CHAPTER 151: IMPRESSIONS OF MY LIFE: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A RECHERCHE POET SECOND HALF ON THE ROD AGAIN 1982

 CHAPTER 151 ON THE ROAD AGAIN & NAKED PEOPLE 1982

 

What’s with all these people dancing about some garden in the altogether? 

 

These are statues by thesculptor John H. Waddell (right). The piece is called, “Dance” and it sits in front of the Herberger Theater Center. These figures were directly across from the Hyatt where I was staying, so every time I went out they greeted me. This is terrible to admit, but I can’t remember exactly why I was in Phoenix. I know it was on Bank business, but exactly the purpose is no longer in my head. Here is what I actually remember about my trip to Phoenix. 

I flew down on Continental. We made an unscheduled stop at the Denver airport, my first time in that state. I did not see much of it though, for we were stuck in the airport for a few hours. Our Continental Flight had problems with the hydraulics. When we landed, we did not taxi up to a terminal. Some shuttle buses rolled up to the plane. We exited down stairs pushed up to the door. The buses took as to the main terminal, where we sat around for quite a while. There had been some problem detected within the plane and after we deplaned it was driven straight to the maintenance hangar.

Finally, we were re-boarded. This time directly from a terminal gate.

The plane then taxied out toward a runway, but suddenly stopped. A new leak in the hydraulic system had occurred,  which had to be fixed before we took off. This took an hour or so and we all remained in our seats upon the plane until it was done. Once they felt the plane had been made safe we continued on to  Phoenix (left from the air), not without some apprehension.

The surroundings were not very inspiring during the taxi ride to the
Hyatt hotel. There was a revolving restaurant atop a kind of tower that rose above the Hyatt. Our hosts insisted we had to eat there. The problem for me was getting up there. There was one elevator that took you and it was on the outside of the building. Furthermore, it was totally glass enclosed so you could see the city as it fell further below. I still suffered from my fear of height, so I was huddled back against the elevator door that clung to the building. I think the meal was quite good and the view was interesting since the restaurant did a constant, slow 360-revolution over and over. You got to see all the unfolding landscape; however, by the time we ordered dinner night had fallen so you mostly saw lights.

The next day I took an afternoon walk through downtown. It was only 96 degrees since this was October and we were past the peak of summertime. They say it is a dry heat, but let me tell you, when you walked on the sunny side of the street it was still hot. The shady side of the sidewalk was comfortable, I will say that, and you didn’t really sweat. 

At one point on my walk it rained, came down hard, but didn’t last long. Me and my clothes dried out in minutes once it stopped.

The downtown area was depressing (keep in mind this was 1982, it may be quite different today). There were a lot of closed and boarded up stores and desperate looking men shuffling about the streets or sitting in deserted shop entries. I was glad to get back to the hotel area. The size of the place reminded me of Wilmington.

I did manage to take a long bus tour during my stay. The temperature was near 100 in Phoenix and it was sunny. We started out through the desert, a lot of brown ground and brown bushes, here and there a cactus. However, an hour or so along we pulled into a truck stop for breakfast and the ground had turned to white. It was snowing.

 Our main destination was the Grand Canyon. We stopped in a Navajo Reservation for lunch. As we drove through the roads to the restaurant and trading post we saw a lot of squalor. Every yard seemed to have the rusting bones of an old cars. On the right is some of what we traded to the Navajo in exchange for their land, so we could claim we didn't steal it.

The Trading Post was nice enough, a expansive gift shop in reality. The restaurant sat to the rear. There were two sides to the menu. One side was “American” food; the other was Indian (the Term Native-American had not yet become in vogue). I was the only member of the tour group that ordered from the Indian menu. It was quite good, though I don’t remember what I ate. In fact, I’m not sure I knew what I ate.

 After lunch we stopped at another canyon, not the Grand. Maybe it
was Marble Canyon. We stopped here and the tour group wandered over to gaze down. There were no restraining walls or fences. I made several ladies on the tour nervous because I went out atop some rocks along the edge to  take pictures. As I have said, I get foolishly brave when viewing the world through a camera. I know I took several rolls of film in Arizona, but all I can find amount to less than two rolls and are all of downtown Phoenix near my hotel.

Oh, just as a note, we did get to The Grand Canyon and spend some time gazing at this long, deep gash, but in all honesty I wasn’t overwhelmingly impressed. I was a bit disappointed, I guess. The photo on the left is my father at the Grand Canyon in 1967. Sitting up on the restraining wall is not something I would do. They probably don’t let anyone do that anymore.

 I enjoyed my excursion, but it was pretty busy back home and I was definitely required to address it. As previously noted we had listed out Cobbs Street home for sale while we searched for a new house in Delaware. We had contracted for a house in Claymont, contingent on our selling our current place.  Certain matters surfaced there and we pulled our contract. Fortunately, we did get our full deposit returned. Ironically, we contracted on another house only two doors away. It was the same style. As it was, our Drexel Hill property sold and we were able to buy this home.

 What an amazing difference Delaware was, not only in eliminating that long commute, but in almost everything else. This is the basic description of the home we bought: a single family home that contains 2,400 square feet and was built in 1957. It contains 4 bedrooms and 1.5  baths. The lot is 7,841 square feet. The property last sold in November 1982 for $57,000. Yeah that last buyer be us. The photo on the left
is the Claymont house at the time we purchased it in November 1982.

The double house we sold in Drexel Hill is a single family home containing 1,152 square feet and was built in 1947, half the size and ten  years older. It has 3 bedrooms and 1 bath. Its postage stamp lot is 2,657 square feet, 2/3 smaller than the new home we bought. We received $54,000 for the Drexel Hill Semi-detached, only $3,000 less than the much bigger lot and home we purchased. (Our half of the double house on Cobbs in on the right hand side in this photo, the part without a porch roof.)

Not only that, our property tax in Delaware was less than half of what we were paying in Pennsylvania for a much smaller place. Delaware also had a much lower state income tax and no sales tax. The house on Cobbs Street had an unfinished basement that was dark, damp and spooky.)

Our new home had a finished basement with a huge recreation room (as they called in then). The kids could play down there on bad weather days; if they wanted they could even ride their bikes about downstairs.

We moved to the home November 7, 1982. Neighbors of my parents as well as they came along to help with the move. Settlement was made on November 12, on the sale of Cobbs in the morning and the purchase of Claymont in the afternoon.

I had rented a U-Haul. We initially got lost. It took us a while to find out way easily in and out of our development. When I pulled the truck up to the front and began toting furniture down the ramp, the next door neighbor came over and offered to help. He introduced himself, said he was a Deacon at a local Baptist Church and that he and his wife headed the youth group there, so  we could expect to see a bunch of teenagers at his home regularly. He suggested I might like to come to his church, Bethel Baptist. Kind of interesting, since Lois and I had previously been youth leaders ourselves and I had attended as a teen, and we were married in, Bethel Methodist. (The Claymont home as it looks today on the right.)