Day before yesterday I had an entertaining (sorta) adventure in Valley street navigation. It actually was pretty interesting…and amazing.
Traipsed out to the Mayo, which is on the far eastern border of Scottsdale, halfway to Payson from here. Driving back, I decided to circumvent the unholy construction on Shea (or whatever the mess is: hard to tell why they’ve got the road blocked for mile after mile) by heading north on Frank Lloyd Wright and then cruising west on another main drag.
Well…this took me, shall we say, far afield. Ended up in north Scottsdale, in the general direction of where my friends Barbara and Larry used to live while Barbara and I were in graduate school. They rented a studio that was part of a big ole’ million-dollar house in what was then the fringe of Scottsdale up against some local hills.
What was then is NOT what is now. :-D.
That place…it defies description. A once-quiet enclave for the Wealthy in the Know is now a suburb that goes on and on and on and ON. It’s got vast spreads of apartment buildings. Miles and miles of tile-roofed stick-and-Styrofoam suburban HOAs. Dizzying clusters of commerce. It spreads way, WAY north, oozes around the little “mountains,” and saturates the land as far as you can see.
It was overcast, preparatory to yesterday’s rain, and the sky was so gray I couldn’t see where the sun was and so, having been turned and turned and turned, could NOT for the life of me figure out which way was north. Or which way I needed to turn to get out of the damned maze.
What a mess!
And what a shame. It was such a pretty place. Now…well, as ugly Southern-California style suburbs go, it’s not too bad. Comparable, I’d say, to some of the less annoying parts of Orange County. But as a place to live? Unless you’re into beehive-dwelling: ugh
This is why, if my son didn’t object so vociferously, I would move to Prescott in an instant. Or Patagonia. Or Oro Valley. Any place but here.
It’s funny how you tend to identify people with the places they live. Or lived. I think of Barbara as Scottsdale. I think of Larry as Phoenix.
Barbara, because after she unloaded Larry and married his Coast Guard shipmate, she ended up (by amazing serendipity) in far east Scottsdale, and that’s where she lived until she and the new guy moved to Seattle. Larry’s parents lived out their lives at a house in a North Central Phoenix neighborhood not far from where DXH and I lived. and despite his lengthy marriage to Barbara and the many places where they dwelt, I connect him with the parental manse.
Larry and Barbara had rented a studio that was appended to a lovely old adobe mansion (REAL adobe) in Scottsdale, and it was a beautiful place. Had about a half-acre back yard, with a view to the north that stretched all the way across the desert to the mountains. At one point, he proposed to us and the other couple in our threesome that we should band together and buy that house. DXH was averse: thought that was a losing idea.
But…Larry was right. Those houses are now going for prices in excess of (hang onto your hat!) SIX MILLION DOLLARS.
It would have taken half our adult lives to cash in…but if we’d bought that place and just sat tight, we would have cleaned up by now.
Why are you so concerned about what your son thinks? If he decided to relocate, would he feel that he has to ask your permission?
He has threatened to have me declared incompetent if I try to sell the house. Though obviously that’s a quarrel I would win, I do not need that kind of hassle, or the bad feelings that would follow — for the rest of our lives. Besides, there are worse things than being trapped in North Central Phoenix. 😀