History Adventuring

I just finished watching "Room on the Broom", which is on Netflix, and I enjoyed the animation, and the wonderful little story. It also got me thinking about old-time Phoenix, and being a witchy woman. I think that I can answer most questions about why we have an image of a witch which looks that way, and for the stuff I can't do, I'm hoping that you, dear reader, can help me out here. Let's time-travel to old-time Phoenix, a little over 100 years ago, and if you have no objection, you're going to be a witchy woman. I'm going to start with something that's very confusing nowadays, to both men and women of, uh, age, and that's thinness. A witchy woman was thin. Nowadays, of course, "thin is in". All of my life women have wanted to be as thin as possible. When I was a kid, a popular model was so thin that she called herself "Twiggy". But before that, thin was kinda creepy, and being a bit plump was a sign of robust health. And a l

I live in Arizona, have never had even the slightest interest in watching sports, even when I lived in Los Angeles in the '80s, but I like my LA Dodgers hat. I went to a Dodgers game in 1987 on "free hat day" and got my first Dodgers hat. I've never paid much attention to my casual wear (although I worked in a shirt-and-tie) so I tended to wear whatever I had, and never gave any thought to my blue hat that said LA on it when I moved back to Phoenix in 1989. Yes, of course I knew that it was for the Dodgers baseball team, but that wasn't important to me. So calm down there if you're a Diamondbacks fan, or know about baseball. I know nothing. I have a basic understanding of how to play baseball, since I grew up in the United States, although I was very slow in understanding that you shouldn't run to first base if you hit a popup. Yeah, I wasn't often chosen to play baseball much in school! But I have fond memories of Los Angeles, and I like the color blu

Since I live in the Phoenix, Arizona area, and have for a long time (longer than I would care to admit, in fact!) and I love living there, I'm always happy to make recommendations for people who might be interested in moving here. I'm fascinated with the history of Phoenix, which for me includes right now, and even the future. I call it "time-traveling". Anyway, I always start by doing the most logical thing for me, which is recommend where I live, which in a suburb of Phoenix called Glendale, right on the border of another suburb, Peoria. I've known people who live in places that they dislike, which seems sad, but rest assured that I love it here. I always wanted to live in suburbia, always wanted to buy a house, I like peace and quiet, but still good access to downtown, so this is perfect for me. I sound like a real estate agent now, sorry about that! Anyway, I've seen what's perfect for me look just awful to other people, so if you have no interest in s

I was browsing the Library of Congress newspapers site, which I love to do, not really looking for anything in particular, and this front page of the Arizona Sun caught my eye. It's Friday, February 3rd, 1950, and there's an article about the new YMCA building that will be built in Phoenix, Arizona. No, there's nothing earth-shattering about this issue, and there's no reason for you to try to look for something. It's just an ordinary day in Phoenix in 1950. Time-travel with me. I have a special fascination for the buildings in Phoenix, so when I see a newspaper article that has information it catches my eye, but there's more here when you put it in historical perspective. This is a newspaper for the Black population of Arizona, which the header explains represents 60,000 of those people. Phoenix, like the rest of the United States, was segregated. This was a time when being Black could keep you from eating a restaurant, staying at a hotel, even using a drinking

It's October of 2020, and I've been wearing a mask for months. Well, not right now, in my house, but every time I've gone out in public, since April. And since I like history, especially written first-hand, I thought this would be a good time to tell you how I've felt wearing a mask here in Arizona during that time. I live in Glendale, right on the border of Peoria, which is suburban Phoenix, Arizona. When I started reading news of the pandemic, I helped a friend by ordering some disposable masks online, and when they arrived I asked for a couple of them, and started wearing one. My favorite mask, which I got soon after that (the polka-dot one in the pic up there) I lost just a couple of weeks ago. It must have blown away while I was out riding. I go over to my local McDonald's, which is open for walk-in service, but the dining area is still closed, every morning for coffee. And before any type of official mandate was issued by the mayors of Glendale and Peoria, I c

I started doing my history adventuring in Los Angeles, in my mid-twenties, because everything there looked so fascinating, and I've continued here in Phoenix, but I've rarely looked back to the place where I grew up, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Time-travel with me. I found the pic at the top of this post while browsing the Library of Congress site, and it's from a 1903 article in the Minneapolis Journal. I did some quick research on the building, which is still there, on 5th Street and Hennepin, was built in 1883, and is considered the first "skyscraper" built in Minneapolis. I'm sure that I went past it many times as I visited downtown Minneapolis a lot. I watched the IDS building going up, as I've always had an interest in architecture. But the old buildings didn't catch my eye. And that's because there were just too many of them. When I moved out west the old buildings were rare, and caught my eye, but not so in Minneapolis. There are a LOT of them.

