Killing someone in old-time Phoenix


In a longish life, I've never killed anyone, either on purpose or accidentally. At least as far as I know. And I'd like to keep it that way. As I get older I've found it more difficult to sleep at night, and the last thing I need is to see someone's surprised expression when they realize that they shouldn't have done that!

Of course, life has risks, and you can try to be as careful as you can, and you may still kill someone. I've known people who have done that, and it haunts them. Nowadays there are all kinds of things that no one ever dreamed of in old-time Phoenix, like seat belts in cars, or bicycle helmets, and so many things that we take for granted that it seems as if it would be very difficult to kill someone, but people do all of the time. This makes me sad.

Let's time-travel back to old-time Phoenix and see how easy it would have been to kill someone. And I'll start with what probably jumps to your mind when you think about the subject - guns. Yes, there were a LOT of guns in old-time Phoenix. And while there would have been a lot of people who knew about safe gun handling, usually ex-military, there would have been a lot of people who didn't. And the kind of gunshot wound that nowadays would send you to a trauma center would probably kill you back then. If you were lucky, you'd live, but probably with a limb amputated.

Of course, killing someone by giving them the flu would have happened, especially in 1918. Simply saying hello to someone, or shaking their hand, could have been a death sentence to them.

Oh yeah, and let's not forget about how common the use of whiskey was. Drunk driving was considered just something to laugh about in old-time Phoenix. It really wasn't until the 1980s that killing someone with a car while you were drunk was really thought to be a very bad thing. Attitudes have changed dramatically!

Speaking for myself, my attitude towards death is different from most of the people I've met. To me, dying is easy, and living is tough. I'm sad when someone dies, of course, but to me they step through a door where there is no more pain. My true sadness is for the people left behind. Let's be careful out there!

Image at the top of this post: Looking east over 1st Avenue between Washington and Jefferson in 1899, Phoenix, Arizona.
Help support history adventuring, and see a lot of cool old photos of Phoenix 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