Helping the needy in old-time Phoenix


There's nothing quite like Christmastime to bring into sharp focus that there are people who have, and those who have not. Of course, hunger knows no season, but the display of wealth that is traditional from Thanksgiving to Christmas just seems to be "an embarrassment of riches".

Speaking for myself, I often say that I never wanted to be rich, and I never wanted to be poor, and I got my wish. I am blessed to have a roof over my head, and food in my stomach. I've been lucky.

In the article at the top of this post, the word "Poor" is used. It's not a word that you hear much anymore, you usually hear "needy" or "homeless", or something else. And that's probably because it's really hard to define what "poor" means. I've known people who have described themselves as so poor that they had to drive an old junky car, or eat the dollar menu at McDonalds.

I've never been poor, but I've seen it. And it has nothing to do with having a junky car, or eating the dollar menu. It's not having a car at all, not even decent shoes. It's being hungry all of the time, and trying to live on rice. It's many people living in a tiny space, squeezed together like sardines, and maybe not having a place to live at all. And of course it's the children who suffer the most.

In my imagination the Christmas Cheer that Mr. and Mrs. Shearer are sharing in 1918 are seen as a true Christmas miracle by the needy people who go to the Adams Hotel (where the Renaissance Hotel is now, at Central and Adams). Each child will get a stocking containing oranges, apples, nuts and toys.
History Adventuring on Patreon

 Click here to become a Patron!

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

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

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