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| Ruthie and Scotty |
There were no computers, video games, CDs, to name a few things. And life was simpler then – today there is so much for parents to worry about – at least in places like this. Back then, it was safe for us to be out running around, as long as we stayed out of the traffic. Where I live, though, there really wasn’t much traffic back then. That got to be a bigger problem as I grew up, but when I was very small, 30th Place and Cactus Road wasn’t too far removed from unpaved roads.
So, what did we do for fun? I think life was pretty darn good for poor kids around here…
When it would rain, as it often did in the late summer, we’d sometimes get to play outside IN it. One pleasure was the smell of the rain – we had an evaporative cooler and it would draw in the smell of the wet dust. Just like today, our summer thunderstorms were often preceded by a dust storm “squall line.” The wet dirt actually smelled kind of good. And the desert around here, our neighborhood was surrounded by open desert – the creosote bushes have a particular and peculiar smell when they get rained on. That smell is still a warm fuzzy today – whenever I happen to be out on the desert during or after a rain. Which is not often enough!
After the rain, water (run-off) would flow down the street in front of the house. Our road was crowned and where our sidewalk is today there was a glorious ditch. After the rain, it was a ditch-river, a river on which one could float a small piece of lumber, a nail pounded into it for a “mast” – an impromptu toy boat. I'm still a mud-puddle splasher today.
Once in a while, in the summer, we’d go to the drive-in movie theater. The movie would be something really tame by today’s standards – there was no graphic violence, and certainly no sex. The only naked thing you’d see at the drive-in would've probably have been John Wayne's horse. It would be hot, and we’d roll down the windows, or maybe take lawn chairs and sit in front of the car outside. It would always be a double feature, and a highlight of the evening was the trip to the snack bar at intermission, with maybe enough change for popcorn or something. Sometimes the price was only $1 a carload! There was a lot of anticipation involved -- we had to wait for it to get dark -- you'd get there early to get a good spot, and then you had to wait what seemed like HOURS (to a kid anyway) for it to get dark enough to see the screen.
That reminds me of 4th of July fireworks too -- in the early days about the only show around here close by was at Turf Paradise. We would drive fairly close and park alongside a road -- maybe Bell Road -- and watch from there. We'd always be impatient as we waited for the darkness to fall so they'd start the show!
Later on in the evening, we’d get sleepy. One good thing -- it would be cooler for the ride home. Our car never had air conditioning in those days – we couldn’t afford it -- except what came in through the windows, of course. So we enjoyed it a lot when the weather (or the evening) was cooler. Unlike today, it actually did tend to cool off overnight, even in high summer. I think it is because there wasn’t so much concrete and asphalt then – it’s like going out away from the city these days – once you get out there a ways where it's mostly dirt or fields or trees -- it is cooler.
There were several drive-ins that we frequented for movie nights – one on Cave Creek Road at Sweetwater called the Cactus Drive-In – and there was the Northern, the Cinema Park, the Thunderbird (out in Glendale) and the Indian (at Indian School Rd and what is now I-17). There were lots of others too but these are the ones we usually went to. The most fun was when we got to take our friends with us.
In the summer, we were sometimes allowed to “sleep out.” We’d throw our sleeping bags down on the grass – we had grass in the front and back (yard) then – and we’d talk and watch the stars come out. Sometimes we'd see a shooting star. It was normal to wake up early – in the dawn when it was really cool. We’d either go in the house to finish our sleep or sometimes we’d even get up and play. One of my favorite activities in the early morning cool was to practice my “pitching” with a tennis ball against the north side of the house. I would aim for a specific brick. It would bounce back to me, unless "the pitch" was really wild...so I didn't need a catcher. I don’t think my mother appreciated that activity much. I got yelled at a LOT.
My first dog was Pete -- he used to chase cars and fight any other dog that came around. Sometimes he'd even go out LOOKING for a good fight. I can remember him coming home from a fight, all beat up and so tired he'd lean up against the house to rest. He was a black and white mongrel -- part collie and part some other thing, maybe bear. Later we got a dachshund that we named Prince Maynard von Wiggles. He was also a fighter, although he often bit off more than he could chew. He'd beg at the table. He'd proceed from one chair to the next, and sit upright on his hind legs begging. I once gave him a pickle. He skipped my chair while begging for weeks after that. We always had cats, too, although they never humiliated themselves by begging for anything, and occasionally some other critter (guinea pigs, for one).
