Arizona ‘Lawns’ – We’re Not in Kansas Anymore…

Photo of a Sun City Leisure Lawn included in a March 1963 National Geographic article on Arizona.

Photo of a Sun City Leisure Lawn included in a March 1963 National Geographic article on Arizona.

Headline and photo from a February 23rd, 1963 Arizona Republic article on Leisure Lawns.

Headline and photo from a February 23rd, 1963 Arizona Republic article on Leisure Lawns.

A 1968 Arizona Republic ad for Leisure Lawn Stones.

A 1968 Arizona Republic ad for Leisure Lawn Stones.

Bermuda grass is considered a weed in most parts of the nation. In many Arizona communities, however, a patch of bermuda is not an unsightly blight on the landscape, but is instead thought of as a ‘lawn.’ Of course, the blistering heat of an Arizona summer often proves overwhelming for even the best maintained Sonoran Desert-variety lawns, leading some to seek an alternative to the cost and labor required to maintain grass in the desert. Enter the “Leisure Lawn.”

A 1972 Arizona Republic ad for Leisure Lawn Stones.

A 1972 Arizona Republic ad for Leisure Lawn Stones.

Arizonans who have driven through Sun City, Mesa’s Leisure World, Pima County’s Green Valley, or any number of mobile home parks throughout the Phoenix, Tucson, and Yuma metropolitan areas have likely seen many such lawns, which appear verdant year-round regardless of temperature or rainfall levels. The rich green color of these lawns is not the result of a Space Age turf-greening technology developed at one of the state’s universities. Rather, it is a material no more technologically advanced than the pet rock was biologically innovative — painted rocks.

A 1973 Arizona Republic ad for Leisure Lawn Stones.

A 1973 Arizona Republic ad for Leisure Lawn Stones.

Leisure Lawns came about as a product intended to serve as a low-cost, no maintenance lawn that that could withstand the brutal Arizona sun, thrive in times of drought, and render lawn mowers obsolete. Though now little more than a kitschy relic of Arizona’s mid-century retiree influx, Leisure Lawns were once quite popular throughout the warmer regions of the Grand Canyon State.

 

A 1976 Arizona Republic ad for Leisure Lawn Stones.

A 1976 Arizona Republic ad for Leisure Lawn Stones.

The green rock fad, something likely incomprehensible to residents of more temperate climes, was touted in a February 23rd, 1963 Arizona Republic article as a choice that allows “retired couples who prefer hobbies to hoeing” to “have an at-ease lawn, thanks to colored gravel,” and won notice in National Geographic’s March 1963 story entitled “Arizona: Booming Youngster of the West.” However, just as tail fins, hula hoops, and drive-in theaters have faded from the scene, so too has the Leisure Lawn. A 2011 Arizona Republic article lamenting the demise of the water-conscious landscaping option detailed the growing rarity of this once-common sight, bringing renewed — albeit brief — attention to green rock landscaping. In this age of xeriscaping, might Leisure Lawns be poised for a comeback? Just imagine the Phoenix Open played on a course comprised of green-painted rocks…

Arizona and the Moon Landing

 

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The front page of the July 25th, 1969 Arizona Republic, which featured a headline announcing the safe return of the triumphant Apollo 11 crew.

The front page headline of the July 25th, 1969 Arizona Republic announced, “They’re back and safe,” they being the three Apollo 11 astronauts who had splashed down in the Pacific Ocean the day prior, thus completing their heroic “giant leap for mankind.” Terrestrial sites most often associated with the July 1969 moon landing include the Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral, Florida, from which the Moon-bound rocket blasted off on July 16th, and NASA’s Houston, Texas Mission Control Center. However, several Arizona locations number among the lesser known sites tied to the overall success of the Apollo 11 mission specifically and astrogeology in general.

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A postcard showing Arizona’s Meteor Crater, one of the many sites visited by NASA astronauts in preparation for the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s and 1970s.

While training for lunar missions including Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong and other astronauts visited the Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater, Sunset Crater, and Kitt Peak National Observatory. Cinder Lake and Sunset Crater proved to be important locations for testing technology such as cameras and vehicles to be deployed on the Moon and Flagstaff proudly served as home to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Center of Astrogeology, a significant contributor to NASA’s successful Apollo program. Though now little-known for its role in putting men on the Moon, the Flagstaff area did receive widespread recognition during the historic mission. Notably, CBS assigned several journalists to report on-location from the Flagstaff area during the network’s Apollo 11 coverage.

