tonight on studio 12, we take you inside one of Denver's family owned businesses, Ted's Clothiers, as they celebrate 50 years in business.

Then fall is in the air.

And Apple workshop, where harvest season turns into lessons in community and cooking.

Plus, we lift off at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, following one family that carries a piece of Colorado's heart with them into the sky.

All of that and more right now on studio 12.

From the Five Points Media Center in the heart of Denver, Colorado.

This is studio 12.

Hi, I'm Bosie Kanani, and I'm Ryan Hare.

Thanks for joining us here on studio 12.

In tonight's business of Colorado, we're shooting up with a family business that's been helping Denver look its best for 50 years.

Heads clothiers has been a staple for style and service since 1975.

Known for hand tailored suits, personalized customer service, and a dedication to hard work.

In honor of their 50th anniversary, Frannie Matthews sat down with Ted and his son Chris to hear about their history and how they've stood the test of time.

Take a look.

We're here.

We are a staple of India.

We've been here for 50 years.

Yeah.

See this?

We would just shorten sleeves and then just take this in.

Yeah.

I never used to tape.

I never myself many years of tape and stuff, but I used to tape some.

So long, so many years.

And as soon customer walked in I say, no, you belong to the big and tall size or you belong.

I yeah, I know what size.

Well, you walk in here, someone's there to greet you, with a friendly voice.

And they listen to you and they're here to help.

To have a smile on the customer's face is a reward in its own.

And we maintain to try to keep that.

People, we trust you.

Fine.

See, I put the ties away.

This the selfie people they put.

And I've got the the pirate.

And I found the perfect tie for the outfit.

And the customer say, oh, my gosh, this is.

That's it.

So you steal that?

Yes.

Yeah.

People, come in.

Word of mouth or looking for a product, but they find us and they're happy that they found us here.

People that care about, you know, what we have around.

If it's the clothing, if it's family, if it's themselves trying to help them.

That's how Ted was.

He?

He treated me like I was his best friend on the very first day I met him.

And?

And it hasn't changed since.

Do you think we can cut this, shrink this lapel down to fit here?

We don't charge extra for tailoring.

You come in, you buy the suit.

We make it perfect for your party.

No expectation.

The tailor shop really is our backbone of the business.

Without providing that expertise, craftsmanship to mold the final product, we wouldn't be any better than other big box corporate stores or places like that.

I hire Maria.

40, 46 years ago, and she's still here.

I mean, we had good health.

I start from nothing, but I manage.

I met my wife in, Greece.

In Athens?

72.

Yeah.

That's me and Angie.

Before we had family, and, I was a police officer.

I make a decision, and I went to, American Embassy.

I took my paperwork, and I arrived in Denver in June.

73, Father's day.

The second day arrive in Denver.

I started working at two.

First years, I work, very hard.

I walked all the way down to Broadway, catch the bus, and come, Broadway and crack.

It used to have a small clothing store, and whatever he sells during the week, I come down south of here so I can go out of state.

Where that one morning he said that I'm retired and I want to sell you the business.

And I say, can, I don't have a lot of money.

I have only $50,000 in savings from my car.

And I say, give me what you have, and then you pay me when you can, you know, paper to sign or anything.

Yeah.

And that's how I started.

I came here with a dream.

Yes.

Drawn my own business someday.

To own my own coffee.

Okay.

And if you work hard here in the States, you can have everything.

No problem.

So being able to see what, he's done.

Right, coming as an immigrant with nothing and, being able to provide for all of us.

My brothers, my sisters, his wife, or, you know, we had we had a roof and our home, we had food on our plate.

We had clothes on our back.

All those things.

It's something that I look up to, right?

And I can, you know, show that way to my kids.

Then I've done it.

The other one's got a little bit of, wool in cashmere attached to it, too.

So this is also very soft.

They come from miles around just to see Ted.

And you can try to see if you like that idea.

Otherwise, you know, I like the bamboo on you.

It's the same idea here.

It's got that little teal in there, which is a great color for the season.

And now Chris is right, has learned at Ted's ankles for all those years.

And and Chris is just as good.

What you want to, appear is, you want to be, a happy place that people want to come in, see you to, give back.

And those those, you know, levels of happiness or feelings of happiness.

It's rewarding that you can share it with, customers.

You can share it with, employees.

