History Adventuring

Although most of the people that I talk to have never even heard of the flu epidemic of 1918, which killed about 500 million people worldwide, it's something that history buffs know about, and think about. This morning I was pondering how difficult it would be for people in Phoenix to follow the new regulations, not only without air conditioning in buildings, but wanting to smoke, like a cigar. Time-travel with me to 1918 in Phoenix, Arizona. I'll be a prominent businessman, like the owner of a bank, and I'll like to smoke cigars. By the way, even though smoking is fairly rare nowadays, back then it was very common - most people smoked. My parents were heavy smokers up until the Surgeon General's Report came out in the mid-sixties. Smoking may have gotten some prudish looks back then, but mostly it was seen as an innocent thing to do, to help you relax. Even doctors smoked. My mom tells that when she was pregnant with me that her doctor recommended that she keep he

If you're a history buff, you know about the flu epidemic of 1918, which killed about 500 million people worldwide. And if you're reading this at about the time I'm writing this, in June of 2020, you know about the the current pandemic, COVID-19 (Coronavirus 2019 - the year it was discovered). Here in Glendale (a suburb of Phoenix) and in all of Maricopa County, there's a new regulation requiring the wearing of masks when in public places. And today I got to wondering what people thought of all of this back in old-time Phoenix, so I looked at the Library of Congress site, and found this wonderful cartoon. When I'm out and about I've seen a variety of masks, and also people who kinda look like that strong-willed lady there. I like to exercise in the morning, and I tend to hang my mask over my ear, like the guy smoking the cigar, when I'm out riding, but I mask up quickly when I'm around people. My favorite image from that cartoon is Smith - wh

I feel like a game of tennis. Well, actually I feel like playing an imaginary game of tennis - my tennis days are gone for good I'm afraid, my bad ankle will serve me well enough, but not enough to get back on a tennis court. So let's travel to Minneapolis in the 1970s, and be kids playing tennis. The only photo that I have of the hill where the tennis courts were (and are) on Bloomington Avenue near the Minnehaha Parkway is from 1936, but it's just like I remember, and it hasn't changed to this day. This neighborhood was built in the 1920s, and it's just an ordinary neighborhood in Minneapolis. If you've played much tennis, you know that on the top of a hill is a terrible place for tennis courts, because even though Minneapolis isn't particularly windy, what wind there is is at the top of hills. But that's where the courts were (and are). I really don't know when the courts were put in, but they were old when I lived there in the '70s. An

This morning, as I was out pedaling around Peoria (a suburb of Phoenix) in the cool of the morning, I passed someone who was walking along the sidewalk, using a cane. He didn't seem to have any difficulty walking, and a few minutes later I saw him twirl it, which made me smile. In a longish life I've been on canes, and crutches, and I've tried to keep a positive attitude, but of course I've done my hobbling in modern-day Phoenix, with nice flat concrete sidewalks, and asphalt roads, and mostly with ADA(Americans with Disabilities Act)-compliant buildings. So of course I starting thinking about how much more challenging it would have been to walk with a cane in old-time Phoenix. I have a photo in my collection of Washington looking towards 1st Street in 1905, and I remembered seeing the man catching the streetcar while using a cane. Doesn't look like the trolley did much but slow down a bit, no signs of a nice platform like the modern light rail has. I'll po

I've never been a gambling man. I have no objection to it, and if you like it that's fine - in fact, I'm kinda jealous of you. I learned a long time ago that man should never gamble more than he can stand to lose, and I've always lived close to the edge. For people who can afford to take the loss, and it's all part of what they enjoy, that's fine. Whenever I've had money "to burn" I would buy a hamburger at the Chuckbox, or something like that. But Phoenix has always had gambling. Not legalized, of course, like in Las Vegas, unless you think of placed like Turf Paradise, where it's not called gambling, it's called, I think "parimutuel betting" (I just Googled it for the spelling, and even after reading the definition, I have no idea what it is). And there was legal betting on greyhounds, and even for a while on old-fashioned horses-with-carts-behind them. And unless you were born yesterday, you know that in the days of Al C

At the risk of promoting stereotypes, I kinda like it when people act their age. Children should be noisy (and run back and forth for no apparent reason), old people should be grumpy (and complain about the government, and taxes) and teenagers should be sulky (and bored with everything, and disinterested in anything but what really interests them). Sorry, but quiet and polite children, and old people who are cheerful about the state of the world today, and teenagers who smile politely and flash winning smiles just seem wrong to me. As a teenager of the seventies, I really don't remember much about it, except that it was awkward, and there were pimples. Lots of pimples. I really try not to think about my teenage years, preferring to imagine myself going from a chubby little kid to the mature adult who got his first corporate job. But today I'm thinking about being a teenager in old-time Phoenix. I'm no math wizard, but I know that people went through their teenage yea

I was reading a book today, which was set in the 1920s (or '30s) in London, and the main character used the term spondulix for money, which took me by surprise - because I kind of thought that I knew all of the slang terms for money. I guess it just shows to go ya that some slang terms just fade away, and are lost, or that I don't know everything, or both. So of course I started thinking about slang terms for money, and what it would sound like in old-time Phoenix. Since I was a kid in the '60s, I have vague memories of money being called "bread" or "dough". I've heard the Three Stooges use the term "dough" in the 1930s, but I doubt that they would have recognized the term "bread". I really don't know when the term moola came into common use, but I don't know if people in old-time Phoenix would have recognized it. Whether young people recognize these terms nowadays I have no idea. I also know that you can rub your t