For more information on Arizona’s contributions to the field of astrogeology, please visit http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1190/of2005-1190.pdf.

Barry Goldwater – Mr. Conservative – Wins the 1964 Republican Presidential Nod

The front page of the July 16th, 1964 Arizona Republic featured a headline exclaiming, "Barry Wins," referring to Goldwater having captured the 1964 Republican presidential nomination the day prior.

The front page of the July 16th, 1964 Arizona Republic featured a headline exclaiming, “Barry Wins,” referring to Goldwater having captured the 1964 Republican presidential nomination the day prior.

Barry Goldwater accepted the Republican presidential nomination fifty years ago this evening. Goldwater, a Phoenix businessman who had served on the Phoenix City Council and, at the time of his nomination, was completing his second term in the United States Senate, secured his party’s nod after having prevailed over Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton, two well-funded moderate Republicans from populous East Coast states. However, Goldwater’s convention victory would prove to be the pinnacle of his 1964 electoral success.

The 1964 election occurred less than one year after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and American voters were disinclined to support yet another leadership transition. Goldwater’s strong conservatism and recent vote against the Civil Rights Act did little to endear him to voters in many parts of the nation. President Johnson’s campaign capitalized on widespread perceptions of Goldwater being a war hawk, an effort best represented by the infamous “Daisy Ad,” a controversial television advertisement that ran just one time but nonetheless managed to strongly reinforce the narrative of Goldwater being willing to recklessly over-escalate military conflicts such as the U.S. effort in Vietnam. These factors, paired with other issues such as the tepid support Goldwater received from moderate “Rockefeller Republicans,” resulted in a resounding general election defeat in which the Arizonan won only his home state and a handful of others. However, Goldwater’s campaign, supported by articulate political conservatives such as Ronald Reagan, helped to redefine conservatism and drastically alter the American political landscape. Goldwater, known by many as “Mr. Conservative,” went on to represent Arizona in the Senate for three more terms before retiring to his Paradise Valley home in 1987. An iconoclast to the end, Goldwater continued to speak his mind and gleefully rankle feathers — including those of his fellow GOPers — for the remainder of his life, which ended in May of 1998.

To view of one Senator Goldwater’s ads featuring the candidate, please visit http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964/we-will-bury-you.

To view President Johnson’s “Daisy Ad,” please visit http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/media/daisyspot/.

To view a Goldwater ad featuring Ronald Reagan responding to claims of Goldwater’s hawkish nature, please visit  http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964/ronald-reagan.

Please note that the webpages on which the above links can be found are not operated by or endorsed by John Larsen Southard. Links are provided for educational purposes only.

Phoenicians Celebrated Their First Post-Statehood 4th of July with “One and a Half Beeves”

A 1957 stamp showing the 48-star U.S. flag in use from 1912 to 1959. For more information regarding Arizona’s star and its association with Independence Day, please see https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=409877605794905&set=a.342266935889306.81247.221135871335747&type=1&theater.

A 1957 stamp showing the 48-star U.S. flag in use from 1912 to 1959. For more information regarding Arizona’s star and its association with Independence Day, please see https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=409877605794905&set=a.342266935889306.81247.221135871335747&type=1&theater.

How are you celebrating Independence Day?

Phoenicians celebrated July 4th, 1912, Arizona’s first post-statehood Independence Day, with a parade, a feast, outdoor games, a concert, and a late-night dance. As reported in the July 5th, 1912 edition of the Arizona Republican newspaper, there was also a “patriotic talk,” but, “not maddening noise and wild and senseless hurrah.” The talk referenced was given by George P. Bullard, the state’s first attorney general. Bullard’s address, memorialized in full on page five of the following day’s Arizona Republican, began with a section reminding those listening, “This Fourth of July is of especial interest to Arizonians and every Arizonian’s heart should swell with pride because today [from] every national building, from every reservation, from every fort, from the mast of every American vessel in all the ports of the civilized world there will break to the breeze for the first time the beloved flag of our nation emblazoned upon its field of azure blue the forty-eighth star, the star of Arizona.” However, Bullard’s discussion of the Grand Canyon State’s symbolic presence on the American flag seems to have been trumped in importance — at least in the minds of the paper’s reporting staff — by the large feast made available to the many revelers in attendance.

