History Adventuring

Although I'm not quite old enough to remember when stores actually sold everything for a nickel, or a dime, I remember the old buildings in Minneapolis when I was a kid that had a five and a ten on them. I suppose the old-timers were dismayed as prices of things just got too expensive to be sold for a nickel, or a dime, or even a quarter, especially in the early 1970s. And now I'm going to see the end of the Dollar Store. They've been around for a long time, but selling things for a dollar just isn't practical anymore. In fact, at my local 99-cent store, they've already started selling a lot of stuff for over 99 cents. The price could be $.99, or $5.99. But my local Dollar Store is still, as of this writing, selling everything in there for a dollar. I suppose in the future, there will be ten-dollar stores. And while that may sound far-fetched, it's really the difference between the most expensive things at a five and dime as compared to a Dollar Store tod...

As someone who is drifting into his senior years now, I know that I'm finding it more and more difficult to understand why young people would be afraid of certain things. And I don't mean the kind of things that people, uh, "of age" are afraid of, like the cost of gas going up, or that situation overseas. What I remember from being young and afraid in Phoenix was the fear of looking like an idiot, with things I didn't know. I'm sure that when I was 19, and brand-new to Phoenix, if someone had walked up to me I could have told them the names of all fifty states. In fact, I had a lot of that type of essentially useless information that I had learned up through high school. But other things worried me, because I really didn't have a clue, and I feared that the more experienced people would laugh at me. And they did! So today I'd like to time-travel back to old-time Phoenix and worry about stuff that I don't know anything about. I'll be youn...

In a longish life, I've met a lot of people who have been poor. Some of them, I can tell, have been genuinely poor, but most have been like the little rich girl in the story who is asked to describe a poor family: "The daddy was poor, the mommy was poor, the children were poor, the butler was poor, the chauffeur was poor..." And I understand. It's all a matter of point of view. And the most common thing I hear about people being poor is that they had honest poverty. They may been poor, but they didn't steal stuff. Of course, there's always that one uncle... Honest poverty, and dishonest poverty, go hand-in-hand. If someone has plenty of money, they can afford to walk past a hundred dollar bill lying there on the sidewalk, but for people who really need to pay the rent, buy food, that sort of thing, something like that can seem like a blessing from heaven. Yes, it's stealing in a way, taking something that isn't yours, but it's hard to imagine ...

My favorite hamburger place is the Chuckbox, which is on University and Forest in Tempe, Arizona. It's just east of Mill Avenue, and just north of the Art Building, where I spent a lot of time in the 1980s. And every time I go there I think that this will be my last Chuckbox burger. I've been thinking that for over thirty years, and hopefully I will be able to continue to think like that for many years to come. If you're not sure what I'm saying here, I just have to say that to me it just seems too good to be true. And it was even back when I was going to ASU. Unlike most of my friends, I didn't have much of an entertainment budget when I was going to school. I didn't go to concerts, I didn't eat at restaurants, not even fast food places. But on the rare occasions that I had some extra money, I would buy a hamburger at the Chuckbox. And the burgers were delicious beyond belief, maybe because it was such a special treat. When I graduated and moved aw...

When I started teaching, I did it merely as a job. I needed work after I left my corporate job as a graphic designer, and teaching graphics software was a smooth transition for me. I simply had to show people the things that I knew the best - like Adobe Photoshop. I showed people what a "serif" was, how to measure in pixels, that sort of thing. And that part of the job came easily to me, and made sense. That people were pursuing dreams is something that took me a while to realize. It really wasn't until I started teaching at Glendale Community College that I really started seeing what most people were doing. They weren't just learning software, or taking classes, they were on a journey to make their lives better. They were pursuing dreams. This amazed me, and still does. I really don't know how successful my students became - I'm connected with some of them on LinkedIn, but I really don't know, and to me it doesn't matter. What matters to me is ...

