The wonderful, and wonderfully frightening people of the road less traveled


I love the road less traveled, and have spent most of my life there, for various different reasons. And the people that I've met there, although everyone is different, have tended to mostly be what I call my "frightened little animals", and since that's how my journey began, I understand.

If there were a way to Google "frightened little animal in Minneapolis as a kid" it would be a picture of me. I was so shy as a little kid that even doing the simplest social tasks was extremely painful for me, right up through high school. If you went to high school with me, you may not even remember me, or the people that I hung around with, we stayed in the shadows, which was safer.

But after high school I had decided that this was no way to live, and that I would throw myself out into the cold cruel world, and become more sociable, which I made an attempt at, when I moved to Phoenix at age 19, and then when I moved to Los Angeles at age 25. And I did make great progress. I was never someone who crowded into bars, or stadiums, but I went to parties, and I introduced myself to strangers. If you had met me back then you would have always thought that I was sociable. I prided myself on doing that.

But I was really never comfortable in crowds, and in traffic. I preferred the road less traveled, where I could breathe, and my mind could have time to settle a bit. I found places like that in LA, which wasn't easy, and when I moved back to Phoenix it was, and remains, a very easy thing to do.

Of course the road less traveled isn't completely empty, there are people there. And the vast majority of people that I've met on the road less traveled are my "frightened little animals", whom I dearly love. They come in all shapes and sizes, but most of them are small, and tend to be pretty defenseless. I assume that these people have a small sidearm hidden, which they keep handy whenever a stranger approaches, so I don't rush up on them, any more than I'd rush up to a rattlesnake.

The road less traveled can be a lonely and dangerous place, and people who spend a lot of time there know it. A cynical eye can keep you from being hurt, so it's expected. I lift my head up, and wave from a distance. No cowboy in his right mind would fail to do that if he saw another rider in the distance. This is a universal signal that someone acknowledges a shared space, but that's all. Close is close enough, partner!

I just love the sound of the quiet of the desert, and it's possible to hear if you know where to go. Yes, you have to get far from the madding crowd, to the road less traveled. But if you choose to go there, beware, there are rattlers out there, give 'em space.

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