Living in ignorant bliss in old-time Phoenix


If you're familiar with the expression "ignorance is bliss", it may still confuse you. And in my experience you have to be very, very, ignorant to hit the blissful stage. A little knowledge can be very dangerous, and frightening.

It's March 22, 2020, and I'm watching the world around me as it responds to the coronavirus pandemic. And like most people today I find myself with a lot of time on my hands, and of course I'm thinking about old-time Phoenix, and what people thought back in the day.

Speaking for myself, I lived through two times in my life with the blissfulness of ignorance, once when I was a toddler, and again a few years ago after my stroke. Sadly, my bliss faded away with a little knowledge, and I moved into the fearful stage. And for a lot of people, that's where they are, but that's not what I'm thinking about today - I'm thinking how wonderfully happy people are who really don't have a clue - like when I was four years old, and also seventeen years ago for me.

Let's time-travel to old-time Phoenix and be blissfully ignorant. This is gonna take a big stretch of imagination, because we aren't going to be superstitious, or anything. I suppose we could either be four years old, or the village idiot. I was the village idiot for several years after my brain was damaged, and I gotta tell ya, it was the happiest time of my life. Yes, I got better - I'm writing this now, you know! And I'm not nearly as happy!

And no, I'm not calling George Luhrs up there the village idiot, far from it, but his son on the tricycle (not sure if that's Arthur or George Jr.) would have been wonderfully happy. I don't remember much from that age (although I do remember riding my tricycle) but I can't imagine that much worried me. I suppose I would have gleefully eaten dirt, and if you mentioned germs to me, I would just smile and wonder what you were talking about. I may have just enjoyed hearing the sound of your voice.

Blissful ignorance is not worrying about where your next meal is coming from, or where you're going to sleep that night. It sure isn't being concerned about who is going to win the Big Game, or how much you'll have to pay in taxes. As someone who has recovered from brain damage, I can now call it "existentialism", and whenever possible I try to go back to that feeling.

If you're worrying too much, I recommend riding your tricycle around Phoenix!
If you liked this article, and would like to see more in the future, along with a LOT of cool old photos of Phoenix, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! Your pledge makes this happen!

 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