We rarely ate “out.” I remember a little hamburger stand at Cave Creek and Dunlap – where the Jack in the Box is now – and they sold little McDonald’s-type hamburgers 7 for $1. (Later, they reduced it to 5 for a $1). So we could afford that once in a while. I never had pizza in a pizza parlor until I was a teen. We made “pizza” out of a box-mix sold at the store – by Chef Boy-Ar-Di! It was horrible – but we liked it I think. I know we kept eating it anyway… Other “treats” were an occasional dinner out, sometimes with my grandparents, at a little café on Cave Creek Road south of Greenway, called Juno’s. The building is still there. My Grandparents liked that place. Mom would bring home (she worked as an RN downtown) a Payday candy bar occasionally, or sometimes glazed donuts. I still like both of those – especially glazed donuts just dripping with confectioner’s icing…
In the early years, there were no grocery stores out here. The nearest one was at 7th Avenue and Glendale -- an A.J. Bayless store. So we'd drive across Northern Avenue through the Dreamy Draw to get there, and it was an island of desert. This is the area that SR51 follows through now. Down at the point where Northern Avenue splits off and SR51 curves southward into Phoenix today, we hit a skunk in the road, with all the nasty implications of that crime. This occurred right beside or near a particular road sign. The skunk appropriately expressed his defiance just before death. You know all those remedies for getting "stink" off stuff? Yeah, well, none of them work. That old Mercury (my Mom's first car) smelled for several weeks. To this very day, I cannot see a 45 mph "curve ahead" sign without thinking of that skunk "encounter."
My Mom learned to drive in that old Mercury. My Dad painted it green, along with his TR-3 and all our bicycles and tricycles. Must've gotten quite a deal on that horrible bright green paint. Mom couldn't master the coordination of shifting a standard transmission -- so when Dad found that Mercury and it had an automatic -- well, the rest was inevitable. She drove that car up and down the alley behind the house -- and when she finally got comfortable with it, hit Cactus Road in a shower of gravel and we haven't seen her since. Well, maybe a little more lately now that, at 90, she has given up driving...
My earliest memory of outside “play” was riding my tricycle. I was always going somewhere. My route was normally out the back and down the alley to Cactus, along the north side of Fuquay’s house (31st and Cactus) and into the desert area on the east side of our neighborhood (between 31st St and 32nd Street). There were worn paths through that little strip of desert, and they were fun to ride. There were rattlesnakes in the area, and coyotes, certainly, but I never encountered any out there. We had more snakes right here in the yard than I ever saw in the deserts around here. Maybe because they came around looking for the shade - and the water...
Later years (after age 7) when I had learned to ride a bicycle, my horizons opened up wide. I would ride down to Paradise Hills Shopping Center for a Coke at the Ryan Evans Drug Store soda fountain (there was an “older” woman working there whom I was sweet on - she was 16, I was probably 10). The area around our neighborhood was open desert when we moved here in 1955, and it slowly grew up (and developed) over the next 30 years. As a kid, I would ride over to the mountains (west of here) and climb them. I would ride fast up the street and out into the desert, pretending to be flying a bomber, trying to pop a wheelie for the take off, or driving a semi. The street in front of the house was my runway. I haven’t changed much. But we didn't have to ride on streets much -- we could get to just about anywhere by riding through the neighborhoods or the desert. There were paths everywhere.
Kite flying in the spring was another favorite activity. I spent dozens of hours trying to fly, and flying, kites. You could buy one for about 15¢ and about all you had to do to get it aloft was spread it out, secure it with the string attached and hang a tail on it. I never quite got the knack of starting them – old Mr. Kerns could sit on his porch, and just by manipulating the kite with his wrist, get the sucker into the air and flying high. Me, I’d run up and down the street, dragging the kite behind me, and only because I got lucky actually get the damned thing to fly. Mr. Kerns would sit on his porch and just laugh at me. He was one of my best friends and I must have been a source of great entertainment for him. I got the kites tangled up in power lines and trees occasionally and this year’s kite rarely survived the season. No matter, they were pretty cheap. I have to tell you though, when it came to kite-flying skills, Charlie Brown had nothing on me.
