Forty Years On An Airplane

My First Flight

The first time I flew on an airplane in Summer 1973, my mother dressed us appropriately for a semi-cross continental excursion: long, pastel dresses for us girls, my Dad in a necktie and sports coat.  We climbed the exterior staircases, carrying a small token of a toy for entertainment during the 2.5 hour flight.  If we remained on our best behavior for the duration, the stewardesses would provide us with a small pin to remind us of our voyage.  We would have earned our wings.  Best behavior meant not asking for a complementary deck of cards, it meant not dropping food in our laps as we ate our meals, and it meant sitting in our seats and not getting up for any reason, even to use the on-board lavatories.

Flying in the early 1970s also meant departing from the old, brick terminal at Sky Harbor Airport.  We had only lived in the Grand Canyon State for about eighteen months, yet we had visited the terminal several times to pick up Dad from his business travels.  Sometimes we would arrive early and go out to the gate to meet him; sometimes we would change into our pajamas and just pull up curbside when he had late evening arrivals.  I remember driving down Interstate 17 and curving onto the Black Canyon Freeway, and I never remember there being any traffic.  Travel felt different then, even if I simply came along for the ride.  And when I finally boarded a plane, I felt like royalty.  And I dressed and acted accordingly.

Flash Forward

I am inflight now, and I see a completely different view.  Kicked under my seat are my flip flops.  On my tray table, a simple bag of peanuts, and I fork over the additional cost for a Corona.  The flight attendants – the majority of whom are men – wear shorts and polo shirts.   My son sits next to me, jeans and t-shirt, much like every other passenger.  Last time the two of us flew together, we sat astride on two aisle seats, but he got the better deal.  On the window beside me, a woman tucked her dog in a nylon tote under her seat, and between us her boyfriend used his soft drink can as a make-shift spittoon.  It’s a different caliber of passenger, with a different level of service, and a different in-flight experience.

But think about what else has changed.  This flight includes LED mood lighting to ease the transition from taxiway, to airborne, to landing.  I am Wi-Fi enabled and can play solitaire, not with the complimentary deck of cards, but on the in-flight gaming system.  The movie audio isn’t piped in through headset air tubes, but is electronically connected, along with a full selection of television channels and movies.  I communicate with the ground via email, or I can post a video of myself and the view out the window.  With GPS I can track my flight, see over what landmarks I am flying, and receive real-time speed and distance measurements.  This is a new era of air travel, less formal, but far more functional; planes are more snug, but letting go of the traditions of the past helps us move towards a better life and a more effective journey from Point A to Point B.  I recall a flight abroad in the early nineties where the back third of the plane contained the smoking section, as if the smoke confined itself to those rows.  I like the changes in the past forty years.  Now, if only we can get rid of the smokeless tobacco, too.

Pizza, A Wedding, & Queen

Colored Lights and Picnic Tables

As a child, the most fun birthday celebrations included chocolate cake and a trip to Organ Stop Pizza.  After placing an order, we’d sit family-style at the endless rows of checkered table cloth-covered picnic tables dotted with red glass candles.  On the wall, near the high ceiling, we watched for the numbers on the wall to illuminate in a rainbow of colors until our order number appeared.  The moment it illuminated, we would pester Dad to go and retrieve our pizzas and he returned with big metal pizza pans covered with melted cheese and tasty toppings.  And the pièce de résistance would be the enormous, mighty Wurlitzer organ connected to hundreds of pipes, a player piano, a glockenspiel, a xylophone, a compacted timpani set, and an animated bird cage.  The simple sing-a-longs would blare throughout the hall of picnic tables, and even “In The Good Old Summertime” could not compare to the “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” complete with full engine introduction.  You cannot even imagine the decibel level of “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,” my personal favorite.

