She was a classic old gray mare we called Lady and she had a backbone that stuck up several inches from shoulders back to the tail and she was pot bellied but her ribs still showed. My Dad rode her bareback out to our place a mile West of City Park—quite a trip for a man who hated horses. (His step dad, Pete Smith, was a horse trainer at the State Fair Grounds and he made Dad clean stalls and hot walk horses when he was young. He hated Pete and the horses. Pete was also a railroad union president. My Dad always hated Unions, too, even though he was a Democrat.) My Dad had once been a pin setter at the Steel Y bowling alley and whenever we got near it he also liked to talk about the pool there where he learned to swim.

A few years later Dad put us to work with him tearing down an old shed on a street near the Y. It must have belonged to one of the bartenders or owners in the area. The lumber was old and weathered (it would be priceless today) and we used it to make a chicken house for my brother’s laying hens that paid for his music lessons and went into his college savings. So, we helped remove the horse manure production from Bessemer and turn it into a dehorsified community.

When horse and man finally arrived at our home, I got on and rode for seven straight hours. I could barely sit for a week and had a huge scab on my nether regions that tore whenever my bowels were emptied. But, I continued riding all over the West Park and Arkansas River area from the 4th street bridge out to the Rock Creek Barrier Damn and out the Rock Creek Springs road to Beulah—a far cry for the old mare from her little pen in the hood. A colt was born to her when I was nine and she was my steady companion for the next five years.

We were never treated to all the great places to eat that you guys seem to know. Once a month when Dad was paid we dressed in our one suit and went to the Top of the Town for a steak while our Mother read to us from Emily Post. I hated it and still do not have the relish for ‘eating out’ that many folks do. My colt was sacrificed to a Top of the Town outing one evening when I got her out of the neighbor’s garden where she had escaped to and tied her with a lariat to a post while they honked the horn and yelled at me to ‘hurry.’ Next morning she was dead from choking on the loose rope.

In his later days in Pueblo in the mid 1990s, my Dad almost always wound up steering us to the various Mexican restaurants in the old Bessemer area. So, I do not even know their names but I do remember some darn good Mexican Restaurants around there. Thanks for giving me some names to look for if I ever get back that way.

One night when we were in Sadie’s, James Brown came on the jukebox singing, “I Feel Good.” I was facing the jukebox and noticed that no one had put any money in it. I mentioned this to Gary’s wife, and she said this occurred fairly frequently, that the jukebox would begin start without anyone putting any money in it, and it was always James Brown, but singing different songs. She went on to tell us about other freaky incidents that occurred on a regular basis, like the radio station changing by itself, lights that kept coming back on when they had been turned off, and mumbled voices that could be heard when the restaurant was closed and no one was there. She said she and her daughters refused to help clean the place at night if Gary wasn’t with them. I knew that before Sadie’s opened the building housed another restaurant, but then something clicked and I asked what had been there long before, and she said Simmons Downbeat. Gary came up to us then and he verified what his wife had told us, and I asked him if anyone had ever been killed in the Downbeat, and he said it had happened, although I don’t know if he was correct. Those few of you who have read my story on this blog, “David Glick, Private Dick,” posted in March, 2008, might recognize that I used this jukebox incident in that story.

A couple of years later, when they put the building up for sale, Gary’s wife told us that Gary had told her to keep quiet about the ghostly happenings or they would never sell it.

A few doors down from Sadie’s, on E. Evans in Bessemer, is a pool hall. It was there, in the early 1940s, that my father and his partner, Scotty Spinuzzi, ran a barboot game in plain sight just inside the front door.

The location of the Mill Stop had a previous incarnation. Back when mill workers “doubled over,” i.e. worked a second shift, CF&I paid for a lunch provided by Chuck’s Lunch. The lunch was likely to be a bologna sandwich on white bread with a container of chips, but at three o’clock in the morning, it was good.

Next door to the Mill Stop, right on the corner, the doors are closed, but I was in there a few times when it was Liz’s. That’s where I first ate menudo, a soup made with cow’s stomach. Cattycorner from there is the parking lot of the Power Credit union. Once it was a recreation center with a low ceiling in the basketball court, where the legendary, in Bessemer at least, Teto Trujillo perfected the flat shot that enabled him to play for the Phillips 66 Oilers at the age of 18. Later that rec center became the Ramirez café mentioned by both Jerry Donnelly and Jerry Miller.

