Happy Fourth of July
I did a little sightseeing today, just walking up and down the street to see what was new and how much things have changed. And the first thing that was very obvious to me was I couldn't walk as fast at 10,000 feet in elevation as I used to. And after that, I was mildly shocked at the size of the new casinos. The early casinos were maybe one or two city lots wide and two stories tall. However, the casinos have now grown to gigantic proportions. Not like Las Vegas casinos, I don't think anything beats those, but way bigger than those of us that helped start the gambling in Cripple Creek could have predicted in our wildest dreams.
I'm guessing many people will be arriving in town today. I don't have much to base that on, since the last Fourth of July I celebrated in Cripple Creek, I was working in the restaurant and didn't have much time to walk around and talk to the other business owners about how many folks were in town.
On most days, after the lunch rush, I would leave my restaurant manager in charge and would walk to the other end of town to check the mail at the post office and on the way to the post office I would stop by some of the businesses and spend a few minutes talking to the owners about how things were going, and usually starting the conversation by asking " you making any money today? "And I would usually get the answer of "not too much", yeah, we’re making a little bit, or sometimes something like ‘I would've made more money if I'd stayed home." And those answers would usually give me an idea about how I was doing compared to everybody else. And I enjoyed the conversations.
Those times came flooding back into my memories as I struggled up and down the hills of Cripple Creek, seeing the storefronts, and wondering what had happened to those folks I talked to every day. Were they still around somewhere? Did they open up another business somewhere else? Did COVID get most of them? Are they wondering the same about me? Probably not, but there's one thing for sure: nothing stays the same except change, and you can always depend on change.
Theboondork
And speaking of change, I thought I'd shake things up a bit by giving everyone a mystery to think about. So every day, I will leave a clue to help solve the mystery. This mystery is somewhere in my blog and has been there since I first created this new blog on Squarespace. And your first clue is....
What you see is not what you get; timing is everything, on that you can bet.
My vacant lot in Cripple Creek, before I parked the camper near the white house. I took this picture from the road where I'm parked. I sold the white house, but I bifurcated the land and kept three of the lots, and those three lots are where I'm staying now.
The small blue house, located next to the white house, is for sale. There's a sign in the yard, and I heard they’re asking about $300,000 for it. It's only one lot wide, which is 25 feet, and that brown fence you see is all the land that comes with the house. They used to have a nice view, but the new casino covered it up. But it would be a great place for someone who works at the new casino.
A few of the houses across the street from me. I really like Victorian-style houses.
A hundred-year-old Baptist Church is just down the street from me. even a house of worship is not immune from the bumpy terrain of Cripple Creek.
Bennett Avenue is the main street in Cripple Creek, where the gambling is located. Needless to say, all of us who wanted and paid for the costs of changing the Colorado Constitution to legalize gambling had businesses on Bennett Avenue.