You can share it with, you know, the world.

You can you know, you can.

They mean a lot.

They mean a lot.

And hopefully it's, you know, reciprocated.

Yeah, I'm very fortunate.

I'm very lucky.

Okay.

My son came to the business almost 20 years ago.

He used to play basketball up at Chadron State, Nebraska.

And he got injured, at the beginning of, the third season.

And they put him in, ager reserve, and he said, he called me up.

He said, daddy, I don't want to stay up here anymore.

I'm not going to be an NBA player.

I want to come down.

I drove up there.

I brought him down.

He came down.

Can say, daddy, can I work at your store?

Part time.

And then I'll go down to Metro to finish my college.

I say sure.

He the realization of the percentage of people really going to playing professional sports, is very little, which in turn brought me back here and finished up, college, finished up school and brought me back to working part time, going to school for the other part time, and then working full time here.

He came to the store.

He he loved it.

He finished college down at Metro, you know, business.

And, then the time came.

He purchased the business and the rest of the store.

It's that's it.

Here's a big question.

Yeah.

You got a lot of lessons because you've been around this man for a long time.

What's one of the biggest lessons that you found out?

Humbleness.

My wife, she tries to get me to not work as hard and work smarter, and I totally understand, and I don't know any different.

You know, I've been trained by machine himself.

If anybody knows what he's gone through.

And to be able to look around and say, hey, this is the fruit of what you've built, it's us.

And for every one of me, there's other people around in the state, in the country that have had that same success story, both me and my wife, we still working.

We still have a payroll a couple weeks, a couple weeks, but we're very fortunate.

It goes to the grandkids people.

They're still they still need clothes.

People are still dressing up.

People are still getting married.

And so we're excited to be able to service and continuing to service those for three generations, for generations.

And on if I can provide that for either my kids or my nieces and nephews to continue that, lineage, to be here for the next 50 years plus, we've done our job as long I can move, as long I can think I can.

Okay, I'll be around.

Nobody's not going to forget who Ted was, who Chris was in.

We would always maybe have that going forward.

And we can only hope to keep that generational store or what?

What it may be to continue in the next.

Like I said, 50 years in our.

To learn more about Ted's clothiers, you can go to their website at Ted's clothiers.com.

on Colorado inside out.

Alton Dillard fills in for host Kyle Dyer.

Alton, along with our engaging lineup of panelists, bring to the table real issues impacting Colorado and our lives.

One of the hot topics front and center is Denver's Park Hill Park deal.

Here's more.

The Park Hill Park, formerly the Park Hill Golf Course, is partially open, so that puts an end to that issue, right?

Well, in the words of legendary sports announcer Lee Corso, not so fast.

It turns out that due to a fiber line under the dere land that was part of the land swap in the Park Hill Park agreement, 20 additional acres of land were added to the deal after it closed.

Also, $70 million is on the line for the park if Denver passes to be of the aforementioned vibrant Denver bond.

Once again, Jesse the Devil seems to be in the details.

I still miss the Park Hill Golf course.

That was the one place where I could shoot a decent score and short.

But look, you know, Atlanta kind of mentioned this earlier.

This is another issue for the for the mayor in terms of credibility issues.

The 20 additional acres of land.

I don't think anybody knew about that until recently when some colleagues, reported on it.

And Axios had a really interesting story, I think, kind of examining this, this issue that that the mayor has wanted to say, governor, this is a city issue.

That the mayor has, you know, with, with credibility problems and kind of saying things that don't add up.

There's a few different examples of that in the story.

I think heavily back to when he talked about property taxes in a way that wasn't true and then ultimately cost him, I think in part, his sales tax increase a few years ago.

And I and the I think the vibrant Denver question is going to be a really real referendum on whether people trust the mayor to kind of carry out, the things that he wants to do.

And this is just another kind of chip away from that credibility, the trust that the that folks might have in him.

And, Patty, you all have been on this issue pretty much since day one.

So what do you think of the evolutions going on right now?

Well, no one anticipated this twist.

I mean, it was one thing.

We had the conservation easement on it.

So either people had to vote to lift that, or it was going to stay open space, or maybe be able to have some park amenities.

And Denver approved that.

And then we had to come up with the money then to continue making it useful, open space.

And then you had the trade on property so that Denver could afford it.

And that was with the West Side.