Speaking of ghost buildings, right across from the Mill Stop to the south is a parking lot that takes up nearly an entire block. The Colorado Supply, Pueblo’s version of the “Company Store” burned in about 1953. I watched the fire with my family, as did Joann and hers. The south half of the block was the Steel Y, a subject too grand, and heartbreaking to go into now.

After lunch I turned north on Routt and drove by a good take-out place, Pasta Cottage, then past El Nopal, which was our favorite when I brought my wife to Pueblo in 1967. There was a fairly recent article in the Chieftain which claims that the same family owns it. Whether the change is in me or in the food, it’s not the same old El Nopal.

Further north on Routt I passed Sadie’s, a Mexican restaurant that is quite good, but which once was Simmons Down Beat, a drinking spot for African Americans that fascinated, and frightened many whites. Just down the street is Jorge’s El Sombrero where then candidate Barack Obama famously ate on a campaign trip to Pueblo. Jorge’s certainly would make my top five.

As I continued on towards the library, I passed many other places with memories, either gone like Bolingers or boarded up. There is a Mexican store/restaurant on the southeast corner of Routt and Mesa that advertises bus trips to El Paso. I have not been in.

On Abriendo are the old and new locations of the Pass-Key. The smaller, older one was a place I played pinball. The new one is iconic Pueblo, partly because a couple of writers for the Chieftain mention it frequently.

I know the Junction itself if full of food ghosts: ice cream places, hamburger shacks, drug store soda fountains, Sambo’s, but that was too far from the Bessemer I remember.

“Not only does the menu feature Colorado’s finest products from our varied region, Chef Duy expertly layers the ingredients in such a way that each one can be experienced as it exists alone and as it enhances the dish. State gourmet treasures such as Haystack Mountain Goat Dairy cheese, Pueblo County vegetables, and Colorado lamb are featured on the menu, which changes daily.”

Prices seem moderate. French/European/and New American. They serve hamburgers, etc., also.

Probably worth checking out.

Ray

The sad thing about Jerry’s post is that of the 10 places he mentioned, only 3 remain. On the other hand, maybe it’s amazing that 3 still do after 50 or 60 years.

When Jackie and I first married, in 1965, one night a week, I think Thursday, the combination plates at Ramirez’s were priced two for one, and we went there almost weekly. As I recall they were less than two dollars to start with, and who could pass up that wonderful food when you were in effect paying half price? When we moved to Denver, and later Colorado Springs, we learned that you could not get the quality of Mexican food in either place as we had in Pueblo.

When I was a kid my family didn’t eat out a lot, but sometimes on Sunday we would have dinner downtown, then head to either the Chief or Main to see a movie. We usually ate at the Canton Cafe, which I think was on 6th St. I always had a hot roast beef sandwich with lots of brown gravy.

Another downtown place was Christmas Cafe, which may have been on 7th between Main and Santa Fe. If you went in there at 2AM, after the bars closed, it was just as busy then as it was at 6PM. The clientele was a lot noisier and sometimes rowdy at that time of night, as you might imagine. But after we had been drinking, we were ravenous.

I know there are more great places that neither of us has mentioned. A lot of people made a decent living by operating a small restaurant, but the competition from chains has put many of them down. Because of that I rarely eat at chain restaurants. To paraphrase Hemingway, I obscenity in the milk of all corporations.

This second place was being built at the same time as the Freeway. The first day the Freeway opened a regular customer at the Lake Avenue BK drove his classic T-Bird from one to the other in five minutes, without speeding, he claimed. That was a real shock since pre-Free you’d probably have to go through 20 stoplights to make that trip.

My introduction to eating out, along with most of Mrs. Varra’s class, probably fourth grade, at Minnequa was to Mike’s hamburger stand on Main near the old Y on Eighth Street. Mike was Mr’s Varra’s husband and we took a field trip. I didn’t eat hamburgers at home then, but I liked Mike’s,

Ron DeLeon’s mother and aunt opened Velasco’s next door to the Avalon and across from the Klamm’s Shell when we were at Corwin. Velasco was Judy and Estelle’s maiden name. Their mother cooked. It was my introduction to Mexican Food, still my favorite cuisine.

Everything seemed fresh and light. I don’t remember refried beans or green chile, now a requirement in Pueblo Mexican restaurants. I’d give quite a lot to be able to compare one of their entrees with anything served by any of the the popular restaurants now doing business.

Don’t get me wrong. I like several Mexican restaurants in Pueblo, but Velasco’s was first love.

Jeff Arnold