Himself a Story

On Wednesday night, I attended my first in a series of four classes on short story writing. The location was downtown Denver, the Captiol Hill area. Through the goodness of MapQuest, I found the corner, parked the car and began to wander up and down the short block. It seemed to be one business after another…a shop, a photographer, a salon…and then I decided to check the address number…..1116, 1112…where was 1114? Ah, here it is….a dark blue door, paint chipped and cracked, a door knob grimy with the years and a hand lettered sign “Writing Class, Please Ring Bell.” I pushed the bell and waited. In a minute, the door was opened by a white haired gentleman, holding a barking schaunzer, who said, “Come in, come in!” In front of me was a wide staircase, obviously built in a time when labor was cheap and so was lumber, meant to convey a sense of grandeur. Now the carpet was ratty and spotty and the handrail was shaky. We made our way up the stairs and there on the landing were numerous plants, a bicycle and a refrigerator. He opened the door, one of four, next to the antique appliance and we stepped back in time. Except for the obvious fact that the carpet had been peed on numerous times by the dog, the apartment hadn’t been touched in decades. On the right, in the kitchen, original tile hung on the walls, a gas stove in the popular rust color of the 1960s sat against a wall and a table and two mismatched chairs followed the inward slant of the floor. Off the kitchen was a balcony, littered with bits and pieces of broken equipment with a view of an alley. He ushered us – there were two of us – into a small room where he had set up a rectangular table and two chairs. Despite the odor and the appearance that the seat would not hold my weight, I sat down. He sat on a stool, facing us and began to talk about the short story. His notes were written on a notepad provided by a pharmaceutical company and he soon told us that he had been in the hospital. Throughout the course of the two hours, he shared that he has been in a war (Vietnam?) and had been a newspaper man, had lived in Greece a couple of years and was “a wild man painter in my younger years.” At the end of the class, the other student and I navigated the foyer and descended the rickety stairs, turned the aged door knob and were almost startled to find that Capitol Hill still existed in 2009! Now I need to get to work on my short story….and I’m thinking our instructor could easily be the main character!