Writing about good news, in old-time Phoenix


I remember back when I was a kid reading about why newspapers only seem to focus on bad news, not good news. The example, as I recall, was a big headline that said, "Man drives safely to work, then safely home, and has a good dinner!" or something like that. And since so much good news happens all of the time, it really would be ridiculous to try to report on it. I might say something like that I haven't tripped over my wiener dogs, and that my air conditioning is working just fine. I might also say that I don't have COVID-19, because I'm writing this in Arizona in July of 2020. And yes, I do write good news, on my Facebook page, every day. It's just the kind of nonsense that people like me like to hear, that life goes on, that friends and family are doing well. I've done this kind of thing for years, and I know that it genuinely puzzles people. I once posted a link to an Internet Movie Database (IMDB) for a friend of mine who had just visited, who was a Hollywood producer, and the comments seemed to puzzle a lot of people, like is he dead? No, he's alive and well, and he just visited me.

Anyway, in this blog I try to imagine myself in the ordinary day-to-day life of old-time Phoenix. I'm no expert on history, nor do I want to be - I'm a time-traveler, and the one thing I love is to travel back to old-time Phoenix and do some ordinary stuff, and have a good day. So here's some good news.


I'm going to spin the way-back machine to 1942, and take a walk across 1st Street and Adams in Phoenix. The photo was obviously taken to show the Balke Building, which is interesting, but that's not what I'm going to talk about right now. Yeah, I'm making this up, my presumptions will be reasonable. I'm the guy in the fedora. If you're wondering why I'm kinda blurry, the photo was taken with a long exposure time, and I'm moving.

As you may have noticed, I'm not being run over by that car. Looks like the driver of that car knew what to do with a red light, and his brakes (which would have been four-wheel drums) work just fine. I'm not as young as I used to be, but I think I cut a dashing figure in my long overcoat. I wonder if the women standing there looking the other way will watch me walk by?


Since this photo isn't in motion, I'm assuming that the car turning there in front of Gosnell's is stopping for the lady with the mink collar (or is that squirrel? I really don't know). Note the blurry people, moving too quickly to stay in focus for the exposure. The long exposure, by the way, is the reason that this photo has such rich and sharp detail. It was taken by the McCulloch brothers, who used a large format camera, with a tripod. This isn't a snapshot!

The fire hydrant there (which is still in the same place today, by the way) doesn't have a fire engine hooked up to it, so it's reasonable to assume that no buildings are on fire. See, I told you that reporting on good news was kinda silly! And wonderful.

Good news is all around us, and I will continue to report on it. Don't thank me, it's my pleasure!
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please consider subscribing to History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

 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