History Adventuring

In a longish life, I've met a lot of people who are comfortable in wildly different temperature extremes. Speaking for myself, I like it hot. I keep the thermostat in my house fairly high, and I've happily played golf in the summer in Phoenix (the green fees are way cheap then!). I've also known people who preferred cold, who liked to sleep with the window open, even when it was snowing outside (I grew up in Minnesota). But one thing that I find everyone agrees on is that heat combined with high humidity is awful. No one likes that. If you've experienced it, you know. I experienced 18 years of high-humidity summers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I really hated it. If you're not familiar with the four seasons of Minnesota, yes it gets terribly cold in the winter, and it can also get up into the eighties, or nineties in the summer. If you've never experienced those temperatures with high humidity, then it's probably impossible for me to explain how aw...

If I'm learning anything about Phoenix history, it's that it's best seen through the eyes of people who are watching it. I really don't care for history books, I like looking through magazines and newspapers of the era. And yet I know that those printed words can't possibly tell me what the average person on the street was thinking. And I would be especially interested in the words of people about the age I am now, which although I still consider myself "middle aged" (I plan on living to 120 at least), were the real voices of reason. So if you don't mind, I'd like to be a couple of Phoenix old-timers, sitting on a corner, just talking about things. Well how-de-do! It's another beautiful day in Phoenix! Just breath that fresh air! Let's move away from those horses, and set a spell. I just don't know what this town is coming to! Those horseless carriages are everywhere, kicking up dust, making a racket, scaring the horses. They oug...

It's 1911, so let's take a balloon ride over Phoenix. Wow, this is amazing, how much my town has grown in the last few years. I wonder if it will keep growing? I hope so. We're looking northwest. Let's see, down to our left is the new Dorris-Heyman store, which is at Adams and 1st Street. I really don't have much use for furniture, but if you want to go there after we land, that sounds fine. Dorris-Heyman, 1st Street and Adams Hey! There's my church, Central Methodist, right across from the Central School. I didn't go to school here in Phoenix, did you go there? Central Methodist Church (left) and Center School, Central and Monroe. And there's the post office building, and Steinegger's Lodge, and the Coliseum there on the corner. Maybe we could go see a vaudeville show there? I understand that they also plan on showing some of those new "moving pictures"! Left to right: the post office building, Steinegger's Lod...

I don't live in Apache Junction, but I've spent a lot of time there. But apparently it looks so different to me that many people really don't believe that I know anything about the area. I don't know the restaurants, the tourist places, I haven't done any hiking in the mountains, the list goes on an on of things that I know nothing about. So when most people want to talk to me about Apache Junction, there doesn't seem to be much we have in common. Walk with me. Mine is the Apache Junction of a person on foot, with no particular place to go. I've walked around Apache Junction, usually alone, sometimes with dogs. So that's where you start - on foot. And we're not walking across a parking lot into a building, or along a trail that's marked. There won't be anything that we can check off our list of having done, and it won't impress anyone on Facebook. Mine is the Apache Junction of Andrew Wyeth. Well, not exactly, of course, he was i...

Hello, my dear. What did the doctor say? I see. Well, doctors don't know everything. Yes, I understand. Well, this is 1898, and we're in one of the most modern cities in the world, and... I'm sorry, what were you saying? Well, I didn't become one of the richest men in Pittsburg just to... What? Yes. Yes. Oh, I see. In this imaginary story I'm a wealthy man in a big city back east in 1898 with a very sick wife. She has been coughing, and the doctors really don't know what to do. And she has found a pamphlet called "Health Resorts in Salt River Valley, Arizona". Arizona? You mean where the cowboys and Indians are? Way out west? Ten gallon hats and six-shooters? Let me see that pamphlet! You know this is printed by the railroad company? They just want me to buy an expensive ticket... I'm sorry, don't cry, of course I'll read some more. Why, that Adams Hotel looks pretty nice, much bigger than anything I'd ever thought that Phoenix w...

