Christmas without snow, Phoenix, Arizona


I hate snow and cold. That's the main reason that I left Minneapolis as quickly as I could. At 19 I packed up all of my earthly belongings (which were a cheap set of golf clubs, my tennis racquet, a drawing board, and maybe some other stuff) and headed west. I had spent too many winters in Minnesota, delivering newspapers and walking to school in the snow. I had a map, I had a driver's license, I had a car (well, an MG Midget), and all that mattered was to go where there wasn't any more snow and cold. I drove to Phoenix, Arizona.

I arrived in August, and even though my car, and my apartment, didn't have air conditioning, I really didn't mind. And I was anxious to see what winter would be like without snow. I was one of those typical midwestern people who was out by the pool when the locals were smart enough to be inside.

But when Christmastime came, it hurt. I dreamed of a white Christmas. It all just felt so wrong. I remember making the mistake of guessing that the Arizona town of Snowflake would have a lot of snow, so I drove up there. No, it's not called that because of snow, it's called that because it was founded by two guys, named "Snow" and "Flake". Go Google it, I'm not kidding. I haven't trusted place names since then.

I did find Flagstaff, which has beautiful snow. And I promptly got my little sports car stuck in the snow there, and was glad to get out of it. And I learned that I could always drive up 17 whenever I felt the need for cold, and cooler weather. A good lesson!

The last time I saw Minnesota snow, 1982.

I made the mistake of visiting Minnesota one Christmas, and there was a record blizzard, and bitter cold. It seemed better to dream of it in Arizona than to actually go there, so I've never been back there in the winter. No thank you.

Even after all these years, Christmas without snow seems very strange. I listen to Christmas music, and I look at photos. Then I walk outside, where right now it's 54 degrees, and I shiver. I like it here, and nothing could possibly make me go back to the snow and cold, not even for a visit. I dream of a white Christmas, but I do it from Phoenix.

Image at the top of this post: Looking south at the Papago Buttes from Wonderview Road on Camelback Mountain in 1978, Phoenix, Arizona. Being in Phoenix amazed me then, and it still does.
History Adventuring on Patreon

 Click here to become a Patron!

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