And I wasn't really sure what West Side wanted with the property out by the airport, but it looked like a great deal.

It was taking a while to close on October 2nd, the city says, oh, it's all done and we're going to be Great Park Hill.

We're ready to have the party on the 28th.

In the meantime, just a few few days later, executive session, and this is where the story started.

They discovered the appraisal wasn't coming in right on the airport swap land, and that the city would have to come up because of this underground fiber optics.

The city would have to come up with more land and almost $1 million to make it a fair swap deal, and that took two weeks to come out from when the executive session was their city was stonewalling channel four.

They stonewalled us on it because I think they wanted to have the big celebration on Tuesday before the people found out, oh, it's not that smooth.

And now we have the FAA saying, even though they've kind of fixed the swap, maybe there's still some problems.

We're not going to know till November 21st if the FAA is going to allow the swap.

David, lots of government in this and love to hear your perspective.

Well, the it the Johnston administration has lied even about the $900,000 extra they had to pay to the developer, and claiming that they, they didn't have to do it.

But then Westword caught him on that this vibrant Denver bond, the way you can think of it as a homeowner, is imagine you finish paying off your mortgage.

Well, if these these bonds pass, you get to make two extra months of about the size of your mortgage payment just to pay for these particular bonds.

Never mind all the other property taxes, that Denver imposes.

So with this Park Hill thing, it reinforces the question is, do you really trust this current administration to spend $1 billion in an open, fair, non crony, transparent way?

Or do you think that there might be a whole bunch of other side deals, that get cut with all this, money?

That would be billion dollars that would be put in the administration's hands.

As Patty mentioned earlier, we've got $70 million in question to be that would go towards redeveloping the Park Hill golf course, turning it into a park.

I think you, Patty, you mentioned the FAA, scrutiny that that was just reported, yesterday, which is huge.

The fact that number one, he, Mayor Johnston secretly gave 20 more acres.

Then the FAA comes in saying this deal is is messier than already the secrecy that that fueled it.

It's they noticed numerous abnormalities.

I think that was their quote, that they're now going to have to look over for the next month.

They asked for an extension, I think, for about a month, to really review what this deal is all about.

This Park Hill golf course story is never ending.

I don't know how many times we have talked about this at this table.

And the fact that if voters don't pass to be that, we would, Johnston says we would have to go back to the drawing board means that this story is going to continue for years to come.

No matter if it passes or not, because you're going to have a ton of development if it does pass.

That goes into this.

So, you know, par for the course for this entire issue that that we're going to be looking at this for many more years to come.

Par for the course.

I see what you.

That was just one of the topics discussed on the latest episode of Colorado Inside Out.

Kyle Dyer will be returning to CIO this week.

You can catch the entire show on YouTube, the PBS passport app, or Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and you can find past episodes in those places as well.

fall is in the air and so are the smells of fresh apples.

PBS Twelve's Erica McLarty heads to an interactive workshop with Denver Urban Gardens that teaches people how to turn autumn apple harvests into healthy, homemade food.

Take a look.

Move over pumpkin spice, because this season it's all about the apples.

From the sauce to the apple butter to the vinegar.

We're here at the Posner Center with Denver Urban Garden for a workshop on preserving your apples.

So there's a lot of recipes to get to today I can't wait.

Let's get preserving.

Tonight we are hosting a piece of our preservation series.

So Apple Preservation.

We're going to be working with all of our participants to teach them how to preserve the bounty of their fruit trees.

So the very first class that we did was dehydrating.

Leading the class is Chef Paula Thomas, a long time cook who turned her passion for food preservation into a way of life.

I have been cooking professionally for more than 20 years.

I've been cooking my entire life because my mother taught me how to cook since I was a very young girl.

But I started preserving in 2009 when I got my first CSA community share agriculture.

And it was fruit and there was so much fruit and I didn't know what to do with it.

So then it's, you know, grown into something that I'm really passionate about.

I love everything preservation.

Now, my home, we only eat seasonal, which means I have to preserve everything.

So here we're going to make an apple sauce, which you can can if you want to.

Today we are going to pass some of it through a mill because we're going to make up with leather.

So apple leather is the second child of your apple sauce.

Put it in your oven.

I use a sheet pan and I use a seal.

You're like what?

So many things just happen.

We'll come back to this.

