Yes, another extended break (Ugh!)

So, I knew I was going to take a break for August. However, I didn't expect it to be this long.

I had planned a two-week vacation toward the end of this month, so I was going to be forced to keep from posting any new stuff during that time anyway. One thing I didn't count on was being sick the last week and a half. In fact, I was so sick, I actually stayed from from work for the last three days. I am almost never too sick to show up for work. This put an unexpected gap in my articles.

With that in mind, I'm going to just not post anything for the next few weeks. It stops me from having to take a second, even longer, break this month and will give me a chance to write future articles with better quality.

I expect to return 09/07/15 and pick up where I left off in Denver. It will be like a new TV season starting. That's kind of how I have to look at it.

Enjoy the rest of your summer.

I get my first ticket in Denver

I was trying my best to steer clear of the cops in Denver after I had moved into my own apartment. I wasn't planning on going through the task of switching my registration to another state because I wasn't certain how long I was going to be there. I'd already had one run-in before, but I wasn't driving that time.

I was driving from the Southern part of the Denver Metro area when I decided I wanted to go eat at Round the Corner. I was going to take the Hampden Avenue exit from I-25. For some reason, I got it in my head that it was a two-lane exit. Even though I had driven past it many times, it wasn't. I didn't figure it out until it was too late, so I immediately drove over and illegally changed lanes. There were no cars in the next lane that I could have hit. The next thing I knew, I saw flashing lights behind me. I wasn't even off the ramp yet and I pulled over.

The officer came up. "Why did you cut over like that?" "Oh, I thought it was a two lane exit." He asked for my license, registration and proof of insurance. While my insurance card showed I had active coverage, I knew it had been canceled because I didn't pay the last bill. I just hoped the cop wasn't going to call the company to verify the insurance. (I found out that they NEVER do.) But that was my only worry about the stop. However, he asked where I lived. I knew that my Clovis address was still on the registration. "I live in New Mexico." He pointed out that the registration showed a handwritten address at 456 Logan St. “It says here you live in Denver.” My parents had forwarded the registration and wrote my new address on the outside of the envelope, which contained carbon paper. That address bled right through and showed up on the actual registration. I said, “I’m staying with my uncle for a little while.” “How long have you been here?” “A couple of months.” “Well, you’re supposed to get a Colorado Drivers License within 30 days of moving here.” (I didn’t know that. Otherwise, I would have told him a couple of weeks. DAMN!)

He only wrote me a ticket for not having a valid Drivers License. I did not get a ticket for crossing over nor for having an invalid vehicle registration. I would have to appear in traffic court. There was a number on the ticket that I had to call to set up a court date. I told Bez' father what happened and he decided to help me out, pro bono. I think he wanted to stretch his attorney muscles, which had only seen limited action up to this point.

One of the things he made me do was go get my license. I finally did this toward the end of December 1988, before we left on a trip to Los Angeles to get the rest of Bez' stuff from her maternal grandparents. I didn't even bother to look at the driving booklet. I just took the test and passed on the first try. They took my NM drivers license away. I asked if I could keep the photo on the old license (which was actually one of the best of me ever taken with my long hair), but they said no. I looked like a thug on my Colorado license.

On the day of the appointed appearence, we met at the City and County building and went into the courtroom. There were about 50 other people who were having cases heard at the same time. It looked like I was the only one there with an attorney. The judge came out. It was a woman. She went into this 15-minute monologue about reaching plea agreements. People in the court could get fewer points on their driving record if they pleaded to a lesser charge, even if the charge wasn't remotely related to the original offense. If no plea agreement could be reached, then a date for a trial would be set. Bez' father asked me if I would take a plea bargain. I said I would.

We finally got called up to meet with the prosecutor. I put my license down on the table. Bez' father introduced himself as my attorney. The prosecutor said, "I see you've got a valid Colorado Drivers License. I'll move for a dismissal." I was shocked that he just did that. I was expecting to pay some sort of fine or something. I was getting off scott-free! Later, I wondered if the only reason the prosecutor dismissed was because I had an attorney and he just didn't feel like it was worth fighting about, even though I was going to go ahead and accept a plea deal.

That would not be the last time I would get a ticket nor the last time I would need an attorney. I got in plenty more trouble about a year later, and it did not all end in dismissals. Even though Bez and I had broken up, her father would continue to represent me in court. But I had to pay these times, and pay and pay.

Those will be stories for other days.

Apartment #2: 456 Logan St. #101, Denver CO, 1988 - 1991

I had been living with my uncle Ord and his family for about three months. I didn't realize it at first, but Mom and Dad had been paying them $100 a month to let me live there. I found this out a couple of months in when Mom called me to let me know that they were going to be a little short and asked if I would pay them the $100. I figured that if I was going to have to fork out $100 every month to live some place where I had no privacy, I should just get my own apartment. I was hoping to get something close to work so I wouldn't have to deal with rush hour traffic.