When we were very small, Tina, Ruth and I would invent games to play – we’d make little “books” out of scrap paper, with pictures drawn inside on the little tiny pages of monsters we imagined. Then we’d sneak around outside and “spot” them, using the tiny "manual" for identification purposes. Look! There's a Great-Horned Skagelkrook! We better run!
In the evenings particularly, we’d play games outside with other neighbor kids – hide and seek, Red Rover, kick-ball, tag… We were usually allowed to play outside until it was almost dark. Inside, during the daytime when it was hot outside, we could play board games (we had a few) or card games. But we didn’t always stay in just because it was hot… we were tougher than nails! We played baseball outside, and rode our bikes all over the place. We’d play ball in the street in front of the houses – or in side-yards when we got yelled at for it. But if we tried to stay inside, Mom would throw our butts OUT. "Go outside and PLAY, don't think for one minute you're going to stay in here and bother ME all day!"
When we couldn't go to a public pool, we'd run through the sprinklers on the lawn. Sometimes this resulted in a bee sting or two. We'd also go to the library and get books to read -- we had a very large Mulberry tree in the back yard, and we could climb up into the leaves, sit there in the shade and read where it was cooler. Life in the Arizona desert had its plusses.
We had TV! It was broadcast television -- from antennas high on South Mountain. It was black and white of course -- and our TV was actually made by (or at least branded by) CBS. There were 4 or 5 channels -- ABC (KTVK), CBS (KOOL) and NBC (KTAR). There was a local independent station (KPHO) which is now the CBS affiliate here (KTSP, Channel 5). KPHO had a great children's program in the afternoon -- Wallace and Ladmo. It's still one of the best things about Phoenix, ever.
One of my preferred activities was to stay up late with a bowl of popcorn, and watch the 10:30 pm movie on Saturday night -- the Million Dollar Movie -- and I saw lots of old classic films that way. At the end of the movie, the station would always shut down for the night -- there was no such thing as 24-hour programming in the 1960s -- not in Phoenix anyway. They'd "sign off" with Air Force jets flying and a recitation of "High Flight," a poem by John Gillespie McGee, Jr, and then the national anthem. The poem's author, a fighter pilot in the RAF, was killed in WWII but he will live immortal in the minds of pilots everywhere, because of that poem.
Channel 10's general manager was Mr. Homer Lane -- and he was a pilot and an aviation enthusiast. He would do short editorials occasionally and he reminded me of a librarian, or an English teacher: very stiff, very formal, and always wearing a bow tie. I met him once later -- we were both trying to land our planes at Prescott and he screwed up and almost ran over me in the traffic pattern. I was about to call him a few choice names, when he came over and profusely apologized. Mr. Lane was a decent guy and a class act.
Our news anchors held their jobs for years -- Dave Nichols, Art Brock, Ray Thompson... It wasn't "musical chairs" for the next pretty face like it is today. You saw the same faces every day, and they reported the news -- they didn't consider themselves the news. We trusted them. I think the concept they adhered to was that they were providing a public service -- unbiased news reporting -- instead of always trying to spin things or over-dramatize things. They had integrity. Personally, I think today's broadcast media are a profession teetering very close to the edge of a certain kind of prostitution and they do occasionally fall in.
Every once in awhile, we’d go on a picnic. Mom would drive us up north along Scottsdale Road and then east along a power-line road – at least until there was a murder or two out there and a suicide… then we’d go up off Cave Creek Road on Tapekim Road and have hot dogs over a fire and roast marshmallows. We’ve still got those sticks here – and the grandkids using them today have no idea about their history! Once when I was really small, Dad and Mom took us up north of Bell on 32nd Street, until we were way out north of Campo Bello (a neighborhood), and we had a picnic out there. I’ve only ever seen a Gila Monster live in the wild twice – once on that picnic, and once a few years back out west of Wickenburg on the highway in the middle of the night.
