 Aizan Longmont. Offering a diversity of topics about our community that will inform and entertain you. We invite you to sit back and enjoy this edition of Aizan Longmont. Happy birthday Longmont. Hello. My name is Abe Melendez. I am 63 years old. We came to Colorado in 1965. Both of my parents are from Mexico. My dad's name is Juan. My mother's name is Luz. And we come from a very big family. My mother had 12 siblings. My dad came from a family of 11. They were both from small towns in Mexico. And at the age of 16, my dad lost his father. He was some type of authority figure in Mexico and was killed by an outlaw. My grandmother had 11 children from 20 all the way down to an infant. So at the age of about 17, my father came to the United States to go to work to try to help his family. He went back to Mexico and eventually signed up with the Bracero Program, which is a worker, alien worker program, where the contract between the United States and Mexico, they would come to the border and then the employers that needed workers, whether it was production or laborers. My father was unskilled, so when they asked for ranch hands, my father moved forward and he was picked by a man. The gentleman had a worker, told the worker to take my dad to the back and have him settle a horse. Well, my dad knew about ranching, so he was hired. I think he had to work in the ranch for two years and then they would sponsor him with a green card. After about three years, he said, I packed up my bags and I went down past the main house. The rancher came out with his wife and he said, what are you doing, Juan? And he said, well, I said, you promised me that you would grant me my green card in two years. He said, I've been here about three years and I'm going to go find a rancher that will do that. He said, I apologize. And he said, the only thing I ask of you is that you train the next person, stay here long enough to train the next person. And dad said, out of respect, I stayed there for less than a year, but a long time. The only person I saw was a rancher every so often that would fly by on his plane and drop a stack of letters and some candy bars out of the plane when he was coming by me. Went back to Mexico, married my mother and came to El Paso. There are six of us. I've got a brother and four sisters and we were all born in El Paso. My dad was working for Standard Oil in 1965 when a cousin of his in Longmont called them and said, they're needing workers, they're needing laborers at this turkey plant. So my dad asked them, what do they pay? And he said, a dollar an hour. He said, I'm making a dollar an hour now and the cost of living in El Paso is a lot less than in Colorado. His cousin said the magic word. He said, we have a lot of overtime. And my dad was on a bus shortly after that and arrived in Longmont. They dropped the passengers off at 3rd and Main. He walked down at the turkey plant. And his cousin asked him, are you ready to work? And he said, yes. He started that night shift that night. My mother and my father worked there for 25 years. My dad worked there as a cleanup, eventually becoming the supervisor for all those 25 years. And my mother worked on a production line called the boning, cutting up meat for 25 years in a wet, cold place. My dad came first and my mother and three of us came after, or four of us came afterwards. My uncle bought us two kids and we bought grandma to take care of the kids. We lived in Firestone the second year. We moved to Longmont, lived on Rothrock, which is between Martin and Lashley. In a little house that had no running water, had an outside bathroom. There was a box car that was put together. We only had a cold stove. We would get water from the owners on a 55-gallon drum. And I think mother had a milk, those metal milk containers where she used water for drinking. After a couple years, my dad saved up his money and he bought a house on Fifth Avenue. And I remember walking into that house and it had tile entry and carpet. We still have that house. My dad bought it for $10,500 and we still have it. My sister is going to move in to take care of my daddy. He's 93 now. My mother passed away when she was 63. We went to Columbine Elementary School. And on the weekends, our parents would take us out to work the sugar beets up on I-25. So we were considered migrant workers and my sister and I were able to go to migrant school in the summer, which we loved. Because they took us places on field trips, swimming, that type of thing. And one of my fondest memories is the Rainbow Bread Company on I-25 going into Denver. And I could still smell the barrette that was made there. My mother raised us because dad worked night shift every all his life. And so one thing about my mother, she was very big on education. Both my parents only had third grade education, not because they didn't go to school. There was in school. My mother didn't speak English. She didn't drive. But she made every parent-teacher conference that was there. And I was the interpreter. She took me to that parent-teacher conference. She grabbed me by the hand. She was tapping my hand. She says, I want you to tell your teacher that he has my permission to spank you if you don't behave. And I was looking down and I said, his name was Mr. Manion. All of us had Mr. Manion. And as a Mr. Manion, my mother says that we're doing very well. And he says, oh yes, oh yes. My mother was tapping me, see, see, see. And years later I told her that I had not told him that he could spank us. And she said, you're a brat. One thing I'd like to say is going back on my mother about education. But my mother went back to school at the age of 62 to get her education. So she was at El Paso Community College. And they called her the grandmother of, within all the students, because she always bought in baked goods for them. But she was trying to learn her English. I remember going back to her house in El Paso and she was, she'd have sticky notes all over the house with the way she would spell or pronounce the English words. But education was big. Growing up in Longmont, my dad worked at the night shift. My mother made lunch for him every night. So I would furry a lunch pail to the turkey plant. Rain or snow, I was always there with that lunchbox with my mother. And at times I'd zip over to a little, there was like, I think it was a pool room on the corner of the main and second, which was on the northeast side of the street. And it was a pool hall and they had some pinballs in there that I used to spend time in. They're playing the baseball machine. So that was very fond of that. I went to Longmont Junior High. And I was a straight age student because of my mother and my aunt who led with us, who was a teacher in Mexico. And she made us do homework. So I credit her for some intelligence. And my claim to fame in Longmont Junior High, I was Longmont fastest miler. But there should be an asterisk with that because I was Longmont's only miler. They knew me at the turkey plant because I always bought my father lunch. And after school was out, I went to the turkey plant to apply for a job. And they said no, I was too young. Because I wasn't 16 yet, I would be 16 into July. And so one of the managers who knew me asked my dad, I said, I saw your boy here earlier today, but it wasn't in the evening when he usually brings lunch. And my dad said, yeah, he was here to apply for a job. And the manager said, what happened? He said, well, he was too young. And the manager said, you tell him to come back, I'll hire him. And I worked there for four years during high school. In the evening, I worked four hours all through my high school years. And then in the summer, I worked full time. When I was in high school, back then it was a big cruising community. I had muscle cars. I had a 57 Chevy that we used to go up and down Main Street. People come in from outside of the city, even from Denver, just to come and cruise in Longmont. This building, I remember when the old building, we used to have a recreation room where we had weights. We'd come in there and use that. We'd come to the football games on this very spot where the rodeo was. And they had the tractor poles here. I graduated on this at the field here. The rodeos were here. This was the Boulder County fairgrounds. And this is where everything was held. I remember Michael O'Shea's. That was one of the, I think it's the oldest restaurant now. But back to the migrant program, they nominated us or maybe they brought a gift to all the migrant families. And they bought us a re-gift. I think I was 12 maybe. And a nice lady came to the house and it was a gift that was re-taped. I think the edges were frayed. It was a use gift. It was a mousetrap. I don't know how many people remember the mousetrap. Before she left, she looked around and the lady says, I think you guys would probably qualify for assistance. And I told my dad, and I'll never forget the words my dad said. He said, you tell the nice lady, thank you very much for her offer. He says, I'm the man of the house. I have a job. That's probably for people that really need it. And he thanked her and she left. And when she left, I asked my dad, I said, dad, why didn't you take the money? We don't have much. And he said, son, if you ever depend on somebody else to put money in your pocket, you'll never amount to much. So that's the way he left. We were at Columbine Elementary School. We loved it. We liked it. And I have an older sister. We were in the back part of the school. It's around the older part. And in the center, what I remember was it's very open. And this has to do with Christmas. They always decorated a big tree. The kids used the paper chains and popcorn and tinsel and ornaments. And we didn't have a tree. So my sister and I asked one day, we asked what happens to the tree. And somebody said it's, I think they just, you know, they put it away after it's done. So we asked if we could have it. My sister and I would bring that tree home. And my dad would cut it down his side because it was pretty big. And that's the way we had our Christmases. But I graduated from Longmont High School. I went to the service after high school. I was in the Marine Corps. I did four years there. Had a good career. After the service, I went to work for Mark Marietta, which is a cement plant on Alliance. And I was there for 10 years. I started out as a laborer and I ended up being the first non-degreed person to be hired into the lab. After 10 years, Mark Marietta was sold. And I was one of the less senior people. So I was, I was a Lego. And so I went into real estate and was working for Prudential and a friend of mine. He said, even if you sold the house to date, you wouldn't probably get paid for three months. I think it was 90 days, 30 days to qualify on and on. He said there's a lady that's looking for somebody to help her take her phones out or take her phones at night. And she's a bail agent, which I didn't know what that was. I talked to her and she hired me and I've been doing that for 20, 26 years. Our parents taught us to serve other people. I've got a sister that's in the school system, my older sister. I've got a sister that's a PA at Centera. We all graduated from high school. One associate's degree, one bachelor's, one master's and one, and I have a sister that's a doctorate in physical therapy. So my mother was very focused on education. I've been doing this for 26 years, serving the community and working with Martha Moreno, who is El Comite. Longma's been very, very good to us. Longma's been very kind to us and it's been wonderful to live here. I was away in the service for four years in California, which I loved, and after four years I thought, I miss the mountains. I miss Colorado. I could always visit the ocean. So I've been here since. Happy birthday to you. Feliz cumpleaños, Longmont. Happy birthday, Longmont. My name is Juana Mendoza. I was 15 years old when I came here from Mexico. I was born in Boulder, but raised in Mexico. Came here when I was a teenager, 15 years old. What I remember of Longmont was the driving that we used to have on 17th Avenue. It was about the 1400 block of 17th Avenue. We used to have a station wagon, so my mom and my siblings, we all went to the drive-in and enjoyed the drive-in. Then the other thing that I remember also about Longmont, Front Range Community College used to be, where Camar used to be on North Main, right in between 21st and 23rd, it used to be a small mall there, and Front Range Community College used to be there. The other thing that I'll never forget is my younger brother and younger sister, they always used to go rollerblading at the rollerina, and that was on Sunset. The rollerblades they had back then was one of those that you would put your shoes in with four wheels, metal, and I remember they worked really hard during the week to earn money to go to the rollerina. My mom was a single parent with four of us, so it was hard, it was tough. My mom worked at the Longmont Turkey Plan for many years, and it was hard for my mom to come up with the money to send my siblings there. However, they managed to make enough money. My brother used to help a teacher, you know, with her garden, so he would have money towards his rollerina ticket. The other thing that I also remember is we used to have migrants here. We used to have the Tanaka Farms and the Maida Farms. There was a lot of migrant children that came to school when I was in school. We used to go there and purchase their fresh vegetables. The Tanaka Farm was south Maine. The Maida Farm used to be on 3rd Avenue towards I-25. Not quite there, it was Well County Road 1, and 3rd Avenue there. The other thing, too, that I remember, and it was so nice to have the community up in open air. I mean, we still do that in Longmont, but we used to have gatherings where people were bringing, like, baseball players. If it was a baseball season, I remember the Rockies would come and sign their little football cards. The police people used to go around and they would give children baseball cards with the football players, and on the back of the baseball card, he had tips on how to be safe. We're able to get into the low-income apartments on 600 Martin Street, and we lived there until we all got older and got married and moved away, so we didn't move a lot. We had that one place, and it was a great place to be there because those apartments were for people that were not able to pay full rent. And, you know, my mom working at the turkey plant, it was hard to come up with a monthly rent and support for children. There used to be a J.C. Penny's on Main Street. My mother, whenever she would get paid and she could afford, she would go there and buy her some of her personal stuff that she would need from the J.C. Penny's and she was so excited because coming from Mexico, I mean, we got here and there was running water, a heater, the floor was not dirt, you know? It was such an amazing thing to be here. In America, it's a dream for everybody. The only thing that I see sometimes is that sometimes people don't make those good choices when we come here, and what I really love about it is the opportunity that they give us. When I came here, I didn't speak any English. I used to have a teacher, and she was a teacher's aide, Ms. Phyllis Theronas. She used to live in I-WAT, so every weekend, she would take us, my siblings and myself and Korean students that she had and the migrant people, Solomon, their parents used to be migrants and she would take us to their house and she would give us lunch and teach us English in her house and she would not let us speak Spanish at all or Korean, the girl that you spoke Korean. She said, no, this is an English class, so I want you to learn. So me, as, you know, I was 15, but growing up and finished my high school, I was that, that's what I want to do someday. I want to be able to help people that come here regardless of what race or whatever they come from. If I encounter them, I want to be able to help them like they did to us because when you move to a different country, it's like a fish, when you change the water from the fish tank and you put them in new water, if you don't put the treatment in there, they go into culture check. It's like, ah, what just happened here? So it was, I'm very grateful and thankful for that and because of that, you know, all our siblings, we are somehow related to service. I work for Boulder County Housing and Human Services. I have two sisters that work for the school district and my brother now is a Sergeant with law enforcement. And yeah, so it's, it's been a great experience and we make sure that we always say, repeat that to people that, well, because we want to make sure that they're here and feel, yeah, this is America. It is a little different than where you come from. It's safe. It's safe to be here. Just be a good citizen and try to help up as much as you can, you know. My sisters and my brother, we all graduated from Skyline High School. I was, I was the first class that graduated from Skyline High School. So my brothers, my brother and my sisters graduated there, my nieces and my grandchildren. My granddaughter is going to graduate from Skyline High School. My children also graduated from Skyline High School. To me, it makes me feel good because when my granddaughter started going there to school, she saw my class, my graduation class picture on the wall and she says, I saw your picture on the wall. So that was like really nice. And I said, yeah, and I hope to see yours too. And, you know, three years later, she's going to get it done this year. So yeah, I'm really excited about that. I also wanted to tell you that, you know, working for the Boulder County Housing and Human Services, I had a lot of opportunities to help families that have come through the same, how we did. And not just people from Mexico, people from everywhere, Asians, you know, people, I had people from Czechoslovakia that I had worked with because I'm a program specialist. So I go, I help people find resources around the community so they can survive. Boulder County has a lot to offer. People need to take the help. And I tell my clients, it's a two-way street. You come this way and I'll go the other way. It's not just a one-way street because together we can build, we can do it. And, you know, just think. Once you have your settle, you have a stable place for you and your children, just think how wonderful that is for their education. They don't have to keep moving and then meeting new friends. And then that causes a little bit of trauma on children because they leave their friends behind and they're not settled in one spot. I always used to tell a girl that I worked with, I said, remember, you build your own castle and your castle's not made of sand. Nobody can come and just get rid of it. I said, it's concrete. You have your foundation and you're going to make it. And thank you so much for having me here today. Happy birthday, Longmont. I'm, uh, I'm Millie and I swaner. I moved here in 1954 with my husband, who was the manager of a finance company called Central Finance. It was located in the 500 block of Main Street, CrossFit and the Trojan Theater. We came here from Denver, which was kind of a switch, but it was a wonderful, wonderful experience. Been here ever since. I can remember how friendly Longmont was at the time. It took no time at all to get acquainted. I wasn't even, I wasn't here a week when a lady rang my doorbell. She was from the welcome wagon, was sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, I think, and she came with a basket of goodies, the coupons and things from merchants around town. One thing that came about after that, she introduced me to a club called the New Commerce Club, which met at the Callahan House once a month for dessert and coffee, cards, if we wanted to play cards. From there, I met some lifelong friends. Some of us formed an eight-person bridge club, and we played bridge for probably 50 years. Also, my husband joined JC's, which was a very, very active group here in Longmont. He did a lot of things for the city, and from there was formed the JC's auxiliary called the JCX, so I also met friends there. It took no time to get acquainted in Longmont. We joined the Elks Club. The Elks Club was the center activity in Longmont. They always had something going on. Many dances. My husband and I loved to dance, and we would go there for dinner and dancing probably once a month, so they had a great orchestra called J. Weeder who came and played, and they were wonderful. People liked to dance back in those days. Kids nowadays, I don't think know how to dance, but anyway, we danced a lot, and there was a club called the M&M Dance Club, which you were invited to join if you wanted to, and we would have dances at different places, usually with a dinner. One of the favorite places was the waist side in in Berthard was located right on Main Street, and next door to that was a church which they purchased and used that for a wedding reception or whatever, but we rented it for dances, and we'd do that like four times a year, the fall, New Year's Eve, spring, and summer. There was a drive-in theater called, I think it was called the Starlight, and we would go there, watch a double feature for a little bit of nothing. Nothing cost anything in those days. When we first moved to town, we rented a little house on Baker Street, which was very, rentals were not plentiful at all. We were lucky to find anything at all, but this was just a little house, and about two years I think we bought a house up on Faith Court, brand new, and it was like a thousand square feet. I remember it cost $12,500. Our monthly payments were like $52 a month, and that included the insurance and the taxes, and then, of course, as our family grew, we moved into different places. We ended up on Fox Hill Golf Course. When I lived on Faith Court, which is right below Sunset Golf Course, that was the only golf course in town at the time, and my husband played golf all the time. I decided, if I was going to see him, I better learn how to play golf. So that's where I learned to play golf on Sunset Golf Course. The biggest grocery store was Safeway, was on Main Street. There were neighborhood grocery stores, little ones. There was one on Longs Peak, and there was one on the other side of town, probably on Martin Street or something like that. Ideal Market was not here yet when we came to town. Then they moved in. The corner pantry was here. That was a very popular store at 9th and Main. Woolworth Store was on 4th and Main. We had a nice Woolworth Store. I remember little dress shops down on Main Street, Elders and Marburgs, and they had beautiful clothes. You can't find clothes like that anymore. There was a little gift shop called the Marleau Gift Shop. It was run by two sisters. Their names were Margaret and Louise, I think, and they called it Marleau. You could buy beautiful gifts in there. Of course, the Trojan Theater, and then there was a Longmont Creamery where they sold ice cream. That was, I think, in the 500 block on Main, too. There was a nice place to eat on North Main, about 15th or something like that. I think it was called the Fireside Inn. That was the only nice restaurant in town. There were drive-ins. As you're driving down 9th Avenue West, Sunset was almost the edge. I think Over Road was probably the city limits. But when we bought that house on Faith Court, which is like a block west of Sunset, we were on the edge of town. There was not much of anything on Pass Over Road. IBM came, I think, in the late 60s. My husband was president of the Chamber of Commerce about that time. So he was quite active in that. But that's when the town began to grow. Not much before then. It was a little farming community. The farmers raised sugar beets. In the fall, big campaign, you know, get to process all those sugar beets. We used to have the Longmont Hospital, which was at 4th and Kauffman. The St. Vrain Hospital was on 3rd and Kauffman. And then there was a little osteopathic hospital at 9th and Kimbark. And then the town was growing, so they had to have a bigger hospital. So they joined forces and built Longmont United. And the lower part of what you see over there now was the original hospital. And from that, the hospital auxiliary formed. They used to perform plays and melodramas. And the profits would go to the auxiliary, which would go to the hospital. And that hospital was built, I think, in 1959. And then it's expanded and expanded and expanded. A lot of the women in town joined the hospital auxiliary. We used to go to the county fair, which was held out at Roosevelt Park. There was a grandstand there. It's also where they played all the football games. Of course, we just had one high school. Everything went on at Roosevelt Park. They had all the exhibits for the county fair. Also, all the 4th of July fireworks were at Roosevelt Park. And we'd always walk down there and spread a blanket on the lawn and watch the fireworks. I would never live any place but Longmont. It's a wonderful place to live. I've enjoyed it since day one. Hopefully, I will last. I can stay here until the end. Feliz cumpleaños para Longmont, Colorado. Hola, soy Linda Nieto y vengo a felicitar a Longmont, Colorado por su cumpleaños. Nosotros venimos a Colorado de migrants. The migrants, a trabajar en el campo con los sugar beets, un año no hubo, porque hubo un crop, algo de los crops, y los comenzamos a trabajar, a buscar trabajo, y llegamos a la Longmont Turkey plant. Éramos todos minors, pero los aceptaron, porque se fueron necesitados de gente. Trabajé, ahí conocía mi esposo. A los dos años los casamos. Y ha estado aquí, en Longmont, Colorado, fui a la escuela. Este, agarré mi GED gracias a Pat Lopez y a Virginia Alvarez, que tenían un programa aquí. Y después de eso, que agarré mi GED, fui a la escuela para ser secretaria y comienzo a trabajar en muchas comunidades para ayudar a los latinos, en Longmont, Colorado. Y todavía les ayudo mucho en interpretar, doctor, immigration, en lo que sea, es lo que hago. Trabajé, este, primero comenzé a trabajar en manpower si estaba en Main Street. Después ahí duré como unos 5 o 6 años. Después me fui para Salud Clinic. Y estábamos en la Kimbark, 515 Kimbark Street. Ahí teníamos una de los White House, 2 bedrooms. Y de allí fuimos creciendo y creciendo, ayudándole a mucha gente. Latinos y no latinos les ayudábamos a mucha gente en su salud de ellos. Después de allí, los fuimos para cruzar la calle, que es detrás de Michael Chase, ahí duramos otros cuantos años. Y estábamos creciendo mucho, mucha demanda de médico para la gente que no tenía asegurancia ni nada de eso. No hablaban inglés y no leían. Estamos creciendo tanto que hicimos otra campión para que está All Night in Lashley. Ahí tuvimos más grandecito, pero todavía grabamos mucho demanda de espacio. So juntaron un dinero, hicimos una clínica muy grande y muy bonita on Roger Road. No me acuerdo qué año, pero ahí está, desde cuándo, muchos años yo trabajé con la cellulite 15 años. Después de los 15 años que me salí de allí, este, fui a la escuela para CNA, grabé mi certificado de CNA, trabajé 15 años con deshabilitados, física y mental. Ahí trabajé muchos años, también otros 15 años. Ya de allí pues me salí y me quedo en la casa y hago balanchero aquí y allá y estoy disfrutando de mis años aquí en Longmont Colorado. Soy de Texas, original. Nací y me crí allá, pero creo que me gusta mucho aquí en Colorado que no vuelvo a quedarme allá. Y es todo. Muchas gracias. Felicidades, Longmont. Longmont used to be a very a very small community and very friendly community and a lot of the times that we would come to Longmont, there was places though that didn't allow Hispanic people in at one time. But it got better and better because our population kept growing and growing and it got better and better and a lot of our kids were born and raised here and they speak both of the languages which I'm very proud of. They're parents that teach both of the languages and it was very small. The only bank that we had was the First National Bank that was on 5th and Main and on Friday night you would see all the turkey parent people walking from the turkey plant to the bank with their white boots and their white caps and we knew who worked. On weekends we would cruise up and down Main Street and park but that was a friendly cruising waving at people and saying hi or parking by some street and having an ice cream or something. At one time it was a single parent with three kids so it was pretty hard to get involved in all those things and at that time it was really hard when you're a single parent and I worked at the Seluclidic all day and then I would go to Kmart at night to support my three kids. I was one Mexican proud mother with no food stamps, no Medicaid, no welfare, nothing. I did it on my own because that's the way we were brought up you need to work for what you want. I remember when there was a shooting on Main Street it was right in front of the cemetery two Hispanic kids were running I don't know whether they were running what they did or anything but they were running and the police officers shot them in the back and that was a no-no with a lot of people in Longmont. They got together, they did meetings, they did walkings, protest and the whole thing, we even started El Comite which is still active and it helps a lot of people whatever they need, housing, paperwork whatever they need they help there we started that with Ed Navarro and a lot of other people there and we were on the board one time I was a vice president they all came together white people, Hispanic, all black people they all came together and we supported each other and we still do police officers do a good job in Longmont now it's a good, good nice town. Feliz cumpleaños Longmont. Yo soy Virginia Alvarez y he vivido aquí toda mi vida I went to school here I graduated from Longmont High in 1961 I've been involved in different community things I worked for Community Action Center for several years with the senior citizen program and then the bilingual program came into St. Brain Valley School District and they needed someone who was bilingual fluent in Spanish so I thought, oh, they're looking for me and I applied and I got hired and I worked with all the Hispanic community enrolling their children in school my parents lived in the rural area of Longmont they were farm workers and when we went to school at Pleasant View Ridge on County Line Road 1 we only went there until we were in the 7th grade and this is real hard for people to believe that that school board paid taxis to go pick us up at home and bring us in to Columbine so at Columbine I was there until 8th grade then I went to Longmont High School and there is where I graduated and from there I just worked with different things mostly senior citizens because I guess I love them I really enjoyed that job we provided translation for them and I provided transportation to doctors for them and once a month we had them all together for a potluck each one of the seniors brought a plate of food it was the best meals we ever had because there were good cooks from there I went to the St. Brain Valley School District to work also with the bilingual community and we had classes in Erie, Frederick, Columbine so then we extended them to other schools and there I worked with the district for 20 years and then I retired and now I'm free I can do whatever I want but what every Longmont teenager used to like we would drag Maine from 3rd Avenue to Johnson's Corner which was 9th and that's what we did on Friday nights and that was the only time I had time with my friends and we knew how to drive so we would just drag Maine that was the fun we had we'd parked at Corner Pantry and all our friends met us there it was just a joyous time and it was until after I graduated that I had a little more freedom and then I went to work in Boulder for Esquire magazine and there I worked until after I got married I met Tom, it's my husband's name it was a blind date and we were going to a party and from there on we kept seeing each other and so then we decided to get married after a couple of years and we married at St. John's in Longmont and we've been married for 53 years we had two children our daughter is the oldest her name is Bernadette and our youngest is Carlos and both of them are married they don't have any children my son graduated from Skyline and so did Bernadette so she is a dental hygienist and Carlos works for the district St. Brain Valley School District Thomas worked at Ball Aerospace and he was there for almost 30 years I remember when the two boys in Longmont were shot and it just gives me the chills to think about that I knew both families and it was a very sad situation and I just hope it never happens again I don't remember people discriminating against me personally but I knew there was that happening you know and I remember my parents talking about it when they came and seeing white trade-only signs all over Longmont so they lived through that and I just lived through that because they said it would happen but I didn't actually see it but there's always been a little bit of that in Longmont I came from a family of seven children we were all born out east of Longmont and farms we were all raised out in the country my father worked in the beet fields and he would get up early in the morning at 4.30 to go to the beet fields my mother used to fix burritos for him and take burritos to the field so he could have breakfast and us kids we wouldn't eat at home we wanted to eat her burritos with dad so she would make enough for all of us I think we should have been eating cereal or something but no, we ate the burritos with dad at the end of the field you know, we'd sit there and during school time after we got home we used to go to work in the fields to help my dad and that was just on Countyline Road the Rasmussen Farm or the labor farm my dad and mom were the ones that got paid we didn't, in those days we just went to help my dad you know, we didn't get any money out of it we had food to eat and clothes to wear we didn't start getting, I guess, Americanized till we were older you know and both my parents joined in though you know, they were from Mexico came from Mexico in 1921 to Longmont my oldest sister lived in Longmont my brother moved to Lafayette because that's where his wife was from and then the sister that was older than I she went to live in California when she got married and then my brother my two younger brothers had a body shop here in town Rocky Mountain paint and body and that was a good business for them they did very well and my younger sister married and she worked at IBM and then she moved to North Carolina and all of them are gone except myself and my younger sister that's it they all passed away Happy birthday Longmont my name is Rick Jennings I'm a native of Longmont born and raised born in the old hospital that was at what Kaufman and fourth there's a bank building there now but I certainly recall that and I recall getting my tonsils out there as a matter of fact when I was five years old four years old something like that I lived the first year of my life on a ranch up the North St. Verane it was called Skyline Ranch it's now Pinewood Springs and my dad had 180 acres on the north side of the road and he used to raise Christmas trees there and another thing I remember about growing up is my besides raising Christmas trees when we moved to town after I was about a year old we lived on Judson Street in a 300 block just off of Third Avenue then shortly thereafter we needed a little bigger place so we moved to Aethan Grant which is still considered to be Old Town although at the time it was New Town because all the construction was just going on there when we moved in what I remember is we had a big privacy fence around the backyard and my dad wholesale Christmas trees every year so there'd be a semi-pull in they'd load off 500 or 1000 Christmas trees into the backyard stacked up and we'd run around in the backyard between the big stacks of Christmas trees and it smelled great it was a great time I say I lived a beaver-cleaver kind of childhood because we lived in a great little neighborhood there was probably 15 kids all about the same age and we just ran and played it really was an ideal way to grow up I am so grateful for the way I grew up in Longmont and one of the things I remember about living there is that we lived about four blocks from Roosevelt Park and in those days, Roosevelt Park they had the Boulder County Fair there and there was a big grandstand we had just great time since it was so close we could walk over to the fair every day as kids and I think we got into trouble but I'm not sure it wasn't very serious I remember playing on the tractors they used to bring in and all the critters that used to be in the barns along where the skating rink is now and along in there in fact we used to skate in those barns in the winter there used to be like three or four livestock barns where the skating rink is and there's still one of the barns there that they use for keeping vehicles in now and stuff but one of those, they'd flood every winter and we'd skate inside one of the kind of barns or sheds or whatever they were and we did that very well and one of the things about my father, his name was Harold Jennings built the stock well we called it the Stock 8 it was the name of it it's the log building that's at the corner of 