Playing with my collection of old Phoenix photos


Like most middle-aged guys (which I will consider myself to be until I'm at least 100), I like to collect stuff. If you know someone like that, or maybe you are someone like that, you know how it works. The collection is never, ever, big enough. There's always a search on for something. The collection grows and grows. Luckily, my collection requires no physical space, because it's digital photos of old Phoenix. At last count I think I have nearly 10,000 images. I've been collecting for over twenty years, and don't see any reason to stop, or even slow down. Of course, if they were physical images, I'd have filled up my house, and probably several storage sheds by now, but they're digital, and live on my computer, and on my website server.

Like all collectors, I like to show people my collection. I post them on a Facebook page, and really do enjoy the oohs and aahs. Of course, since they're digital, I can give them away, which I do, and people don't have to pay for admission, or buy stuff from me. They can just have it, and maybe add it to their own collection!

But I do something with my collection that goes way back to when I was a kid - I play. I was never one of those kids who would just collect things, like Matchbox cars, and just let them sit in a display case. I would get them out and play with them. They'd roll around with G.I. Joe, or Spiderman, or whoever was handy, and I'd have an adventure. They were often attacked by aliens.

Now waitaminute, this doesn't mean that I destroyed my collection. I didn't throw them out of the window, or blow them up with fire crackers. I wasn't that kind of kid, and I'm still not. I played with my toys, in flights of imagination.

Nowadays, as a old kid, I still love to play in my imagination with my favorite toys, which are now the old photos of Phoenix. That's what history adventuring is all about - not just collecting, and labelling, and looking at the photos, but stepping into them, having an adventuring, being there.

So please play with me. If you understand my playful attitude, you'll like adventuring with me.

Image at the top of this post: Looking northeast over 1st Avenue and Washington in 1915, Phoenix, Arizona. See that street car? I want to ride on it in 1915! You can be the guy on the horse, OK?
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