History Adventuring

I enjoy history, and I know my own genealogy, and recently I added two flags to the back of my trike, one for Scotland, and one for Italy. Of course I'm a proud American, and genealogically I'm more English than anything else, but I won't be flying those flags right now. I'll see if I can explain.  First of all, it's March of 2022, I'm in Arizona, and flying the American flag for the past few years has become associated with people who are on the extreme right. I'm at neither extreme, and I wouldn't want anyone thinking that I was (yes, I care what people think, imagine that!). I'm not in a category of people that the right wing hate, such as foreigners, alternate lifestyle people (if you know what I mean, and I think you do), people of color, etc., but I still support them, and I would never want these people to think for an instant that I don't. Mine is a world of inclusion, and all are welcome. As for the English flag, that gets a bit more com...

When I tell people that I was a part of Hollywood in 1983, their reaction depends on how much they know about Los Angeles. And with that in mind, I would like to describe my part in Hollywood starting with the first thing that springs to mind: the movies. No, I was never in a movie, or a TV show, or anything like that. So when I say that I was a part of Hollywood in 1983, we have to take a closer look at the city of Los Angeles. Stay with me here, I want to move slowly through this - if you're already a Hollywood insider, you may want to skip down a bit. I lived in an inexpensive apartment in Los Angeles the year after I graduated from college, and moved from Tempe, Arizona. My goal at the time was to see if I could land a job at an advertising agency, and to me there were two places I could go, either LA or New York. That is, Wilshire Boulevard or Madison Avenue. And since I never considered New York for an instant, I moved to LA. By the way, I never did work for an advertising ag...

Lately in this blog I've been painting a pretty grim picture of my Los Angeles of the 1980s, the traffic, the air quality, that sort of thing, so today I'd like to take you back to one of the most pleasant times of my life, ten days at the LA County Courthouse in Santa Monica, California. No, I didn't live in Santa Monica, I lived in Canoga Park, which is in the San Fernando Valley, but it's all LA County. And as gigantic as the City of Los Angeles is, the county is just mind-boggling, even back in the 1980s. So the fact that I ran into a friend, and had a good time overall during those ten days will sound like I'm making this up. Of course, I have no proof, so I could be, but I'm not. This is what really happened. Just the facts. I'm pretty sure it was 1987, but it could have been 1986, and I had just started working at Blue Cross of California in their corporate offices in Woodland Hills. If you're not familiar with LA, that's a nice area, as oppos...

Trying to describe Los Angeles to people who have never lived there is just about impossible. You can describe how big it is, and how terrible the traffic is, but it just begins to sound like a tall tale, and I might as well be describing Paul Bunyan. But I've been pondering living in the City of Angels in the 1980s, and as much as I enjoyed it, I was glad to be well out of there, in 1989, and back in Phoenix. And to this day I try not to comment when people complain about traffic in Phoenix. For me, there really never was much traffic in Phoenix, not compared to LA, because I never felt the need to carry a book in my car, which I always did in LA. I've always had a bit of a silly sense of humor, so it's understandable if people can't tell if I'm kidding, but I'm serious, I carried a book in my car, and read it on the freeway. Now calm down there if you're picturing me zipping through lanes and flipping through pages, I would never do that. I just took it ou...

Although the photos on the Duke University site ROAD (Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions) are all about the billboards, which is why the photos were taken, what I enjoy the most is the fact that it captures an ordinary moment in time, which I like to call a "slice of life". Like one of my favorite humorists, James Thurber, who just happens to be from Columbus, Ohio, I prefer to speak largely about small matters and smally about great affairs. So if you're expecting anything in the photo to be spectacular, or historically significant, sorry, there's nothing like that. But let's take a look, anyway. Just to keep the record straight, it's 1936 and we're on High Street at 5th Avenue looking south. Well, the point of view of the photographer is looking that way. But since this is a journey of imagination, I'm gonna look the other way. Here, I'll zoom in on me - trying to listen to someone who is going on, and on, and on, and on... Yeah, I'...

In 1989 I really had no intention of moving back to Arizona. I had been laid off from my job in Los Angeles, was collecting unemployment and had been working hard on getting my next job there when I decided to go visit Phoenix, you know, see some old friends - good for the soul. I called a good friend of mine from my college days at ASU and asked if I could sleep on his floor for a couple of days. I remember calling the number and talking to his wife and being so surprised that she had gone from just speaking Spanish to being perfectly comfortable talking to me on the phone in English, in just six years! I had known her, from going to the wedding, and also visiting them quite often (and stealing the nose from their baby - an old trick I must have picked up from when I was little, where you use your thumb, and say "Look! I got your nose"! (¡Mira tengo su nariz!). It was in summertime and I had forgotten how hot Phoenix was - even at night. My hosts were out when I arrived (I h...

Since it's been so long since I lived in California, when I do mention it, people ask me how different it was than today, and my response is that it was very crowded, very expensive, and the traffic was terrible. In other words, the same. I moved to Los Angeles, specifically the Hollywood area, in 1983, right after I graduated from college. I got my graphic design degree at Arizona State, and decided that it would be good to move to "the big city" and see what it was like. And although I enjoyed many things about the experience, I have to admit that overall it was pretty grim. First of all, I lived in an apartment on Argyle, at the base of the Hollywood Hills. The complex had been built in the 1920s, and was beautiful art deco, except for the part I lived in, which had been added on. So the complex had a combination of people like me, who were just glad to have a place to live, even if it was ratty and horrible, and people who lived in luxury and style, including rent con...

I watched an excellent TikTok video yesterday that showed just how huge the city of Los Angeles is, and it got me to thinking about how I coped with LA in the '80s. Trust me, LA is huge, and has been for a very long time. I even remember the joke about Bugs Bunny burrowing to New Mexico and seeing a "Los Angeles City Limits" sign - and those cartoons were old when I was a kid! What I did was to limit how much of the city I would live in, and take in. That is, I knew my neighborhood very well, but beyond a certain limit, and for me it was the 405 freeway, I it might as well be in a completely different city. Don't get me wrong, I would still venture beyond the 405, but I would take a map, and I wouldn't feel right until I got back to my 'hood. If you've lived in Los Angeles, you understand, and if you haven't, it's difficult to explain, but today I'm gonna try. I've lived in Phoenix for a long time, and if people ever ask me where I lived be...

As I was looking through the Duke University site ROAD (Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions), my eye was caught by a photo of some men working on building an advertising sign, and I thought that you might like taking a look. I've always been a project person, going back to when I was a little kid, making messes in the basement with my paint set, or something. And I always recognize these type of people, who seem to be kind of artists, and kind of construction workers. And like most people who do this type of work, they're taken for granted, as very few people have any idea what goes on "behind the scenes". This will just be a billboard for whiskey. But I see so much more, and I want to look around. First of all, unless they're applied something like clear shellac, this is a posed photo. I can almost hear the photographer telling them to look as if they're doing something. That is, except for the guys in the background, who probably thought that they w...

If you lived in Phoenix in 1898, you probably remember reading about the proposed Las Palmas Tract, which was to be built about four miles from the city, and filled with beautiful trees. Here, I'll let you read a bit of the article: Sounds wonderful, right? I have to admit that it seemed to be stretching it a bit to say that the temperature in the area was 10 degrees higher in the winter, and several degrees cooler in the summer, since nowadays this area would be described as between 16th Street and 24th Street, and Indian School Road and Camelback Road, but hey, that's just marketing, right? Here's a link to the article if you want to read some more:  https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/data/batches/az_elk_ver01/data/sn84020558/00202192622/1898032101/0648.pdf But sadly, it never made it. By 1903, this article explains what happened: Looks like a bunch of money was spent for improvements, grading, laying out walks, and transplanting shade and ornamental trees, and then a dro...

If you lived in Phoenix anytime between 1879 and 1920, you remember the Irvine Building, which was on the southwest corner of Washington and 1st Street, built by Edward Irvine. It was demolished in 1920 to make way for an impressive six-story building, as featured in an article in the Phoenix paper, which sadly was never built. Here it is: It's funny how quickly we forget failures, and this one sounded so promising! I really have no idea why they never got around to building it - it was in the '20s, when there was plenty of money around, and plenty of credit. It didn't all crash until 1929, you know. Maybe someday I'll find out. Here's a link to the article on the Library of Congress site if you want to read more:  https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84020558/1920-02-01/ed-1/seq-15/ 1963 Anyway, the next building that I know of for sure was there was the hamburger place, also called Crystal Tower Hamburgers. My top history adventurer did as much research as is...