I just wanted to tell you all of that because you're going to go out in the wild.

You're going to cut your apples just like I showed you.

Cut it in slices.

Leave the core intact.

Like you.

Well, my auntie, we had a garden.

She started me garden.

And it's just been keeping me up from.

Do you want to try again?

Dragging, fighting, arguing.

And it just gave me a place to be in the garden.

And then somebody started teaching me how to garden and preserve and store properly.

I'm very.

I'm excited.

Every time I come here, I turn off my phone.

I end the day right before class.

Nobody after five.

I don't need to deal with traffic.

Nothing is all about the garden and get my train.

And who are you?

I'm here with my hat.

Hello.

Hi.

How are y'all doing today?

I've been doing garden a long time.

All my life.

Basically with my mom.

And when my mom passed away, I started doing gardening on my own.

And then I called my niece and asked her if she wanted to be a part of me.

And I said, apple butter day.

I have not, have not.

I've seen it in the stores and stuff, but I've never made it before.

You know, my mom always has like bags of apples, but she's got and, you know, she's kind of, drilled in me that they're like the lowest sugar fruit.

And so to treat all the time.

So long.

And then I'm going to add I absolutely love cloves.

I'm not the tiniest bit of cloves.

Not too much because I don't want it to overwhelm.

Well Paula shares the how to Denver Urban Gardens is focused on the why using food preservation as a tool for sustainability and community.

I mean, food waste is is a huge problem in the US.

We waste over 40% of food that's grown.

So this is an, really great way to learn how to preserve those apples.

It's a core part of our mission.

So to provide people with the skills that they need to be able to grow healthy food for their families, and then what to do with all that healthy produce?

Looking at food sovereignty, looking at ways to encourage healthy eating, and then, of course, using all of that fresh grown produce that we're growing in our gardens.

So apples traditionally applesauce, dehydrating apples is a great way to make a snack, especially for active Coloradans hiking up mountains, going in the ski season.

Apples we typically think of as a as a sweet product.

But we can grow a lot of different tart apples.

They can also be used as a savory recipe.

So we harvested some fresh sage from our herb garden that we're going to be featuring.

So none of it goes to waste.

You can use every piece of the apple, and grow some, make some really great food to share with your neighbors.

So the seeds and the bits and pieces, you'll see, we actually use for apple cider vinegar.

So there's a lot of the parts that would normally go into our compost, be put back into the soil, grow healthy soils.

We're going to use those to ferment them and turn them into vinegar.

That's another kind of health tonic that we would use for benefits.

You add your sugar, sugar melts so it becomes liquid.

In baking sugar, it's actually part of the liquids.

I feel like a grandma.

I'm going to try to pass it through here again.

This is a labor of love with my tiny little sieve.

Yum.

Okay, and one thing we've noticed in the preservation series this season is that we have a lot of repeat folks coming back, and they've really built a little community.

So we have our dog online.

We have a preservation circle that we started where folks can connect beyond just being here in person and share recipes, talk about their successes, ask questions here, data.

And if you come by yourself, I did.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Yeah.

What's it like coming out of that?

Well, these ladies have been lovely to chat with.

But yeah, I just moved back to Denver, and I was just super excited to get involved with dog.

And this is just an event that seems like a really great introduction for that.

Well, we learned a lot today, but my favorite part was not learning alone.

We had so much fun with all these other people.

And you know what?

Apple preserving really isn't just about food.

It's about tradition and connection and just slowing down and enjoying the simple stuff.

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is a bucket list event for many a sky filled with color, representing tradition and family legacies that lift off year after year.

And this year, one balloon in particular carried a special piece of Colorado in our viewfinder segment.

PBS Twelve's photojournalist Rico Romero followed a former Denver family whose balloon bears the flag of the Mile High City and whose story goes back generations.

We were at Albuquerque International doing theater rooms yesterday somewhere where they put the balloons up the fly.

Yards get real tired on this part.

Siesta is a time when pilots from around the nation, up and around the United States, all come together in one place.

Albuquerque and they fly.

We're basically, triad area around, Raleigh, Durham and North Carolina.

Everybody comes together and they fly in the beautiful skies of Albuquerque.

I like it, and most of the time they blow up the special shape.

You can have shapes, you have ride balloons, you have standard balloons.

You have anywhere from small balloons to super big 16 passenger balloons.