I loved listening to music -- we had a table radio that sat in the hallway. I wasn't allowed to play it loud, so I'd lay my head on the table in front of that little radio and listen to the Top 40 on KRUX or KRIZ radio. At night, we could get WLS in Chicago or KOMA in Oklahoma City via the "skip." AM radio waves literally bounce off the stratosphere, and can travel hundreds and hundreds of miles where even a little cheap radio set could pick them up. This only happened at night.
Halloween was pretty neat -- not like now. We'd go out at dusk and hit every house we could get to -- and come home with bags and bags of candy. There'd be hundreds of kids on the street. The older kids weren't as mean then either -- instead of stealing your candy and rubbing your face in the dirt --- they'd more likely be looking out for you. Usually. You really didn't have to worry about your kids too much -- there was definitely less meanness in the world. At least around here.
Once in a while, we’d get to go camping. Normally, we’d go east of Payson – Woods Canyon Lake was one place we camped. In those days you camped right beside the lake, next to the water. Another time we went to Mt Graham (we heard a mountain lion scream and had bears in camp). So we cowered in the tent, and Mom wondered what the hell she was thinking by taking us out there to be eaten alive! That same trip we also camped near Alpine at Luna Lake.
From the time I was knee-high, and even today, one of MY favorite activities is going to the airport to watch the airliners. Another surprise, I’m sure. Originally, there was one terminal (now torn down). It had an observation deck on top and we’d stand up there and watch old propliners take off on the one runway. In about 1962, they built Terminal 2, and it also had a long observation deck on the roof, and a ground-level outside promenade crossing the south end like a “T.”
I learned of my Grandfather’s death on a Phoenix-bound flight in 1965 in a little back room in Terminal 2 – behind what was then the TWA ticket counter. I have heard that his plane was over Missouri somewhere when he passed away – and very nearly over the town where he was born. When the pilot radioed in that he had a death on board, he supposedly reported his position as over that town. I can still show you right where that little back-room is or was. The airline staff took us in and very gently informed us of that sad news.
While at the airport, I would collect every airline timetable I could get my hands on (wish I still had them). Then I would pore over them, wishing and planning to GO -- and I could identify the outbound and inbound flights that passed over the house. I still do this today! Of course there weren't as many then as there are today -- a few regulars each day was all. Bonanza Airlines flew Fairchild F-27 "Friendships" -- north out of Phoenix to Las Vegas mostly and their bright orange tails made them easy to spot (along with their screeching Rolls Royce "Dart" turbine engines). At least once every day in the late afternoon, Frontier Airlines employed a DC-3 whose drone I could hear five minutes before it ever got here, heading due north. The under-view profile of a DC-3 is still as familiar to me today as is the shape of my own hand.
Some of my best memories (this one will be a surprise) were of road trips to see the relatives in Indiana and Missouri. We went in 1957 in Dad’s TR-3, ’59 at Christmas (and broke down in Anson, Texas!), 1961, 1966, ’68 and ’70. By the 1970 trip, I was driving and I got to drive most of the way. Woo HOO! I installed an 8-Track tape player in the car for the trip… that was cool! In 1961, we pulled up in the farm yard near Alamo, Indiana and Dad lit off a string of firecrackers to announce our arrival. On that trip, we got to ride on Pampaw’s Allis-Chalmers tractor all the way from the farm to Alamo!
If you’ve ever seen the movie American Graffiti, you’ve seen teenagers “cruising.” We used to do that too – Central Avenue between about Camelback south to Thomas! We’d drive slowly downtown, then turn around and cruise back. Back and forth, back and forth. We never ever hooked up, but we were always hopeful! Sometimes we’d stop in at Christown (now Spectrum) Mall and watch the girls shop and walk, or give the organ grinder’s monkey hot pennies…
That is some of what my childhood and young adulthood was like. We were poor, dirt-poor really, but it didn't feel like it. Aside from not having much extra I don’t think Tina or I ever felt deprived (that I know of, anyway). I don’t know about Ruthie because she was a bit older and left here when Tina and I were still little. I know she's said she was not allowed to do as much as me.
Things are so much different now – but kids are just kids; so I wonder what this generation will look back on – what will be the good things they'll remember from their childhoods. I hope theirs are as good as ours were! Kids are the same, for sure – but it is a different world, isn’t it? I can’t help but feel like we’ve lost something.
