How money went from very exciting to very boring in old-time Phoenix

When it comes to money, my favorite expression about it is that "it's like manure, and really only works if you spread it around". I have never had much money, but what I've had I spread around, mostly spending it locally, encouraging the businesses that I want to stay in my neighborhood. Other than that, I have to admit that money has never been all that exciting for me.

Of course if I lived in old-time Phoenix, I know that it would have been. Let's time-travel back to 1892, and find gold. You can be Sam Webb. If I had been with you when you found the gold, chances are we would have been VERY excited, maybe jumping around and shouting. We might have polished off the last bottle of your whiskey, and kept celebrating at the Central Hotel, until we were thrown in the hoosegow to sleep it off.

That's the exciting part, and then it gets very boring. In fact, dull, dull, dull. At least from my point of view. That's because at that point it has to be weighed, and measured, and calculations have to be made, and numbers written down in a ledger, and receipts given. I apologize to you if you find accounting exciting, but it's not for me, and it's not for most people. I took a semester of accounting at ASU, learning about debits and credits, and I found it dangerously dull. You would write numbers down, and add them up, or subtract. Then you would do it again. Not what I considered exciting!

When I started working for Valley Bank in 1989, I signed up for automatic deposit. A letter would arrive every month with numbers on it, showing numbers in (credit) and numbers out (debit). As a responsible adult I kept an eye on it, but I don't ever recall shouting "eureka!"

Don't get me wrong, I was pleased that they gave me money in exchange for my work, and was happy to be able to pay rent, and get groceries. Working for a bank I learned a little about money, about interest, about equity, that sort of thing. And while it's important stuff to know, it really can't compare to the excitement of making a rich find of gold!

Eureka!

If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of 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