The busy lives of the Idle Rich in old-time Phoenix


I've always had a fascination with rich people, and I'm pretty sure that most people do. I remember a TV show called "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous", which left an impression on me, and I wondered what those people were like IRL (In Real Life). I've met a few of these people, and after pondering it, I've come to the conclusion that they're just like anyone else I've ever met, either relaxed and easy-going, or nervous and anxious, and either busy, or not.

Speaking for myself, I've been lucky. I never wanted to be poor, and I never wanted to be rich, and I got my wish. I know that I fall into that middle area that understands what it's like to panic about being able to pay the rent, and I also have experienced the opposite, which was best summed up by a song which said, "Too much time on my hands."

In my twenties, I got to see how people who had to work all of the time lived. I had a neighbor in Santa Barbara who lived in what I called a "World of Total Work". He had a nine-to-five job, at the local community college doing landscaping, and at night he did night watchman jobs at various places around the area. He slept in his truck. I have no idea how long he had been doing that before I met him, and for how long afterwards he did that, but it was an important lesson to me that I didn't want to do nothing but go to work, sleep, go to work, sleep, etc., etc. So I turned to the Idle Rich to see what they did. Many of those people tended to go to a lot of parties, stay up late, drink a lot, and socialize, but that never interested me. I'm a morning person, and I chose golf.

Let's time-travel back to old-time Phoenix, and spend some time at the Ingleside Inn. It's 1913, and I'm staying there for the season. That is, I'll be there in the winter, and then I'll probably wander over to Monte Carlo, or somewhere. I really don't know, I'll think of that later. It's a beautiful January morning, and I'm heading over the links. I will see you there!

Good morning! Would you like to walk along with me! A golf cart? No, this is 1913, we walk. No, of course I don't carry my clubs, that's what the caddies do. Ah, and here he is now! By the way, you don't look very good this morning, did you go to one of the bottle parties? Yes, I understand, social obligation, noblesse oblige you might say. No, I wasn't invited. Old Buffy is still offended about my comment about the tyres on his Rolls-Kinardly. I'll probably see him in Cannes, and probably by then he'll be over it.

Caddie! What do you recommend here? A mashie-niblick? I'll take a full swing here, watch me tear the gutta-percha of the ball, and hit it all of the way to the Camel Back Mountain!

A good round! I'm going to write down 72. Yes, it's my usual game. Would you care to join me in a cocktail? Funny! Yes, of course there'll be room enough in it for both of us. Gin-and-tonic? Then what say we toddle over to Buffy's place for more restoratives?

You can still play this course, it's now called the Arizona Country Club. Members only.
Help support history adventuring, and see a lot of cool old photos of Phoenix on Patreon

 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