No matter how many times we convinced our parents to take us to Organ Stop, we never went often enough.  We loved when out-of-town family would come to visit so we could be sure to take them to our favorite establishment.  We would submit all our most beloved song selections, even if they were the same standards the organist would play regardless of whether or not we requested them.  The colored lights would illuminate, and continue counting even after we had finished our pizza, and we would practically fall asleep on the drive home because we wanted to stay as late as possible and enjoy as much of the ambiance of the pipe-filled hall as possible.  Even through the double-paned glass outside the restaurant, we would hear the hum of the deepest notes and feel the windows vibrate as the music continued to play despite our departure.  And as we drove away we would wonder when our next chance would be to return.

Modern Love

More than two decades later, my return to Arizona includes a stroll around Arizona State University, a visit to my old residences and schools, and dinner with an organ and pizza.  Except the original location where we had spent numerous celebrations had since shuttered its doors, leaving us to track down the even larger recreation on the far side of the Valley of the Sun.  Nonetheless, I want my sons to experience the excitement of watching the colored numbers blink until we know our pizza is finally ready.  We arrive before the first note of music so as to not miss a moment of memory.  But despite the familiar colored numbers and the lengthy picnic tables with red glass candles, the new and improved Organ Stop Pizza proves to be more than I remember.

As the pipes blow their first musical blast, the Wurlitzer rises from the “basement,” and rotates to reveal the same organist who began his pizza-playing career when I celebrated my first Organ Stop birthday in the early 1970s.  But his repertoire now includes a vastly more broad selection of stylings, including, at the request of a group of graduating high-school seniors, “Bohemian Rhapsody.”  And in the upper balcony (yes, this locale even includes a second story), a wedding party celebrates with special tunes, hot, melted cheese on metal pizza pans, and tuxedos.  We stay until the last pipe blows, until the pizza is cooled and its cheese solidified, and until the colored lights stop flashing – a fete of endurance I had always wanted as a child – and regardless of their lack of overwhelming excitement that I always recall, I share some pizza, a wedding, and a little Queen with my boys at a restaurant synonymous with the colorful, tasty, musical delight of my childhood.

Astronomer's Inn

On the Hilltop

I imagine the days when drivers would just head down a US highway until sunset and hope to find a place to stay, or when planners would use an outdated travel guide to call long distance to the anticipated city of arrival and book a motel that seemed to fit the size and budget of the party.  How clean was it?  How old was it?  How well kept was it?  These mysteries eluded even the most seasoned traveler, but with the advent of the Internet, booking hotel accommodations has entered a completely different era, yet somehow, the question still lingers over vacation planning: When booking a hotel for a vacation, how often does the place where we lie our heads reach a cosmic status?

Luck must have been on our side when we traveled to Benson, Arizona.  We read a few online reviews, and we booked a one-night stay on a hilltop overlooking the edge of the Sonoran Desert at a three-room inn with a self-explanatory name.  We splurged and booked the largest accommodations in the Egyptian Suite.  Delight ensued.  Besides a luxurious garden tub, walk-in shower, and add-on suite with sink, and a sensational view of the sunrise, the building included a guest kitchen, a spacious living room, a media room, an interactive classroom, an indoor dining area, a sunroom dining area, a lower patio with barbeque grill, and an upper patio with a stone-and-groove recreation of the solar system.  To top it off, the modest beacon offered three private rooms with telescopes to view the celestial spaces overhead.  Quite the heavenly retreat!

Before And After Sunset

Son #1 wandered the desert hillsides, tracking down rabbits, flowers, and vistas worthy of his 35mm camera.  Son #2 wandered through the indoor education areas alternating his exploring by climbing the stairs to roll the smooth stones representing Jupiter, Venus, and then-planet Pluto around the boulder of the sun on the upper deck.  I repeatedly pulled my hair for my face where the wind felt determined to toss it as I attempted to capture the ambiance of the late May afternoon in words.  From time to time, one of the boys might stop to check in with me, but they had become enthralled with their own expeditions and not until the proverbial dinner bell rang did we finally regroup as a family.  We savored and swallowed our prepared dinner as the horizon likewise did the same to the evening sun.

