six-foot chain link fence around the property — people had begun invading it like it was a public park. They let the big trees die. We took down a half dozen elms, locust, and spruce in the first six years we lived here. I did most of that myself. The owner had busts of Beethoven and charts that showed how the bumps on a person’s head reveal their personality. His wife was part of an Italian family famous for their violins, not sure if they were gypsies or just Guanieris. She must have been a rebel runaway because she dressed up as a clown and played the fiddle at the openings of supermarkets. Their son lived in the cottage. He was a Vietnam vet and never left the house. They left us a shambles when we moved in; they let it go to seed in just ten years. He abandoned an album of photos from his service which I still have.
Franni — Grappa, you always say that when you rub my head you can tell I’m smart. Can everyone do that?
Grappa — I like rubbing my girl’s head and I already know how smart she is. But that was also what made Glen George an eccentric: he believed that rubbing people’s heads could reveal what they were about. What this fella could know I can only guess, since I only met him once when we signed papers at the bank. I read the Village Voice during the closing and paid my share with a personal check. Nanny and I were pretty naïve, innocent like you girl, about business and loans. But our partner’s mother knew the banker at Southwest State Bank, and we got the house.
When we moved in, we rolled up the ratty carpet right behind the owner’s son moving their stuff out. When Nanny’s mother and father came out after we bought this place, your great grandmother Ruth collapsed on the floor in the middle of the dining room and cried, she was so disappointed. Only Nanny and me and our friend Mickey who was our partner liked the place. Now it’s a famous house, where the museum holds parties.
Franni — The museum people come to our house to see Poppy’s furniture because it’s so nice. Why do they come to your old house?
Grappa — Oh, Franni, they had a summer party and women from the rich neighborhood of Cherry Hills wanted to move into the cottage and the cabin. Everybody thought it was quaint, you know, like living in the country, comfortable.
Patrick and Delores and Juliet’s house across the street looked dilapidated, run down back then. It didn’t have those nice lights on the pear trees on Ellsworth, or the grass in the back yard, and the deck with their dining table and couch. A big family lived there. A father who was named Streakingdeer, and a Mexican American mother, and two daughters, and a son who was born when Poppy was, within a day. Dexter and Lewis grew up together, but were from different cultures. Your daddy went to daycare at Auraria, which was educational. Lewis just hung around the house. I put together a bike for him once, but it was left out and stolen within the week. I tried to help Dickey across the street, where the really bad people lived, with a bike, too, but neither kid understood much about ownership or responsibility. Lewis, Sr., little Lewis’s dad, grew up on a reservation and loved music, but I’m not sure what he did for work, and eventually he left. One time we asked musician friends of ours to housesit while we were on vacation, and Lewis’s father stumbled into our yard when they were playing violins on the porch. Our friends said he was drunk and talking about playing music when he was young.
Franni — I want to play music. Daddy says I can start playing an instrument next year.
Grappa — You should play the cello, or a guitar. I like those the best, but maybe experiment with electronic music, so you can play all kinds of sounds.
Lewis’s mother needed to make money to take care of her kids, so she bootlegged Budweiser weekend nights. She would buy cases of beer and then sell it out of her house after the bars closed. We didn’t care much about it, but more and more people were knocking on our door because we were on the same corner. We got sick of getting woken up. I saw one of my friends from North Denver patrolling the neighborhood as a beat cop, and mentioned it to him. He set up a sting and the police arrested her. It slowed her down for a while, but she fell back into it, and so I mentioned it once more to my buddy, and they got her again.
I didn’t feel bad. The boyfriend of one of her daughters saw us leaving for skiing one day when your poppy was twelve, and we came home and our televisions were gone. We always suspected him. When the girls were older, they would party in the middle of the street after a night of drinking. I would tell them to go inside, and they would get mad at me. They were the ones giving our block a bad name. Lewis was getting involved with gangs at school, but he was always nice to your dad, and let the bangers, the gang kids around, know to leave Pops alone.
Finally, the mother gave up drinking, got her life together, and moved to Las Vegas. Lewis was left in town and worked for a while at the steel fabricator down the block, but could never keep a steady job. He was shot by a Vietnamese shop owner who he was shaking down for protection money. The house never changed much while they lived there — it just started falling apart, like the garage. When Henry Roth lived there when he bought our property, he built the garage behind the house out of granite, the gray stones I use as a border for the big pencil behind our house. (That was the “sharpest pencil in town” the slogan for Hoover Ford at Speer and Federal — we found the wood logo in the alley after the car company moved to the suburbs.) He must have been trying his hand at rock building, and found the granite too hard to handle, too sharp, since he never used it on our houses. After Patrick and Delores moved in, they found homeless people living in their garage, and finally took it down. Their fence across the street, Franni, is made with the granite from that garage. They had a plasterer who was doing work for them stack that stone. He said he grew up on a big ranch in Mexico and repaired stone walls when he was young. Patrick said that he brought his buddies by to see the wall he was so proud.
