Making friends in old-time, and modern Phoenix, Arizona


Most of the people I know have friends. It may only be one, or two, or a handful, but I've never met anyone who faces the world entirely alone. They may be friends with people in their family, or their childhood friends, or people who have the same political views or interests that they have, or they may just be friends with their dog. And this has got me to thinking about making friends in the modern day (during the time of COVID-19), or during the beginning of the modern era (which is my own arbitrary date - when I moved to Phoenix in 1977), or back in old-time Phoenix (which goes back to 1870).

If, for whatever reason, you decided to move to Phoenix when it was new, let's say in the 1870s, you would probably be interested in making friends. It could be because you're starting a business, like selling ice, or maybe you're looking for romance. The reasons are as endless and varied as there are people.

Speaking for myself, I moved away from where I grew up, Minneapolis, Minnesota, the year after I graduated from high school. I didn't know anyone in Phoenix, didn't have any family, I just went there because it sounded good, and it didn't snow there (I HATE cold and snow!). I had been working part-time for an inventory company in Minneapolis that hired college kids for minimum wage to do physical inventory, and I asked for a transfer, which they did. I still remember sitting in my boss's office after he hung up the phone. I had a job in Phoenix. Well, minimum wage, but to me that was a lot compared to the last job I had, which had been delivering newspapers. Minimum wage didn't put me in the lap of luxury in Phoenix, but I was 19, and I didn't need much. My needs were simple, like the fact that I used a frisbee as a dinner plate. I also ate a lot of cheese and beans, which I still do.

Living out in the middle of nowhere, miles from civilization, was very hard, but exciting. When Phoenix was new (I'm talking about the 1870s here, not the 1970s), there was an opportunity to be part of something that just may turn out to be something big. I know that in the 1970s I looked around at people and wondered what in the world they were doing in a place that got to over 100 degrees in the summer, and I'm inclined to think that people thought the same thing in the 1870s. But for me it formed a bond. I immediately liked all of the people around me - they had decided to live in Phoenix, just like me. They were already my neighbors, and it didn't take much to make them into friends.

I'm as friendly as a little puppy dog, and I always have been. Every once in a while I see a questioning look on someone, as if they were trying to figure out what I wanted, why I was being so friendly? And maybe it's because I've been a stranger many times, and I find that very uncomfortable. People are strange when you're a stranger, faces look ugly when you're alone.

Image at the top of this post: Looking east on Camelback Road at 5th Street in the 1970s, Phoenix, Arizona.
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