The Colburn was the heart of activity in the summer of '47, and it's just a few
blocks south of the Capitol Building. Still a thriving place to live, breathe and
pay rent, and its tenants are a mix of pensioners and theater troupes staying in
town short-term. During that summer, Carolyn Robinson (soon to be Cassady's wife
to the end of his life), a
University of Denver theater student, lived here on the third floor when
she met and fell in love with Cassady, who stayed here with her. The problem, as
it was perennially with Cassady, was that he was carrying on equally intense affairs
with his first wife and also Ginsberg himself, who he'd encouraged to come out to
Denver from New York.
Ginsberg took a room in the Colburn until he ran out of money and had to move to a
dank basement apartment up at 18th Avenue and Grant Street (the building is gone) where
he wrote a cycle of poems called "the Denver Doldrums." Before he moved, though, the
Colburn was a hotbed of passionate feelings, with Cassady shuttling between his
first wife, his future wife, and Ginsberg, with two of them in different rooms in
the Colburn. In Chapter 7 of On the Road, Kerouac documents the intense "tremendous
season," in the Colburn, where Cassady and Ginsberg would use then-legal Benzedrine
inhalers to stay awake and high, sit cross-legged facing each other on the bed
and "...communicate with absolute honesty and absolute completeness everything on
our minds." When not exhausting truths, Ginsberg worked to convince Cassady that
his future was wide open ("...become the mayor of Denver!"), but Cassady liked to
take Ginsberg to the midget-car races instead.
Jack Kerouac, down with a serious case of Romanticizing Denver because of Neal
Cassady, arrived at the Greyhound bus station in the midst of all this, balancing
his time between his crazy, intense (and now famous) friends Ginsberg and Cassady
and his saner (and happily un-famous) Denver friends from Columbia, Ed White, Hal
Chase and Bob Burford. Ed White, later an architect and a character in many Kerouac
texts, was an important friend for Kerouac. Kerouac himself says that White was
the first person to suggest that he simply "sketch" what he sees and feels in words
rather than labor over a tense text that doesn't feel real. Throughout the years,
no matter what else was happening, Kerouac would take time to write Ed White in
Denver, and many of these letters are now appearing in journals and letter
collections for the first time.
The texts about that summer at the Colburn also talk about the fact that between all
the romance and the soul explorations, Kerouac, Cassady and Ginsberg would retreat
to the bar downstairs at the Colburn, and it's still there: stop in Charlie Brown's
and create your own imaginary film of these three talking passionately in the
original summer of love.
DIRECTIONS TO THE NEXT STOP
From 10th Avenue and Grant Street, go west (toward the mountains) for two short blocks to
Lincoln Street and take a right. Continue north in the right lane for 10 blocks and
follow the sign (at 20th Street) directing you to take a right on Welton Street. Stay on
Welton for three blocks and take a left on 24th Street. The baseball field will be on
your left.
DENVER'S BEAT POETRY DRIVING TOUR