Past has a nine day annual event that happens the first two full weekends in October, and the week in between those is a certain pride to fly.

Have festivals and be the show for the people that they paid to get into.

The sights, this smells.

I don't know if you know this ballooning has a specific smell to it.

The leather, the propane, everything.

And just to get around the sights, the sounds of the smells.

And I just, got obsessed with it again.

It's been occurring since 1972.

Haven't been to the fiesta in a few years.

But, you know, I love it.

I like to tell people it's like walking among giants, because that's what you feel like when these balloons started flaming and you're also amongst them.

It reminds me.

It makes me think of walking with giants.

It brings together people from all across the globe to see this magical event, watching people who have not experienced this before, see that for the first time.

You can't describe it to anybody, to people.

So when you see that on somebody's face, you know, it's just, you know, it never gets old.

All right.

Here, I got you an M1 from the cherry on top, guys.

Vader and Frankenstein.

That balloon is what used to be Denver.

Kent's the city and county of Denver's flag.

So 5280.

Fire.

That's a balloon.

I learned how to fly in with Marnie's mom.

Or my mother in law.

My mother and father in law.

They were, Well, they are natives of Colorado.

Natives of Denver.

So when they were able to hand that balloon over to Marnie and myself, it's it's just been that balloon that we've always wanted a big part of who we are as a family.

John and I learned how to fly on that balloon, and it's still our favorite.

I think it's year 18.

I've been flying here.

Been here, been coming here for about 27 years now.

You have your blood family, and then you have your balloon family.

We are a, big community.

You know, I know pilots from all over the country, a few from around the world.

I have a lot of friends.

They're like, oh, like, it's so awesome.

You're a pilot's daughter.

I'm like, I'm not just the pilot's daughter.

Like, I'm crew.

I'm there waking up with them early in the morning doing weather check.

There are a number of families where it's generational.

There are quite a few generational balloon families probably on this field this week.

I have been coming to siesta my entire life.

Actually since In Utero, which is kind of crazy.

The first time I came, I was about nine months old.

My parents had just both got their pilot's license.

My grandma flew, and I've come every year since, minus a few here and there because of reasons.

But I've been coming for the past 21 years, and it's awesome.

And I look forward to being a future pilot.

It's great to have our kids here, Marnie.

She grew up doing this, so my dad put me in a little carrier, took me up.

I do not know.

Life without ballooning.

I'll be third generation once I get my pilot's license.

We really didn't push the kids to fly, you know?

We asked him.

Hey, do you guys want to fly?

And it wasn't until recently where they're like, yeah, dad, we want to start learning how to fly.

My grandma was a full time gasoline pilot and normal pilot on top of being a radiologist and doctor.

We call her noona, but she's Carol to everybody else.

The story goes that at the time they had one car.

And so my mom sold the car to buy a share.

And to their very first, she is someone who's in the Hall of Fame.

You see your picture around, you remember who she is.

Like she has the picture of one fiesta.

It's hard not having her, like, here to, like, see the beauty of it.

But like, I have my mom and I have my dad, and like, I'm there for the heartbreak and the tears.

Like, I've been here, like, this entire time, and it's like, I don't know, it's just.

It's fun to have fun doing something that's hard and missing people.

And it's you just have to make the best out of a hard, situation that has now turned into memories and power and so much more than just ballooning.

It's made it my connection to balloon and grow stronger.

It was, as Margaret mentioned, it was very, very difficult for a couple of years in there.

It's wonderful to talk to people now and understand the impact my mom made on them, and just a moment or a time in their lives.

And, so that's really it's been really rewarding and wonderful and healing for me to hear other people's stories about her.

For me, it's all about carrying on the legacy and it's what she would want us to do.

My mom and dad fly.

My mom doesn't fly as much because there was not here anymore.

But, because she is the definition of my grandpa.

And my dad carries the legacy and he carries a pen with just her, like, and just seeing, like, my mom, like, looks just like my grandma.

And it's just being able to see her and, like, living out her mom's legacy and, like, being an awesome mom and being an awesome wife, and, like, she works so hard.

And just seeing her come out here and, like, put a brave face and smile like it's inspiring.

I'm super proud of my family and like, I love my dad and I'm proud of what he does and like.

But it's like my mom's.

It's my mom's thing.

Like my dad's a pilot.