Many times people have asked me why I went to Arizona when I was 19. And it's a reasonable question, since I knew nothing about the place, had never been there, and had no relatives there. But it really wasn't about going somewhere, it was about leaving somewhere. I'll see if I can explain. When I was in high school, my best friend Big Dan, who had a car, would often stop by in the evenings. And as soon as he got there, we immediately wanted to leave. My mom would politely ask where we were going, and the answer was that we were going to visit another friend, which was perfectly true. It was perfectly boring, because we were good kids who didn't drink or smoke or do anything like that. And we would go over to another friend's house, pick them up, and we rarely did anything at all. We would sometimes go to Arby's, but that's about it. And as the time passed, we began the process of going back, and dropping everyone off, and Big Dan went home. And the reality

I learned how to be a phony in Hollywood, a town that's famous for phonies. I had done a bit of it, back in Minneapolis where I grew up, trying to blend in with the cool kids who had big houses, but when I got to LA I was suddenly aware how much of a "hayseed" I seemed to be. Now calm down there if you're familiar with Minneapolis - it's a brilliant urban area, filled with culture and refinement, including the arts and theaters, but in Hollywood I was simply a midwestern boy on my own, stumbling around. And I didn't like that. So one of the first things I learned to do was to rub shoulders with celebrities, and name drop. If I had even a passing acquaintance with someone who was someone, I would imply that we were great personal friends. Sound like Hollywood to you? It was there that I learned to put on a brave, and confident face. Standing on the corner of Hollywood and Vine, gawking like a rube at the bright lights and strange-looking people going by wasn&#

When I decided to try to get my career started, this time for real, in Los Angeles, I moved to the San Fernando Valley. I had no idea what I was doing, but I wasn't about to rot for another year in a small town. So I just moved there, to look for work, like a corporate job, which is what I really wanted. I had decided that where I wanted to be was on the edge of LA, and so I chose the western edge of the valley. If you're familiar with the area, you may be thinking of Woodland Hills, and even Calabasas and Thousand Oaks, but the closest place that I could find with rent that I could afford was Canoga Park. If you shied like a startled mustang at the sound of the name Canoga Park, possibly turning away as if you smelled something bad, I understand. Canoga Park was in the 1980s, and still is, what I would describe as "less than fashionable". It was within a few of miles of the places that I just mentioned, but cheaper rent came with things like car alarms always going o

I grew up in Minneapolis, and lived at 48th Street and Bloomington from 1964 to 1977. The high school that I went to was Washburn, which was very far away (and yes I walked through the snow uphill, both ways), as our house was right on the edge of the cutoff line for the other high school, which was Roosevelt. But today I'm thinking of my high school, Washburn, which is in the 1932 picture at the top of this post. The photo shows the construction of the track, which was between Washburn and Ramsey. My memories of Minneapolis are pretty vague, as you would imagine, and sometimes I wonder if the kids who live on the Parkway, or in Tangletown, are still considered "the rich kids". When I went to Washburn I remember the distinction. I wasn't poor, but I sure wasn't one of them, although they let me hang out with them. There was always a particular air about the "rich kids" at Washburn. They tended to wear much nicer "high tech" cold weather clothin

A good friend of mine recently started going through some of his photos of his old neighborhood in Minneapolis, called Tangletown, and today he sent me this photo of the Washburn Water Tower in 1978. This water tower, which is on Prospect Avenue between Harriet and Highview, and is on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, as the Washburn Park Water Tower, is something that I really have no memory of, although it was just a few blocks away from where I went to high school, and closer still to my friend's house, where I visited quite often to flop his dog's ears. So today I thought that it would be good to take a closer look. Since my friend is an Engineer, and I'm a Graphic Designer, we do see things differently. We was able to tell me about its history, how it replaced the original water tower, the fact that it sits on the highest point in the city of Minneapolis, that sort of thing, but what I really enjoyed is how he said that as a kid he would stand right undern

