How do you remember Phoenix? Stories from long time residents... (Cave Creek: boyfriend, ambulance)

[JoeC]

Thanks, Sluggo. Missed your earlier post.
It's good to know that my memory still works, occasionally...

[raventhicket]

I grew up in Sunnyslope area...such good memories I have we lived in the area from 1970 until I moved to California in 1993. I went to Guardian Angel Nursery up by Cloud 9...if this makes any sense, I hated it and loved it. They had a huge Merry Go Round in back and huge sand pit and lots of toys to play on. But the people that ran it were mean and the kids that watched us overnight were mean and scared us. If you were lucky enough to eat there...they took you to a seperate building out back and you sat Diner style and it was always the same thing...mac n cheese with green beans and hot dogs all mixed together...YUCK! We stopped going there when I was in the 4th grade at the Original Mountian View School on 15th Ave. & Mountain View...man I miss that school. I don't know what it is now...but at least its still there. My daughter went there K-2nd grade also...she drove by the other day and said it was gone...so I got on Google and saw its still there, its just something else now saving grace...the old Country Market is still there!!! I remember as kid in the 70s going there before and after school and spending my pennies awww...candy in those days was so much better than it is now. They only let us in a few kids at a time. Now I'm home sick So glad I found this site though. Anyone remember the old Good Shepherd Home for Wayward Girls on 19th Ave. and Northern?? I so wanted to live there when I was a kid...lol

[desertskies]

Originally Posted by desertratz

Very cool indeed! I remember the 72 floods, especially the part where I was trying to get from the west valley to the east on a motorcycle down Camelback Rd. I was truly a drowned rat on that day! The Black Canyon freeway from roughly Van Buren to who knows how far north was just a canal full of submerged cars when the drainage pumps where overwhelmed and failed. I remember some guy put his boat in there and was putting up and down before he was chased out by the police. It poured rain steadily for several days probably because of some stalled tropical depression or something?

The Indian Bend wash wasn't much better at Scottsdale Rd.

As described by the NWS website from June 22 1972:
1972�Phoenix�s Worst Flash Flood�
June 22 1972...Severe flash flooding occurs in metro Phoenix.� Three to five inches of rain falls over much of the north half of the Phoenix metro area. Flood waters inundate hundreds of homes in Phoenix and Scottsdale.� This is particularly notable because normal June rainfall in Phoenix is only 0.13 of an inch.

As for a stalled tropical depression, that happened in Oct, 1972:
1972�Hurricane Joanne�
October 4 through 7 1972...The remains of Hurricane Joanne brings heavy rain and flooding to much of the state.� It is the first �documented� time that a tropical storm reaches Arizona with its cyclonic circulation intact.� Heavy rains fall over much of the state with severe flooding in the Clifton...Duncan...and Safford areas.�

Note to Mods...I understand that doesn't bode with the Phoenix thread, but felt it can tie in with some of the unusual weather the Valley experienced in '72.

[raventhicket]

OMG...just reading (from the beginning) all the posts...got to page 17 or 18...I remember my mom sending me to Circle K to buy cigarettes for her and she had to give me a note...and they would sell them to me. Makes me wonder why I needed a note, I remember those cigarette machines were around back then too and anyone could buy from those.

[SluggoF16]

Originally Posted by desertskies

The Indian Bend wash wasn't much better at Scottsdale Rd.

In late February or early March 1978 I arrived at Saguaro HS only to discover that school was cancelled for the day due to the Indian Bend Wash flooding. This was as it was being turned into a Greenbelt but before the bridges. I lived on the east side but since so many faculty and students lived on the west side classes were cancelled.

The 72 flood left a big "lake" at Indian School and Hayden for the whole summer. Fun to wade and muck in.

[1937Gal]

The 72' floods were something else. We had a lot of employees that simply could not get to work because of the streets. Some of the businesses at Central Ave and Osborn had muck and mud that flowed into the main floors.... I went home by 15th Ave and I knew always that just north of Bethany by the golf course the flooding on that street would make me have white knuckles to get through it before the car stalled.

Originally Posted by Dave Bob

Backed-up traffic crossing the Mill Ave bridge made me late for the evening final exam in a history class at ASU. (At least I wasn't on a motorcycle!)
I think there was a pretty long period during that school year when I would get up extra early every day to get to campus since I always had to cross the Salt.

One of the pix on that very cool flood website shows Christown's parking lot full of water. That must have been the time I remember sandbags around my grandparents' house, on 15th ave just north of Christown.

[JoeC]

Originally Posted by SluggoF16

In late February or early March 1978 I arrived at Saguaro HS only to discover that school was cancelled for the day due to the Indian Bend Wash flooding. This was as it was being turned into a Greenbelt but before the bridges. I lived on the east side but since so many faculty and students lived on the west side classes were cancelled.

The 72 flood left a big "lake" at Indian School and Hayden for the whole summer. Fun to wade and muck in.

IIRC there was a hotel on the west bank of Indian Bend Wash in the 80s; at the time, the running joke with the hotel workers was that their phone number was 998-SWAMP.
There were depth markers on both sides of the wash - and there would still be at least one idiot per monsoon season who thought they could drive through an indicated 6 feet of water.

[dgsaz1950]

Originally Posted by JoeC

About The Salt River flooding:

Maybe early or mid 80s - does anyone remember when they had to close the newest bridge over the Salt (with a higher CFS - cubic feet/second - rating) because it was deemed unsafe, while the WPA-era Mill Avenue bridge (with a far lower CFS rating) was allowed to remain open? IIRC the river was flowing at 200,000 CFS, which was way over what the Mill Ave bridge was designed for - and it remained safe.

I thought it was a little ironic.

Am I remembering this correctly?

What I do recall; the bridge was under construction and the shoring was engineered to withstand X amount of cubic feet of water per second. After the flow went double or more, the shoring started to fail and the partial bridge, shoring, form work and everything else fell into the flood and went down stream. Opps!

How about the industrious sorority girls who would buy six packs of beer and then roller skate through the waiting traffic on Mill Ave selling single cans for $1.00 a can.

Or the crazy person who drove his jeep across the railroad bridge on night to beat the traffic.

I was building a project in Tempe and would park my truck at Legend City and ride my bike across the bridge to work and then back across after work.

Prior to the 72 floods there were two old frame houses in the river bottom. One almost under the bridge and the other on the bank behind the stockyards. I watched both structures break up and float down stream.

At the time I was living in Ash Court, an old tourist court at Ash and Second Street in Tempe. I spent a lot of time in the river bottom on my dirt bike. There was an actual hobo camp under the old Ash Avenue Bridge. Not homeless, but railroad hobos. They cooked over a fire with a big pot as you would imagine.

After the 72 flood i never saw them again.

dgsaz

[roosevelt]

1966 flood.

[1937Gal]

We teens cruised Central in the 50s.... down to the library, turn around in the library parking lot, back on Central north to AD McClain Real Estate (sat on the corner of Campbell just north of Carnation Ice Cream)...we wouldn't go all the way to Camelback because nothing much was there back then.... we hung out in the back of Mcdonalds and the manager (whose name I said I would never forget but have) would come back and shoo all of us away.




QUOTE=roosevelt;23816543]Thomas was as far as we got, nothing up there except the Polar Bar and the Gilded Cage.[/quote]