Once in a while, in the summer, we’d go to the drive-in movie theater. The movie would be something really tame by today’s standards – there was no graphic violence, and certainly no sex. The only naked thing you’d see at the drive-in would've probably have been John Wayne's horse. It would be hot, and we’d roll down the windows, or maybe take lawn chairs and sit in front of the car outside. It would always be a double feature, and a highlight of the evening was the trip to the snack bar at intermission, with maybe enough change for popcorn or something. Sometimes the price was only $1 a carload! There was a lot of anticipation involved -- we had to wait for it to get dark -- you'd get there early to get a good spot, and then you had to wait what seemed like HOURS (to a kid anyway) for it to get dark enough to see the screen.
That reminds me of 4th of July fireworks too -- in the early days about the only show around here close by was at Turf Paradise. We would drive fairly close and park alongside a road -- maybe Bell Road -- and watch from there. We'd always be impatient as we waited for the darkness to fall so they'd start the show!
Later on in the evening, we’d get sleepy. One good thing -- it would be cooler for the ride home. Our car never had air conditioning in those days – we couldn’t afford it -- except what came in through the windows, of course. So we enjoyed it a lot when the weather (or the evening) was cooler. Unlike today, it actually did tend to cool off overnight, even in high summer. I think it is because there wasn’t so much concrete and asphalt then – it’s like going out away from the city these days – once you get out there a ways where it's mostly dirt or fields or trees -- it is cooler.
There were several drive-ins that we frequented for movie nights – one on Cave Creek Road at Sweetwater called the Cactus Drive-In – and there was the Northern, the Cinema Park, the Thunderbird (out in Glendale) and the Indian (at Indian School Rd and what is now I-17). There were lots of others too but these are the ones we usually went to. The most fun was when we got to take our friends with us.
In the summer, we were sometimes allowed to “sleep out.” We’d throw our sleeping bags down on the grass – we had grass in the front and back (yard) then – and we’d talk and watch the stars come out. Sometimes we'd see a shooting star. It was normal to wake up early – in the dawn when it was really cool. We’d either go in the house to finish our sleep or sometimes we’d even get up and play. One of my favorite activities in the early morning cool was to practice my “pitching” with a tennis ball against the north side of the house. I would aim for a specific brick. It would bounce back to me, unless "the pitch" was really wild...so I didn't need a catcher. I don’t think my mother appreciated that activity much. I got yelled at a LOT.
My first dog was Pete -- he used to chase cars and fight any other dog that came around. Sometimes he'd even go out LOOKING for a good fight. I can remember him coming home from a fight, all beat up and so tired he'd lean up against the house to rest. He was a black and white mongrel -- part collie and part some other thing, maybe bear. Later we got a dachshund that we named Prince Maynard von Wiggles. He was also a fighter, although he often bit off more than he could chew. He'd beg at the table. He'd proceed from one chair to the next, and sit upright on his hind legs begging. I once gave him a pickle. He skipped my chair while begging for weeks after that. We always had cats, too, although they never humiliated themselves by begging for anything, and occasionally some other critter (guinea pigs, for one).
We rarely ate “out.” I remember a little hamburger stand at Cave Creek and Dunlap – where the Jack in the Box is now – and they sold little McDonald’s-type hamburgers 7 for $1. (Later, they reduced it to 5 for a $1). So we could afford that once in a while. I never had pizza in a pizza parlor until I was a teen. We made “pizza” out of a box-mix sold at the store – by Chef Boy-Ar-Di! It was horrible – but we liked it I think. I know we kept eating it anyway… Other “treats” were an occasional dinner out, sometimes with my grandparents, at a little café on Cave Creek Road south of Greenway, called Juno’s. The building is still there. My Grandparents liked that place. Mom would bring home (she worked as an RN downtown) a Payday candy bar occasionally, or sometimes glazed donuts. I still like both of those – especially glazed donuts just dripping with confectioner’s icing…
In the early years, there were no grocery stores out here. The nearest one was at 7th Avenue and Glendale -- an A.J. Bayless store. So we'd drive across Northern Avenue through the Dreamy Draw to get there, and it was an island of desert. This is the area that SR51 follows through now. Down at the point where Northern Avenue splits off and SR51 curves southward into Phoenix today, we hit a skunk in the road, with all the nasty implications of that crime. This occurred right beside or near a particular road sign. The skunk appropriately expressed his defiance just before death. You know all those remedies for getting "stink" off stuff? Yeah, well, none of them work. That old Mercury (my Mom's first car) smelled for several weeks. To this very day, I cannot see a 45 mph "curve ahead" sign without thinking of that skunk "encounter."
