We arrived early the next day and went straight to City park in Denver. We stayed the day and night there in the car and it was miserable, especially with 7 people! We stayed in a motel the next night. It was so much worse! I had never had the privilege of cockroaches and/or this many! When you turned the lights off and back on again 30 seconds later the beds and floors were literally covered like a blanket with these disease carrying insects. I was horrified when the lights were turned on and everything was covered. It was out of a horror movie and we were the victims. It was so disgusting and scary all at the same time. Needless to say we kept the lights on and did not sleep well, I was honestly horrified! We had to stay at different motels for a night or two and then back in the car until we received assistance from the state. Which couldn’t come soon enough as it was getting cold and sleeping in the car was not inviting. They put us up in a motel that thank God was not infested. We stayed at this motel until welfare found us a place to live. I thought we had it bad before and this was just the beginning of this new life.
We finally moved into a brownstone in the Five points district of Denver. In those days it was the ghetto and when we first moved there I thought the state was mostly black people. It was mostly black people with other races mixed in. I was of course the only white kid and would be for the next few years. I made friends with all that would befriend me and it was not many. I was not treated with kindness and acceptance at all in this new world and would cling to the few friends I made until the day I got out.
The new apartment was old and had beautiful ornate moldings and trim. I took a large closet as my bedroom and we soon realized that the cock roaches were even worse here. You could literally turn the lights off for 30 seconds and the floors and walls would be solid bug. It was so amazingly disgusting and now a normal part of our lives. We would soon have to move to the basement of this building where none of the doors had locks and the entire place would frequently fill with raw sewage and was literally the worst place I ever had to live. We moved a lot and this was by far the worst ever. I had to change and adapt to my new environment. It was not a choice it was pure necessity. I made the changes necessary to adapt but it always left me with a dark period that cannot be changed or erased. I learned to be the only white kid in an entire school and deal with all the issues that came with it. It was not just a new place but an entirely new social hierarchy and way of life. I grew up overnight and experienced things that I should not have and things I will never forget. This next chapter of my life proved to be more than I had ever seen or gone through before. It was the hardest part of my life and filled with so many stories and amazing adventures.
It was filled with the lives of so many people that enriched my life and my identity. I found lots of sadness and tragedy. It scarred me in a way that I can only explain by telling my story. They are stories that I have carried for too long and need to get out to find peace and to let go. Nothing would be the same in the end and we lost a large part of who we were as a family and as individuals. We never talk of this time and when we do it is for brief moments. Who we were and what we had to do to survive has never been discussed. I think because of what it did to us and how it pulled us apart. We made it through that time together, but this time and this place was a period I know none of us look back at in a positive light what so ever. I would like to tell the most incredible of the many, many stories and things we endured of this time period and as I do I always wonder “where are we”?
pg. 9
This boys story. 