Sadar's Saloon in Elyria

“The saloon was at 46th and Humboldt. It’s gone now. It’s a parking lot.” Joe Sadar remembered.

Matt Sadar arrived in Colorado before 1900 from a town in Slovenia called Novo Mesto. He opened a tavern and boarding house at 3rd Avenue and Powell Street in Elyria (now 46th and Humboldt Street.) Men who worked in the Grant and Globe Smelters could get a room, a lunch packed in a pail, an evening meal and laundry services. Newcomers from the old country, like Jennie Hocevar, cooked, and cleaned in the boarding house while learning English.

Joe Sadar reminisced, “We’d go down to Matt’s with a lard bucket. You could say, ‘I want 25¢ worth of beer,’ and they’d fill it. We’d pass the pail around and everyone would take a sip.

“Matt was so nice. He had the most beautiful hair. It was all gray, but very thick. He had this long bar. and tables you could play cards there and they had a little shelf where you could set your beer. He had pictures of the men working in the smelter. There were these pictures on the wall of a horse and wagon and some kegs of beer on the wagon.”After Prohibition was repealed in 1934, Joe Sadar recalled, “From out of nowhere, beer instantly appeared.”

In 1946, Jack and Frances Brinkerhoff purchased the business and renamed it the Shambles Inn. The bar and restaurant were well known for their beef chili, beef stew and pot roast sandwiches. In 1978, it was bought by the National Western and demolished for a parking lot.

Matt Sadar’s Saloon in 1903 in Elyria

Boys

Children who grew up in pre-World War II Globeville could experience many adventures without ever leaving the area. Particularly boys. "I don’t believe any youngsters had a better neighborhood than we did. We were all over." Joe Sadar recalled. "You know where the Slovenian Hall was? That was an area with trees and stuff and there were railroad tracks around there. The hobos would get off the train, get a fire going and they would heat up their beans. They’d be talking, telling stories and us kids would listen. You know, we kids went to all these camps where these hobos hung out and nobody ever bothered us. When the train started leaving out of the yards, they’d be going and run for the car." Joe also played around that old Grant Smelter stack, a 350 foot remnant of Colorado's mining days. "There were a couple of ponds there and hills we could ride our bikes up and down." Paul Goreski hung around the big chimney too. "You could get inside the chimney but there was a trap door to go through to get to the top and it was too high up — we couldn’t reach it. But some guys did and climbed to the top." Paul had better luck with the nearby city dump. "Oh I used to go over to the Denver City dump at 48th and Washington every day after school and pick up all kinds of stuff, copper and brass, anything we could sell to the scrap collectors. My first bike I got from the old dump and I brought it home piece by piece until I got enough to make my own bicycle." 
Another popular place for boys was the nearby stock yards. Rudy Okoren confessed, "We would ditch church, go over to the stockyards and ride the calves, with our suits on mind you. Our parents would go to the 8 ’o clock Mass and we would go to the 10 o’clock  — they just assumed we were at church. There would be a sermon in English and then one in Slovenian. We got in a bad habit of slipping out during the second sermon and sneaking a smoke." 

Ed Wargin recalled the improvised swimming hole, “We boys used to go up to a place called Fritz’s Lake, where I-25 and 58th Avenue are today, and skinny dip. That would take three fourths of the day because we’d walk there barefoot from Globeville and come back just as dirty as when we went.”
The Southern end of Globeville also offered swimming. Lauren Summers reminisced, "We went go to the Waterhole, the 'vasulach'. We’d go through Miss Hahn’s yard at 4364 Lincoln and then through the railroad property to the sand pits that had filled up with water. Everyone from our end of town learned to swim there. We weren’t supposed to go there because there was no guard and the trains were backing up, but my mother would know where I had been because I would come home so clean." 
Somehow these boys survived the visiting hobos, stock yards, rail yards, smelter ruins and unsupervised swimming and have the stories to share.

Mencin brothers, Tony and John, ready for adventure

Photo used with written permission from Ed Krasovich

Women's Work

The women in the photo appear pleasant although few are smiling. Surely they welcomed a short break from the heat and noise inside the building to pose for the photographer. Their employer, the New Colorado Laundry at 2207 Larimer Street, was the kind of business that hired women in the early 1900’s, since they could be paid little money and required minimal training. Many ladies from Globeville worked at one of the commercial laundries in downtown Denver, such as Silver State at 2441 Broadway, Ideal at 2500 Curtis Street and Enterprise Laundry at 17th and Champa, all within a couple of miles from Globeville.
These women weren't pursuing satisfying careers but supplementing the family's income with the kind of jobs available to them. Steve Machuga remembered, "My mother worked outside the home when I was growing up, scrubbing floors and cleaning rooms at the Brown Palace Hotel for 50¢ a night. She walked with two other ladies from Globeville, up 38th Street to short Larimer and 20 blocks to the hotel. The street car cost 10¢ each way, so they walked."  
Many other Globeville ladies worked as "domestics" doing cooking, cleaning and laundry in the homes of Denver's wealthier citizens. There were also situations available in the many local family-owned taverns, with the bar in the front of the building, living quarters for the family in the rear, and rooms upstairs for the men employed in the smelters. Newcomers like Jennie Hocevar could prepare meals for the family, pack lunches for the boarders and begin the process of learning English and American ways. Jennie later worked at Cudahy, trimming the fat from meat as it came down the chute. “I trimmed more than anybody else and I couldn’t even speak English,” she remembered.
Most women in the 1900s regarded work was a necessity and appreciated the kind of job that would help their family live a better life.

Photo used with written permission from Agnes Tanko. Her mother, Mary Holland, is one of 

the young women in the photo.

Jennie Hocevar Sadar, photo used with written permission from Dorothy Nevelos