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| Ours was green... |
My earliest memory of outside “play” was riding my tricycle. I was always going somewhere. My route was normally out the back and down the alley to Cactus, along the north side of Fuquay’s house (31st and Cactus) and into the desert area on the east side of our neighborhood (between 31st St and 32nd Street). There were worn paths through that little strip of desert, and they were fun to ride. There were rattlesnakes in the area, and coyotes, certainly, but I never encountered any out there. We had more snakes right here in the yard than I ever saw in the deserts around here. Maybe because they came around looking for the shade - and the water...
Later years (after age 7) when I had learned to ride a bicycle, my horizons opened up wide. I would ride down to Paradise Hills Shopping Center for a Coke at the Ryan Evans Drug Store soda fountain (there was an “older” woman working there whom I was sweet on - she was 16, I was probably 10). The area around our neighborhood was open desert when we moved here in 1955, and it slowly grew up (and developed) over the next 30 years. As a kid, I would ride over to the mountains (west of here) and climb them. I would ride fast up the street and out into the desert, pretending to be flying a bomber, trying to pop a wheelie for the take off, or driving a semi. The street in front of the house was my runway. I haven’t changed much. But we didn't have to ride on streets much -- we could get to just about anywhere by riding through the neighborhoods or the desert. There were paths everywhere.
Kite flying in the spring was another favorite activity. I spent dozens of hours trying to fly, and flying, kites. You could buy one for about 15¢ and about all you had to do to get it aloft was spread it out, secure it with the string attached and hang a tail on it. I never quite got the knack of starting them – old Mr. Kerns could sit on his porch, and just by manipulating the kite with his wrist, get the sucker into the air and flying high. Me, I’d run up and down the street, dragging the kite behind me, and only because I got lucky actually get the damned thing to fly. Mr. Kerns would sit on his porch and just laugh at me. He was one of my best friends and I must have been a source of great entertainment for him. I got the kites tangled up in power lines and trees occasionally and this year’s kite rarely survived the season. No matter, they were pretty cheap. I have to tell you though, when it came to kite-flying skills, Charlie Brown had nothing on me.
When we were very small, Tina, Ruth and I would invent games to play – we’d make little “books” out of scrap paper, with pictures drawn inside on the little tiny pages of monsters we imagined. Then we’d sneak around outside and “spot” them, using the tiny "manual" for identification purposes. Look! There's a Great-Horned Skagelkrook! We better run!
In the evenings particularly, we’d play games outside with other neighbor kids – hide and seek, Red Rover, kick-ball, tag… We were usually allowed to play outside until it was almost dark. Inside, during the daytime when it was hot outside, we could play board games (we had a few) or card games. But we didn’t always stay in just because it was hot… we were tougher than nails! We played baseball outside, and rode our bikes all over the place. We’d play ball in the street in front of the houses – or in side-yards when we got yelled at for it. But if we tried to stay inside, Mom would throw our butts OUT. "Go outside and PLAY, don't think for one minute you're going to stay in here and bother ME all day!"
When we couldn't go to a public pool, we'd run through the sprinklers on the lawn. Sometimes this resulted in a bee sting or two. We'd also go to the library and get books to read -- we had a very large Mulberry tree in the back yard, and we could climb up into the leaves, sit there in the shade and read where it was cooler. Life in the Arizona desert had its plusses.
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| An early B/W television |
One of my preferred activities was to stay up late with a bowl of popcorn, and watch the 10:30 pm movie on Saturday night -- the Million Dollar Movie -- and I saw lots of old classic films that way. At the end of the movie, the station would always shut down for the night -- there was no such thing as 24-hour programming in the 1960s -- not in Phoenix anyway. They'd "sign off" with Air Force jets flying and a recitation of "High Flight," a poem by John Gillespie McGee, Jr, and then the national anthem. The poem's author, a fighter pilot in the RAF, was killed in WWII but he will live immortal in the minds of pilots everywhere, because of that poem.
