History Adventuring

Walk with me, and I'll give you a guided tour of the Sahuaro Ranch. We won't be going very far in space, but we'll need to time-travel back to 1899. Come on! If you're heading to the historic buildings, I really can't blame you, but I'm going to start on the northwest corner of the ranch, where the Starbucks is now, at 67th Avenue and Peoria. And that's because the ranch was a square mile, or 640 acres. It went from 67th Avenue to 59th Avenue and from Peoria Avenue to Olive. Of course, there was no 67th Avenue in 1899, but that would have been the western end of the "property line" of William Bartlett's ranch. And as we walk along, we'll have to visualize what the far corner of a ranch like that would have looked like. If you're picturing something that should be in a Norman Rockwell painting, you'll have to think again. There would have been no cornfields out here, or scenic barns. It would have just been open desert, with m

I love Phoenix, and Los Angeles, but I gotta tell ya, the skies there will never be as blue as in Minnesota. But in the last thirty years or so I've seen some amazing improvements. I'll see if I can give you my point of view. I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and it really is the land of sky blue waters. And the water is so blue there because the sky is so blue. Amazingly blue. Crystal-clear blue. There are a lot of reasons for this, but mostly it's because Minnesota is mostly wide open prairie, wind swept by the arctic winds. There are ten thousand lakes there, not to mention about twice as many more puddles and swampy areas, and there really isn't much chance of dust getting into the air. And there are no mountains that could possibly trap any dusty and dirty air. The air is so clean and fresh it's just ridiculous. The bluest skies you've ever seen. Even as I kid I noticed. When I moved to Phoenix, at age 19, I was of course very happy, but the skies

Walk with me. I know that we shouldn't, but I like to walk along railroad tracks when I just need to think. Sometimes I walk and think, and sometimes I just walk. Either way, I've always found it restful for my mind. I'm not really going anywhere, I'm just walking. Railroad tracks are quiet and empty places, like alleys. They can be dangerous, of course, but I've never had a problem there. I've walked a lot of railroad tracks. No, not from town to town, but just to walk a bit. I especially like walking on one rail, balancing as I walk. It makes me look at what's right in front of me, some stray paper, some weeds, nothing in particular. Look! We're going past the Advanced Seed Company. So that means that we're at about 24th Avenue and Madison. It's 1945 so there really isn't a lot going on. We're kids, and all of the men of Phoenix are serving overseas. I wonder how long the war will last? And what it's all about? I've heard

As someone who will often use the phrase "Welcome to the 21st Century!" when someone does something like using a cell phone for the first time, I often think about how frightening it was to be in old-time Phoenix when the century changed from the 1800s to the 1900s. Let's time-travel back to Phoenix at the turn of the century. Now calm down here, you know that I love Phoenix, but it's never exactly been the first place for technology to happen. People were using electricity, and driving cars, long before any of that made its way out to Phoenix. But Phoenix has always had a tradition of embracing progressive thinking, so things caught on fast there. There would have been, of course, people who weren't too thrilled with the latest technology. I'm interested in what they would have had to say. The first thing that I think of is electricity. When it came to Phoenix, near the end of the 1800s, you have to realize that a lot of people could still remember t

I really don't know which is the stranger thought - the bizarre experience of hearing a human voice coming out of a machine for the first time, or the fact that nowadays we take it for granted. OK, let's go history adventuring! Today we're time-traveling back to old-time Phoenix to be astonished by the latest technology, human voices coming out of machines. Let's go over to the Redewill Music Company, at Washington and 2nd Avenue. They have talking machines there. It's the place that has the picture of the dog listening, and hearing his master's voice. I can't imagine, but a lot of people have told me that it's not only possible, but it's been around for a long time. Here we are. What? No, we're just looking. Say, do you have one of those talking machines, like the one in window that the dog is listening to? Yes, I understand that they're so amazing that you'd think someone was right in the room with you, talking. What will they th

If you've been pondering doing some history adventuring of your own, I would very much like to encourage you. No, you don't need me, you don't need a map, you really don't need anything except an idea. My imagination is usually sparked by a photo, like the one up there, which I just chose from random from my collection. The only thing that I really recognize in that photo is Camelback Mountain, and I know that people who have lived anywhere near that mountain have recognized it, for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. I've been doing this type of adventuring since I was a little kid, and it's only in the last couple of decades that I've started calling it "history adventuring". But really it's mostly adventuring, and the history part of it is actually very light. I don't know why grownups feel the need to have a reason why they do things, I know that I feel more comfortable that way. It's as if someone were going to walk up to me

Since it's been over forty years since I started attending Phoenix College, I hope you'll forgive me if my memories are a little blurred. But overall I know that they're good memories, and I learned a lot at PC. Whether I actually learned anything or not in high school, back in Minneapolis, I really can't say. Comparing myself to people who went to school in Phoenix I'd say not. Many of my friends here talk about books that they were supposed to read, or did read and have forgotten, in high school, but I don't recall being required to read any of those books. Whether this is a slur of the Minneapolis school system, or just my poor memory, I really can't say. But I do know that I really started learning at Phoenix College, and two things stand out in my memory - my English Lit class and Principles of Salesmanship. My Principles of Salesmanship (yes, that's what they called it back in 1978) was taught by Susan Heywood, the wife of local celebrity Bi

