“Yup, what we got here is an old-fashioned cowtown!” trumpeted my Uncle Evangelos, threading his swanky new ’66 Ford Country Squire station wagon through the streets of what was then a sleepier Denver. But hope burned bright. Tony GlarosLongmont Lessons My father, his older brother by three years, took in the view from the passenger seat, while my uncle proceeded to bandy about the term “Front Range,” whatever that was.
I thought: was this the latest rollout from Ford? Yes siree, just a couple of decorated World War II vets catching up. And I was along for the ride. Meanwhile, I was along for the ride, squirming in the backseat before seat belts were invented.
I struggled to snatch from the thin Rocky Mountain air that illusory concept called critical thinking — although rest assured I wouldn’t know what `critical thinking’ was if it built a nest in my crew cut. In essence, exactly where were all the cows he spoke of? Another layer of fuzziness swept in as I questioned whether this place could correctly be characterized as a “town,” given the canyon of skyscrapers shadowing our car. Living in the Washington, D.
C., area, I was conditioned not to expect buildings to rise beyond the dome of the Capitol. In the mind of this junior high kid, that automatically meant that the nation’s capital was a “town,” since it was so vertically stunted.
The buildings didn’t reach much higher than 12 stories. My uncle, who landed in Denver after scoring a secure, hig.