A Divided Greeley

Downtown Greeley is a ghost town. It doesn’t have thousands of Muslims inhabiting crumbling ruins – like Detroit – but it’s a ghost town nevertheless.

Other northern Colorado cities do not suffer the same fate as Greeley.

The cause? Division. Greeley is divided by the physical form of the very thing for which Greeley was established. The accursed railroad.

Loveland doesn’t have a railroad bisecting it, at least not in the horrific way as does Greeley. Fort Collins has railroad presence, but somehow it isn’t as divisive.

At the northern and southern outskirts of Greeley, overpasses permit free automotive and trucking traffic.

Other than these overpasses, however, truck and auto traffic must use the accursed street-level crossings that should in all reality be maintained by the Union Pacific.

Maintenance of smooth crossings isn’t a railroad priority. They want “smooth” their direction, but could not care less about the rest of us.

Crossing the tracks in Greeley isn’t really something a thinking person wants to put his vehicle through. Hence, division. We hesitate, all of us, to cross the tracks.

Eighth Street – except for the accursed railroad – could be a main thoroughfare leading shoppers from the sticks to the big city.

Once you drive your nice car or pickup truck across the tracks on Eighth Street you may well learn not to do it again.

My navigator was doping off one day earlier this week, and we innocently re-discovered the violent damage the rough crossings cause. We were both thankful we didn’t lose any fillings from our teeth. I forgot not to go that way, but I’ll remember for a while now.

There are four sets of tracks at Eighth Street. That makes eight rails to cross. What the railroad, and for that matter the city, does to relieve this situation is . . . nothing.

So here’s the deal. The huge farm store at the intersection of Eighth Street and Highway 85 draws big traffic from the north and east, Cheyenne, Fort Morgan, Brush, Sterling.

But these shoppers don’t go downtown. What happens is people are jarred to their jonquils crossing the tracks to reach downtown, and when they get downtown, the stores are empty and there is nothing to buy.

Once you do cross those tracks trying to reach downtown, you tend to avoid it another time.

Instead, you head south from the Big R Farm Store, you cross the railroad using the overpass at Highway 34. You head on south to Brighton or Denver, west to outlying shopping areas, or even to Loveland.

The railroad has effectively blocked traffic from downtown Greeley. I know, people will tell me the railroad was here before the town. It’s true. The town grew up around the railroad.

That was then. This is now.

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When Frontier Days is going on during July, the UP starts up its historic steam engine, hooks up to some antique passenger cars and travels back and forth to Denver, escorting a privileged few to the rodeo and home.

When this special train approaches the crossing at 18th St., near where we live and work, its steam whistle is actually musical, pleasing to the ears. We look forward to Frontier Days for this reason. We both scurry out to watch and hear the old time train.

If that steam-powered whistle is legal – and pleasant at the same time – the railroad could get away with far less noise at crossings for its day-to-day freight.

Taking breakfast at The Ranch Restaurant in downtown Greeley, diners risk real damage to their hearing. The train whistles are so loud, people inside the restaurant have to cover their ears.

If the doors are open during Mass at our church, St. Peter, the train whistles can be so loud as to cover up the music and the spoken liturgy. The tracks are four blocks away.

This clack from the accursed railroad interferes with sleep, with business, and even with worship.

The point is, if the steam engine whistle is loud enough to be legal, loud enough to give a genuine warning, then further decibels are extraneous. But will a shred of humanity strike among the railroad executives, and they will take action? Not likely.

It’s just another way in which the railroad divides Greeley.

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Which brings us to downtown.

They’ve tried everything. For a time, two blocks downtown were blocked off to vehicle traffic. This idea was to make downtown “feel more like a mall.”

Eventually, we all realized that closing a street is like closing a door. Slam. Dead business results.

Now, at yet another outrageous expenditure of our tax money, the city has opened a sort of deer trail through those two blocks. You can drive gingerly through there, but you don’t really want to.

This hasn’t resulted in more business. In fact, more stores are closed now than ever.

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Then there’s the skating rink. I call it the “White Elephant Ice House.”

Voters approved this project. Don’t look at me, I didn’t vote for it. It’s a huge building smack in the middle of downtown, used by a privileged few for fun activities.

The ice rink was promoted as a cure-all for the ailing downtown business community.

It was supposed to inspire commercial activity downtown? The White Elephant has had no perceivable impact on business. Ice skaters don’t really stay downtown after skating to go shopping or dining.

If skaters did want to dine out, they’d have to catch any specific restaurant quickly. They go out of business with regularity. There just isn’t the volume downtown to support the food-and-drink industry.

Divided by the railroad and by dumb fix-it projects, downtown can only get worse.

The Muslims haven’t arrived in any numbers yet, but they will find downtown Greeley. A rotting inner city is just the thing they’re looking for.

Spider of the Week

Word of the Week: Clack. It’s from Middle English, clacken or claque, or clatter. It describes the noise made with an abrupt, sharp sound as by striking two hard substances together.