As much as I love Phoenix, Arizona, I have to admit that there are some things that I'd just rather not think about. But today I'm thinking about a time when the city that I love was populated with people whose goal it was to intimidate people whose race, religion, nationality, or whatever, wasn't what they wanted it to be. Time-travel with me to the days of the KKK. I've chosen 1915, not because that's when it began (it began soon after the Civil War), but when it had a resurgence, encouraged, believe it or not, by the President of the United States. Yes, you can Google it if you don't believe me. If you're a history buff, you know. I'm assuming that you're familiar with the KKK, which stands for "Klu Klux Klan" (which really didn't mean anything), and nowadays we would call it a hate group. And like any hate group, they defended what they thought was right, to keep things in their community the way that they thought it should be. Beca

I've been lucky. Where I am, in Glendale, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, things haven't changed much in the past couple of decades. The neighborhood that I'm in was built in the 1980s, and places like the Post Office, the Home Depot, Applebees, etc., were built in the early '90s, about when I moved here. So other than the convenience of being able to mail something, or buying a lawnmower, or eating one of those delicious petite sirloins at Applebees, nothing much has changed here for me. But other places here in the West haven't been so lucky, and if you live there, you know. The beautiful wide-open spaces of places like Oregon, Arizona, and even Wyoming have been under attack lately by a fierce invasion. Many of these people are moving there from California, but some bring their attitudes, and careless ways with money, from other places in the country. Here in Arizona one of the hardest-hit places is Payson, which just makes the old-timers cry. But there's no st

As I was listening this morning to a, ahem, older gentlemen (who's really not that much older than I am), I got to wondering how much of what he was saying was the plain truth, and how much was exaggerated for effect. Of course I'll never know, and that's what makes it difficult for me, as a historian. Telling tall tales, exaggerations, or "stretchers", has always been a very typical thing for old-timers in Arizona to do. There are other places in the world with liars, but Arizona seems to grow a lot of them. Well, "liar" is too harsh a word, so I'll just use the word "imaginative". Speaking for myself, I'm old enough to remember the 1970s in Phoenix. If you weren't there, I wouldn't blame you for being suspicious of the stuff that I talk about. And this blurred image of the past has many reasons, only one of which that there are a lot of old people who think that they've lived such boring lives that they have to make stuff

It's October, and here in the Phoenix, Arizona area, it's just absolutely glorious. I've always said a lot of nice things about Phoenix, but it's at this time of year that I wouldn't blame you if you thought that I was getting some kind of kickback from the Chamber of Commerce. This is the time, from now through March, that I call "Chamber of Commerce weather". No matter how much you try to exaggerate the wonderful temperatures, and the blue skies, you really can't say enough. It never fails to astonish me, year after year, and I've been here longer than I would care to admit. I moved here from Minneapolis when I was 19, and my enjoyment of living here has never wore off. So if you're thinking of getting away from the snow and cold of where you are, and heading over to Phoenix, I strongly recommend it. Or not, since this is the time of coronavirus, and it will depend on what you like to do. Speaking for myself, I like to be outdoors as much as

Today I'm thinking of Phoenix as a suburb of Los Angeles. So let's time-travel, not to the distant future when the two cities will connect, but back to the 1980s, and I'll see if I can explain it from my point of view. For my friends who have always lived in Phoenix, Los Angeles is VERY different, but to me the two cities have always been very similar. Yes, there are more people, and more freeways in LA, but I've always compared Phoenix and Los Angeles to where I grew up, which was Minneapolis. The first time I saw Phoenix, in 1977, coming from nineteen years in Minneapolis, I was absolutely blown away. The weather was nice, it never snowed, and it even got real hot! There were palm trees! And catuses (cacti?)! Everything was so wide open, the streets were so wide, and I could go on an on, but mostly I knew that I wasn't in Minneapolis anymore. Especially when winter arrived with no snow! Did I mention no snow?! There were red tile roofs, and everything was just so

