Hilltop!

I went for a bike ride Monday afternoon from my condo across the street from the University of Denver to the Hilltop neighborhood, on the east side of Denver. One of the highlights of this community, besides the many fine homes, is Cranmer Park. In the center is a large sundial, as well as an outline of the front range mountains at the edge of a viewing platform, with the name of each mountain and an arrow pointing toward its location on the horizon. Which is why it was once named Mountain View Park. On the east side of the park are mansions facing those mountains, and when I look at those homes I always wonder which one was once featured in a Perry Mason episode. The original Perry Mason television show was set in Los Angeles. However, years later, Raymond Burr, the title character of that series, and who had a home in Colorado, starred in a remake of that series that was both filmed and set in Denver.

That was back in the 1980s, when Denver was going through a major depression. At the time, the city's economy was heavily dependent on the oil industry, and when the price of oil crashed, thousands of people were laid off across Colorado, many moving to different states to find work. On the bright side, it became pretty cheap to live in Denver, and also very cheap to film a television series here. It was fun to watch those episodes and see all those familiar locations. Now, of course, Denver is a pretty damn expensive place to live, and the number of television shows and movies filmed here is zero. But I have seriously digressed. That sundial is supposed to be be highly accurate, and at the base are instructions on how to calculate the exact time. Unfortunately, I did not have a couple of hours to spend figuring it all out, and so just looked at my wristwatch, which is a lot handier than a sundial. I guess some things really have improved over the centuries.