Henrietta Hay's Column

The decade of the l930's has been in my mind a lot lately. Last night the League of Women Voters celebrated its 75th anniversary with a recollection of each decade since 1920. I picked the thirties to remember, since I am one of the few people around who can remember them personally.

An unexpected reminder of those years came last week when a woman came up to me in the Library and said, "I too graduated from Englewood High School and enjoyed your column on Dr. Catron."

Now I have never written about Dr. Catron. I had nearly forgotten that he existed. But I did comment once on the endless steep stairs to the office of the only doctor in Englewood when I was a kid, and the fact that if you weren't sick when you started up, you probably were by the time you got to the top. She recognized the stairs, which she had climbed many times in her own youth. We reminisced a bit, and she reminded me of another incident.

Dry Creek went on a rampage one day in the thirties and moved a lot of my dad's lumber yard west a mile onto Santa Fe Drive. The water also rose in the grocery store and washed the labels off all the cans. The grocer sold the cans on a strictly "as is" basis, and for months we never knew what we were going to have for dinner.

It was quite a shock to run into a woman who remembered Englewood, as I knew it. Just goes to show you never quite outgrow your past, which is probably a good reason for keeping it as respectable as possible.

The thirties saw the depth of the Great Depression. The number of unemployed reached 13 million and wages dropped 60% in one three year period. We worry about the homeless today. In 1932 67,000 homeless children were reported to be wandering the streets of New York City.

But most of us didn't know we were making history.

The kids out in the toolies where I lived didn't notice much difference. We grew up long before the entitlement generation and created our own entertainment without much money. I don't remember being seriously upset over going to my Senior Prom at the YWCA in Denver on the streetcar. The trouble was we had to end it at 11:30, because the last number 3 car left Denver at midnight. Oh well!

Tuition at C. U. was $22 per quarter. Board and room ran about $25 per month. But even that was hard to come by.

For fifty cents you could dance all evening to Glenn Miller and the other big Bands at the Trocadero in Elitch's. Our favorite songs were the ballads --String of Pearls, Mood Indigo, Begin the Beguine. And they always ended up with a slow version of Goodnight Sweetheart. That was in the days when you usually said, "Goodnight," instead of "Your place or mine?"

During the devastating dust storms of the mid-thirties, a large part of Kansas blew into Denver. There were days when you could not see across the street and I suspect some of Kansas made across the mountains to Grand Junction.

Denver was called a cow town then, and maybe it was. But it had its bright spots. I can still taste the deviled crabs at Bauer's and the steaks at the old Manhattan. Those were the days of vaudeville, and I remember how glamorous the Orpheum was and how exciting the shows were.

Politically it was the age of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. His, "The only thing to fear is fear itself," galvanized a nation. It was also the age of his wife, Eleanor, the only other presidential spouse to create as much controversy as Hillary. My mother thought Eleanor was a busybody. I wonder what she would think of Hillary.

Some of the things we take for granted today were radical ideas in the thirties. The Social Security bill was signed into law in 1936. The Tennessee Valley Authority Act was passed. Prohibition ended with the repeal of the 18th Amendment.

And the war to end all wars hadn't! On September 1, 1939 German armies invaded Poland and two days later Britain and France declared war.