12th & Madison

My mom likes to tell about herself and her brother, Johnny, growing up in Denver, and how my grandparents raised them. She uses my names for her parents as she tells me stories, and sometimes explains how “Grammie” and “Po” influenced her views of parenting. She told me this story in 1999, when she was 80. I’m glad I took notes, including some of her exact words. I love her colorful expressions and descriptions. And the way she gave lots of related details, seeming to get lost, but always getting to the point of her story. These photos, taken a few years before the incident I’ll relate, make these children look innocent. But now that my mom and uncle are no longer eligible to be sent to “The Hoosegow” I can safely pass along this tale...

The Number 13 trolley in Denver used to run along 13th Street. It had a thing like a coat hanger on a pole sticking up to get the electricity from the wire that ran overhead. It went at least as far as Washington Street, and maybe all the way to Broadway – in fact, it probably ran all the way down to Wazee, where the roundhouse was. That’s where they’d fix the trolleys and turn them around. I think Madison Street, near our house, was the other end of the line.

Anyway, I know for sure that Moe Miller’s Crystal Palace Market was on 13th Street at Madison. The building had a false front – the wall stuck up above the roof, like the Alamo. Johnny and I could climb the telephone pole near one corner and get up on top. The pole had spikes sticking out on opposite sides, so the linemen could climb it. But these “steps” didn’t come all the way down to the ground – Johnny and I had to shinny up the pole a little way to get to the lowest one. Anyway, Moe Miller’s roof became our “fort.” We figured it would be a good place to hide and watch what happened to the trolley.

Before that day, our schemes involving the trolley were tame – we didn’t need to hide very well while we waited. Around the corner was good enough. Sometimes we’d even stand right there by the tracks, but we had to be careful we didn’t watch too intently – that might arouse suspicion.

We used to set pennies on the tracks and the trolley would flatten them for us. Some stuck to the track, and some went flying – a few we couldn’t even find. The ones we found were about twice as big as the penny we started with. We’d thought they’d get pressed out lengthwise as the trolley rolled over them and become ovals, but they were always pretty round. We were amazed we could still see Lincoln’s face, and even make out the date. And the old Indian-head pennies, darkened by years in somebody’s pocket, even got a little bit shiny.

Sometimes we’d set two straight pins on a track, with one crossed over the other. After the trolley came by, they were harder to find than the pennies, and sometimes they didn’t come out perfect. But some we did find had turned into “scissors.” The heads of the pins got a lot bigger and looked like round handles. Of course, we couldn’t cut anything with them – if we tried to use them, our “scissors” would fall apart. But if we were careful, they’d stick right together.

The Number 13 trolley ran every ten minutes during the day. That seemed like a long wait. So sometimes we’d go two blocks further, up to Colfax, where the Number 15 was. It ran more frequently, maybe every five minutes, since Colfax was a major street. Anyway, one day while we were waiting at one place or the other, Johnny had a better idea – “Ya know those little sparklet bottles Daddy uses to make his bubbly water – let’s fill an empty one with gunpowder and . . .“

I was two years older than Johnny. If I remember right, I usually came up with the ideas. Then we both did them, but Johnny (being the boy) caught most of the trouble. But I think the scheme to make a “bomb” really was Johnny’s.

At least, he was the one that found out how to make gunpowder. I think it had potassium in it, or magnesium, or permanganate – maybe he used that medicine Grammie would put on our faces when we got impetigo. No, actually, I think the impetigo medicine was “poslum” or something like that. It was gray ointment in a little tin can. It smelled awful. I guess the permanganate must have been the stuff that left little purple spots on my face one time around Easter, so I wore a hat with a lace veil that had the same kind of purple spots on it.

Now that I think about it, maybe I never quite knew all the details of making gunpowder, or else I forgot. And I don’t know if “sparklet bottles” was the real name of those little carbon dioxide seltzer chargers, but that’s what we called them. They were about the size of Vienna sausages. The hole in the end was tiny, so it took us a while to fill one with Johnny’s homemade gunpowder.

But we finally got our “bomb” built, put it on the track, shinnied up the pole to the roof of Moe Miller’s, and hid in our fort. We waited for the longest ten minutes I ever remember, but eventually, here came the trolley.

We weren’t really trying to blow it up. We figured our “bomb” would make a bang, just frighten the people a little. We didn’t want to do any damage, and we certainly didn’t want to hurt anyone. We didn’t think about it that way – we just wanted to find out what would happen. I think that’s the way kids are – they don’t see things the way adults do. They usually don’t intend to do the wrong thing. They just don’t have all the same factors in mind as their parents. But they’re not “bad kids.”

Anyway, it wasn’t really an explosion, but it did make quite a bang, and it did frighten the passengers. And we saw that it frightened the trolley too! It sort of got unseated – it may have come dis-hinged from its equipment, kind of got disengaged, and it rolled along the street a little way and then it quit. It wasn’t really broken, but it just flat wasn’t working any more. And Johnny and I were quaking in our boots.

When the driver couldn’t get it started, the people got out and stood around looking at it. Johnny and I were on the roof of the Market for a long time, waiting in our fort for the furor to subside. Eventually, the various crews that came got the trolley put back on the tracks and got it re-engaged and re-hooked-up. The people got back on, and it drove away. I guess they all got to wherever they were going. Or maybe some of them had to make other arrangements.

And Johnny and I were still up on the Crystal Palace Market. We were glad we didn’t hurt the trolley. We didn’t know our “bomb” would do that. Anyway, we finally figured it was safe to shinny down the pole and run home. We lived just two blocks away, at 14th and Monroe.

But by the time we got there, it was so late we had to explain. We had already learned the best way to deal with Grammie and Po – just tell the truth. And Po, of course, had already heard about what happened to the trolley – he probably suspected that his kids might have been involved.

Po allowed as to how he’d done much worse when he was a kid, so he wouldn’t punish us. He probably figured we’d learned our lesson. But he did suggest that we not make any more gunpowder.

Epilogue:

Research showed that, although the Number 13 ran along 13th Street for most of its route and got its name for this reason, it went down to 12th for several blocks and finally turned and went down as far as 8th and Monroe. Morris (“Moe”) Miller owned “Miller’s Groceteria” at 12th and Madison; evidently my mom’s memory was a block off, but I’ll leave Moe’s on 13th Street where she placed it in her story.