Being sober in old-time Phoenix


I've always been fascinated by the word "sober", meaning not intoxicated. Of course, it could also just mean calm and well-thought-out, the way that judges are, but mostly it's used to indicate that someone isn't drunk at that particular moment. And it's a window into understanding old-time Phoenix.

As a man who likes a shot of whiskey on special occasions, or a glass of beer in the evenings, it's hard for me to imagine how regularly pixelated the people in old-time Phoenix were. It's like thinking about how much they smoked - most people started smoking as children, and always had a pipe, or a cigar, or a cigarette, in their mouth, unless they were sleeping. Nowadays we would call that "chain-smoking", but in old-time Phoenix it would have been perfectly natural. Women tended not to smoke, unless they had reached an age where they really didn't care what people thought, and the image of an elderly woman with a corn-cob pipe is a stereotype because it was actually quite common.

But I digress. We're talking about being sober here. And that means abstaining from intoxicating beverages for the length of time it takes for alcohol to wear off. And that means about a day. In other words, intoxication from alcohol would be gone from someone's system if they simply slept it off. They might have a terrible hangover, or be deathly ill, but they're no longer drunk, they're sober. Well, give it until that evening.

From a modern perspective the use of alcohol seems as if Phoenix were populated by a bunch of drunks. It wouldn't have been unusual for a working man to have a swig of whiskey in the morning, and carry a flask with him all day. Mothers would rub whiskey on the gums of teething babies. And yes, you would take a shot of whiskey to help deaden the pain if they had to take a bullet out of you. Ouch! The list goes on and on of "medicinal purposes" for alcohol, usually whiskey. And of course whiskey can cheer and inebriate, which for some people falls into the category of "medicinal purposes", not unlike the taking of various drugs today.

So if I were to walk into old-time Phoenix right now, I'd be sober. I would also, by the way, not be smoking. So I'd feel a bit out of place.

Image at the top of this post: 1911 ad for whiskey, the pure food, which physicians often prescribe.

 If you liked this article, and would like to see more in the future, please consider becoming a patron of History Adventuring on Patreon. If you're already a patron, thank you! Your pledge makes this happen!

 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

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