The Road to Denver

I left Clovis, NM on July 1st, 1988. I packed the rest of my belongings in my car and drove to Artesia for the weekend. My parents had left for a vaction on a cruise ship to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. That meant I was in the house all by myself that weekend. I didn't really go out and do anything because I didn't have any money. My last paycheck from the station wasn't going to be available until later that afternoon, but I didn't want to wait an unknown number of hours to leave town. Besides, I would have needed all that money for when I got to Denver.

Because I had no cash on me, there was really nothing for me to do but get my stuff organized for the move. The only thing I actually remember doing was finding a box of brownie mix in the pantry and making some brownies.

On Sunday the 3rd, I drove back to Clovis, stopped by the station and picked up the check. I only had to deal with the part-timers there. I probably didn't stick around more than 3 minutes. I then drove to Fort Sumner and spent the night at my Grandma Bend's house.

The next morning, Independence Day, I set out for Denver. Grandma Bend gave me some food to take, including some hard-boiled eggs. I was going to drive more than 400 miles in one day to get to my Uncle Ord's house. It would be the longest distance I had ever driven by myself.

I remember everything was fine until I got past Raton and started driving through Raton Pass before getting to the New Mexico-Colorado border. It's a steep climb and my '78 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme just didn't have enough power to get through at a high rate of speed. I thought that the car was going to overheat and die. I pulled over and decided to wait until the engine cooled down so I could check the radiator level. This was when I decided to eat the lunch that Grandma Bend prepared for me.

After about a half-hour, I checked the radiator, but the fluid level was where it should be and I continued driving. I was still driving very slowly, but I made it to the summit and entered Colorado. It was smooth sailing from there.

I remember stopping to fill up with gas in Colorado Springs. At that point, I was just an hour away from my destination, which was actually unincorporated Littleton. I didn't actually drive all the way up to Denver that day, but I got about five miles away.

I arrived at Uncle Ord's house, unpacked my stuff and hung out with his family. They had made plans to go up to Fiddler's Green to watch the fireworks that night. At the time, I had no idea what Fiddler's Green was, but the funny thing was that I would wind up working there just a little more than two weeks later.

We drove around and found a decent place to watch the fireworks from the lawn of a library. A lot of other people decided to watch the fireworks from there as well. It was a very exciting way to start the next chapter of my life, which would actually begin the next day.

I was looking forward to all of it.