Why I live in Phoenix, Arizona


I just love living in Phoenix, Arizona. I've only lived in two other places in my life, Minneapolis (where I grew up) and Southern California (where I spent my twenties), so it's not like I traveled around and have a lot to go on. But I made the decision, and it's my dearest wish that I will be able to stay in Phoenix for the rest of my life, which looks like it's gonna be a long one.

Like most people who moved to Phoenix from Minnesota, I just wanted to get away from the cold and snow. It was during my first year of Junior College after High School that I started working part time for a company that hired college kids to do physical inventory. That is, busloads of people would be dropped off at a store and stay there all night, counting stuff. We wore big old-fashioned calculators (even for those days!) and wrote down the totals on a piece of paper on a clipboard. Pretty brainless work really, and perfect for someone like me who didn't mind being up all night on my feet doring dull, repetitious work. It paid minimum wage, which to me was a lot more than I remembered from my paper route, which I stopped doing when I started Junior High School, at about 14.

At age 19 I was seriously pondering leaving the snow and cold. I had a car, and I had figured out how to read maps. I mentioned this to my team leader one day, and he said that they needed people in Phoenix. I had no idea what Phoenix was like, other than it didn't snow there, so I told him I'd like to go. As I sat in his office, he made a phone call, then turned to me and said, "OK, they're expecting you." So I drove there.
Support Arizona history by becoming a patron on Patreon

Click here to become a Patron!
History Adventuring blog posts are shared there daily, also there's "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, and super high-resolution photos of historic Phoenix, Arizona
I like Phoenix, but after I got my degree in Graphic Design at ASU, I wanted to move to the "big city". To me, there are only two big cities in the U.S. - New York (which was out of the question), and Los Angeles. So I moved to LA. After a few years of miscellaneous jobs I got an awesome job in the San Fernando Valley. Then, suddenly the department was eliminated, and I was out of a job.

My visit back to Phoenix was just to see old friends. You know, good for the soul. I slept on the floor of my friend Miguel's, whose wife didn't really seem to mind. I was there for just a few days when I signed a lease at an apartment in Phoenix, and arranged to borrow a truck from another friend to go get my stuff in California.

I found Phoenix to be just right. Not too big, not too small. I had spent a few years in Santa Barbara, which was too small. I had spent a few years in Los Angeles, which was too big. Minneapolis would be about the right size, but then there was that darn snow! So I stayed in Phoenix. I was lucky enough to get a great job just about right away, and I was able to buy the house that I'm now, and hopefully always will be.

I often ask people why they're where they are. Many times people just grumble and say that they'd love to move away. I saw this a lot of this in LA, where people would complain about watching the homeless people go by and staring out at the auburn sky. Then they'd say, "all my friends are here."

I like Phoenix. I'll want to stay here.


Image at the top of this post: 21 years old at the Saguaro Apartments in 1979, 4205 N. 9th Street, Phoenix, Arizona. Not luxury living at its finest, but no snow, and all the freedom I wanted.

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