History Adventuring

There's really nothing special about the year 1954 for me, I just grabbed it at random today, and I thought it would be fun if we would time-travel back there, using some pics from my collection. This is way before my time, so I'll try to stick with what I know, which isn't much. I'm an old advertising guy, so I thought I'd start with a 1954 ad - Arizona Sunshine Playground! From the looks of the illustration, you could ride horses and golf in just about the same place. And if it were the Biltmore, it really was true - there was (and still is) a golf course, and back then Lincoln didn't go through, so there were trails where you could ride horses in the foothills of the Phoenix Mountains. By the way, what's with the lady with the belly button with the golf clubs? Since this is 1954 she's either in her underwear or it's one of the earliest images of a bikini that I've seen. On a golf course? Anyway let's wander around a bit... Here...

Let's visit Phoenix, Arizona in 1969. This imaginary journey is inspired by a movie that I just saw called "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", which was set in 1969 Los Angeles. And it's got me thinking about that particular year, but in Phoenix. Let's start with getting a suntan. No one in 1969 associated suntanning with skin cancer (well, maybe some doctors did back then), and so getting a nice tan was the first priority of people visiting Phoenix. I have no idea how kids felt about getting a suntan, but I know that growing up in Minneapolis, where it actually gets four seasons, including summer, we learned that you should make sure that you have a base tan, and then that would protect you from sunburn for the summer. On the subject of beauty, I have to admit again that I haven't a clue as to what was considered attractive in 1969. This ad that I found, from 1969, asks if you want a new face? I'm presuming that the new face people wanted to have w...

This morning I was admiring the brand new sign that welcomes you to Peoria, Arizona at 67th Avenue and Peoria Avenue, and noticed that it says "EST 1954". But if you're a history fan of the area, you know that Peoria was established in 1886. What the sign means to say is that it was incorporated in 1954, which just means that it became a city with all of the appropriate paperwork, etc. Before it was incorporated, that is, for 68 years, it was there, but the formalities hadn't been observed yet. That's actually quite a long time for a town to be running on a more casual basis, but that's what they did. It all started with William Murphy (yeah, the guy that the Murphy Bridle Path on Central Avenue is named after, and Murphy Park in Glendale) and his friends when they built (created? It really wasn't paved back then) Grand Avenue, going from what was the outskirts of Phoenix (7th Avenue and Van Buren) at a northwest diagonal up to where the also privat...

I've always been fascinated by the word "sober", meaning not intoxicated. Of course, it could also just mean calm and well-thought-out, the way that judges are, but mostly it's used to indicate that someone isn't drunk at that particular moment. And it's a window into understanding old-time Phoenix. As a man who likes a shot of whiskey on special occasions, or a glass of beer in the evenings, it's hard for me to imagine how regularly pixelated the people in old-time Phoenix were. It's like thinking about how much they smoked - most people started smoking as children, and always had a pipe, or a cigar, or a cigarette, in their mouth, unless they were sleeping. Nowadays we would call that "chain-smoking", but in old-time Phoenix it would have been perfectly natural. Women tended not to smoke, unless they had reached an age where they really didn't care what people thought, and the image of an elderly woman with a corn-cob pipe is a ste...

It's often shocking, and sometimes humorous, to see how the language has changed over the years. If you like looking at old ads, like I do, you will often see the word "toilet", which today means something that sits in your bathroom made out of porcelain. But if we time-travel a bit, and go back to old-time Phoenix (or anywhere in the United States) in 1913, the meaning is different. And once you know that, the ads don't seem quite so shocking, or as humorous. If you were a lady of refinement in Phoenix in 1913 and walked into City Drug Store, which was on Adams at 1st Avenue, and asked for toilet water, the owner of the store wouldn't just point you to the bathroom where his dog might be having a drink. No, toilet water would have been a nice-smelling perfumed water, manufactured by Palmer, Colgate, Roger & Gallet, Pinaud, Pivier, Hanbigant, or Guerlain. Speaking for myself, I'd probably go with something French-sounding, probably not Colgate. An...

