MyDad: The Phoenix I Knew. Arizona’s Hometown From the Eyes of a 1950s-born Phoenician

When I was a kid, back in the 1950s, my folks used to take us for a drive just for fun… This was in Phoenix, Arizona when the population was a little over 100,000 (Editor’s note: !!). Back then Phx was a kinda Western farming stockyard (Ed note: ?), a kinda big, but kinda smalltown-feeling place… No malls yet…

You still had to go downtown to shop at a department store for school clothes, Christmas, or any big occasion or important item you needed. There were repair shops and gas stations and little stores here and there but no Circle Ks, U-Totems (Ed Note: ?! … I have never heard of this…), or QT’s… Anyway back to my story.

A birds eye view of Phoenix and Cave Creek Road in the days of my dad's upbringing

We lived in a new sub division about three or four miles outside the city limits. Built right in the middle of farmers fields full of Cotton, Corn, Watermelon, Cantaloupe and a variety of other agricultural crops (Ed Note: This sounds AMAZING. I wish I could’ve seen it back then). Back then Phoenix was an irragated desert oasis with irrigation ditches lining the sides of most major streets. Big wide ditches maybe three feet deep, some deeper, full of Goldfish, Crawdads, Bullfrog and all kinds of neat stuff for a kid; Ahh spending summer days… playing in these “natural swimming pools” was a joy I’ll never forget.

There were and still are major canals running through Phoenix, some downtown were built in the 1800s and others later on were 40-50 feet across and maybe 6, 7, 8 or 10 feet deep. These were built for irrigating desert land into bountiful farmland.

You see water is what made Phoenix seem like we didn’t live in the desert. Along the ditch’s that ran for miles and miles through Phx were all kinds of vegetation. Palm Trees, Cottonwood Trees, Weeping Willows, even Bamboo Stands (Ed note: :O I remember the bamboo! I haven’t seen bamboo growing in Phoenix since I was little in the 80s’, early 90s… but my grandpas house had Bamboo growing in the dirt field behind the house…); Just about whatever was planted in Phoenix grew along the flowing water ways of the desert.

A look at Metro Center when it was first built in the early 1970s. Even at this time, you can see that it was desert all around the mall...

The drives my family took would mostly be in the winter, fall or spring; summer in Phoenix was hot and dry like it still is, but back then there was no such thing as air conditioning… much less in a car!

Anyway, we’d load up in the old family car (A Plymouth I think, the name Savoy seems to come to mind… or maybe that was another one), this one was a worn brown and probably from the 1940s I’d imagine, so off we’d go just driving past farmland… vast tracts of it; past immense citrus groves… Oranges, Grapefruits, Lemon Trees, Tangerine Trees… we’d pull out of our little neighborhood and head down Northern Avenue, sometimes right, sometimes left…

As I remember it, the Interstate didn’t connect to Phoenix back then, there was a new freeway being built called Black Canyon, but it wouldn’t reach us for years to come. Route 66 came through the valley from the Eastside, although I could be wrong… But that’s how I remember it.

Here is a really interesting video that shows both old and modern versions of Phoenix and talks about the history behind certain buildings and landmarks.

Here is a video of Phoenix, Arizona from the 1950s! This one is a little slow though, but it does show interesting stuff at the end.

Anyway, us boys would be in the back seat (all five of us) with my older sister up front with the folks usually, and we’d go on our drive. As we passed the farmland, you could look down the rows of Corn, Lettuce or whatever when it was still small and see the rows… the furrows, turn into legs… if they had just irrigated, it was even better! The shinny water, the stubby green crop and the furrows running… like long legs, as we passed by. If you set your eyes just right, it was awesome. At least to us simple kids it was. We’d say “Look at the farmer’s legs!”

Mostly this would happen on Sunday, we’d drive down Northern for 7 or 8 miles, then turn downtown where my grandpa’s church was. We’d stop for lunch at a restaurant or cafe afterward, then head home, back to the “farmer’s legs”. I’ll always carry with me those memories of Cotton fields, Watermelon fields… a mile square…

And I think about it now and then… I remember, and tell a story to my kids who’ve heard it a hundred or more times…

But ya know those times and the small city were nice for back then or for memories. But if not for progress and the three or four building booms throughout the years, me and a lot of other local guys (Phoenix born, bred and raised) wouldn’t have entered the building trades like we did.

The early days of Phoenix and heading downtown to shop!

And what about all the malls and shopping centers? Well the Citrus groves were long ago plowed under to make room for urban sprawl… Oh and how Phoenix has sprawled!

Almost all of the farmland of my youth and memories is now gone – family’s having given in to the big city pressure, selling family farms, homesteads, orchards… where now apartments, condos, townhouses, etc. make-up saburbia. The beautiful tree-lined ditches from my youth, our old swimming holes, are all piped and covered over for wider paved 4 to 6-lane streets…. Freeways, stacked with swirls of roads and big-city-looking tunnels…

In this day and age there is now no need to go downtown, cause there’s a Walmart, K-Mart, Home Depot, Lowes, Jack in the Box, McDonalds, Wendy’s, Burger King and a hundred others with big flashing signs on every corner and down every street…

Cruising Central was a favorite pastime during my parents' teen years. You can see 50s era cars in this full-color picture!

Ya know, it’s a little noisier now, but I gotta admit — the convenience of pulling up to the corner, where just about anything you need is close by… It’s great and it has its advantages that we old-timer Phoenicians born in the “old days” could scarcely comprehend.