I enjoy looking at the old photos of billboards on the Duke University site ROAD (Resource of Outdoor Advertising), but even though I use the term "billboard", many of them predate the laws that were created to stop advertising from being plastered on just about every building, and instead could only be put on specified boards (hence the term billboard - because posted advertising was called a "bill"). Nowadays you will rarely see advertising painted directly on a building, maybe an old barn, but there was a time when it was so common that you could hardly ever get away from these annoying "pop-up ads" everywhere you looked. This is an example of one from 1919, which shows that the R.C. Maxwell Company of Trenton New Jersey, was receiving $100 from Pillsbury Flower to paint and lease the space for a year to advertise on the side of a building in Cleveland, Ohio, at 603 Superior Avenue. Here's let's take a closer look at the writing. I've looked...

Like many people all over the world nowadays, I've been puzzling out what Russia is doing, and has been doing historically. And when I started doing some research, it turned into such a complicated maze that this morning I decided to just look back on my lifetime and give you my impression of them - dangerous buffoons. Now calm down there, I'm sure that there are a lot of people in Russia who aren't dangerous buffoons, but overall the country has given me that impression, from the 1970s to present day. And don't get me wrong, I'm not against someone being a buffoon, some of my best friends have been buffoons. And if you're not familiar with the term, I'll go look up a definition. Hang on. Here ya go: "a ridiculous but amusing person; a clown" And if you yourself are a buffoon, don't worry, I still love ya. I've derived a lot of amusement from the buffoonery of friends, and some of my fondest memories of high school are of my friends' bu...

In this imaginary journey I'm walking in Columbus, Ohio. Specifically, across Galloway Avenue at Mt. Vernon Street. At least that's what the sign says. That would be me there photobombing the picture that someone was taking of the billboard back there. I'm guessing I'm a teenager, or I may just be big for my age, and younger than that, or older, and youthful-looking. I really don't know. I'm just making this up so I can go time-traveling in this photo, which was taken for a commonplace reason, because of the advertising that you see in the background. Hang on a sec, I'll see if I can explain. This photo was taken just to give proof to the nice people who were paying for the billboard that it was up, and visible. Yep, photographers used to go around and do that. Nowadays they're collected and posted on Duke University's site ROAD (Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions) and they study them. Yes, that's a thing. But there won't be a test ...

Attitudes about equal opportunity for everyone, regardless of race or gender, started to change in the 1970s, and by the 1980s most progressive companies were putting in active measures to encourage the hiring of minorities, including more women. And so the corporate world that I stepped into, in 1987, in Los Angeles, was a pretty diverse crowd. And nowadays it can be kinda confusing to people, because nobody really says the kind of things that I heard back then, which were, to put it bluntly, very cold-blooded. I never saw any of the memos that went around to managers in those days, but they weren't subtle. They didn't say things like "create more diversity", they gave quotas, and specifics. People who didn't look like me got preferential treatment at a job interview, it was that simple. I knew people who were faking stuff on their resumes just to get an interview. Since I didn't fill any quota, I was lucky to get the job I got. And aside from my talent and m...

Although I've never been purified in the waters of Lake Minnetonka, I did grow up in Minneapolis. I lived not far from where the Artist Formerly Known as Prince lived, near the lake formerly known as Calhoun. And just in case you're wondering what "Minneapolis" means, it's a combination of a Sioux word for water and a Greek word for city. Minne is used a lot where I grew up, just a block from Minnehaha Creek. Yes, that means "laughing water". I really don't recall ever visiting Lake Minnetonka, but I'm sure I did, it wasn't really all that far from my neighborhood. Hang on, I'll see if I can find what the "tonka" in Minnetonka means. Here ya go: "Minnetonka is in Hennepin County Minne (also spelled mini) is the common Dakota word for water, and tonka (also spelled tanka) is likewise their common word meaning big or great, but the name thus compounded seems not to have been used by the Dakota till Ramsey coined it for the la...

There are two seasons in Phoenix 1) So absolutely glorious that you can hardly believe it, like now in March, which I call "Chamber of Commerce weather", and 2) So incredibly hot that you can't understand why anyone in their right mind would live there. So if you're planning a visit, especially to play golf, it's important to keep this in mind. By the way, the "Chamber of Commerce weather", where the skies are not cloudy all day, and out on the golf course you'll think you're in heaven, is from October to April. And from May through September people will wonder what kind of lunatic you are to be outside at all. And just to be clear here, you can visit Phoenix even when it's ridiculously hot out there - you just stay inside of an air conditioned building, and travel in an air conditioned car (preferably at night), just like Las Vegas. But stepping outside in Phoenix in August will make you wonder if you've just stepped into an oven - it...