Surviving the summer in Phoenix, Arizona


It's July 14th as I write this, in Glendale, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, and there's only one word for the awful heat here right now - unbearable. And yet people do bear it. I've been doing it for over twenty years now. Of course, I've had it easy. I've had air conditioning.

My interest in Phoenix history always makes me wonder how it was for the pioneers. And in spite of the people who insist that "it wasn't so hot back in the day", it was. Long before freeways, and asphalt, and swimming pools, it was the Sonoran Desert, which has been a very hot desert since the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. So, whenever I think about the people who lived there before the invention of air conditioning, from Indians to pioneers, I cringe a little.

My favorite description of it in the 1870s is from Phoenix pioneer George Loring, who wrote this in a letter back home:

“If a man can get up at three o'clock and sits perfectly still in some open spot (where he can get the advantage of what small breeze there is) without a rag on, he can get comfortable, the sweat will not run, but understanding that he has got to keep perfectly still. If he moves his toes they will be covered with perspiration, he must not wink more than once in fifteen minutes…"

And it goes on and on, and gets more sarcastic and miserable. Author Patrick Grady did the original research on this, and it's in his book "Out of the Ruins" if you'd like to read more. If you have the book, take a look at Chapter Six, "A Frontier Love Story". And all I can think is, "what in the world were people doing here?" Well, they were looking for opportunity, and being what I call "unrealistically optimistic" about the chances of a great city like Phoenix growing in such an inhospitable spot.

Like I say, I've been lucky. I've always worked indoors, with air conditioning. And thanks to the nice people at General Motors, I can travel around Phoenix with cool air inside of a bubble. George Loring would have loved it!

Above: the rugged face of Phoenix pioneer George Loring
Become a PhD (Phoenix History Detective) today on Patreon!

Click here to become a Patron!
History Adventuring posts are shared there daily including "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos of historic Phoenix, Arizona. Discounts for seniors, students, teachers, and veterans.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more