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It was the first trip I’ve taken purely for fun – no attending conferences or meetings, no visiting family or friends – since Joanna passed away in February 2021. Traveling just doesn’t hold the same allure for me without Joanna by my side.
But this trip held the unique attraction of visiting a significant part of my past with Joanna from the present. You see, we spent 10 wonderful years in Denver. We moved there in the last week of August 1977, just days short of our first wedding anniversary. So these Denver years were years of “firsts” for us – our first wedding anniversary; our first house (and second & third); our first (and second) child . . . and so forth. We moved there from Norman, Oklahoma, with Joanna’s job with Mobil Oil, and 10 years later moved to the DFW area, again with Joanna’s job.
I spent the better part of 3 days in Denver and surroundings, from early Friday afternoon, October 4, until my departure on Sunday evening, October 6.
Reason for this trip? Honoring the 1977 Denver Broncos!
I began planning this trip back in June, when I read that the Denver Broncos would be honoring, during their October 6 game against the Raiders, their 1977 team, which was the first Broncos team – ever – to make the playoffs. Those Broncos beat the Oakland Raiders to go to their first Super Bowl. Watching (on TV) the Broncos beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-0, in their opener that season, I quickly became a Broncos fan. I wound up going to two games that season, game # 11, in which the 9-1 Broncos faced the 9-1 Baltimore Colts, and beat the Colts, 27-13; and the AFC Championship Game, in which they beat the Raiders, 20-17.
Well, I thought, I just have to be there to see the Broncos celebrate that 1977 team for which I hold such fond memories. I was able to get a ticket on StubHub for just $122 (on Sunday, I discovered just why it was so cheap, but you’ll have to read that story in Part 15), then went onto the Southwest Airlines site to book my flight, rental car, and hotel reservations.
If I was going to make this trip, it had to be about a lot more than football. Joanna and I made a lot of special memories there, and this was my opportunity to relive some of them – and perhaps sense her presence, reliving them with me. I ultimately decided to call this my “nostalgia tour” of Denver and set out to relive as many of those memories as time would allow.
The Broncos “bookended” this nostalgia tour, but there were plenty of other stories between the two bookends.
By the way, one thing that was NOT nostalgia for me was the airport. Flying into Denver early Friday afternoon, this was my first time in Denver International Airport. (I snapped this photo from the plane, just after we landed and as we were taxiing to the gate.) Back in our day, Stapleton International was the airport. Denver International opened in 1995, eight years after we left; any trips we have taken to the area since then have been by car, with the exception of one trip I took in the early ’90s for the annual meeting of PRC Environmental Management, for which I was working as a tech editor in Dallas at the time. Stapleton was still in operation then.
This series of 15 blog posts is about memories, the long-ago memories that came to mind as I experienced the Denver of today. As my family will attest – as well as many of you who have read my musings over the years – while I have one foot planted in the present, the other is wistfully . . . happily . . . moored to the past. Memories are important to me . . . they have grown even moreso since the passing of the love of my life, Joanna, in 2021 . . . and I love to share those stories of my life with others. Again, my family will attest to that . . . the hours they have spent listening to my stories are legion, and I have caught more than a few eye-rolls (and even a few eye droops) from them during my stories. But I persist in telling them, anyway, in hopes that someday they will mean something to our kids and grandkids.
These 15 blog posts cover 3 days, October 4-6, 2024, in Denver, but they also cover 10 wonderful years, August 1977-August 1987, that Joanna and I spent in that beautiful place where our two children were born and we truly became a family.
So, without any further delay, let’s dive in to my Denver nostalgia tour – visiting those long ago years of 1977-1987 from the vantage point of 2024.
Casa Bonita, the Disneyland of Mexican restaurants
I flew into Denver Friday afternoon. That evening was a special treat – meal and entertainment at Casa Bonita Mexican Restaurant on West Colfax in Denver. Joanna and I went to Casa Bonita numerous times during our 10 years in Denver – here’s a picture of Joanna with Alison, who is wearing a Casa Bonita hat we bought her on one of our visits there. Back then the food was okay, nothing special, but the entertainment was the draw. Cliff divers, illusionists, strolling mariachi bands, balcony guitarists . . . and much more. Unfortunately, in recent years, Casa Bonita had fallen on hard times and had closed down for several years – until the summer of 2021, when Trey Parker & Matt Stone, creators of the hilariously irreverent South Park animated Comedy Central TV show, which is based in a Denver suburb, bought it. Having gone to Casa Bonita many times as children, they had even made the restaurant the focus of a South Park episode. After buying Casa Bonita, which was severely rundown, they poured $40 million into renovating it and restoring it to its earlier glory as a Denver-area entertainment mecca.
Though it had reopened a year or so ago, it had been by invitation-only until the middle of September, when they opened it to the public for reservations. Somehow, by the luck of the draw – despite being behind several thousand when I first went online that afternoon – I was ultimately able to secure a reservation that evening for Friday, October 4. At this point, the site was telling me that everything else in October and November had already been booked! Somehow there was one spot available, and it was when I would be in town.
So I made it there for my reservation at 8:30 Friday evening. There was a long line – all of us having reservations. Here I am, standing in front of the restaurant. I got in and got my seat. The food – I had the chicken enchiladas – was better than I remembered it. The entertainment was wonderful. I saw the cliff divers, and my waiter made sure I got a to-go box so that I could scoot downstairs in time for that evening’s last show of the Insanely Mysterious Sorsoro, an illusionist who was both mysterious (never spoke a word) and hilarious! As I walked through, I stopped and listened to the haunting strains of the balcony guitarists. Then, as I promised Travis (who is a big South Park fan), I got my picture taken with Cartman – one of the key South Park characters – seated at his table. (No, he didn’t get up to greet me – it would have been out of character.) On my way out, I stopped at the Casa Bonita Mercado (market) and bought Travis a Casa Bonita cap – as it turned out, they were “buy one, get one free,” so I picked up two – one for each of us.