Franni — I like Juliet’s house. The ceilings have funny angles, and they have those nice wood stairs.
Grappa — Your house is sleek and modern. Your parents call it the Ivory Castle. But Patrick and Delores did a lot to their Victorian house. Their house is like most of the houses in Baker, built nearly 150 years ago. They bought a lot of cabinets and counters from IKEA when Patrick would drive to Salt Lake City to pick them up, before there were any stores like that in Denver. Now Patrick has his own stores all over the country selling clothes and bags. You have a Rondo bag, Franni. Patrick learned a lot about business from Nanny. Do you like the colors of their house — that darkish gray with the blue and red?
Franni — I like it, but I like how white ours is because everything else looks colorful in it.
Grappa – You’re right. Your Mamacita and Poppy show off lots of art and colorful things in your house. But Delores across the street always plants canna lilies and that Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick tree and climbing roses around their porch. I think she has an eye for colorful arrangements that comes from being part Japanese. I’m sure glad they moved into that house.
You know that I told you that there once lived a train photographer in Juliet’s house name of Otto Perry. He delivered telegrams, too, just like I did when I was 16. Well, there was a news photographer who also became famous who lived in the little house at the back of our yard, where Louise lives. Henry Roth built that cabin to look like a garage, but he rented it immediately. He just locked the big doors tight. The city had told him to stop renting the sheds to hobos, because one had fallen asleep smoking and brought the fire trucks into the yard. That shed was a railroad brakeman’s shack that Mr. Roth had dragged into the yard for one more source of income. He was always hustling. It stood right next to the pool, right here.
But Nanny and I rented that little house to George the photographer, who had just gotten a divorce in Florida and was reestablishing himself in Denver. His little boys came and visited once or twice, but George was so good a picture taker, he was able to move to a bigger place where his boys could stay with him. Nanny’s father and I worked on that place for a few years, trying to build a little studio that was comfortable even though it was small. A lot of crazy people lived in that tiny house. There was a jazz singer who was part Lakhota Sioux, a punk rock drummer named Leroy X, an installation artist, and a nice woman named Michelle who lived there for over twenty years. We first rented out the bigger one bedroom cottage to a nursing student from Loretta Heights. She and her friends would drive into the yard in winter and get their cars stuck. After her, a cabdriver rented the place. David drank too much, but never on the job, and he was one of the few drivers who would pick up old people at the grocery store. We put the pool in when he lived here, and he came up with the line, “I wonder what the poor people are doing today.” None of us were rich, but we had a pool to swim in and that made us feel like we were.
Franni — You’re the only people I know who have a pool. I love swimming in it all summer.
Grappa — Franni, you’ll be in the Olympics before you know it.
You know where you ride your bike down the hill in front of our house? That’s Fox Hill, and kids have been riding and skating down it forever. Before all the condos went in across the street, there was a big lot where the Gates Company stored steel and concrete framing materials. There was a tall fence all around that yard, with torn green fabric screening the yard. Gates owned all the land down the block, and acres on both sides of Bayaud. Every building they owned was painted white with blue trim — you would have thought it was a Mediterranean village. But the lot across the street was weedy and full of trash. They didn’t like us and they figured the house where all the bad people lived that was full of trash marked the neighborhood as criminal. They had bought that property from a German industrialist who was starting to make conveyors and machinery to recycle scrap. Karl Schmidt had big plans, and wanted to build a big factory across the street, but we fought him in zoning court with the help of a great attorney named Flo. I did most of the research and legwork to contest his plans. We lost the battle, but won the war. He knew he was up against some smart folks, and he decided to move to an industrial park in Commerce City. Before he had that land, there was a small business associated with Gates that did concrete work. When we first moved in, there was another long white one story office and shop building that a middle aged fellow managed. He grew tomatoes on the south side of the building and would share those with us. He felt bad when Schmidt bought the property because he knew what was coming.
But guess what, Franni. Before that, we heard from some of the old people who lived up the block, that that entire half-block of condos was once a go cart track, back in the 1960s. It would have been fun to race one of those gas carts around a track like the skate ramp in the Platte Valley or the BMX track at Ruby Hill. At least you still have Fox Hill. You know, your daddy took a long time to learn how to ride a bike. He didn’t get it the first year, but the next spring he rode it and was standing on the top tube going down Fox Hill in an hour.
Franni — I want to swim like Mom and race bikes like Poppy. He does those long races where he rides his bike with the skinny tires on dirt and rocks.
Grappa — Franni, you’re already riding up a storm, and you’re safe on the bike; you know what to expect from drivers. You’re my smart sweet tart. I told the developer of that land before he designed the condos about that go cart track. That’s why all the metal railings for the units with balconies have those cutouts of little cars. They’re called the Go Cart Condos.
When Gates took over that property, they thought they could do anything they wanted, especially after we lost the court case with Schmidt. They would paint steel beams on their lots with red paint — workers didn’t wear masks, and they hardly cared about the environment. Once when they plowed the snow after a major storm, there was a ten-foot pile of red snow at the end of the street. It looked like a slushy because the snow was mixed with lead paint. All that snow was melting and draining directly into the Platte River. A photo I took of that was enough to get the city involved so that they were forced to paint those beams in a paint booth. I kept after Gates for noise violations when they grinded metal. They didn’t like Nanny and me — one time old man Gates said we lived like pigs, after one of the zoning hearings. Your great grandpa, who was older than Gordon Gates, was ready to beat him up in the elevator before we whisked him away. Those were tough times dealing with industrial owners who weren’t neighborly.
But look out there now, Franni. Four corners all looking pretty. Imagine yourself in the middle of the intersection and taking a panorama shot of the Four Corners. It’s like being in a cyclorama seeing the history and landscape and people revolve around you. Even kitty-corner, that old Victorian manse that was all but destroyed by its owners. When we first moved in, Grandma Wiley kept the place up, but the hoarding hex got the better of her. The only time that I was in the house, the living room was like the maze in The Shining, stacked to the ceiling with newspapers that only allowed narrow aisles for maneuvering. Her daughter Lotti grew up there, and mothered two sons who seem to have strayed from the natural selection of the species. A neighbor began calling her brother, who owned the house with her, “uncle-dad,” since it was unclear how close he was to the boys. We tried to be nice. Like I said, I helped Dickey with a tire for his bike, but that didn’t last long — it disappeared into the junk heap of their house. One time we found Dickey exploring our yard when we got home in the car. We told him not to come back. He grew up driving large vehicles, first as a school bus driver whom I wouldn’t want to ride with, finally as a long haul driver. He fathered a bunch of kids and his wife moved into that house, but she finally took the babies and ran. She must have realized the place was a freak show.
Franni — Do you mean like a circus, Grappa?
Grappa — Yes, Franni, but more like Jim Rose’s Circus Sideshow. The place was full of demented fools. The younger brother Maxwell thought the Insane Clown Posse was the coming of Christ. He preferred the nickname Taz, for Tazmanian Devil, a nasty cartoon character. They had a huge maple tree out front of their house, the best thing about the place. Maxwell put out a Denver water sign that encouraged people to “only use what you need.” I expect that he thought that excused them from watering. The tree died not long afterward, died of thirst. I mowed the yard inside the gate once, but they offered little thanks. About ten years ago there was a Shriner convention in town — those guys who ride those little motorcycles in parades — and one of those men brought a friend to see the house where he grew up. He cried when he saw the Wiley’s disgrace.
I bet that I’ve seen eight or ten different owners of the house north of Maxwell’s since Nanny and I have lived here. They all move after dealing with the Wileys for any length of time. When Lotti moved out, with Dickey on the road, Maxwell took over as the resident on site. He had already been rifling through all the cars on the block, checking garages for anything he could steal. He put up a makeshift privacy fence so that all the goods that he and his friends were taking at night and delivering to the yard in shopping carts could easily be hidden in the yard where people couldn’t see them. When there were three empty carts parked on the sidewalk in the morning, you knew they had a good night. Girls started coming and going, working on guys in cars, retreating inside the house, then leaving with knapsacks full of clothes and drugs. One time Maxwell drew a hate sign, a swastika on the Subaru when it was new, and I caught him at it. He got a year’s probation. That was his style, his shiftiness. He never seemed to get caught. Finally, the police were called into the house because a guy had a knife threatening a woman. That’s when the police and inspectors shut the place down. Not too long after that, that old white house was sold, gutted, and refurbished. Hector and Orlando live there now. They put a nice deck inside the side yard, with that gurgling fountain that looks like a mermaid. You’ve been there, haven’t you, Franni?
Franni — Nanny brought me over there. I love that fountain. They have nice furniture like we do. They’re fun. And they have a new baby!
Grappa — Yes, a couple of nice guys with a little girl named Cepeda. I think Orlando likes baseball. The place looks nice with its new sycamores and that hibiscus with red flowers the size of your head. After all these years, the Four Corners has turned out to be a nice place to live. I hope your parents and you hold onto Little Reata. That’s what we call our place. The name comes from James Dean’s property in Giant; he inherited it from the woman he worked for. The mural on the back wall of our kitchen spells it out in graffiti letters. One of my students from when I was teaching at art school painted it. Maybe it will be yours someday. It’s a nice place to call home.
Enough of my talking. Let’s swim.
Franni — Watch my dive, Grappa.
Splash.
Grappa — Splashi Franni!