I found a couple of promising studio apartments in the area. (I couldn't afford a one-bedroom like I had in Clovis, NM.) One that I looked at had just been repainted and had brand-new carpeting, but I didn't like the look of the neighborhood. Then I found this once place that was almost across the street from Phone Survey, Inc. It was a long, rectangular-shaped studio with a kitchen and a walk in closet that led to the bathroom. It also had a little hallway from the front door to the living room. Most of the other apartments had more space, but if you opened the front door, you could see the whole living room at once. The rent was $185 a month with a $19 charge for the heating and A/C, so I only had to pay $204. That was less than my apartment in Clovis. However, I would have to pay for my own electricity. The best thing about this is that I knew that no matter how bad things might get for me, I would always be able to scrounge up a couple of hundred dollars every month to pay the rent.

Another thing was that if I signed a six-month lease, the property owner would pay my $99 deposit. It was truly a renter's market at that time. They did the credit check, told me I was approved and I gave them a money order for the first month. I didn't have any furniture. Ord let me have a mattress that he used to keep in the back of his pick up. The only other stuff I had to move were my clothes and my stereo. One of the things I had to buy was a shower curtain. This wound up being my first trip to shop at a Target. (Denver didn't have Walmarts back then.)

After moving in, I had to work. When I got off work, I asked the office manager's daughter where there was a good pizza place nearby. She recommended Famous Pizza on Broadway. I drove over there and got an entire pizza to go. I went back to my place and continued my tradition of having my pizza for the first night in the apartment. I would wind up eating pizza there several times in the future. (And at a lot of other places. I didn't realize it at the time, but there was Angelo's just a couple of blocks away from my house. The funny thing is that I had eaten there before I moved into the apartment. I just didn't realize it was so nearby.

There wasn't anything unusual about the apartment, except that it was large enough for two people to live in. Had Bez and I gotten married at the Balloon Festival, she would have just moved out of her parents' house and into my apartment. But we would have found another place pretty soon.

I did have something weird with my key. When I first moved in, the building super had a hard time finding it. When he thought he found it, he gave it me and it unlocked my door. Later, I found out that it could unlock just about every door in the building. He had given me a master key. In fact, I found out that the key even went to the door on the rooftop. Sometimes, I would go up there to just chill and watch the helicopters land at the nearby military reserve building across Cherry Creek. If I'd wanted to, I could have held parties on the roof, but I'm sure I would have gotten into big trouble for that. However, when we got a new super, he changed the lock to the roof. And this was without him knowing I was going up there.

I was close to the part of town known as "Governor's Park." That's because the Governor's mansion was just a few blocks away. One day, I was watching the movie "The Unsinkable Molly Brown," which takes place in Colorado. In the movie, Molly Brown makes reference to getting rich and owning one of "those big houses on Pennsylvania Avenue." When I watched this, I thought, "Wait, Pennsylvania Street is the next street over. Am I really this close to rich people's houses?" When I went walking down Pennsylvania, that's when I first saw the Governor's Mansion. Further on up were several other large houses, including Molly Brown's, which was now a museum. The funny thing was noticing that they didn't use her real house in the movie. It's shown as being on a corner when it's really in the middle of the block. Also, it's nowhere near as large as the movie. I mean, it's a big house, but there's no way they'd be able to fit a ballroom that size on the property.

I was within a 30 minute walking distance of Downtown Denver. And I was also situated close to several buslines in th event it was snowing or raining. I was also close to a Safeway, a King Soopers.and a few convenience stores. There were also newspaper vending machines nearby.

Logan Street was also the main road that emergency vehicles would take to get Downtown. Instead of going up Lincoln, where there was likely to be traffic, they'd go right past my apartment building at night because there were rarely any cars on the road. It was something I didn't pay much attention to until Rid was talking to me on the phone one night. In the middle of the conversation, he said, "Hey, I think this is the first time I've ever talked to you that I haven't heard a fire truck go by!" I didn't realize it happened that often.

A few years later, a friend of mine told me he had driven by my old apartment building and saw that one of the windows in my apartment had been broken. I'm glad I wasn't living there when that happened. They have since repaired that and refurbished the building.

When I left Denver three years later, I knew there was no way I was going to be able to find that good of an apartment for less than $350 a month. It would be really nice to be making the hourly wage I have now and only have to pay $204 a month for an apartment. I see that a studio apartment at that building now goes for $580 a month. It's nice to know that I'd still be able to afford to live there, even if I was making minimum wage.

The funny thing is that I wouldn't live in an apartment this long for another 16 years. Moving became a way of life for me.