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Theme restaurants of the past

Last Sunday my wife (Dee) and I attended “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” play at Littleton Town Hall Arts Center. It was a good play and I recommend it to anyone. It is strange how one event spurs your thoughts to some other subject. I was thinking of the play and for some reason I started to think about theme restaurants that have been in Denver in past years. They are gone now but I have memories to share.

The first one I remember is “94th Aero Squadron” This was located just south of the east,west runway of Stapleton International Airport. The building was built to look like a farm building of World War I vintage. It had sandbags around the building and replicas of machine guns near the entrance. The thing that I remember the most was the “ready room” this was a room located in the basement and it was decorated like a room where World War I pilots prepared for their next combat mission. They showed black & white movies that some times could be quite graphic. I remember one about a bull fight and the bull gored one of the horses. Need I say More? The restaurant was situated so that you could view the planes take off and land. It was an enjoyable experience. However, I don’t remember how good the food was.

I don’t remember the timeline, but I think the business closed expectantly. After a period of time the building conveniently burned down, how strange.

Another memory was the “Traildust Steak House” located near I25 and Arapahoe road. Their gimmick was to display ties that they supposedly cut off from customers if they walked in with a tie. The walls were covered with the bottom portions of ties. Apparently they were doing well and opened up another location in Westminster. Again, I don’t remember the timeline the Westminster location closed and later the Arapahoe location was closed.

Brittany On the Hill is the next restaurant on my list. This was located east of I25 maybe 92nd & Grant. It was high on a hill and had a nice view of northern parts of Denver. We are not much for reservations and we just take our chances to get in. One Saturday we decided to go there and when we got there they informed us that the entire restaurant was closed for a wedding reception. I don’t know how much that cost, but, I know I could never afford to pay for a trick like that.

Baby Doe Matchless Mine took the same steps as the previous examples. Located west of I25 near 26th Avenue. The theme they displayed was an old Colorado gold mine. The view of downtown Denver was very enjoyable. Again I don’t remember how the food tasted.

I also remember another restaurant near I25 just east of the freeway. You could see the building from the freeway. The building looked like and old Dutch windmill. I don’t remember the name. I think it was something like “Old Dutch Mill”. One of their gimmicks was to place  an empty coffee cup on the foot of the waiter and poor the coffee from the pot into the coffee cup resting on the waiters foot.  Apparently, the coffee pouring through the air was suppose to enhance the flavor of the coffee.

They are all gone now. All I have are memories of these food establishments. They all seemed to be busy when we went there. One will really never know why they disappeared, but I would speculate that tons of money was lost. I am sure there are theme restaurants taking their place. We just have not had the interest to find them. At our age we must watch our diet and be more careful on what we eat and how much. Today we look for coupons in the paper and senior discounts at the restaurants we go to.

One wonders how Casa Bonita and Simms Landing has survived the test of time. What is their secret?

Hi capacity laptop battery

I have had this Dell B130 laptop since 2007. It was the cheapest laptop I could find at the time. I was planning on taking a trip to Italy and I wanted a laptop to download the photos I was planning to take on the trip. The main reason was just a source for backup of all the photos I planned to take. It worked well for that purpose. However, with the original battery I was lucky to get over an hour and half of battery time. This was ok because I was always near a power source.

Now I have a reason to use the laptop that may require more time on the battery than available with the original battery. I went to the Dell website to see what was available from Dell since it was a Dell product. The battery they offered had a price of $137.00. This shocked me. I paid less than $500.00 for the complete laptop. It was obvious to me that Dell was not really interested in supplying replacement batteries.

I then went to my second choice of Amazon.com. I found a super-capacity Lithium-Ion battery for only $40.81. I decided to try it because that is what I was expecting for just a standard replacement battery. This battery has 8800 mah or twice the capacity of the standard battery. This was ordered Feb. 6th and it was at my doorstep yesterday Feb. 10th. Only four days delivery with free freight and no sales tax. This kind of service and pricing sure makes it difficult for a local retailer to compete with.

