Home › Entertainment › Books › Special Reports › A Dozen on Denver RSS | My Yahoo

What goes into creating a great city? The same thing that makes for a great newspaper: vision, a spirit of curiosity and dogged determination — and the creative energy that goes into building something where there once was only the wisp of an idea.

This November, the city of Denver celebrated its 150th anniversary. In April, the Rocky follows with its own 150th. To commemorate both, we ran a series titled A Dozen on Denver: Stories to celebrate the city at 150. For the series, we commissioned 11 Colorado authors to write original fiction. We asked the authors to choose a different decade of Denver's history, to mention Larimer Street at least once in their stories and to keep it all to 2,500 words.

We featured a new story every Tuesday since the beginning of the series. Friday November 14th, we ran a special section in print compiling all the stories, plus one additional piece: the winner of our story contest. Look below for PDF files of that special print section, and enjoy the stories and professional audio readings and interviews in this special report.

THE STORIES

1860: Yellow roses

by Margaret Coel

She had wondered how many days would pass before someone came to tell her what to do. It had required two weeks. Two weeks to the day that the horse-drawn wagon had carried the plank coffin out onto the brown bluffs that wrapped around Denver City. The men had dug a hole in the hard ground, lowered the coffin inside, and shoveled earth on top. She had planted a yellow rose on the mound. Then she had grasped Little Mary's hand and followed the small crowd of mourners back to the log cabin on Larimer Street that she and Jed had moved into only a month ago. ...

1880: It's November 1880, and the Angel of Death is having a bad day

by Joanne Greenberg

The Angel of Death for the 4-year-old state of Colorado has overslept. An hour after his normal waking, he heaves himself from his lumpy mattress. In the old county, he remembers with a pang, they had feather beds, deep, warm and soft. You could lie by the chimney and ... He sighs. He is in his frailer years and had dreamt yet another dream of happier times. ...

1890: A place in the world to be

by Pam Houston

It wasn't money that Harner was after, as much as a place in the world to be. He'd been kicked out of several places in his short life, the first one being his father's gentleman farm just outside Scottsbluff, Neb., which, he would be the first to admit, had never been a comfortable fit, not even when he was a baby. After his mother died of influenza the winter Harner turned 11, no amount of try on his part could earn him a place there. He got a job as a hand on a huge wheat and cattle operation just over the Colorado border but got kicked out of the bunkhouse for snoring and eating more than his share of the food. ...

1910: Armistice Day

by Nick Arvin

Peace has come, and in the Manhattan on Larimer Street, where the menu offers steak for 35 cents, a chaotic, exuberant noise rises from the tables. Over the last week the Spanish flu epidemic has ebbed, and today came word of a signed armistice - soon the boys in France will be coming home! Few still bother to wear the gauze masks that the city mandated to combat the influenza, but a pair seated at a table near the front door wear theirs - white cloths tied back over the ears, covering nose and mouth. ...

1920: New hat

by Connie Willis

Sir, how long before we reach Denver?" Clara asked the conductor timidly. "Two hours, ma'am." Good, Clara thought, relieved. The lawyer would still be in his office. She could see him and find out what Uncle Matthew had left her in his will and maybe even catch a train back to Chicago tonight and not have to spend the night in Denver.

1940: Lennie's Tavern

by Sandra Dallas

Before the war, my brother and I hung out in the gin mills on upper Larimer Street, near the old Windsor Hotel. There was the Headquarters, the Lighthouse, the Easy Inn and our favorite, Lennie's Tavern, which was next door to the Good Sisters Mission. Lennie's clientele was mostly retired railroad men who lived in the Roxbury Hotel or in the Barclay Rooms, and a few down-and-outers who slept in doorways or under the viaducts. For some reason, the pressmen from the Rocky Mountain News came all the way down to Lennie's after shift.

1950: Fence Busters

by Manuel Ramos

Kiko tugged on the short brim of his cap, a cachucha to his mother, and adjusted the strap of his shoeshine box. Thick black hair clumped around the edges of the cap. An October gust streaked up Larimer Street. He squinted to block dust stirred from the curb.

1960: The Welcome

by Arnold Grossman

What are you, a cowboy or a queer?"

It was a deep, resonant voice, laced with whiskey and cigarettes, that startled Zack Blum, sending a bolt of fear surging through his body. He made no attempt to drop the newspaper he had been reading. Instead he stole a glance down at the tan granite floor and saw a pair of scuffed, steel-tipped cowboy boots pointing at him.

1970: Something in common

by Robert Greer

The mid-October Mile High City air was dry, crisp and rich with the home-again smell of burning leaves and the barest hint of ponderosa pine.

1980: Beginnings

by Diane Mott Davidson

Arch stumbled onto the body of Manny Trent at dusk the night before Thanksgiving. A heavy confetti of snow was falling all over Denver. An hour earlier, we'd left our house in Aspen Meadow, 40 miles to the west, in what felt like an onrushing storm. Panicked, fearful for reasons other than weather, I'd hustled Arch into our Jeep and just taken off. No boots. No hats. No plans.

2000: The Color of the Impression

by Laura Pritchett

I was ice-skating on the pond, the puppy bounding around next to me, leaping at my legs in adoration and joy, and it was this exuberance that caused us to collide. I ran over the pup's paw with the blade of my skate, and her yelp pierced the air as I plunged forward, right into the boat that I leave, upside down, next to the pond. My head hit the chine of the boat, the boat being a little plywood number I made myself.

The Future: Heirlooms

by Robert Pogue Ziegler

Peanut sat on the cracked concrete stoop like Alice on the mushroom, bare feet folded under her rump, faded SpongeBob T-shirt hooked over her knees. She scooped handfuls of loose charcoal from a brazier made from the bottom third of a rusted 50-gal drum and pressed it into a heap of wet cotton set on a scrap of tin siding laid before her. Her sunburned nose wrinkled with determination as she beat at the mixture with tiny palms. Teresa watched her and marveled how the girl resembled her own mother

The Contest

To round out our A Dozen on Denver series, we asked readers to send us original stories set in Denver's future and mention "Larimer Street" somewhere in the text. We received nearly 200 entries, everything from humorous tales to apocalyptic visions of Denver's future.

A committee of three — Denver author Sandra Dallas, Denver publishing consultant Laurie Brock and former Tattered Cover book buyer Margaret Maupin — read all the stories, narrowing them to five. From these, Rocky Books Editor Patti Thorn chose the winning story.

The winner: