The Town

Greeley Colorado in the 1950's was a mixture of Happy Days meets Mayberry. It was a town where an eleven year old boy could ride along with the Ennis Dairy Driver, all day long, and no one thought the driver was a pedophile.

I use to love riding with him, helping him carry the orders up to the door and finding the new orders stuck in the top of a glass ( yes glass ) milk bottle. My pay for helping him was free access to the choclate milk and ice cream treats. Boy, did I make sure I was well paid.

Greeley had 4 movie theatres at that time; the Chief, the Kiva, the Park, and the Sterling. A person could go to the movies at noon on Saturday and see a serial, the news, 6 color cartoons, and the main feature, plus the teasers all for only 25 cents. My dad often said it was worth the quarter just to get me out of his hair for a few hours.

Greeley also had two drive-in movies: the Greeley Drive In, and the Motorena, we called them passion pits, It took me a while to figure out why.

Some of the stores that lined eighth ave., which was the main drag were the La Famosa Tortilla Factory, the National Guard Armory, The Camfield Hotel, Weldorado Drugs, Salzman's Shoe Shop, Earl Steeles western store, and Shell Printers and Dance Studio. There were many other businesses in town but these are some of the ones that stand out in my memories. Some of the others were Kimball Music, Gambles, Glasses barber shop, ( owned by my best friends dad ) and one of the most memorable stores was Woody's Cigar Store.

To even begin to describe Woody's is a major undertaking. It was a combination of candy, tobacco, magazine and magic. It was a store that for an inquisitive young man had an endless supply of magazines such as: Stag, For Men Only, Male, etc. The first pipe I ever bought I bought at Woody's, a corn cob that cost me seventy five cents.

The main park in Greeley was called Glenmere. It had two lakes where I spent endless hours trying to catch ( and occasionally catching ) fish. It also had a stream where we caught many many crayfish. It also had walking paths and plenty of shade trees.

Greeley also had two five and ten cent stores. A Kress's and a Woolworths, there were two pool halls in town, the Elite, and the Stockman. Ace Parr had a war surplus store that also sold clothing and shoes. I worked there for a while, taking most of my pay out in merchandise.

Greeley was a town where a kid could leave on his bike at six in the morning, be gone all day, and no one would or needed to worry.

The one thing Greeley didn't have was liquor stores, the town was founded by a group of religious fanatics who forbade the selling of deamon rum within the city limits.