If you're like me, and can remember not only the 1990s, but the '80s, the '70s, and the '60s, you probably chuckled a bit at the expression "way back in the 1990s". And although it really doesn't seem all that long ago to me now, it just occurred to me that it's as far away from the 1970s that the 1950s were, which seemed a mythical time, which I only learned from movies and TV shows. In fact, one of the most popular shows in the 1970s was called "Happy Days" and was set twenty years earlier, in the 1950s, a time where apparently you were cool if you rode a motorcycle with a leather jacket, among other things I learned from that show. I don't recall the old-timers in the 1970s talking much about the "old days" of twenty years previous. I may have asked questions like "did they have cars back then?" or "Did you have to study history back then? Was there any?" So maybe I was a smart kid, who should have as

It's been over a decade since the 2008 financial crisis that hit everyone so hard. And that meant that people lost their homes, they lost their savings, they lost their investments. It was a terrible time. As I was pedaling through my little neighborhood in suburban Glendale, Arizona (near Phoenix) this morning, it seemed like yesterday when I saw just about every other house for sale. And I knew a lot of people who were losing their houses, by being (not that I understand it, "upside down"). I bought the house I'm in (well, signed the mortgage papers for it) in 1993. It was perfect for me, a single man, as all I really wanted was a garage, and a tiny backyard to sit in. And at the time I remember that it had everything going against it for resale - the tiny size, the fact that it didn't have more than two bedrooms, even the streets weren't maintained by the city, and were narrower than the surrounding city streets. I got it, and it was cheap, even by P

Let's time-travel back to 1977, and be an old guy doing a rant. 1977 is the year I moved here, at age 19, and to me it's "back in the day", but it's all relative to when someone was born. In this story I'm going to imagine that I'm an old guy living in Phoenix in 1977, and I see this punk kid from Minneapolis. Whipper-snapper! Let's see, I gotta do the math, so if this guy were 60 in 1977, he would have been born in 1917, would have been a kid in the 1920s and '30s, and graduated high school in 1933. I'd like to believe that he marveled at how much the city had grown, and the modern marvels, but chances are better that he'd dislike the changes, and go off on rants. Let's listen to him: "Dang! What was that? One of them-thar foreign sports cars! Just a bunch of darn foolishness if you ask me. These young people zipping around in their little cars, there oughta be a law! Not sure what that was, but those darned things have bee

Even though it's been over forty years since I saw my first Phoenix November, I still can't really believe it. And I challenge anyone to find skies so blue, air so clear, and well, just everything so darned nice anywhere else on Planet Earth. I moved to Phoenix when I was 19, arriving in August, which was horrible beyond description. Nothing back east had prepared me for that type of heat. And it would have been nice if I had air conditioning in my car, which it didn't have, and if the air conditioning worked in my crummy little apartment (it just rattled and made noise). But then November arrived...! To this day I absolutely want to fall to my knees just walking outside. I've lived in some beautiful climates in my day, including Santa Barbara, but Phoenix in November just puts them to shame. And I really thought that one day I'd get over it, but it looks like it isn't going to happen. Here in Phoenix I want to walk up to people and say, "Can you bel

Although most people think of warm weather, and even terribly hot weather, when they think of Phoenix, it can get cold. No, not as cold as Minneapolis, where I grew up, but I gotta tell ya, it can get cold enough to be uncomfortable, even in my snug little suburban house. And while all I have to do is switch from A/C to heat on my thermostat, I've been thinking about how it was for people back before this modern convenience was available. The first thing to realize about Phoenix is that firewood is not abundant. It's in the desert! Sure, you could take your buckboard up north and chop some firewood, but it wouldn't be the same as if, for example, you lived in Minnesota, where there are trees everywhere. And burning something is the most basic way to warm up a dwelling. In old-time Phoenix, there must have been plenty of arguments as to what was worthwhile burning. Certainly mesquite wood would have been the first choice - it grows naturally in riparian areas around P

As someone who is entering his, uh, "senior years" I often hear a lot of my friends say that they don't like the latest technology. And of course it makes me wonder what they're referring to. In my mind, technology is everything that people have invented, starting with the wheel. Each new technology when it was invented, was of course the latest technology, and so the definition of "the latest technology" is something that I've often pondered. And the answer is easy: the latest technology is whatever wasn't around when someone was a kid. Here in Phoenix, of course, there's no one old enough to remember a time before electricity, or cars. And so those things seem as if they've always been. In my imagination I often think how shocking (literally) electricity was when it came to Phoenix in the 1890s, and how "latest technology" it was there for most people, who had never seen it. Of course in other parts of the world, like Paris

I just finished talking to one of my PhDs (Phoenix History Detectives) who was kind enough to express his appreciation for a couple of my articles about ordinary people in Phoenix that I saw as extraordinary. And it really is how I feel about my town. And if you don't feel that way about your town, whether it's Phoenix or not, I kinda feel sorry for you. It's like anything you love, everything inch of it becomes precious. And you get defensive if someone criticizes it, or if anything changes, anything at all. I don't know when I started becoming fascinated with what most people think of as ordinary. I tend to think of "grownups" as people who wouldn't understand, so I guess I've always been that way. I used to spend hours just walking around the little town in Minnesota where my grandma lived, and when the grownups asked me where I'd been, or what I'd seen, I really had no answer. To them I was looking at rocks and weeds. To me it was so