When darkness covered the hillside and the valley, and while the moon waited patiently offstage awaiting its late evening entrance, we joined our guest astronomy buff alongside the 20” telescope in our own private observatory.  From this vantage point, and with a few magical clicks of the web-enabled mammoth in the room, we each took turns gazing upon the rings of Saturn.  Looping effortlessly around the sphere they called home, the rings lacked Hubble-quality color and clarity, but beyond a doubt, the proof that these spinning collections of rocks and debris hugged their mother planet and we witnessed this spectacle together as a little family.  Distant nebula followed suit, and once the moon distracted from our perfectly clear view of the skies beyond our little atmosphere, we stepped outside to watch man-made satellites loop the earth passing south to north, swiftly darting through the night sky.  Even with its user-generated content, expert advice, and special savings offers, Expedia could not have given our night at the Astronomer’s Inn a remotely suitable rating to match the majesty of our exquisite night among the stars.

Combing Through My Memories

My First Adventure

Just after my third birthday, my father switched jobs and our family moved to Arizona from Colorado.  Growing up in the desert climate of the Grand Canyon state (see “One Hundred Years” from March 2012) clearly shaped my passion for warmth and my distaste for snow.  Our family traveled separately to arrive at our new home with my father and me driving from Denver to Phoenix by way of Albuquerque, while my mother flew with a four-year-old and six-week-old.  While not my first road trip, I recall select pieces of this drive, but nothing of the scenery.  I wonder if maybe I was too little to see out the window.

South from the Mile High City, across the state line into New Mexico, through Santa Fe, and down to Albuquerque we drove, making a right turn towards the mountainous areas of Flagstaff during the month of December, and then a left turn towards Arizona’s capital.  I passed through three of my now favorite states, and all without a single recollection of the mountains, the sunsets, the rocks, the rivers, or the route that brought me to my childhood home.  I sometimes think it would be worth retracing my steps and driving this route again, but without the initial recollection of the voyage, it might be just another gloriously scenic drive, but not a memory inducer.

The Moments We Remember

I recall only a few memories of my time living in Colorado – watching out the picture window waiting for my Dad to come home from work,  his painting the deck a color the paint can referred to as “peanut butter,” and singing “Sugar, Sugar,” a number one hit from 1969 by the Archies.  It always strikes me as odd, what things we remember.  A paint color (which I also remember getting on my beach ball) and a cartoon pop song (which I remember hearing while riding in a car with someone who was not my family, but I don’t know who) are two distinct memories I have as a two-year-old.  When I went back to visit the house in Denver as an adult, the current resident asked if my parents had picked out the awful rust-colored carpet.  If I had to guess, I thought I remembered the carpet being green.

But on the drive from my toddler home to my childhood home, I recall only two specific moments from the trip.  The first, when I had an upset stomach and got sick all over one of the two beds in the hotel room (sorry, Dad), so he nervously let me sleep next to him, no doubt paranoid that this little person would get sick again.  And then the following morning, Dad tried to get me ready to go by combing my hair with his narrow comb rather than a gentle little girl’s hair brush.  Ouch!  I know that I cried the entire time.  (Again, sorry Dad.)  But I wonder how well I behaved in the car, what I maybe said to my Dad while we rode, what scenery we witnessed, and how I passed my time for two solid days.  I wish I remembered those moments instead.

Just Sitting

With Gratitude

Thank goodness for the Rockefellers.  Unless a student of philanthropy, the general connotation of the name may only imply oil-baron wealth or the occasional contribution to cultural antiquity.  Actually bathing in the gifts bestowed by the family of Standard Oil, may seem a distant relic of the monopolies and generosities of the early twentieth century.  Unless living near the world’s most famous Christmas tree, or working for the National Broadcasting Company in the Big Apple, perhaps those days of bygone gift-giving elude the general public.  Not true!

