Outliving people in old-time, and modern Phoenix, Arizona


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 morbid thought I know that when I watch old movies I realize that everyone I'm watching is now dead. For some reason, I seem to be saddened by thinking of the dogs. But that's how life works, it ends for the individual, but life itself goes on. There are still plenty of people, and dogs, around!

And I know that it's a stereotype, but know that it's really true, people who live for a long time can end up feeling sad, lonely, and lost. I've seen the anger, and despair, as everyone they knew died, leaving them as if they were left all alone at a party with no one to talk to. And so in recent years I've sought out people who have lived a long time, and can be role models for me.

My first thought is of a friend that I met a couple of years ago who was part of our little group at McDonald's (before COVID-19) that would meet to drink coffee. He loved to have people guess his age, and they always guessed twenty years younger. His solution for such a long and prosperous life was to be engaging, to talk to people, to make new friends. I liked his approach. It took nothing away from the friends who were no longer alive that he made new friends, like me. It was all the same to him. I liked that.

Speaking for myself, I'm now living much longer than I'd ever expected, and have no doubt now that I'll live longer than my dad did, which was 96. He spent the last twenty plus years of his life in the Phoenix, Arizona area, so it might have something to do with the air?

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