A Street Fair and Going Way Back

Every Memorial Day Weekend, a street festival, called Territory Days, is held in an area of Colorado Springs now known as "Old Colorado City". It just happens that I grew up in that neighborhood. Only, when I was growing up, it wasn't the fashionable part of town that it is now, and it was simply called the West Side.

We haven't been to Territory Days for quite a long time, but Jim thought it would be fun, so this morning we got up and went out to breakfast downtown before heading over to the West Side.

Across the street from the restaurant is this building, where I once worked. In front of the building is a beautiful kinetic wind sculpture by Starr Kempf, an artist who lived in Colorado Springs for many years.

Here's a close-up of the center of the sculpture. The arms swing gracefully in the wind. I've always loved his work which used to be displayed in the front yard of his home.

At the festival, we saw a booth staffed by HawkQuest, a Colorado non-profit organization dedicated to "providing an educational opportunity to understand and appreciate the interaction of wild living things in their natural environment, and the importance of preserving the world in which they live." They had this owl with them:

In addition to hundreds of craft, jewelry, food, clothing and every other kind of booth you can think of, there are little shows put on by folks who love to play dress up.

The skits don't relate any actual history, but are good fun.

Once we'd walked the entire length of the festival booths which covered about 4 blocks, and back, I thought I'd like to go take a picture of the house we lived in when I was a small child.

On the way, we noticed some beautiful flowers, like this purple iris:

And the lilacs with their intense frangrance:

This is it, 116 North 24th Street, the first address I memorized. Our phone number was ME4-1995. The house used to be yellow with white trim. When we lived there, a small, wrought iron fence stood across the front yard, and there was a large lilac bush in the side yard.

This afternoon we practiced relaxing for a while. I also started to catch up with entering our monthly expenses as I'm way behind on that little job.

The weather has been sunny and a little cool, but still windy. Have I mentioned that I'm really hoping the wind will stop soon?