Because of my mom.

It's really hard.

Like missing people who you haven't had the relationship and being able to grow up with, like, so like Carol is the image and the backbone to like what we are as a family and like, yeah, she's not here.

But like, we carry her with us every day.

And my mom is such an awesome person and such a beautiful person, and so is my dad.

And to see my dad fly and my mom being like, okay, like I'm going to get back into it and do this like it's super awesome.

And just being here and like being back in Albuquerque, like embracing her culture and, embracing Balloon Fiesta has been super awesome to see the past couple of years because it was really hard for a long time, and now it's just seeing like the power and the movement, behind what my grandma did.

And now my parents are carrying on and what I hope to carry on after them.

Like I hope to be a great, awesome balloon pilot like my parents are.

But you just never know.

Like you don't ever know.

Really an incredible story there.

You could just feel how much love and loss are intertwined in that one family's ballooning journey.

Absolutely.

And you can catch more of Rico Romero's stories celebrating the people and places that lift our communities right here on studio 12.

We haven't finished celebrating Dia de Los Muertos just yet.

There are still some events and special exhibits happening this month.

At one of them in Denver.

You can see the work of artist Calle Duran in our heart of the West segment tonight.

Calle shows us his ofrenda installation at History Colorado.

It's in honor of the late Rita Flores de Wallace, florist.

De Wallace was known as Denver's First Lady of Mexican Folk Art, the teacher and storyteller who helped shape Colorado's cultural heritage.

Now, through Cal's hands, her legacy continues.

We caught up with Cal as he created this year's altar, blending his own indigenous and Latin roots with Rita's textile work and a powerful tribute that connects generations.

Take a look.

I grew up, my mom was adopted and my father was in and out of prison.

So we didn't have this like grounding of a cultural presence.

But I always had this longing of knowing where I come from.

So art was a way for me to remember, like where I came from.

I didn't go to art school.

I didn't graduate high school.

It was my senior year, and they wanted me to go to a gym class, and it was two months before my graduation, and I was in art like art class all the time.

I was winning awards, with this organization called Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.

My art got sent to New York, and I just knew I wanted to be an artist.

So Jim was just like.

So they kicked me out and I was like, okay, I'm not going to go to art school, but I am just going to keep creating.

So I work with clay, and Clay, I believe holds all the memories of the earth.

And it holds all the elements.

It's earth, air, fire and water.

And I teach clay as well.

And when I see that, students create from clay, it's that intuition.

It's that inner remembering of working with the earth.

And so my art is really about honoring my ancestors, my identities.

Doctor Rene Vado, I am the director of the Metropolitan State University Journey to our heritage program.

So I was one of the very fortunate young people back in the day and a young member of the Chicano Humanities Arts Council in the 80s to come upon a teacher, our maestro Rita Wallace de Flores, who was one of the people that came to Colorado, and really helped young Chicanos establish, what Dia de Los Muertos was and began teaching it.

And Rita Wallace, the Flores and the Luna Boys, as we call them, from the pirate Bob Luna specifically, were really instrumental in bringing those traditions here to Colorado.

I met her probably when I was about 17, when I was in an organization called Chalk Chicano Humanities for the Art Council, and also had a gallery called pirate Art Gallery.

And every year they did a dia that was meant to celebration.

And you can make an a friend, an altar.

It was extremely important that when she came, she brought a lot of the traditions surrounding the building that for our friends, the traditions of the the cuantos storytelling.

So timelines kind of traveled.

And then about five years ago, I met Renee, and she's just been a great advocate and, just really a beautiful, kind, open hearted person I've been learning from.

And Rita was her teacher, so was kind of this full circle moment.

And Rita was, you know, kind of ailing and, had dementia.

She was in the hospital a few times, almost passed away, but she told me I'm not ready to leave the earth.

I have one more student, and lo and behold, she was right.

Yeah.

And Cal.

Cal is her last student.

And, she was iconic for her o hostiles.

And we all know that Cal Duran, we're talking ojos Dios.

He is the cream of the crop.

So she really brought her knowledge back in the, my native me back in the 70s and 80s because she was from a small town in Mexico.

And really just shared those traditions with the community when she came here.

And she brought the traditions that she knew of Dia de Los Muertos, she was very adamant.

You have to understand that this holiday is a syncretic holiday.

