Modern, and old-time Phoenix as seen through the eyes of a young man

I just love seeing things through other people's point of view. I call it "looking through their eyes", and it's often very surprising what people see, even if they're looking at the same thing, like the city of Phoenix. I see it through the eyes of a young man, so that's what I'm thinking about today.

Now, you may be saying, "Waitaminute there, Brad, didn't you come to Phoenix in 1977 when you were nineteen?" How in the world can you say that you have the eyes of a young man? Well, my eyes may have wrinkles around them now, but what I see, and what I look at, has never changed, and I'm beginning to believe that it really never will.

OK, we're all adults here, but I'll keep this clean. The first thing that my eyes see are women. Or girls. Yes, I'm a girl-watcher. That doesn't mean that I have a dirty, leering attitude, it's just that women are very important to me. Young men know this. They walk a little taller around girls, they nervously run their fingers through their hair, hoping that they don't look ridiculous to the girls. Young men stick our their chest and suck their gut in a little bit when a pretty girl goes by. In all of the years that I've been a young man I've never caught a girl looking at me, and young men like me just have to believe that girls apparently can see through their ears, because I know that the girls see us young men. I remember seeing the old men, who didn't care a bit what they looked like, and wondered when that happened to them? The old men would scowl at people going by, and some of them reached a point where they cared so little about what people thought about them that they went out in public in dirty clothes, often clothes that didn't fit.

I have a young man's attitude about change, which I get a big kick out of. If I see a new model car I'll stop and look at it. Phoenix has always been changing, and I find it wonderful. And yes, I know that at my age I'm supposed to wish that nothing ever changed, or even wish that things are the same way that they used to be. And the rate of change in Phoenix makes me think that it's always been a good place to a young man, not so much for the old guys.

Phoenix from the turn of the century to the 1920s

Phoenix must have been exhausting, and frustrating, for the old folks. It's been growing and changing so quickly for so long it seems as if as soon as you know your way around, there's a new building, or a new neighborhood. Exciting for a young man, looking for growth and opportunity, not so much for the older generation. The two biggest growth spurts for Phoenix were during the 1920s, and also after World War II, in the 1950s. But no one can say that Phoenix isn't still growing and changing quickly now!

Image at the top of this post: Looking at Phoenix through the eyes of a young man. I'm older, but no wiser, because I have the eyes of a young man.

Thank you for the encouragement! If you want to see daily pics of my adventures on my recumbent trike in suburban Phoenix (just for fun, of course!) you can follow me on Buy me a coffee, and you can buy me a coffee if you'd like to:

  Buy Me A Coffee

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