As exclaimed by a front page newspaper headline the following day, “Phoenix Had Best Fourth.” Notably, the city’s first post-statehood 4th of July observance included a food spread of a size, “never before witnessed in [that] city.” Indeed, the gleeful and likely sated reporter proclaimed, “if the barbecue alone had been the sum and substance of the day’s events, the affair would have been a success.” What merits this praise, you ask? A feast consisting of “one and a half beeves, 547 loaves of bread, eight hams, two barrels of pickles and quantities of olives.” How does that compare to your planned menu?

Regardless of whether you’ll be sitting down to hot dogs and hamburgers or sharing a meal of “one and a half beeves” with a large group of friends and neighbors, Happy 4th of July!

But It’s A Dry Heat…

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Cover of the 1952 edition of Oren Arnold’s Arizona Brags.
Image credit: John Larsen Southard Collection

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A humorous early twentieth-century postcard comparing the temperatures of Tucson and Yuma to those of Hell.
Image credit: John Larsen Southard Collection

Arizona’s climate, one of the state’s 5 Cs, is something to boast about during the winter months. Early tourism campaign slogans such as “Summer Days All Winter” were used to great effect in efforts to draw out-of-state visitors to enjoy the spectacular weather found here from November through March or, at best, April. However, the wonderful winter weather inevitably transitions to the far less desirable and often eye-popping extreme heat of an Arizona summer. These high temperatures have prompted quips such as Dick Wick Hall’s story of a seven-year-old frog who never learned to swim due to his being raised in the dry, dusty Sonoran Desert, and Mark Twain’s story of a soldier from Fort Yuma who died and “went straight to the hottest corner of perdition,” but found that after living in Yuma, he needed a blanket to live comfortably in the cooler climes of Hell.

 

Humorist Oren Arnold compiled a number of jokes, claims, facts, and anecdotes — many of them climate-related — for inclusion in his 1947 book entitled Arizona Brags (revised and republished in 1952). As we slide into the brutal heat of yet another summer, some of Arnold’s ‘facts’ may help to bring a smile to our collectively overheated faces. Among other assertions, some believable and some outlandish, Arnold’s book jokingly claims:

— “The devil himself carries a palm leaf fan in Arizona.”

— “It never rains. Only reason an Arizona home has a roof is to have a place to put the TV [antenna].”

— “It stays so dry in western Arizona the fish kick up clouds of dust as they cruise the Colorado River.”

— “Any Phoenix doctor says that his medical practice is twice as hard as that of doctors in any other part of the nation. He can’t tell his patients to go to Arizona for their health.”

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A postcard showing the swimming pool at Williams Field, later to be known as Williams Air Force Base. While airmen such as the Milwaukee native native referenced in the above joke might have initially found the Sonoran Desert climate to be unbearable, the large numbers of World War II veterans who chose to relocate to the Valley in the post-war period indicate that one need not be a native to “stand the weather.”
Image credit: John Larsen Southard Collection

— “A young GI from Milwaukee was sweating out his first summer at Williams Air Force Base near Phoenix. A native Arizonan explained that a man had to be born and reared here to stand the weather. ‘What!’ exclaimed the soldier. ‘You mean folks live here when there ain’t no war?’”

— “It gets so dry in Arizona the jackrabbits carry canteens and the trees chase after dogs. Only mud is the kind the politicians sling. Rivers are just lines to crease a map, and to furnish Arizona cattle a dry, sandy bedding ground.”

And finally, a joke related to something all Arizonans have been guilty of at one time or another…

— “A citizen of Phoenix died and, of course, went down below. The devil greeted him and was showing him around the place. The ex-Phoenician kept mopping his brow. Finally he spoke up.

‘Gosh, it certainly is hot down here.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Satan nodded. ‘But it’s not humid, it’s a healthful, dry heat.’

‘Phooey!’ scoffed the Arizonan. ‘I’ve heard that old guff before.’

‘Oh sure you have,’ Satan smiled affably. ‘Fact is, you told it. That’s why you’re here.’”