Thursday, May 25, 2006

1969

A year or so later (1969) we were back in Arizona to build a second Broadway store, not in Phoenix, but in the more exclusive city of Scottsdale. At that time, Scottsdale was a distinct city of its own and not a suburb of Phoenix. A trip to Glendale required traveling through unpopulated land…only farms and desert.

And this time we had an opportunity to bring our families along with us for the duration of the job. Since we had built so many of these stores and since we had an experienced crew waiting to work for us again…it was going to be a great summer! An easy job and time to explore Arizona.

I had prepared for this by buying a Ford 12 passenger van. For our family of 5. This was a great vehicle for us with room for the baby and the girls each had a seat of their own. And every weekend found us traveling to some new place in Arizona. We made all of the usual tourist excursions; Tombstone, Grand Canyon, Sedona, Jerome, Saguaro National Forest, Prescott, Flagstaff, Tuzigoot National Monument, etc, etc.

Of course there was work as well…but now it was a contest to see how fast we could build one of these stores. We knew how to do it; we just wanted to do it faster. This time we had some of the experienced help from the Phoenix job and that helped us to trim a few days off of the schedule, despite the Arizona summer heat.

Notable moments: We watched the lunar landing while sitting around the pool at our summer home (apartment) in Phoenix. We would run in to look at the television and then back out to see the moon itself.