Growing up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I never experienced air conditioned air. Mostly there you don't need it, and I really don't recall if anyone had in their house. I suppose the theaters had it, but it would only be necessary when it got really hot, in the summer. And since Minnesota has four seasons, it can get very cold, and moderately hot, and only very rarely very hot. On the other hand, Phoenix, where I moved to when I was 19, gets ridiculously hot. Not kinda hot, not "we're havin' a heat wave" hot, but brutally hot, like don't touch anything chrome on your car or your fingers will get burned. Living without a way to cool the air hardly seems possible to me, although people did it for a long time in Phoenix, even before electricity was available. And even then, mostly what you can get would be a fan. If you've ever tried to sleep when it's over 90 degrees with just a fan, well, it's awful. I've only had to do that when my A/C b

Something that I've always enjoyed is traveling. My adult life has been spent in places with some of the most amazing scenery on earth, including Santa Barbara, California, and especially Arizona. Arizona is so beautiful that there's a popular magazine called "Arizona Highways" that people enjoy all over the world. But most of the people I've ever met hate traveling. Now don't get me wrong, it isn't as if they walk up to me and grab me by the lapels and say, "Brad, I hate traveling!" but I can tell by what they do, and how they talk. I'll see if I can explain. Most of the people that I talk to about going places have talked about how quickly they got there. They will say that they drove "12 hours straight" or something like that. And while I understand that to them I'm asking about their destination, I'm really not - I'm asking about what they saw, and did, along the way. That is, traveling. But I do know people

I was trying to explain what "Wi-Fi" is to a friend of mine today, who is interested in getting up to speed with the latest technology, and as I listened to myself try to explain, it occurred to me that there are a lot of terms that we use without really thinking about it, and later on I thought about the phrase "hanging up the telephone". As a man, ahem, "of age", I've hung up many telephones in my day. That is, I've put the receiver on a little hanger, and when I did so, the connection ended. But while hanging up telephones ended a LONG time ago, the phrase "hang up" is still around. So when you hang up your phone nowadays, there's no hook to hang it on, you simply push a button that disconnects you. But the language persists, and we still say, "Hey, she hung up on me!", which I guess sounds better than, "She pushed the little red button on her cell phone on me!" Thank you for letting me discuss my tel

As someone who loves old movies, and old photos, I enjoy seeing service stations, especially in Los Angeles. But as someone who lived in Los Angeles, I much preferred gas stations. I'll see if I can explain. When I was a kid, in the '60s, my parents would go get gas at service stations. They would drive up, and when they rolled over a little cable, a bell would sound, summoning the attendant to the car. My dad would say something like "Fill 'er up!" and the attendant would pump gas into the car, check the oil, check the tires, and make recommendations for whatever he saw that either needed maintenance, or repairs. These types of places existed for quite a while, combining the sale of gas with car repairs. And the cars that my dad drove, beginning with his first one in the 1940s, required a lot of repairs, including grease. And then things started changing, and cars needed less of that. By the time I started driving, in the mid-1970s, mostly cars just needed g

As someone who likes to know distances, I've often asked people in Los Angeles how far away something is, and inevitably they have answered me in minutes. And of course those minutes were auto minutes, not minutes to walk somewhere, or anything else. When I would ask again, yes, but how far away is it, and they continued to say "12 minutes", I knew that it was an easy conversion: one minute equals one mile. That is, theoretically you would get on a freeway and go from point to point at sixty miles an hour. If you've ever driven in LA, you know how ridiculous it is to assume a mile a minute, but I have a theory about it, that it was originally a marketing trick that was used so often that people got used to it. In time the ad at the top of this post, Los Angeles had very few freeways, and it was VERY crowded. From what I've learned, traffic just inched along, and calculating a mile a minute would have been absolutely ridiculous. Still, I have to wonder

Among the many things that never, ever, occurred to me was that it used to be illegal for men to appear in public shirtless. One of my history adventuring friends mentioned it, and it's got me to thinking, and doing some research. Looks like in most places in America right up through the 1930s, a man could be arrested for being shirtless in public, even swimming. So of course the first thing I did was to go look through my collection, and I found this one at the top of this post, from 1954 at a resort in Phoenix. I'm not sure, but I think it's the Camelback Inn. I found it in an ad. And while I've definitely taken a good look at what the girl is wearing, and the couple in the background, I never gave the young man a second look. I mean, it just seems perfectly natural to be at a pool, ready for a swim, and, uh, topless (if you can apply that term to a man). I have a lot of pics of pools, and swimmers, so I'm still looking. Hang on, I'll see what I can f

I never saw the downtown Los Angeles of the 1940s, having been born much too late. By the time I saw it, in the 1980s, it was a frightening-looking place in my opinion, well on its way to the images of the movie "Bladerunner". Nowadays, of course, it's been revitalized, but I've never seen that, either. So I'm going to visit in my imagination. Come with me. Let's go to the 1940s. We're driving past the Purity Market, which was at 711 W. 8th Street. That's Hope Street up there. By the way, the building behind the billboard, the parking garage, is still there, although everything else has changed. From what I've read of Los Angeles when they had just started building freeways, in the 1940s, is that it was a mess. Somewhere along the line, the freeways have taken the blame for the traffic jams of LA, but the traffic was jammed long before the first freeway was built. It all seems so idyllic now, but it had to be awful, just inching along wit