15th and Main and when I say he built it he actually did he brought the logs down from up the North St. Verrain skimmed the logs and built the log building it didn't have the porch on it that did now it was that there was probably between the front of the building and Main Street it was probably 100 feet then now it's about 12 feet because it was just a two-lane street there was nothing else there the armory wasn't out there then he built it and then sold furniture out of it it's called the Stock 8 did that for quite a while and the furniture they sold this is another was from Now's Naughty Pine which was built in Longmont originally I think the plant for it was right where Stock 8 is and then they moved that to what would be oh I think 15th and Gay is where it is now I don't remember a lot more about my father he died when I was 11 so after the Stock 8 he worked at a place called Cyclone Filter which is now where Circle Graphics is my mother and my grandmother were both teachers at Longmont High they both taught English I think they started probably in the 40s my mom taught till she got married in 48 and then quit and then started again when my dad got sick in the late 50s I was the first in the first class the class of 67 that went all the way through the New Longmont High well it was new then it's the old one now that was on that's on Francis Street between Francis and Sunset you know my childhood in my high school years I remember very fondly Longmont was a great place it was probably 12, 15, 17,000 I think it was 16, 17,000 when I graduated something like that it was a small town and it felt even smaller interestingly enough I moved out of town for about 10 years and then came back I went to law school and all that and then came back and that was in the 90s and then back in 2000 and Longmont was different I bought a house in the 300 block on Sumner Street which is Old Town and I it reminded me so much of growing up in Longmont we were that was a part of town I originally lived in we lived in for about four years on Judson Street which is just down to the old memories coming back I left the door to a family called the Homeses who had Homes Family Shoes which was on Main Street 400 block west side it was a small shoe store or a family shoe store that was there forever Ron Homes was my best friend forever I met him when I was one year old when we moved from Pinewood or from the Skyline Ranch on down to Longmont they lived next door to us and then we moved over on Grant and within of six months or so the Homeses had moved about a half a block away up 8th Avenue so I knew him all of my life and I remember something about Homes Family Shoes that was kind of it had a fluoroscope in there you could go in, put your feet in and look at the bones in your feet I went to school, graduated in 1967 I'm currently kind of the facto chairman I guess of the reunion committee after the last 50th reunion we had a few years ago, they dumped everything on me so I guess I'm taking care of that. With the school to teach I came back and substituted for a while at Niowat High, by then my mother had transferred to Niowat High from Longmont High when they opened Niowat well when I was in high school we all what we did for fun is drive up and down Main Street about 100 miles on a car in Main Street and burdened maybe $2 worth of gas we'd drive from one end of Main to the other and we'd always cruise through the Black Angus which was on Main Street and Hamburger Haven and then we'd head up to the north Johnson's Corner which was at 17th in Main Longmont had a big car culture back in those days and I was, my brother was into it a little bit more than I was going out to airport road and racing cars and it was kind of almost like you'd see in the movies where people pull off in the borrowed ditch and we'd race from the railroad track down to a feed bag that was on one of the posts that was a quarter mile and we'd figure that out and then the cops would show up and so everybody would leave in a hurry that was part of growing up in Longmont was the car culture there was another drive in we used to go to Walt's patio drive where the five story first bank is now and that was one of the turnaround spots before we'd head back down Main there weren't lots of restaurants in Longmont, there was jeans Texas burgers, Texas which was right across from the old high school and they had long horn sandwiches which I know face hamburger covered with chili and cheese everybody loved jeans they seated about 12 people at a time I think and they were from Texas and they made great pies you know we didn't go out and eat very often it was a treat when we went to jeans or something you know every once in a while we'd go to jeans and have a long horn or a short horn that's it and I remember the movie the Trojan Theater which is and I remember when when they came in and sold they changed the name from the it was the Fox before it was the Trojan and they changed the name to the Trojan and that was a big deal and that's where we all went Friday nights in high school we'd go and sit whatever girl you were kind of liking you try to sit next to her maybe if you got risky you'd hold her hand or I don't think there was a lot of making out in the theater back in those days I remember the drive-in I remember driving in with several people stashed in the trunk of my car we used to you know because it probably cost a quarter to get in or 50 cents and so we'd put two people in the front three people in the trunk sneak into the driver I hope the statute of limitations has gone and all this stuff and so I do remember this guy you know when I was young and living on Grand Street we used to come over to Lumiller where Lumiller Pond is now across from the high school that was all just field and reeds and swamp in there and we'd go beat around in the swamp and catch frogs and minnows and all kinds of little creatures that were in there had great time doing that once I got old enough I could cross 9th Avenue the fact I can remember vaguely coming up 9th Avenue and the pavement stopped at Bowen it was gravel past Bowen Street going west and it got paved not too long ago but I can remember being on the gravel road down there at right at Bowen and on 9th Avenue there was a house there that had one of the old gas pumps that were the glass on the top where you'd put in your silver dollar or whatever it took and it would fill it up with gas and then you'd pump it into your car. I often wondered if the people that lived there now know that there was probably a gas tank buried in there. That whole area of town that is part of old town now I laugh because it was Newtown when I grew up so I kind of think I'm so old that Newtown is now old town. I remember the old waiting pool at Roosevelt which was where the waiting pool is now and that brought up a memory of Sunset swimming pool which was Sunset swimming pool at the time was a lake that was cold because it's a lake it wasn't heated and they had just roped off part of it where they had kind of cleaned it out so it was deep enough and they had a cement wall on one side where you could dive off of and the rest of it was just cold sandy bottom lake. It was kind of shocked to me when they decided to build an actual swimming pool up there. I tried to learn to swim there but it was always too cold. I never could learn in a heated pool some place years later. I remember playing golf up at Sunset when Sunset was the only golf course in town a little nine-hour course. My mom