It's a woven mixture now of many peoples traditions that have come together, and where they live is the way that they celebrate it.

And there is no right or wrong way to really celebrate it.

She was very, very, intent upon us realizing that you come together as a community.

Is it time to support each other?

So she passed away on April 27th.

Close to the, day of the children, Dia de Nino.

And when it came time to celebrate her life, Cal made her a huge altar.

So she passed away April 27th.

And the.

This is really just an honor to her and her legacy.

There's also photos of other, women, and lineage.

They're called the Queen mothers that have passed away as well.

After.

The marigolds represent the ancestors.

So they say when you smell a marigolds, it's the, food of the ancestors.

It's the scent of the ancestors.

That's why, that's always represented.

I've been creating friends all over Colorado, probably for the last 15 years.

Probably ten years ago.

That was one of my first skeletons I created.

And it survived.

I wanted to give it wings as it's flying.

Back home.

And then these are all photos of Rita.

And a friend is an offering.

So meaning offering.

But it's an also an altar.

I refer to as an a friend.

As a little pit stop.

Like a beacon, a beacon of light.

This is actually one of Rita's, pieces.

So she works a lot with corn husks and crepe paper.

She loved dolls.

And communicants up there is a big Sacred Heart me and my friend built about ten years ago.

I sell papier maché, and behind it is an altar de Dios.

That's, a God's eye.

And traditionally, Rita, made those as well.

And we made those together.

The other US matters can really be celebrated by anybody.

And why I say that is because we're all going to die.

You know, we're all on this universal quiet of death and life.

And I see Dia de Los Muertos as a celebration of life and death, as one more of those.

We think it's just about honoring our ancestors and those that came before us and their hard work and their sacrifice.

But the very core of it is gratitude.

It's celebrated so differently, like in Mexico.

And each Puebla, they celebrate it differently.

So it has deep, roots in the Mexican roots.

And it was, celebrated was, meets the aunt Lee.

She's the goddess of the dead.

Since colonization happened, it really moved on to like All Saints Day.

But I was always taught it was three days.

And November 1st is when all the little babies come and lead the procession.

And November 2nd is really when we build the ofrenda we, like, kind of build the bones of the friend on the first.

And the second is really when our loved ones come and greet us, and then on the third day is when we get to say goodbye.

I think it's good that, you know, that culture of Dia de Los Muertos is brought into that forefront and that kids are really recognizing that, and then it's not so taboo to talk about death, you know, and to really, you know, be grateful that we get to wake up every day and to really just give offerings that, you know, every footstep that we take is an offering, you know, for the ones, before us, when I was younger, I think it was kind of a smaller pocket, but I think, like with the commercial commercialization of it, too, it's gotten wider spread, but I think that's also, a gift because I think people need to know more about it.

And I think we definitely.

And preserving traditions in a way, because this is honoring Rita and her traditions of what she taught us.

And I'm always kind of a big I have a open heart.

And I think, you know, we can preserve and preserve, but also that kind of puts a lid lid on our traditions when I think we need to meet our community where it is now and having it front and center here, you know, this is a community altar.

So people could add messages to their loved ones.

This is just isn't about Rita.

This isn't just about the women on the altar, but it's really a connective thread to everybody.

And that's really what I want to preserve.

And this and I think that's what Dia de Los Muertos is really about, is the connective thread within everybody.

And these are all messages I see that, community is already offered.

I believe there's mitosis every day.

All day.

We should celebrate, you know, the ones that have left this realm, because their memories are like seeds.

And it inside of us.

And we get to just really share that with everybody we meet.

Cal's exhibit will be up through November 9th.

For more information you can go to History colorado.org.

Switching now to the Business of Colorado, PBS 12 photojournalist Rico Romero takes us inside Denver's own Polidori sausage company to celebrate 100 years in business and five generations of family ownership, from former small grocery store and butcher shop to America's oldest family owned Italian sausage company, Polidori.

History is rich in flavor and tradition.

I. We're at 3800 Dallas Street Depository manufacturing plant.

Polydor is the oldest Italian company still family owned and operated in the nation.

Started with my great grandmother out of a small grocery store on 34th and Churchill back in 1925.

This is where she started to worse.

We're still doing it on our our home turf.

We talk about how we're local.

Well, there's three generations in those pictures up there.

