The exciting West of the Imagination, and the comforting Real West


Since I love living in the West, make no mistake, I love the West of the Imagination. It's thrilling, but I also like the Real West, which isn't quite so exciting, but I find very comforting. Some people, I know, consider it dull and boring, and maybe it is. So if you can't get all excited about the Real West, I understand, I'll let it go.

Of course, in the West of the Imagination, everything is larger than life, including the Western heros, who have to be at least seven feet tall. The women are incredibly beautiful, with eyes that flash, and bosoms that heave, and even the dogs are so wonderful that there's no chance that any kid would fall down a well without being rescued immediately. And I love the West of the Imagination! I can't tell you how many times I've seen "Shane", and I've seen enough Sunday Matinee movies to know that the U.S. Cavalry always arrives right in the nick of time.

But for me, I also find comfort in the Real West. I enjoy learning about the day-to-day lives of people who lived here in Arizona years ago. And when I'm in the mood for that, I don't want anything to be fictionalized, I don't want the timeframe to be "back in the days of yore", I want to know exactly where, and when. I actually spend most of my time in the Real West, and in addition to being comforting, I gotta admit that sometimes it's just dull. Sometimes just painfully dull, so I try to keep the information that I share at least short, like this blog post.

An example that I could give you is the dullest book I've ever read, about the history of Valley National Bank of Arizona. Yes, it goes back over 100 years, but it's just the story of a bank. A little bit goes a long way for me when you talk about a subject as dry as banking. I suppose accountants would be thrilled by it, but I'm no accountant. Let's see, papers are drawn up, dotted lines are signed on, loans are given, mergers happen, etc., etc. You know, banking. Maybe you don't know - I sure don't! I worked for Valley Bank for years, but only as a graphic designer, I didn't have anything to do with the day-to-day banking. I met a lot of these people, who were good, solid citizens, the kind of people you want running a bank. Not exciting!

So, as I've learned different things about the True West, I've held back. If someone asks me a rhetorical question, starting with "Can you tell me...." I check myself. Yes, I can tell you about that, but the reality of it will be much more boring than you probably want to hear. I make a mental note to write something in this blog, and try to keep it fairly light, and entertaining, at least a bit. Thrilling? No, not so much. For that I refer you to the great Western writers, my favorite being Zane Grey.

I'm no Zane Grey, I just like writing about ordinary stuff, and somehow that seems to make me more comfortable living in the West. I like it here, even if it's not always thrilling.

Image at the top of this post: Promoting Nash automobiles in 1941 at Miller Brothers Motors, 542-548 W. Washington, Phoenix, Arizona. From the McCulloch Brothers Photography Collection at ASU.
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

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

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