Escaping the corn (maize)

By Ted Streuli

July 21, 2020

There had been hours and hours and hours of corn. That’s the drive from Oklahoma City to Denver, where the highlight is the left turn from I-35 onto I-70 in Salina. And once you’ve made that turn, there’s corn until you hit the Denver airport offramp.

But that’s the kind of thing we do for our kids, and this was an especially important three-day hockey camp. Further proving parental dedication, the camp was drop-off only, no parents in the building, no watching our little superstars play the game. Thanks a lot, COVID.

We were in the northwest suburb of Superior at a place called the Sports Stable, and because not even accomplished 13-year-old hockey players can skate 12 hours a day, there was some free time.

The closest place of interest was the Pearl Street Pedestrian Mall in Boulder; close enough to get to quickly and, at six blocks long, short enough to meander for a while and get back to the rink in time for the next session.

Pearl Street was a lot less crowded and there were a lot more empty storefronts than the last time I was there, but there’s still enough to stay busy. An ice cream store every 10th yard, a store dedicated to fancy kites, soda pop shops, funky jewelry stores, tourist T-shirt shops, bars, restaurants and an occasional street musician. The whole thing smelled like tomato sauce, which drifted from an Italian restaurant

And bookstores. Independent bookstores selling new and used. Three of them. Three! In six blocks! And two more on the outskirts! The most appealing was the unimaginatively named Boulder Book Store, which has the sort of entrance that defies you to walk past without entering. One peek will sell you: Just inside the entrance there’s a staircase leading down to the basement level and everyone knows that all great bookshops have great, dusty, delightful basements full of used books sure to sag your backpack and fill you with exhaustion and gleeful anticipation.

Thirteen-year-old hockey players are disinclined to browse bookstores, which is probably a survival skill; there’s no way we’d have made it back to the rink on time if he’d turned me loose.

Instead, we continued our saunter amid coeds in ruffled cotton sundresses and at least one man having a heated conversation with an acquaintance visible only to him. Both got the 13-year-old’s attention.

Raymond, the unlikely son of a 60s-era San Franciscan took it in.

“Dad,” he said, “this place is pretty hippie.”

I had the good camera in its special backpack slung over my right shoulder and there were street portraits everywhere. I missed the best one; I couldn’t get to the camera fast enough. A Black man, in his 70s I suppose, was seated on a public bench or planter or something in front of the Wells Fargo. He’d have been a terrific portrait subject; his skin was very dark and he had a short white beard and cropped white hair. He had the homeless look and the signs of mental affliction, as though he was in a familiar place but frightened by his surroundings nonetheless.

A tall, young, curly haired man walked out of the bank. He was wearing a longsleeved white shirt and a dark skinny tie and he carried a paper coffee cup.

In most of the places I’ve lived, the next scene would be the banker shooing the man off the bench, worried he was scaring customers away or detracting from the institution’s imagined majesty. But what really happened was this: The young banker greeted the man on the bench by name.

“Here you go,” the banker said. “I got you your refill.”

The old Black man nodded and said something I couldn’t hear, probably, “Thank you.” It was clear the ritual had played out many times.

And even more than three bookshops in six blocks, it made me think that Boulder must be a pretty good place. Even if it’s pretty hippie.