played golf all the time she was part of the women's Sunset Golf Association I think she was a president one year. Every Thursday morning all the women would go out and play golf I remember that and then she started me playing when I was probably probably eight years old maybe started playing eight or nine maybe ten I gave it up it was too frustrating for me. My dad was a fly fisherman from back in the 40s although he died when I was 11 or so he did instill in me that kind of passion for fishing and everything and I started fly fishing in high school and continued doing it a lot up until I was in my 40s then I moved out of state for a while and kind of haven't gotten back into it but I'm thinking now that I'm an old fart I get that dollar a year fishing license I need to take advantage of it along with my ten dollar lifetime pass to the Rocky Mountain National Park another thing that's so great about Living in Longmont is that you're so close to such a great resource the park and everything up along there many people in Longmont had cabins in Allens Park and Raymond and everything and we never did but I remember going up and visiting them all the time that was what you did in the summer is you'd go up and hang out in either Allens Park or Raymond and around in there I remember they were building all the roads up in the north and south St. Bahrain because I remember going through the old road up the north St. Bahrain you had to go through Raymond and everything all those little bitty towns and the same with I remember they opened up the diagonal between here and Boulder and then all of a sudden you could get to Boulder in 15 minutes instead of taking 40 minutes almost half the kids I knew lived on farms or they lived in town in their dad's own farms around town there was the coogles that lived next door to us they were big farmers in town flying farmers they both had planes I remember that they called themselves a flying farmers or a club of them or something and there was the Johnson's that lived behind us that had a big farm about where Silver Creek is now Silver Creek High School that was all farmland I remember going out and bucking bales understanding why I was glad I wasn't a farm kid they had to work I had her pretty easy as a kid Happy birthday Longmont Hi I'm Sandy Halloran and I came to Longmont in 1957 with my family and my two brothers we moved from Minnesota and when we came here I remember thinking oh the streets were just huge they were just really wide we'd never seen such wide streets before and we thought it was kind of like the wild wild west you know with the cowboys and everything so that was really strange for us we moved to an acreage which was on Hygiene Road and it's now called 17th and we had horses there and Angus cattle and we lived right across from the acres acreage and that is now a development they're off of 17th there are many things I remember I do remember some special buildings in Longmont and one is still there the library the little Carnegie Library which is now just dwarfed by the other library but it was just a I thought a sweet library and I spent lots of time there you know Saturday afternoons usually and I was glad when I moved back here after our 40th reunion and I married Arleigh Ostrander I was glad to see that it was still there that it hadn't been taken down another building that I remembered in Longmont is the Teenage Canteen and it was a little wooden structure behind the bleachers which were here in Roosevelt Park Roosevelt Park had a large set of bleachers and that's where we had football games and that's where the county fair was held and all that but when we came to football games that's where we sat on those bleachers that were still there and there was a canteen behind it so after the games on Friday or Saturday night we would go there and there was a couple there that were hired I suppose by the city and they were husband and wife and they were there as our chaperones and so that was a place we could go to dance I think we had ping-pong tables set up there too maybe a pool table I can't quite remember but that was that was a neat thing to have and then as far as in Roosevelt Park area then when the new memorial building was built then that's where we ended up having our proms, our junior and senior proms were there and basketball games that my husband Arley played in the basketball games there and in high school we had a pep club and we wore off-white wool blazers and navy blue pleated skirts and we all sat together and cheered you know and we had cheerleaders too I remember other things about the downtown there weren't any really what we call big box stories or anything like that was chain stores then but probably J.C. Pennies would be the only one and otherwise there were just small little shops and independent stores which were you know kind of fun lots of drug stores and there was one drug store that had booths in it and so we went there mostly during junior high years and we'd go in there and play the little jukeboxes that were right at each booth and drink like green rivers I think and black cows and cherry coax you know things like that so that was fun and then there was a music store I think it was called Bachmans and they had little booths you could go into it was almost like a phone booth and you could get the forty-fives that you wanted to listen to it was probably Elvis at that time you know and the Beatles maybe I don't know but anyway you'd get your favorite record and you could go into that little booth and listen to it you know and it was just really cool you know it was just a tiny little booth it was like two of us could fit in there and it was so cool unfortunately we probably didn't buy many I don't remember buying too many but they were very patient with Sarah so that was fun and then I remember the girls too I can't exactly remember when like jeans came in for girls you know I mean we didn't wear them to school we always were pleated skirts and sweaters and all that kind of stuff but on the weekends then we could wear you know we were jeans but there was a shop downtown Shies and they just carried men's clothing but some of my girlfriends and I we would go in and then they'd let us try on the boys jeans so they had these little areas where it was just like it's just the little curtains you know but you could see everybody's feet underneath as you was trying on these jeans and Mr. Chick Clark was someone who was like one of the managers there I think and he was very very good with all of us girls too and so we'd go in and try on all these jeans it was just funny and I remember it was I thought it was very windy here when we moved to Colorado and we lived out on the acreage and I was probably always on the committee where they were doing the dances and stuff well anyway we were trying to do it on the cheap so it was so windy that it blew all these big tumble weeds I mean huge tumble weeds into our yard and right into our fence line from across the field and everything so we gathered all those up and sprayed them white and thought they looked kind of lacy or something so we used that for a Valentine's dance I remember you know it was just only could be done here I'm sure you'll hear all about you know dragging Maine which was something everybody did and you always wanted to see who was in the other cars and that was something to do after the games or just on weekends when there wasn't anything else going on other than that we went to the drive-in in the summer and