I installed the battery and I am very pleased with the performance and life of the battery. Fully charged the battery indicator shows around six hours  of working time before a recharge is needed. This is more than I need and this additional battery life has re-ignited my interest in this four year old laptop. Sure, it weighs a little more and the height of the battery sets the back of the laptop maybe one half or three quarters of an inch higher. These minor problems are easy to accept because the advantages more than outweigh these minor changes.

For example, this morning I started the laptop on battery around 7:30 this morning. I periodically used it through out the morning and it is now 11:30. Checking the battery life indicator and it still shows a remaining charge of over 5 hours. If this true I am more than satisfied with this high capacity battery and now wish I would have considered one long before now.

How far will this go?

In June 2008 I wrote and published a book at blurb.com about a sixteen day trip to Italy. The book turned out very well and I received many compliments on the book. I didn’t think much about it at the time. At a later date I made another book named “Flowers, the beauty of Nature”. The quality blurb.com does impressed me again.

In January 2010 it was suggested by a group I belong to that I should order some additional books and have a book signing at a future benefit the club was going to have. I thought, “why not”. The function had approximately 150 guests and I sold ten of my books at the function.

This gave me the bug. I noticed a TV ad by Intuit.com about websites for only $4.99 a month. Now I have a domain name and a website, tomtbooks.com. Listed on the website is all the books I have published on Blurb.com. How far will this go?

Saturday afternoon movie matinees

Not too long ago I happened to drive through the intersection of West 1st Ave. and Knox Court. After driving through the intersection I pulled over to the curb and reminisced for a while. I was remembering how this intersection looked like in the late forties and early fifties. On the southwest corner were a small drug store and few small shops. Today the buildings are still there but the drug store and original shops are long gone. On the northwest corner a filling station and a Piggly Wiggly grocery store filled that corner. I think there was a small hardware store on the northeast corner. I do remember the Saturday auctions held by a Japanese auctioneer dressed in a pair of coveralls. The building that had the most memories for me was on the southeast corner and that was the Comet Theatre.

The Saturday afternoon matinees were the big event through the summer months. The entire neighborhood kids would go to this weekly big event. We would try to get there an hour before the movie opened. The line became quite long before the theatre finally opened. Finally the movie opened and it was mass chaos rushing in and getting our favorite seats. Yes, the theatre would be jammed packed.

The concession room was jammed and full with all these kids trying to get their treats before the movie started. Screaming yelling and waving hands to get the attention of the concession attendant was the norm. No lines here, you just got up to the counter and hoped you could be served quickly.

It was finally movie time. There was always a cartoon and a serial before the movie. Oh, those serials they were the greatest. You had to be sure and come back the next Saturday and find out how the dramatic highlight ended. This was our first exposure to science fiction with Buster Crabb and his space adventures. The graphics in those times were really bad. You could actually see the string holding the space ship in front of the painted wall of outer space. The serials were the best attraction of these matinees. If the movie was bad we would leave early. We could not miss the serial though.

This brought memories of another theatre in our younger years. This was the Webber Theatre on Broadway just north of Alameda Ave a couple of blocks. Their attraction was a birthday club and a drawing every Saturday for a prize. When you had a birthday in the week the Webber Theatre would give you a cake from Volmer’s Bakery. They would call out your name, you would go up on the stage, receive your cake and the audience would sing happy birthday.

One time my brother won the Saturday drawing. It was a single shot BB gun. You would cock the gun and then drop a single BB down the barrel. If you happen to lower the barrel, the BB would roll out. Oh well, it was free and it was won. My parents were not too happy when this BB gun came home. They did not take it away from my brother though.

I don’t have any pictures of these enjoyable days. All I have are the memories stored in the back of my brain.

As time went by we grew up and our interests changed. The Comet Theatre closed and after a period of time being empty and unused the building blew up one night. The report was a natural gas leak. Today The Webber Theatre is now a porn theatre. I don’t know what happened to Vollmer’s Bakery.

Now is so much different than then. I am different now than what I was then. Memories of then continue to crop up now. However, memories bring back good and enjoyable times of the past.