It was such a beautiful morning here in Peoria, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix) that I started singing while I was out pedaling around. Well, not really loud! It was a song that I remember from when I was a kid, and the only words that I know are: "I'm an old cowhand, from the Rio Grande...!" Now that I'm back home at my computer I can Google the rest of the lyrics, but mostly it's got me to thinking about being a cowhand in old-time Phoenix. As someone who grew up on Western movies and TV shows, what I recall was the word "cowboy", not "cowhand". But I've pondered it long enough to know that although the word "cowboy" is said with pride nowadays, it really wasn't all that flattering back in the day. Yes, most of the people who worked with cows were young men, so I guess it would be fair to call them boys. The term becomes a bit insulting as these boys age into men, and are still called "boys". Much better to call them

The first time that I heard the phrase "Live long and prosper", I would have never dreamed that it would ever be a curse. But I know people who have lived long and prospered, and some of them are living longer than anyone they'd ever known. And while these prosperous people aren't rich, their wealth gives them the ability to avoid the type of human contact that requires them to be nice. That is, they've retired, and have enough money to buy stuff, and while they do say "Please and thank you", it's more of a reflex than anything else. They would get that cheeseburger even if they were rude, which many of them are. I've been pondering all of this for quite a while now and of course it makes me think of people in old-time Phoenix who lived a long time. Realistically, I can't imagine anyone who was in that photo at the top of this post in 1916 (at the Del Rey Hotel, by the way, where Chase Tower is nowadays) is still alive. And it is a bit of a m

As I drift into my senior years, which I've been doing for a very long time now, I naturally find myself surrounded mostly by people my age, you know, old people from about 30 to 100. And something that I've noticed is how many of these people have forgotten what it was like to be young, and scared. I have two advantages: I definitely remember being young and scared, and all alone, in Phoenix when I was 19. I also became a teacher at age 38, and since my students were my clients that I cared about, I wanted to please them, and most importantly, I wanted to see through their eyes. Phoenix was a very scary place for me when I was nineteen. And if I could have whipped out my cell phone and sent a text message to Big Dan, my best friend in high school, that would have been wonderful. And if you're wondering what I was afraid of, it was, well, everything. What if my car breaks down? What if I get a flat tire? You may be smiling indulgently and thinking of Triple A (What's th

As someone who likes to learn history from first-hand accounts, written while it was happening, I dislike "history books" which tend to be cobbled together from fragments, and poor memories. And I know that my memory isn't what it used to be (not that it was ever good), so I thought this morning I would jot down some observations about the coronavirus. It's Sunday morning, October 4th, about 9 am. As usual I went out pedaling around Peoria (a suburb of Phoenix), and when I took the photo at the top of this post I was wishing that you could hear the quiet. Sunday mornings are always quiet, but for the past few months it's been kinda eerie. On my morning rides often the loudest sound that I hear is a leaf rustling, or some birds. There are cats wandering around, of course, and often that's the only movement I see. I noodled over to the Walmart at 79th Avenue and Peoria, got a small coffee, and took the back roads back. I took the back roads there, too, by the wa

I've always been open-minded and liberal, especially concerning my relationship with beautiful women, but something that has always been a deal-breaker with me is if she smokes. I'm not interested, sorry. It isn't a matter of some kind of principle, or anything like that, I simply found it unpleasant. So, if I saw a pretty girl that I wanted to approach, if she lit up a cigarette, I turned around. In fact, if she smelled of tobacco, I'd wander off, too. I've never been intolerant, or a "goody two-shoes", it's just that, to quote Forrest Gump, it would be that she "tasted like cigarettes". Yuk! But of course this is from the perspective of someone who was born when cigarette smoking was kinda on its way out. The Surgeon General's Report came out when I was a little kid, my parents both stopped smoking, and I just didn't spend much time around people who did smoke. Attitudes have changed, but it isn't as if people were totally innoc

Let's time-travel back to old-time Phoenix and show off a bit. We will smile at people, and eat stuff. And we're gonna do it as old folks. You know, old enough to get the senior discount, that sort of things. Oh sorry, I mean "seniors", we really don't use the term "old folks" anymore. For this adventure I'll be an old man, and you'll be an old woman. Yeah, seniors. Let's say in our sixties. We really don't have to time-travel back all that far to impress the young people, but I've chosen 1915. Let's go hang out with the young folks in Tempe. Come on! Contrary to popular belief, people did live a long life back in those days, although it was rare. While not as common as nowadays, elderly people (which for me when I was a young 'un, was anyone from 50 to 100) were around. Probably not too many centenarians, but there would have been people who lived to their fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties. But the people in their six