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| - Oh, Phoenix and Arizona, what have you done to yourselves, you big brat of a baby city and state! You went from backwards to red with no improvement over the years (except a little here & there downtown). You have been suckered by California by taking offers you couldn't afford, thus rendering the state eternally poor. You have been corrupt and corrupted. You have attracted weird characters from out of state and country- notably family rejects, southerners, illegals, and pigeons (the birds). You founded valley fever. Remember, there IS a reason why the meteor crashed into you...
circa July 1978: you lured my gullible widowed mother to move here from New Jersey with a promise of a good life, dragging me and my 2 younger sisters along. Don Bolles and Bob Crane were murdered in Phoenix around the same time, but that didn't deter my mother at all. The new tract 3-bed too-small fenced-in house on 59th Ave / Bell in Glendale that we settled in looked like vanilla concrete slab with an arched front (bedroom) window, sliding windows/door, and sunken living room (3 of which influenced my mother to fall in love with the overpriced house). A far fry from the 2-story big house sitting on the lush suburban hills in north Jersey (with no private fence). The neighborhood was full of little kids so there was hardly anyone nearby my age to play with. We moved here with a wad of cash and ended up poor for years. Since you don't need to shovel snow here, my mother gained weight, became a more mercurial parent, and smoked heavily due to boredom. I personally spent 5 miserable years with her because of it, with very boring summers staying in with the a/c and doing lots of reading and watching TV, with my infantile sisters goofing around on their own. Even Rex, the family Collie, was miserable that he could no longer run the hills back east that he, a Scottish breed, should continually be doing. My mother held various jobs as a secretary, with social security, to make ends meet- just so she could enjoy Arizona living. She'd work a full M-F 9-5 and come home, cook supper, watch TV while eating (we weren't allowed to talk to her at all while TV's on), and go to her room and watch more TV, then get ready for bed. She had no pastime or hobbies. We were pretty much left to fend for our own and figure out how to entertain ourselves. It was a sappy cycle. Each summer, she had to set the a/c on 80 degrees with the fan running to save on electric bills. She promised us a pool until she found out the costs, so no pool. Thank God we didn't have evap cooler. The schools here were, at best, meh. The students looked mainly trashy with no regards to their personal appearance. My sisters' first friends had sad backgrounds: one friend had a total of 7 abortions and another was molested by her stepfather (the mother's probably 6th husband). It was frightening to witness but to my sisters, it was better than no friends at all. I had only very few friends because of the rampant drug problem, and I refused to have anything to do with it. Only those who came from better money looked better. It has been known that Arizona rates lowest in education. I fortunately had the smarts to survive on my own and was able to keep my grades up- enough to qualify for various financial assistance to pay for my college education until I graduated (yay!). At 19, I moved into a studio apt on my own and never looked back home in Glendale. I wanted to start over and enjoy what's left of my teenage years that I so deserved...
My writing this review is partly therapy: a release to move on some more. First, I got tired of enviously watching my Jersey childhood friends having had a stable upbringing and much better life, and my wishing I could move back and live with my paternal grandmother, who was very very dear to me). Instead, she and I religiously wrote letters from 1978 to 1994 when she eventually passed away. The same goes for my childhood friends, writing letters to keep my spirits up and so I wouldn't feel so left out their current events. Thank-you EVERYone. Why the 2 stars instead of 1?? Well, first, I am not angry. The star bonus is actually due to...drumroll...my Furkids. That's right! My Furkids saved me and brought me renewed happiness- beginning with my first cat, Cleo, who I adopted as a kitten a year after I moved into that apt. A succession of my adult Persians- Rudy, Brandy, and Melody joined the ranks, as well as my two Shih Tzus, Beau and Romeo. They have been the true key to my survival in Arizona and keeping my chin up and just enjoy whatever I've had coming my way. And, I love the snow and fireplace better than the heat and, ahem, trashy a/c. BTW, I looked at my old 'hood in Glendale and it is now ick, the beauty's expired...
A lesson for you to consider...when something's "cheaper", there is always a catch....when something's "too expensive", there is usually a very good reason!
However, I shall def move!
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