Daniel P. Finney

dafinney@dmreg.com

A reader annoyed with some of these stacked paragraphs suggested my point of view on a particular topic must mean I was an old man.

I wrote back that I was 40 years old. When I was 20, I thought 40 was ancient, but if I make it to 80, I’ll likely think 40 was childhood.

Sunday marks my 41st birthday, and I’ve noticed changes in my eyesight. My vision is fine, but I see Des Moines differently when I look at my native city.

I see the city as it is, of course, but I also see places long gone or drastically changed — sort of memory mirages.

For example, each time I approach East 14th Street at East Euclid Avenue, I expect to see the brown sign for Knox Cafe displaying the current time with the words AIR CONDITIONED in white letters at the bottom.

My late parents and I used to go there on Friday nights in the late 1970s. This always made me nervous, because Fridays were the best night of television.

“The Incredible Hulk,” “The Dukes of Hazzard” and “Dallas” were all on CBS. I didn’t even have to get up to change the channel. (None of the TVs in the house would have a remote control until 1990.)

Mom would always dawdle getting ready, spraying her hair with some toxic concoction inside gold and white aerosol cans and put on so much perfume it made me sneeze.

It was usually approaching 6 p.m. by the time we got to Knox’s. The “Hulk” came on at 7 p.m.

This was the analog age. We had no VCRs or DVRs. You caught a show when it was on or it was gone forever unless you happened to catch the rerun of the one you missed.

Knox Cafe had a waitress named Helen. She reminded me of Flo from the diner TV show “Alice.”

She always promised to get me home in time to watch my “green man,” as she called the Hulk. She said it with a wink.

A wink! Nobody winks anymore. It’s probably a felony.

Anyway, Helen always made good on her promise. Knox was the place where I first tasted rainbow sherbet, served in a tin dish that made a “tink” when the spoon hit the side.

Sometimes Dad bought me a pack of Freshen Up from the candy counter as we paid. The gum had a liquid center filled with extra flavor. I loved the cinnamon.

I chewed it while the Hulk smashed and the Dukes escaped the corrupt law. I fell asleep before J.R.’s shenanigans on “Dallas.”

They tore down Knox Cafe in 1995. The waitress, whose name I later learned was Helen Burley, died in 2009.

But sometimes, when I squint, it’s still there and I can almost smell the fried chicken with steak fries.

I often find myself slightly disappointed when I drive by the Iowa Events Center. There’s nothing wrong with the building. Such things are good for the economy, or at least that’s what we’re told.

But I remember the old River Hills-Riviera Twin movie theaters. I saw my first movie there when I was 5 years old: “The Empire Strikes Back.”

My sister took me while my parents were out of town. I had played with the toys and read the storybooks, but I was too young to see the original “Star Wars.”

My sister and I stood in line for what seemed like hours. We ate a big bucket of popcorn and shared a pop as the adventures set in a galaxy far, far away played out on the biggest screen in the city.

I was gobsmacked. I wanted to go to the movies every day for the rest of my life.

It didn’t quite work out that way. But my sister took me to a lot of movies there over the years, before cinemas moved out to suburban multiplexes.

My college roommate and I saw the rerelease of “Return of the Jedi” in the theater one night in spring 1997. We were the only ones in the place. The theaters closed not long after that and were demolished in the early 2000s to make way for the new arena and convention center.

Some nights when I drive eastbound on Interstate 235, I still expect to see the old KCCI weather beacon giving me the forecast in bright lights atop the downtown broadcast tower.

I should know better. I wrote the story for the Register when they turned it off in 2012.

Then again, sometimes, just for a moment, I expect to see Connie McBurney giving the forecast, holding a contest to guess the first snowfall date and giving away weather radios.

I was somewhat starstruck in my college years when I become friends with McBurney after I won the Mike Reynolds Scholarship at Drake University, named in honor of McBurney’s late husband, a TV newsman himself. I felt like I was meeting Walter Cronkite.

I don’t want to give you the impression I’m overcome with melancholy entering my 41st year. Sure, it’s weird to have the music of my youth referred to as “classic rock” and play on KIOA, but I don’t mind getting older.

I’m glad I can see my city both as it was and as it is. When I was a boy, the East Village was a bunch of dilapidated warehouses.

Court Avenue was akin to a red light district in my youth. Only the stalwart Johnny’s Hall of Fame, which was a much tougher joint in those days, survived a seemingly endless stream of failed efforts to revitalize the area.

A few blocks away, when the Polk County Jail was downtown, women with boyfriends in cells on the upper floors would stand on street corners and flash their beaus. That’s a kind of love, I guess.

Now young people eat expensive food and drink craft brews without a whiff of grittiness that once marked the area.

The truth is I like seeing the city as both how I remember it and I how it is. I don’t feel old. I feel lucky. Buildings rise and are razed. Trends fade.

Yet the city remains, stolid, sure and always moving forward. I hope I get to see it evolve for at least another 41 years.

Daniel P. Finney, the Register's Metro Voice columnist, is a Drake University alumnus who grew up in Winterset and east Des Moines. Reach him at 515-284-8144 or dafinney@dmreg.com. Twitter: @newsmanone.