I'm a great grandmother, obviously my grandfather and then my father.

So it is a family affair.

As the article says, they're, sausage making, a family affair.

We've decided to embrace the year.

We're 100.

I think it represents a lot of legacy, like my brothers side and, you know, carrying on our great grandmother's, family heirloom sausage recipe.

And so, I think my grandmother was a great grandmother would flip out on how enormous we've actually become.

You know, in the last 20 years, our great grandmother's family heirloom sausage.

That is our signature item.

That we still are some handcraft here today, but that particular flavor profile comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes.

So this is where everything happens.

So it starts here.

Here's a combo 2,000 pounds of pork.

Then it would blend through here.

Go through the grinder come out as a clean cut.

So as it comes over to our mixer then we will for whatever batch size we're doing add the spice blend to it.

So right here is our link line.

We have a portion control machine that goes through our linker and then through our cutter.

That's going through there.

It's cutting each link.

So everything we do here is still hand packed.

We have all of these guys that will still go through and hand pack every single box that we do through the tape machine, through the metal detector to the pallet straight to the freezer.

We do an extreme amount of product through this small room.

We can end up doing a one day, 22,000 pound.

Our vendors are local.

So we're, you know, really homegrown.

Anthony's started in Denver in 1984, with our founder, Henry Mann.

He was from New York, and he really wanted to bring that great New York style pizza to Denver.

And from there, we just continued to grow, really being known for that New York City slice.

Hey, how's it going?

Good.

How are you?

Good.

Can I have two, two size combo?

Sausage.

And how a is a partnership that we just started?

Pretty recently.

It was an easy choice, though, when we were looking at products.

The thing about making so much of our product in-house.

Any time we bring in something that is not made in-house, that's a more complete product.

It's really important to us that they have the same values that we do as a company when it comes to community, when it comes to quality more than anything.

And as soon as we tasted Polidori, we pretty much knew that.

And then once we met Steve and Melody, it became obvious as well that they had the same values as business owners as we do.

And it was sort of a natural partnership.

They've been in Colorado 100 years.

We've been in Colorado 40 years.

Between us, we have 140 years of doing things the right way.

Funny, since they switch to sausages, the boundary.

I see it everywhere around this community, you know, and being a local and walking around these places.

So I, you know, I enjoy it.

And I think it was a good addition to the Anthony's, repertoire.

The feedback has been extremely positive, both from our guests and also from our team, which was really important.

The people who eat our food more than anybody, or the guy is working in the back right now who take home a pizza pretty much every single day and have to work with the product and cook the product and taste it all the time.

And hearing positive feedback from our guests was fantastic.

And then hearing positive feedback from our pizza cooks who've been back there 20 years, that they still love the product, that it's even better now.

That felt really awesome.

We make the product the same way my great grandmother made it.

Port.

Salt.

Spices.

No.

Additives.

No.

Nitrates.

Nitrites.

A very clean product.

Something you can be proud of.

You know, like they started out of a grocery store and my great grandmother passed away in 1982.

My grandfather started this little business innovation with our food distributing company.

He didn't feel like retirement was his gig.

He couldn't play golf every day, that kind of thing.

So he started this business, and he started it was as a hobby.

And he started this as a little hobby.

Became, somewhat busy, so.

And he needed help.

And my father said, you need a job.

Go, go work with your grandpa.

And that's kind of how I got started in the business when I was in college working for him.

And then when I graduated college, he offered me a position to take over.

And about ten years later, I bought him out, brought my sister on.

About a year after that.

And from then on, the business really, really boomed.

I think we're we're truly humbled.

Not a lot of companies make it to 100 years.

You know, when I first joined the company 23 years ago, it seemed like it was a long way to 100.

And.

Wow, here we are.

To find out more about Polidori sausage, you can go to their website at Polidori.

Sausage.com.

Well, what a night from family run businesses and fall harvest to artist and creators honoring culture and tradition.

We have seen so much of what Coloradans have to offer to each other.

And we love celebrating those folks, the ones who keep our communities growing, sharing, and inspiring each other.

And thank you for spending your evening with us.

You can find all of tonight's segments and much more on our website, PBS 12.org.

Also follow us on social media to see what's coming next.

Thanks so much for joining us here on studio 12.

I'm Ryan here and I'm Bosie Canady.

We'll see you next Tuesday night at eight.