Wynken, Blynken and Nod
Another way to look at it is “mono no aware” a Japanese phrase which describes a wistfulness about the transience of things (this I stole from a Roger Ebert film review…).
Greg Kelley and I went to Denver either to go further north to the Wildlife Sanctuary south of Greeley or look for photos around the Cherry Creek Mall. We did neither and ended up downtown at the Denver Art Museum which was closed on Monday!
There were plenty of photos to be had outside the Daniel Libeskind wild architecture, however, we ended up across the street at the Byers-Evans House Musuem taking a tour with a guide named Loretta (major coincidence – my deceased step-mom’s name was Loretta and she was a docent in this very museum!).
We stopped at Washington Park for photos, and a wave of nostalgia overcame me. I couldn’t stop telling Greg about growing up in this park (we lived one block away on Gilpin St. for all but two of my first 13 years). I wanted to show Greg where I ‘fished’ for crawdads with bacon and string, and sure enough, there were kids doing the same thing! Then, I wanted to show him the Wynken, Blynken and Nod statue, but couldn’t find it. We asked several walkers/runners, but no one had ever heard of it. Finally, an older gent pointed to the other side of the sports pavilion. There it was, maybe a little smaller than I remembered, right next to the house where Eugene Field lived when he wrote the poem. http://www3.amherst.edu/~rjyanco94/literature/eugenefield/poems/poemsofchildhood/wynkenblynkenandnod.html The house had been converted into a branch library when I was a kid, and I had to tell Greg about the summer I read every Nancy Drew book in the Denver Public Library in one summer.
What a “Roots” trip!
We ate a fabulous meal at Racines and then had coffee and a brief stop at Mike’s Camera in Park Meadows Mall on the way home. Very satisfying. I hope I didn’t bore Greg to tears with my tales.
From Gene Daniels: Odd you should find the Eugene Field house bit and reminisce about the joys of that little branch library in Washington park. My family lived on Downing St and the little library in the Field house , which was then painted a bright yellow , was my favorite refuge and the park my playground. While my taste was not for Nancy Drew ( had not been written at that time I don’t think) sure did gorge on ‘Richard Halliburton’ and many other travel books. Mostly related to Aviation. Thanks for a nice rememberance to find and see the statue. Later when my folks moved tø the mountains and I was forced to board in Denver for school the park was the ideal place to fly model airplanes, a passion of mine in those primitive times. Byers Jr High was the school attended followed by intentions for south High. Amazing how those times we were allowed to roam freely or so I was and suspect you also shared this freedom. This was the time of starting an interest in phøtography also . We even developed our own film generated in our amazing Univex (plastic) camera.
Later from Gene: I neglected to mention my reminiscing was from the 30’s the 1930’s that is. Like about 1936 or so plus. In 1938 we left Colorado for California because of the flood in BearCreek that destroyed our home.