In my lifetime, the meaning of the word "girl" has undergone changes. I came of age in the era of women's liberation, in the 1970s, and use of the word girl became a term that was inappropriate for a grown woman. Nowadays it really means a little girl, you know, giggling and silly, from the age of a toddler until about high school. But in old-time Phoenix, the word girl would apply to any female person from a toddler to marriageable age, which would be up to about 25. The image at the top of this post, which is one of my favorites of my collection, is titled "The Girl from Sunny Tennessee", from 1922. She's up on Camelback Mountain, by the way. But this is no child. This is what we would call a woman today, or at least a young woman. Even in the 1960s, there was a popular song "I'm a Girl Watcher", which nowadays just sounds kinda creepy. The use of the word girl has changed, and as recently as the 1960s it meant a young woman. The way...

I have a good friend who grew up in Phoenix, and decided a few months ago to buy a van and travel around a bit. He headed west, and as I write this, he is in California. I talk to him regularly, and I enjoying seeing my California through his eyes, especially the Los Angeles area. My friend is a very cheerful, positive person who has always taken the time to admire a beautiful sunset, and most of his comments about California are about its natural beauty, especially the ocean. His Instagram posts are wonderful images of mountains and surf, but behind the scenes I know that he is missing something that Phoenix has a lot of, which is parking spots. It wasn't always true in Phoenix. There was a time when Phoenix had been overwhelmed by cars, but after World War II there was a big push to build parking lots, and new malls were built, like Park Central (I always thought that the word "park" was meant to attract attention!), and Uptown Plaza. And then even bigger malls f...

It's 1911, we're in Phoenix, Arizona, and it's time to have some modern plumbing installed by the George Hageman Company. It's going to be expensive and it seems extravagent, but my understanding is that it's the healthy thing to do, and besides what's money for? I've seen this type of plumbing in hotels in California, and I have to admit it's nice. The wife suggested that we do this, but it didn't take much convincing for me to agree. It would be nice not to smell that sewer gas anymore! Yep, nothing but the best! "Standard" porcelain enameled fixtures, which not only look great, but are easy to clean. Let's see, looks like this is what George Hageman recommends: a bathtub with a nice decorative stripe, a commode with a flush, just like the kind I saw on vacation, a sink with faucets (no more going out to the well and filling a jug for water for a basin in the bedroom!), and I'm not sure what that other thing is? Fo...

As I write this, is very hot out there. I mean, stupid, crazy, "who in their right mind would live there?" hot. I live in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix, and have done so for over 25 years. It's my dearest wish to be able to remain here until my days are done, but as much as I love it here, I gotta tell ya, the summers are awful! I know that I'm not a very good fit for this climate. It takes a special kind of person to deal with this, and lately I've been pondering what kind of people can thrive here in the desert, and what people can't be here at all. And of course, the people who are just marginal, like me. Let's time-travel back to before Phoenix had air conditioning, which you can argue was as early as the 1920s, although there were plenty of people living in Phoenix without A/C right up through the 1960s, or later. Heck, there are people right now who are just toughing it out, as the temperature climbs over 110. And while it's true that Phoe...

If you've never gone to Hollywood, California, I recommend that you do. You will be disappointed by what you see, and that's how it should be. I'll see if I can explain. For people all over the world, Hollywood has meant the movies produced in the U.S.A., specifically Los Angeles. There is a portion of Los Angeles that is actually Hollywood, but the term Hollywood really means anywhere from Burbank, in the San Fernando Valley, to Culver City, to Los Feliz, and anywhere in the greater Los Angeles area where movies are made. I lived in Hollywood for just a few months in the 1980s. My plan wasn't to break into the movies, I wanted to work for an advertising agency, along Wilshire Boulevard. The neighborhood in Hollywood where I lived, which was at Franklin and Argyle, had the most reasonable rent that I could find in the area. And since I was immune to being starstruck, it was just another place for me, a street in a city where I was looking for work in Graphic Desi...

Since I enjoy the history of Los Angeles, I'm always interested in the backgrounds of where certain movies were filmed. Of course, most of them were made on backlots, which is more convenient, but more expensive, but to me the best ones were made on low budgets and simply filmed right nearby on a local street. When I saw the 1932 short movie "the Music Box" with Laurel and Hardy, I could immediately tell that it wasn't a backlot, it was a real place somewhere in Los Angeles. So I jumped onto the internet and found the exact address, which is at 923 N. Vendome Street, which is in Silverlake. And don't worry, I'm not giving out private information here, although it's a private residence, the steps are public, and always have been. Of course in the story the steps led up to a house that Laurel and Hardy are delivering a piano to. It's a funny premise, having to haul a piano (a music box) up those stairs, and if you like Laurel and Hardy st...