I like old photos, and as long as I can remember people have often said that they wished that Phoenix could just go back to "the way it was". And I understand, it's a nice thought. As a time-traveler I wonder where in the timeline would be the best "way it was"? Before Phoenix was built, when the area was all just beautiful Sonoran Desert? Or back when the railroad had just arrived, in 1887, and the old adobe buildings were being replaced by beautiful new brick buildings? Of course most people want Phoenix to go back to the way it was when they were kids or when their parents were kids, which could be the '90s, and way before that. Speaking strictly for myself, I love thinking about this kind of stuff, but I never wish for it out loud. And that's because I don't want the story to end. I love watching it unfold. If the story never changed, it really wouldn't be all that interesting to me. And unfortunately, there's a darker side to hear...

Come along with me, and let's ride a horse on Camelback Mountain in 1922. You can be the girl from Sunny Tennessee in the photo that I found in the "Arizona, the State Magazine". It's about sunset, and we've been riding all afternoon. It's a nice winter's day, but in Phoenix it's always summertime, so it's not cold at all. Back east in Minnesota, where I'm from, there's snow on the ground. I don't know about Tennessee, but I'd expect that it's warmer here than there? Wow, from here we can see all of the way to Phoenix, several miles away. The tallest building in town is Dwight Heard's building, on Central between Adams and Monroe, and I think I can see it. Can you? There seems to be a lot of dust in the air, I'm not sure. It's so quiet and peaceful up here, so far away from everything. Hardly a sound at all here in the desert, just the rustling of the horses, and the sound of the wind in our ears. I wonder i...

Leaving Los Angeles, and coming back to Phoenix is one of the best decisions of my life. I grew up in Minneapolis, went to ASU, then moved to California, where I lived through most of the 1980s. I really hadn't planned to move back to Phoenix after my layoff in Los Angeles, I was just going to go see some old friends, good for the soul. So I visited Phoenix. What I saw amazed me. The first thing that struck me was the lack of traffic, and the amount of easy parking. Even after all these years it still makes me happy. Yes, I know people in Phoenix who say that the traffic is awful, and parking is difficult, but all they're saying to me is that they've never seen how awful it can be. I used to always carry a book with me in my car when I got on the freeway in Los Angeles, and when traffic stopped, I would put the car in park and read for a while. Yes, in park. Not bumper-to-bumper inching along, but completely stopped, in park. You just waited for traffic to begin to mov...

It's 1918, we're in Phoenix, Arizona, and I feel like going to a motion picture. Come along with me! Actually, I like to call them "movies", because the pictures move, which is fun to see, although it makes me a little seasick watching them flicker. Yes, I know that calling them "movies" is kind of silly, like cookies, or doggies, but maybe in the future people won't think the name is so funny. I have a newspaper here, and it looks like "Daughter of Destiny" is showing at the Hip, which is just west of Central on Washington. Yes, that Madame Petrova is amazing. Stop blushing, we're adults. Film rating? Censorship? What do you think this is? There's no censorship of movies. Let's see, this guy Art Rick says that he went to Los Angeles to preview the picture, and he seemed to like it. Well, he owns the theater, what do you expect? Well, that was a big waste of time. No, I didn't like it. I could hardly read the title ca...

As someone who has lived with a dachshund (or wiener dog, which is the term that I prefer to use) in Glendale (a suburb of Phoenix) for over twelve years, I'm confident that she just loves it there. She's never seen snow, and never will, and I often see her out in the backyard, sunbathing when the temperatures are well over 100. So of course it's got me wondering what life would have been like being a wiener dog in old-time Phoenix. This is just a guess, but I like to consider it an educated guess! It's 1953, I'm a wiener dog, and I'm helping my family with the slab for their shed next to their house. It's just a concrete slab, and I had to stay off of it when it was wet, but now I can stand on it. Just think how cute my little paw-prints would have been on it! Oh well. It's a warm day, which I like, and my humans are inspecting the concrete slab. I, of course, am keeping an eye out, which I'm sure that my humans appreciate. Wait - I think I s...

