Being a full-grown man still living with your parents in old-time Phoenix


I just started watching the movie "Step Brothers" on Netflix and I like the basic premise. It's about two full-grown men who are still living with their parents, one is forty and the other is thirty-nine. I just started it, so don't tell me how it ends, I'm hoping for a happy ending. And in the meantime, as you've probably guessed by now, I'm pondering being a full-grown man in old-time Phoenix.

The first question that I need to answer is what a full-grown man is, and was. Speaking for myself, I considered it eighteen, when I graduated from high school. People who are the next generation older than me have tended to often push the timeframe back for when they considered themselves full grown men. I've known people who were considered full-grown when they could ride a horse, or ride a tractor. I've known people who have gone out into the cold, cruel world at age 12, and I'm not talking about running away from home - they considered themselves full grown men.

Let's time-travel back to 1907 in Phoenix, Arizona. I have a photo of Central and Monroe which I've always liked, and you can see the streets are still dirt, there's a church on one corner, the school is over there, and there's a nice shade tree to sit under right nearby. We'll be full-grown men still living with our parents. Let's see, I suppose we would have to be at our full height, which for me was about 16-17, and we would have to know some basic stuff, like how to saddle a horse, that sort of thing.

There are no cars, so we wouldn't have a driver's license, and I suppose we would be old enough for military service if we just looked old enough. I can't imagine that we'd have a birth certificate, unless we were very wealthy, and we may not even be absolutely sure the exact year that we were born. But I'll be older than you, and that means that I can boss you around, right? Oh yeah, you're bigger than me.

I suppose if we were born into a wealthy family we'd want to stay at home. I mean, why move away from all of that luxury? And if we were very poor it would probably help the old folks to stay there.

In the movie, the full-grown men are more like middle-aged men. I know that my hair started going grey in my late thirties, and by my forties I was really not considering myself all that young anymore. But in old-time Phoenix people didn't live as long, so it's not really a fair comparison. Being a full-grown man still living with your parents would have meant anything after the age where you could be a hand on a ranch, and pull your weight with the rest of the adults. And whether you left home, or stayed, it would be a decision of a full-grown man.

Image at the top of this post: Looking west on Monroe towards Central in 1907, Phoenix, Arizona.

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