swimming up at sunset and that was just like a pond it just had a dirt bottom mud bottom thinking about life in Longmont at that time it really revolved around school and activities and church you know activities that kind of thing but as I look back on it I think you know it was kind of um like a happy days kind of the TV show in the 50s I just you know as I reminisce I think that's it's more like that than I had realized Happy birthday Longmont my name is Gail Thomas Sweatt and I was born in the Longmont hospital right down on 3rd and Maine and I have lived in Longmont all my days and we were all poor we were all poor it was just after the death bowl and the depression 1930 and the first place I lived was out there across from sandstone ranch and there was a little house across the street my sister got to go to school I didn't get to go so I cried I started school at 4 years old and then we moved daddy had to move wherever there was a job we lived on 627 Kauffman I remember that because mother drilled it into us where we live is 627 Kauffman there weren't any phones that was your identity oh I love Longmont we had those roller skates that you clamped on your shoes and how there were kids in the neighborhood and we played with those kids and it was fun but I was in kindergarten then we moved and we moved over close to Vermillion Road straight down Hover Road dirt road nothing there and we lived there it was a big big awful house and but I liked it then I went to Armstrong school they said we don't have a first grade but you can be in the second grade so I was in the second grade that's what happened oh school was lovely first, second, third and fourth in one room fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth in the other room we all got together and sang God Bless America every morning and Mrs. Ellison played the piano and Miss Elliot led the singing and then we went to our classes and you had a tablet you had crayons you had pencils anything else but they had books and they passed them out we used the same books over and over again when you got to school you could you could help the teacher put coal in the furnace you could help the teacher dust the blackboards you could go beat the the erasers beat them out and it was fun and the other part was good they had a swing oh they had two swings and the teeter totter that we weren't used to we played hopscotch marbles and jacks and sometimes we played ball I had two sisters and Joe was younger Lois was older but the chores we had to do every morning Lois and I would take these cows out on over-road graze along the ditch bank and and then we would get our books and go up there to where the cows were supposed to stop and one day the cows would pass us and they got into hover gardens and oh we thought we'd be in trouble but the ladies at hover garden chased the cows out chased them home we got to go into their house and have tea and it was exciting and we didn't get in trouble and other chores we had two cows two calves and other chores every morning you had to give them a little grain you had to pump water for the cows we had chickens and we had to gather the eggs Lois or I always did the dishes on our way to school dad made us all wear boots and these got awful cotton stockings on the way to school we would ditch those in the culvert along the ditch and on the way home we'd put them back on so dad didn't know that we had ditched them all day as far as eating out we never did, never but mom made loaf of homemade bread when we got home from school and it was so good and then the flour came in big sacks that were printed and she could she could sew very well so she made dresses out of those when I was in probably fourth grade I was telling Carol about this I was in a spelling contest and my teacher took me to Boulder for this spelling contest and she said let's go for lunch and I thought oh wonderful I'd never eaten out much and so she said whatever you want on the menu I ordered a Swiss steak that wasn't what she planned I don't think she thought maybe a hamburger but anyway it was fun the other place we ate sometimes was was at Williams Cafe in Longmont Hughes Waffle Inn yes and I worked there a little bit I could carry the plates of waffles to the people but what I remember about that is he walked around the whole time this is on Main Street it's hot the doors were open he walked around with a fly swatter all the time and killed the flies and wiped where the fly was they would come to eat and Safeway too it was open there were flies in Safeway there were flies everywhere the thing I remember best when we lived in Longmont we started going to the library and we loved the library and every Saturday mom got the car daddy had the other days and we would come to town and mom would buy something at McClellan's and we would walk up and down the street and go to the library but what I remember about this McClellan's there was a thing that you opened it and you could reach in and get a cookie think of COVID and mom always made cookies but these were marshmallow type sticky, gooey cookies that I'd reach in there and you could only take one and I would take one but it was really treat there were barber pulls along Main Street where the men went to the barber shop I think later on we moved over to Highway 66 and that's where my teenage years were spent but I should tell you Armstrong School burned down when I was in the seventh grade and we got to go to Longmont in those days you had to pay if you were rural you had to pay ten dollars a semester to let your kids go to Longmont and that school it was big and exciting and there was an open bridge that you could walk across from art to study hall and I thought it was a lot of fun I can remember a lot about school but mostly I remember my teachers Miss Ellicott and Miss Edson Lola McCarty McCart was a teacher of mine and they were such good teachers so enthusiastic once upon a time I think you could only hire a single woman to teach school I don't know why you know thinking the hard work they did sweep the floor put fuel in the furnace they had outdoor toilets they had to clean those every morning and kind of sanitize them I just don't know how those teachers managed to do all that work I really don't and they taught for grades whatever grade you want to be in I think you could listen to the first grade you could catch up on what you didn't catch on you could listen to the third grade you could be ahead Main Street used to be on Saturday when we drove to town you could park anywhere ours was a 37 Ford I think the radio we had a radio I think it was a battery operated radio so you couldn't listen much but oh I dashed home to listen to Jack Armstrong the all American boy and then daddy liked to watch some political commentator at night and we would all gather around there and listen to that like it was exciting and then the radio was turned off probably it was a battery radio I don't know I don't think there was any electricity because I can remember when daddy bought a refrigerator mother was very frugal and daddy bought the refrigerator home and and mom said she bought another cow with that money and he said but I would like homemade ice cream every day so that's that's what sold her on the refrigerator she made ice cream every day I married Russell right out of high school and we moved there that farm I live on is beautiful and it's a good place to live I wouldn't move and I wouldn't move to a big city no I would stay there and I'm glad I'm here