 

Thanks to John Junior, I enjoyed a spectacular afternoon among the most breathtaking thirty-five thousand acres ever bestowed to the United States.  As a gift to the

National Park Service, and indeed to the world, and on a late summer afternoon to me personally, John Rockefeller, youngest child of the original oil tycoon, turned over some of the most breathtaking, inspiring, and spectacular scenery just down the street from the world’s first national park.  With beer in hand, I toast this wondrous gift, and say, “Thank You, Mr. Rockefeller,” for giving it to me.

 

In Awe

Thousands of adventures await the visitors of the National Park Service.  Driving, diving, hiking, camping, canoeing, kayaking, exploring, spelunking, skiing, sailing, painting, picnicking and partaking in hundreds of unique settings besiege each visitor, fulfilling the interests of each unique observer.  My favorite, and most fulfilling activity: sitting.  Just sitting.  Yes, it is far from glamorous, or even adventurous, but it is worth every second.  Taking advantage of this school ending early for the year, we head to the Grand Canyon State for just that reason.  At the edge of the colorful abyss, on the benches of the Grand Canyon Lodge, I rest my feet on a low stone wall.  I want for nothing.

Sketching nearby, Son #2 recreates the passing clouds blowing eastward sprinkled with tiny figments of color barely noticeable against the blue sky.  In the distance on the jutting vista, Son #1 captures the moment on film, securing the passing image on a fading medium.  I still plan to raft down the canyon’s creating force in the future.  Hiking from peak to valley will someday be checked off my bucket list.  On the canyon floor I will pop a tent and gaze up the tall walls to the shimmering stars.  But for this day, this beautiful, fleeting day, I choose to sit and spend every breathing moment I am able to savor with a view I never want to forget.  Sometimes I like to spend my time just sitting in awe.

One Hundred Years

Belated Birthday

Even for a mildly obsessive calendar watcher, birthdays sometimes sneak up on me, and in my Hallmark stash, I keep a couple belated greetings in case of forgetfulness on my part.  But a landmark birthday – 100 years – surprised me without my preparing for the big day.  The state of Arizona, the last of the contiguous states, just marked its 100th anniversary of statehood.  Compared to the east coast states, it is just a pup; compared to Europe, the Grand Canyon State just completed its infancy; when measured against the advancement of mankind, the formation of the planet, or the creation of the solar system, a century of existence represents a mere blip on the evolutionary radar screen.  But nevertheless, it’s a blip worth recognizing since in a tiny way, my childhood fell somewhere in the middle of Arizona’s history as a state.

Growing up in this Sonoran oasis provided a similar experience to most childhoods, but our education may have experienced some regional modifications. In science we studied the botany of cacti; as part of our

state government class we learned desert survival skills, and geography included memorizing the names of all the counties and county seats – all fifteen of them.  At home we knew how to secure our property as a dust storm blew up from the south darkening the sky and erasing the mountains from our view – a great fete since mountains could be viewed in every direction.  The powerful desert also delivered an explosion of saguaro and prickly pear and ocotillo blooms in yellow and orange and red, and sunsets that swept across the sky coloring our lives.  After all it gave me, how could I have forgotten Arizona’s birthday?

Century Plants

The legends of the southwest – the cowboys, the drifters, the outlaws – seemed like a remnant of a distant past lost to the closing of the American frontier.  Those characters, mostly real but with legendary amplification, lived in the New Mexico territory after the Gadsden Purchase and before the nation added the 47th and 48th states.  Credit goes to the unique cast of characters that built Arizona over its century, and witnessed its maturation.  When drawing a timeline of Arizona’s statehood, note a hash mark about two-thirds of the way through its rich history when I intersected its development.  The giant metropolis of Phoenix, still a growing city, felt more cozy back then, and we followed the annexations of the city limits by moving to the edge of town.  Before the first drops of water trickled through the Central Arizona Project, before Lake Powell finished filling, before the supermarkets and supermalls became connected by the concrete commuter loop around the city, I watched the state change like the bundled blossom of the Agave Americana, or “century plants,” growing throughout the region.  What an appropriate flora with a fitting nickname!

