The wonder of an ordinary day in old-time Phoenix


My fascination with Phoenix history puzzles a lot of people, and I understand why. They're the reasonable people who expect to only hear about bad, or spectacular things. And it is reasonable! I remember hearing the answer as to why newspapers don't report good news: because there's just way too much of it.

I mean, what kind of headline would scream: "Man Goes to the Grocery Store and Buys Eggs!"? And the story might point out that all twelve eggs made it safely home without being cracked. There was an excellent shady parking spot at the store, eyewitnesses said. And so on. Just ridiculous, right?

And that's why so much of what we read in old newspapers gives us a distorted view. There's only so many pages, only so much ink, and besides which no one really wants to hear boring stuff like someone went to work and came home safely, possibly greeted by happy dogs. Well, almost no one. I do.

So when I look at old-time Phoenix I'm not interested in headlines, I'm interested in ordinary life. I want to know what people did on a day-to-day basis, especially during the summer. I don't dismiss celebrities, and politicians, but I'm mostly interested in what they had for lunch, the cars they drove, if they had dogs.

The information that I'm looking for isn't easy to find, but I find it a satisfying labor of love. And there's a connection there that means a lot to me, the ordinary people doing ordinary stuff.

Image at the top of this post: Sitting on the steps of 606 N. 4th Avenue in 1914, Phoenix, Arizona. I would like to think that it was just an ordinary day.
If you liked this article, and would like to see more in the future, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! You are making 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

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

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