The everyday people of Phoenix, and Los Angeles



I like everyday people. And that means everyone. Because we're all everyday people. We all sweat beneath the same sun (especially in Phoenix!), we all look up in wonder at the same moon. Rich or poor, young or old, male or female, etc., etc. And if you like everyday people, you're in luck. They're everywhere.

I moved to Phoenix when I was 19, just because I had a car and I knew how to read a map. I was looking for something different, especially a place that didn't snow (I grew up in Minneapolis), and I was immediately frightened and lonely. I wrote back home to my parents, and my friends all of the time (always including a cartoon!) but it wasn't enough. I needed people.

People in Phoenix are weird. Some of them are a lot like the people I knew in Minneapolis but some were so strangely exotic that I could hardly believe it. Some of them spoke a strange language, and ate things called "tacos". And I very quickly got over my fear and turned everyone I met into everyday people. I started becoming comfortable around people in Phoenix because they really were the same that I knew in Minneapolis - they had families, they drove the same cars (really, this was a surprise to me!), they were brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers. Some people had very dark skin (I'm talking about white people here) caused by the rays of the sun "tanning" it (remember that I'm from Minnesota). And then it got much worse for me, I moved to LA.

LA was a world of opportunities for me. Southern California seemed like such a magical place, and it is. But the people there are VERY strange. I lived there in the eighties, and people, like, dude, talked like, dude, in a strange way. Dude. The surfer dudes said "gnarly!" and the Valley girls said, "totally!" And everyone, like, drove everywhere. Nobody walked in LA. So making strange Californians into everyday people was quite a task for me, but I did it. I'm comfortable there, whether you're a big celebrity, or just one of "the little people" that are mentioned in speeches at the Oscars.

If you're confused, or maybe frightened, by people whose skin is a different color, or who wear different colors than you do, I understand. If you've been taught to hate people who look different from you, or who act differently from you, or follow a different team than you do, you have every reason to hide. It's a scary world you see, and I remember it. I see a different world, a world of everyday people.

Image at the top of this post: A cartoon poster that I did for Bank One Arizona in the 1990s.
If you liked this article, and would like to see more, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! You make this happen!

 Click here to become a Patron!
History adventuring posts are shared there daily. The basic tier is a dollar a month, and the PhD tier, which includes "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos, is five dollars a month, and is discounted for seniors, veterans, and students.

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