During the years after I moved away, people told me I wouldn’t recognize it if I went back.  I remember when Sky Harbor airport had one brown, brick building, when Hughes Airwest was the top banana in the west, and Pioneer Village felt a world away.  After two decades of living in other parts of the country and the world, I finally return possessing only a fractional connection to the state on the verge of its centennial, but with an exponential enthusiasm to revisit my roots.  Overlooking its obvious increase in size,

the state’s vibe feels like it has not just grown, but grown up, and finally fits into its big-boy boots.  The surprising joy of returning to Arizona bubbles in me as I reach the edges of the now-expansive city, as I drive through the dramatic changes in scenery above the Mogollon Rim, and as I watch the landscape change from fields of saguaros to forests of pines.  I am reminded not only of my youth, but that I still possess, however microscopic, a footnote in the American West.  And although Arizona’s history affected me far more than I affected Arizona’s history, I am woven into its 20th century adolescence.  Happy Birthday, Arizona, and welcome to adulthood!

Another Postcard

An Introduction

For the majority of my adult life, my brother has sent me his favorite tunes burned to CD.  He introduced me to Flogging Mollies, They Might be Giants, and even the Bare Naked Ladies before they were wishing for a million dollars.  More than half of the songs I enjoyed, the rest I adored, and I wondered how my little brother tapped into so many great tunes, especially since he was always commenting on the lack of musical diversity in his small town.  Even my own boys adopted the favorite tunes from their cool uncle’s playlists.  He escalated himself to “Favorite Uncle” status when he joined a band and released his first album.

My brother sent me “Banditos” and “Bird House in Your Soul.”  He introduced me to Cowboy Mouth and Breaking Benjamin, and I often believed he wanted me to broaden my horizons, which in the earliest years of my marriage suffered from an extreme lack of visible horizons.  With nearly eight years between us, he was only eleven when I left for college and until the time when he finally went away to school himself, I didn’t know much about his day-to-day teen experiences, other than the fact that his mid-western monotony offered only a culture of small-minded people and insufficient opportunities.  I never felt like a true big sister until the day he told me he had learned how to appreciate true rock music because I introduced him to ACDC’s “Back in Black.”

Anonymously Yours

Our two-week adventure starts in Arizona’s capital as my sons and I vacation in a diamond drive through the national parks, pizza parlors, and wineries of the Southwest.  I haven’t been back to my hometown in twenty years, and the city and state have changed almost as much as I have, so every day is booked with special outings and new adventures mixed with long-buried memories and faint recollections.  I make a point to journal each day about the highlights we experience on our way through New Mexico, Arizona, and even our excursions into Colorado.  And tucked among our changes of clothes, driving directions, and accommodation confirmations, I pack a rubber stamp of a specific ape.

After the postage, the address, the photo’s description, the USPS bar code, and the postmark, little room remains on a postcard to talk about the sites enjoyed by its author.  But for my little brother, we find room enough to send him reminders of the places we traveled together as kids.  And on the back of every stock photo image I write the words that I learned from him, “Another postcard with chimpanzees, and every one is addressed to me,” rubber-stamped with a chimp.  By the time we sit poolside in Scottsdale, observe the night stars in Benson, hike into Carlsbad Caverns, cross the Rio Grande bridge near Taos, ride the train to Silverton, and watch the sun set along the rim of the Grand Canyon, we stuff my brother’s mailbox with the entire lyrics of “Another Postcard,” another memorable song he sent me in thanks for introducing him to the music we both love.  Back in those days growing up together in Phoenix, who knew that I was the cool big sister?