INTRODUCTION TO PHOENIX, ARIZONA - 1922

Our family moved from the western part of Colorado to Phoenix in the winter of 1922. I was eleven years old. Besides my parents, there were two older sisters and one younger brother. We made this long trip in a 1918 Model T Ford touring car. The running boards, fenders and a rack that had been installed on the back of the car were stacked with boxes and suitcases. Spare tires, tubes and tube patching material were tied on all over the car. Crossing the northwest corner of New Mexico from Durango, Colorado to Arizona the roads were completely covered with windblown snow. To guide us across this barren land we had to use the tracks of other cars that had recently gone ahead in the direction that we wanted to go. If there were no tracks we used mountain peaks or mountain ranges in the far off distance to steer by. The sharp outline of a huge rock called "Shiprock" will linger in my memory bank forever. Traveling on a sharp clear day when one could see forever, it seemed to us that across this vast expanse of snow-covered ground, this odd shaped unusual rock loomed in front of us all one day and most of the next one.

In Arizona, traveling through Winslow, Flagstaff, Williams and Prescott the roads immediately became better and maintained but were very mountainous. It was in the dark of the night when we finally came out of the mountains and started the steep decent of the Yarnell Hill grade. On our way down this winding, curving road we started to unsnap and unbutton the side curtains to open up the car to the warm air. By the time we arrived at Congress Junction, we all had removed our lap and body blankets and at Wickenburg, everyone of us had discarded our coats and jackets. It was strange to us to be experiencing such warm weather in the month of January. We arrived in the city of Phoenix, at 3 a.m. My Dad had stopped the loaded Model T in front of the "Ford Hotel" on the northeast corner of Second Street and Washington and had no trouble finding us all rooms.

Early the next morning, noisy clanking street cars on Washington Street and some turning on Second Street in front of the hotel awakened us. We all got up. We went out for breakfast and then went house hunting. That evening we were moving into our new home in Phoenix that the folks had found. It was in the northeast part of the city at 200 W. Pierce Street. The only paved streets that we found were Washington and Central Avenue. The rest were loose dirt. We were told by our new landlord that Phoenix was a city of 46,000. It was closely surrounded by desert with far off mountains to the south and to the north. Coming from a small town of 200 people, I was awed and bewildered.

My Dad got a job as a bookkeeper at a large box factory out on Grand Avenue past Glendale. My sister Margi went to work as a reporter at The Arizona Republican newspaper and my other sister, Rosalind went to work as a telephone operator for the Boston Store on Washington and Second Streets. My brother, Wayne and I started school at Monroe Elementary School on Seventh and Van Buren Streets.

(NOTE: Today, Monroe Elementary School is called Children's Museum of Phoenix. The current use was not the building's original intent. Though the building has housed the museum since the summer of 2008, it has been standing far longer. Opening in 1913, the Monroe School, was the largest elementary schools west of the Mississippi and one of the largest Neoclassical Revival schools left in Phoenix. It was built in 1913 by Los Angeles designer Norman Marsh. At the time, it was billed the "most modern grade school in the United States." The school closed its doors in 1972 due to declining enrollment. Even today, the original bones of the building are surprisingly modern for a building its age.)

Dad traded in the worn out Model T for a 1920 Oldsmobile touring car. I had patched so many tubes on the Ford during our trip that I was sure we did not have a tube left that had any room for another patch. This Oldsmobile was a large car. It had a long wide body with a long, narrow rounded hood shaped like a top half of a large drainage pipe. One summer vacation, Dad got my brother and I a job out at the box factory. We nailed together already cut pieces of leather into lettuce and celery crates. One evening coming home from work I was driving, we were almost to the paved road at Glendale when a rider-less, small saddled pony started to pass by me on the opposite side of the road. There was a young caballero chasing and yelling at the pony in a loud Mexican voice. The pony suddenly turned across the road and he was soon right in front of me. The Oldsmobile hit the pony broadside. It was flipped over towards the windshield of the car with his four legs kicking in the air. The pony had landed upside down with the deep seat of the strange looking saddle firmly wedged on top of the rounded hood of the Olds. It was a snug fit between the large round horn and the deep high back of the saddle. The car was stopped. The pony's four legs were moving like was running upside down in the air or pumping a bicycle.

People had started to gather around the front of the car. The caballero was pressed against the left front fender still screaming and waving his arms at his pony. Some in the crowd was laughing including my Dad and brother. Five men were running towards us from a railroad loading shed. They each had a short coil of small rope with them. They jumped up on top of the fenders and hood. They grabbed the front legs of the pony and held them tight. One of the men took his piece of rope and tied the front legs of the pony like a cowboy would tie the legs of a calf at a rodeo. These men soon had the back legs of the pony bound together. They jumped down from the car, took off their hats, wiped the seat from their faces and said, "Now what?" Their question was soon answered.

A flatbed truck with a hand crank geared winch was crossing the railroad tracks from the vegetable loading shed. With much man power and straining, these men had the saddled pony laying on the road. They freed his legs and he started kicking them again. He rolled over and got to his feet. The caballero was holding his bridle still yelling...