How tall were people in old-time Phoenix?


I've been asking silly questions since I was a kid, and it seems as if the answers I've always gotten have just made me more confused. If I were to ask, for example, "how tall people were back in the 1920s?", inevitably the answer would include a bunch of terms that I never really could grasp, like average, and mean, and stuff like that. And then I would be asked to look at charts and graphs, and I would suddenly remember an urgent appointment somewhere else.

But I think you and I can work out the answer, or at least get close. The short answer, of course, is that they were shorter. No one will argue that point.

I'm about six feet tall (which is how most guys who are 5' 9" describe themselves) and on a daily basis, just wandering around Phoenix, I tend to be the tallest person around. Yes, there are a few guys who are taller than me, of course, but as a percentage there's not that many. As I walk around, I'm taller than just about all of the women I see, and so if you put men and women in the same group, I'm tall. Of course if I stop by and visit the players on the Phoenix Mercury team I wouldn't feel so tall, but they're exceptional. The same with the Suns. OK, OK, any sports team! Maybe not the jockeys at Turf Paradise.

Okay, now let's look through my eyes and walk around old-time Phoenix. Imagine that I'm the man walking there on 1st Avenue and Adams and let's see how tall everyone is who is walking past me looks. And no, I'm not gonna do any math, I'm just gonna say that in the 1920s people were shorter. Nutrition and medical care just weren't as advanced as they are today, and people just were a little shorter. Not so much that I would feel like a giant, but I'd probably have some difficulty getting into cars, walking into old buildings and not banging my head on the door opening, that sort of thing. Things that nowadays I'd never have to give a thought to. In most SUVs I could wear a cowboy hat, and the height of doors nowadays is 6' 8", so I could wear a top hat.

I've never considered myself a particularly tall person, but if I time-traveled back to old-time Phoenix, people might call me "High Pockets" and ask how the weather is up there?
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