Now this is embarrassing. Looks like the old jalopy broke down again, and here we are, miles from anywhere, somewhere near 1950s Glendale, Arizona. I don't see any signs, so we might be half-way to Peoria by now. I'll take a look under the hood. Just what I suspected, it's broke. No, I'm not blaming you, but you worked on it the last time, right? And no, I don't want to leave it out here in the middle of nowhere, let's see if we can get a tow truck out here. There's a farmhouse, let's go see if they have a telephone. Yikes! Those dogs look vicious - let's go to the next house, we can do with a nice walk. Hopefully the dogs there will be friendlier. Well, here we are, but they don't have a telephone. I'm going to borrow a bicycle. No, you can't stay here, go back and sit with the car, I don't want anyone stealing my hubcaps! Very funny - I don't suppose jackrabbits steal hubcaps! Sorry it took so long. I rode back into t...

I try not to rely too much on my memory, which grows more treacherous every year, but I remember the Macho T/A from Mecham Pontiac in Glendale, Arizona. It's was a Trans Am, and more. I'm not much into muscle cars, but the Trans Am went beyond just having a lot of horsepower. In the 1970s it was popularized by Bert Reynolds in "Smokey and the Bandit" and it just kinda represented everything about having a free spirit, and lots of horsepower to go with it. It was based on a Pontiac Firebird, but no one ever called them that, a Trans Am was a Trans Am. And they were ridiculously powerful, and flashy cars. And to take it a level higher, there was a local Phoenix area upgraded version which was called the Macho T/A. Even then I thought that the term "macho" was over the top, but it was really supposed to be, and it was. Machos T/As in 1978 at Mecham Pontiac, Glendale, Arizona I moved to California in 1982, and didn't return to Phoenix until 1989....

I saw a lot of transient people when I lived in California in the 1980s, and as far as I know there are still plenty of them. Nowadays the word "homeless" is used to describe all of these people, and many people have no idea that there are two types of transients, which traditionally were described as "tramps" and "bums". And there is a very big difference between the two! Those old-fashioned terms marked a sharp distinction between people who wandered around. Physically, they looked the same, dirty, deeply tanned, and usually with awesome hair, but there was a difference between people who were just "beachcombers" and people who were traveling around simply to steal things and to avoid work and responsibility. Speaking for myself, I would have never made a good transient person. I like my creature comforts, and I wore contact lenses in my twenties, so the thought of waking up somewhere without clean running water and, uh, facilities, just...

I collect old photos of Phoenix and I often get requests from people who want to see what Phoenix looked like before their neighborhood was built. And sometimes I have a photo, like the one at the top of this post, which is just a background of a billboard that was at 25th Avenue and Peoria. And yep, dirt. Seems like there'd be a lot of blowing dust, too. Probably garbage dumped, and cars abandoned. So if you want to see what your neighborhood looked like before all of the houses were built, just look around at any large open area in the Phoenix metro area. There are still a lot of them. If you want to time-travel further back, go out farther in the desert, where all of the native vegetation hasn't been erased yet. Areas nearby Phoenix were stripped of anything useful years ago. That's what people do - they see something, like an interesting rock, or a cactus, and take it home to put in their yard. And the desert is very slow to regenerate plants like saguaros, which...

If you've lived in the Phoenix area for a while, you know where Central and Van Buren is. It's where Chase Tower is, in downtown Phoenix, right? But, oddly enough, there is another Central and Van Buren in the Phoenix metro area. In Avondale. And now that the Phoenix metropolitan area has all grown together, this sort of thing just kind'a strikes me as weird. All of the cities around Phoenix, like Tempe, Scottsdale, Peoria, etc. have held onto the original names of their streets as much as possible. If you live in Avondale, you know that Avondale has held onto a lot of its original historic street names. Of course Avondale is its own city, as Tempe, Scottsdale, and Peoria are. It has its own fire department, police force, mayor, which how you differentiate a city from merely a named area, such as Sunnyslope, or Hollywood (uh, which is Los Angeles). Personally, I like to see cities stand up against being told what to do by Phoenix. So what if it's confusing th...