I guess every generation has gone through the growth of something small booming to something big… Or watched the change overcome a once-small town…

Well as of the 2010 Census our lil town of Phoenix, Arizona, the little metropolitan area of my youth, is home to 4.2 million people… The sixth most populous city in the United States.

This Phoenix, AZ birds-eye picture of south on Indian School Rd. & Central shows urban sprawl beginning to take over in the ---- early 60s.

Phoenix is the largest capital city in the U.S. and the only State Capitol with over 100,000 people… Founded in 1861 near the Salt River (which I recall overflowing from time to time, we’d all run down to watch the spectacle), and incorporated in 1881. In 1950 Phoenix had a population of just over 100,000 people. Through the following decades Phx maintained growth streaks of 25% per year, making it the fastest-growing city in America many times, along with Houston, Texas and Las Vegas, Nevada.

Sometimes nowadays, when my wife and I “drive into town”, and we go down old Northern Avenue (which, by the way, is now located in what is about the center of the city), I set my eyes just right and in my mind I can still see the Farmer’s Legs running across endless fields…..

About My Dad
My dad was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona.

He has lived here his whole life, along with his large family. His two parents, and my six aunts and uncles (minus one, who was murdered when he was in his early 20s… He is actually the spitting image of my little brother…) and now my whole family who have never lived a minute outside of the walls of this great city.

Dad has worked many jobs and trades throughout the years, and was well-known throughout the city as one of its greatest plasterers. There was no plastering job that dad couldn’t do, and his skill in it was unparalleled. He also did lots of construction work, and other jobs that included painting and masking, laying tile, and the like.

Dell Webb's townhouse being built. He built Sun City into the literal city it is today.

Dad came of age when the construction industry was still big business, decades before the immigrant population moved in from Mexico and the trade lost its value; selling out to the lowest bidder with companies that would undercut how much a job was actually worth. This lead to increasingly shoddy work by those folks who were less educated in the trade and the skills required, and didn’t know how to do the jobs the correct way or with the proper materials. As such, my dad is of the skill that is a dying breed in Phoenix.

His dad [correction, his grandpa] was a Mexican immigrant who came over here as a young boy with his parents; they were well known and loved in the community thanks to doing God’s work to the large Mexican population. My great grandpa had a large Baptist Spanish-speaking church, one in which my grandpa also took over as pastor for a number of years.

Unfortunately I was too young to have seen any of this, and I don’t remember the church at all. Sadly the Spanish-speaking side of the family died with my grandpa’s passing just this past year, he was the only one in the family that spoke the language and never successfully passed it on to any of his kids. Much less my generation or even the generation before me, none of them are Spanish-speakers. Spanish was solely my grandpas.

I also never got to meet my great-grandpa, having only seen him before my memory took hold as a toddler or very young boy. These days my dad is an inspiring poet, and over the years (even before my birth), has written a number of fantastic poems, songs and stories. One day soon… you will be reading his work. :)

This is the first article (and incidentally, the 100th post on my website! :D Thanks dad!) that my dad has written for Watch Us Play Games. He is so oldschool that he actually wrote the article on *gasp* PAPER(!!)… with a PENCIL no less (pencils… I’m surprised they even make them anymore, eh :P) and gave it to me to transcribe into this newfangled digital medium, as his typing would’ve taken several days if not longer.

Look forward to many more articles to be written by my dad. A lot of them nostalgic pieces giving an old-timers view of this crazy modern world we currently live-in. And soon, I will be setting up online destinations where you will be able to see the amazing written works of my father from throughout the years. Thanks for reading. :)

This amazing photograph shows 15 cent hamburgers! Imagine that! Probably mid-1950s to early 1960s.

My Dad’s Corrections
About the Salt River: Actually, the Salt River was still flowing when my parents were teens in the late 30’s and early 40s. They had parks and swimming pools next to it, Riverside Park and Riverside Pool. — Grandma Smith [Editor’s note, that’d be my grandmother] used to ride their horses down to the river from their little farm on Roser Road.

Bad Phoenix Photo, Dad says: Photo of downtown Phoenix is NOT Phoenix. [Ed. Note: Damn Internet… you put in “Phoenix” and you get all kinds of entries from guy’s named or aliased “phoenix” or from publications with “Phoenix” in the name… I’ve since removed photo. I’ll add a different one of actual Phoenix later. The other photos are correct though.]

About My Great Grandpa, Dad says: My grandfather was the Mexican immigrant [Ed Note: I accidentally said “grandpa” when I meant “great grandpa” or dad’s grandpa *scrolls up to correct*]. He walked to Phoenix from Santa Rosalea Baja Mexico with his mother and aunt at the end part of the Mexican Revolution – sometime in the late teens. 1917-1918? Grandpa [Ed. Note, he’s referring to my grandpa, his dad] was born in Phx in the 1920s, whereas your grandmother came here to Phoenix from Iowa with her parents in 1932-1933, she was born in Oklahoma City. [Ed Note: Family history update ftw! :D)

Here is a fun video of Central High School from 1970!

Other articles by my dad:
5. The Glass Oval Cuff-Link… Trinkets, Memories, and Pawnee Bill (Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show) (May 11, 2012)
4. Bullfrogs, Bullies and The Troggs (May 5, 2012)
3. Classical Music (Beethoven), Spencer Tracy (Roger’s Rangers) And Computers… TV, Movies and Memories of Days Gone By (April 25th, 2012)
2. Old Guys & Youtube (April 13th, 2012)
1. — The one you’re reading. —