Walking to the Tri-City Mall in Mesa


Walk with me. Let's go to the Tri-City Mall in Mesa. It's 1982 and we're starting from my little apartment in Tempe, on Wildermuth, near Price and Apache.

I know we're not supposed to do this, but let's walk along the railroad tracks. I don't really need to buy anything, I'm just walking. I like the road less travelled, and I walk along the railroad tracks all of the time, usually with my neighbor's dogs. I've never seen anyone, and even trains are rare. The tracks are absolutely straight, so I can see for miles in both directions, so I'm not worried about getting hit by a train. Yeah, I know it's against the law, but we're young!

There's an open field where the Light Industrial area will be in the 21st Century, so it's an easy walk to the tracks. The dogs are barking but they can't come along this time.

Looking south along the Tempe Canal on the border of Tempe and Mesa in the 1980s. This is the view from Apache Boulevard just east of Price toward the Silos. The area has changed a lot since the 1980s, but the silos are still there. You may have to go around to Broadway to see them.

The tracks run east and west, halfway between Apache and Broadway, and cross at the bridge over the canal. As we walk east, we go past a farm, where I've visited with the dogs many times. Across the canal bridge is still open fields, and there are bees, but don't worry, they stay close to their houses, and they won't bother you. I always stop and look at the silos.

When we get to the road (which is Dobson), we'll need to turn left, and leave the railroad tracks. There's a Denny's there (which is now a LoanMax) so we can stop in, sit at the counter, and eat something. Yeah, we forgot to eat anything before we left, and we've been walking, so now we're hungry. Can you lend me a couple of bucks?

We're now in Mesa (actually we were when we crossed the canal), so it's not Apache anymore, it's Main. Tri-City Mall is now kitty-corner across Main and Dobson, so we're almost there. There's nothing much I need, besides I'm a starving student without any money to spend, but I remember how much I enjoyed hanging around Southdale when I was in High School in Minneapolis, so let's just hang around. Maybe we'll see some girls, but of course we'll be too shy to talk to them!

This has been fun, but I'm ready to head back. I'm sure the dogs are wondering where I've been!

Image at the top of this post: Tri-City Mall in the 1960s, from a postcard. The third city was Scottsdale, which is just north, across the Salt River.
History Adventuring on Patreon

 Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

  1. Jeffrey 6033March 1, 2021 at 10:09 AM

    That postcard of inside Tri-City mall sure brings back fond childhood memories. I went to the Grand Opening in 1968. I want to put a question out there. In the early to mid 1970's there was a Magnavox TV store directly across from the Walgreens store. Does anyone know the name of that Television store???

    ReplyDelete

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