The beautiful weather of Phoenix, Arizona


OK, I'll admit it, I moved to Phoenix for the weather. I grew up in Minneapolis, which is wonderfully green because it seems like it's always either raining, or snowing. And while I like trees, and green landscaping, I don't like rain, and I don't like snow.

I collect old photos of Phoenix, and post them on the web. It's a learning experience, and one of the things I've learned is that not everyone agrees with me about how beautiful the weather is in Phoenix. And that group tends to be the people who grew up in Phoenix, and who experienced the terribly hot summers. I have often wondered how these kids could stand the heat, trying to play outside, etc., but I guess kids do what they have to do.

I moved to Phoenix when I was 19, and have spent most of my time in a nice air-conditioned office. In fact, one of the jobs I had was in what I have always considered to be a “space ship” in a tall building downtown, now called Chase Tower. I would drive my air conditioned car into the shade of a parking garage, walk underground to the building, and take an elevator to my floor. The building had just about everything I needed, including a post office, and dry cleaners. Sometimes at lunch I would walk around downtown, but I really didn't have to.

It's October 3rd and I'm already getting that old feeling that has never left me, that winter will not be coming here. It's been a long time since I've seen snow, and sleet, and cold, and believe me, I don't miss it. And this glorious weather will continue for the next six months, with brilliant sunshine, almost no rain (we do get some light rains in December and January), and no snow.

People who grew up here just shake their heads at people like me, who consider the weather in Phoenix to be beautiful. I've tried to explain it, but really, I was never a kid here riding my bike to school in the terrible heat. It must have been awful. But to me, it was all about playing golf in November. You can't do that in Minneapolis!

Photo above: Sahuaro Ranch, Glendale, Arizona.
If you liked this article, and would like to see more, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! You make this happen!

 Click here to become a Patron!
History adventuring posts are shared there daily. The basic tier is a dollar a month, and the PhD tier, which includes "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos, is five dollars a month, and is discounted for seniors, veterans, and students.

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