If you lived in Arizona anytime between the 1800s (yes, the 1800s), and 1992, you remember Valley National Bank. And while I remember their slogan "Solutions. Not Problems" from when I started in the 1980s, I got to wondering about their slogans throughout the years. This is what I have: 1892 ad for Valley Bank The oldest ad that I have for Valley Bank is from 1892, and it doesn't look like they had a slogan back then. I guess slogans weren't really popular back then. 1911 ad for Valley Bank The first slogan that I see is "The Bank of Service", which you can see in this 1911 ad. Not the catchiest slogan in the world, but at least it was a slogan! 1940s Valley Bank In the 1940s it was "Progressing with Arizona". This stayed their slogan until the 1950s, when it changed to "Arizona's Bank". 1950s Valley Bank 1960s Valley Bank money bag The next slogan, from the 1960s, was "Everywhere i...

If you were living in Phoenix in the nineties, you remember Bank One. They were the bank that Valley Bank became, and if you lived in Phoenix going back to 1800s (yes 1800s), you remember Valley Bank. Nowadays, just to keep the record straight, it's Chase Bank. I started working for Valley Bank in 1989, and I left in 1996. And it was the best of times, and then it was the worst of times, to work for the company. By the way, I didn't work at a branch, I worked in the tower downtown, as part of the graphics department. I had a cubicle on the 31st floor. I was very happy to get the job as a graphic designer for Valley Bank, and happier still when Bank One bought it out and everyone got raises, and the company was saved. From 1992, when the process of converting Valley Bank over to Bank One began, life was good for Valley Bank/Bank One employees. In fact, if you recall, back in 1993 the commercials that had been running for many years, with the coaches from ASU and the U o...

Californians hate tourists from Arizona, who they call Zonies. And "hate" may be too extreme a term, so maybe it's more like: "loathe, detest, dislike greatly, abhor, abominate, despise, execrate, feel aversion toward, feel revulsion toward, feel hostile toward, be repelled by, be revolted by, regard with disgust, not be able to bear/stand, be unable to stomach, find intolerable, shudder at, recoil from, shrink from". Yeah, I just copied that. And the reason for this is simply human nature. And it's an emotional response, not an intellectual one. Intellectually, Californians know that tourists bring in a lot of money, especially tourists from Arizona, in the summer. If you live in Arizona, you know that tourists bring in a lot of money in the winter, but they're still jamming up the streets, getting in the way, driving the prices up, etc., etc. When I lived in California, in the 1980s, I really hadn't spent enough time in Arizona to be conside...

If you've lived in Phoenix for a long time, like I have, and you hear someone say that the streets are confusing, you may say "Huh?" I will often point out that Phoenix streets are on a simple grid, and have a wonderfully logical order. The east-west major streets are all a mile apart, and the north-south streets are numbered. Of course you have to know the difference between Streets and Avenues. Let's take a look at all of this from a visitor's point of view. When Phoenix was originally platted, in 1870, the north-south streets were named after Indian tribes (well kinda), and the east-west streets were named after Presidents. That's why Washington is the main east-west street. Central (then called Center) was the main north-south street. As you went west it was Cortez, Mojave, Papago, Cocopa, and so on, and as you went east it was Montezuma, Maricopa, Pima, etc. That was fine when Phoenix was tiny, but as it grew the names were changed to numbers. The ...

At the risk of revealing my age (which you've probably figured out by now) I've had a lot of experience with Arizona. And I have fond memories. Today I'd like to go back to the 1970s. I did some wonderful stuff, and some dumb stuff. And I don't regret any of it. I tubed the Salt River once without any sunblock on and got so burned that my skin peeled off. I had a neighbor at the apartments where I lived who was a nurse, and she gave me a jar of Noxema, which I lathered on for days. That sunburn hurt! A memory, but maybe not so fond. One of my fondest memories is of the first winter that I was able to be in a swimming pool, in 1977. I grew up in Minneapolis, and yes, I was one of those people who jumped in the pool in the winter. Yep, it was cold, but it was an experience that I'll always remember, and cherish. It felt good in the water, and I learned that the low humidity of the desert makes getting out of the pool hurt - a lot! It's been a long time, an...