Channel 10's general manager was Mr. Homer Lane -- and he was a pilot and an aviation enthusiast. He would do short editorials occasionally and he reminded me of a librarian, or an English teacher: very stiff, very formal, and always wearing a bow tie. I met him once later -- we were both trying to land our planes at Prescott and he screwed up and almost ran over me in the traffic pattern. I was about to call him a few choice names, when he came over and profusely apologized. Mr. Lane was a decent guy and a class act.
Our news anchors held their jobs for years -- Dave Nichols, Art Brock, Ray Thompson... It wasn't "musical chairs" for the next pretty face like it is today. You saw the same faces every day, and they reported the news -- they didn't consider themselves the news. We trusted them. I think the concept they adhered to was that they were providing a public service -- unbiased news reporting -- instead of always trying to spin things or over-dramatize things. They had integrity. Personally, I think today's broadcast media are a profession teetering very close to the edge of a certain kind of prostitution and they do occasionally fall in.
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| Gila Monster |
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| Ours was black... |
Halloween was pretty neat -- not like now. We'd go out at dusk and hit every house we could get to -- and come home with bags and bags of candy. There'd be hundreds of kids on the street. The older kids weren't as mean then either -- instead of stealing your candy and rubbing your face in the dirt --- they'd more likely be looking out for you. Usually. You really didn't have to worry about your kids too much -- there was definitely less meanness in the world. At least around here.
Once in a while, we’d get to go camping. Normally, we’d go east of Payson – Woods Canyon Lake was one place we camped. In those days you camped right beside the lake, next to the water. Another time we went to Mt Graham (we heard a mountain lion scream and had bears in camp). So we cowered in the tent, and Mom wondered what the hell she was thinking by taking us out there to be eaten alive! That same trip we also camped near Alpine at Luna Lake.
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| C580 at old Terminal 1 - Phoenix |
I learned of my Grandfather’s death on a Phoenix-bound flight in 1965 in a little back room in Terminal 2 – behind what was then the TWA ticket counter. I have heard that his plane was over Missouri somewhere when he passed away – and very nearly over the town where he was born. When the pilot radioed in that he had a death on board, he supposedly reported his position as over that town. I can still show you right where that little back-room is or was. The airline staff took us in and very gently informed us of that sad news.
While at the airport, I would collect every airline timetable I could get my hands on (wish I still had them). Then I would pore over them, wishing and planning to GO -- and I could identify the outbound and inbound flights that passed over the house. I still do this today! Of course there weren't as many then as there are today -- a few regulars each day was all. Bonanza Airlines flew Fairchild F-27 "Friendships" -- north out of Phoenix to Las Vegas mostly and their bright orange tails made them easy to spot (along with their screeching Rolls Royce "Dart" turbine engines). At least once every day in the late afternoon, Frontier Airlines employed a DC-3 whose drone I could hear five minutes before it ever got here, heading due north. The under-view profile of a DC-3 is still as familiar to me today as is the shape of my own hand.
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| Pampaw's was probably older ... |
If you’ve ever seen the movie American Graffiti, you’ve seen teenagers “cruising.” We used to do that too – Central Avenue between about Camelback south to Thomas! We’d drive slowly downtown, then turn around and cruise back. Back and forth, back and forth. We never ever hooked up, but we were always hopeful! Sometimes we’d stop in at Christown (now Spectrum) Mall and watch the girls shop and walk, or give the organ grinder’s monkey hot pennies…
That is some of what my childhood and young adulthood was like. We were poor, dirt-poor really, but it didn't feel like it. Aside from not having much extra I don’t think Tina or I ever felt deprived (that I know of, anyway). I don’t know about Ruthie because she was a bit older and left here when Tina and I were still little. I know she's said she was not allowed to do as much as me.
Things are so much different now – but kids are just kids; so I wonder what this generation will look back on – what will be the good things they'll remember from their childhoods. I hope theirs are as good as ours were! Kids are the same, for sure – but it is a different world, isn’t it? I can’t help but feel like we’ve lost something.
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