Left in Tucson

Years ago, the Tucson city council adamently opposed building a city interstate highway loop around the town,  like you find in other metropolitan areas.  As a result, Tucson's main streets have been turned into 6 and 8-lane thoroughfares in order to handle the current volume of traffic.  There is only one interstate highway leading from Tucson to Phoenix and no Tucson community has easy access to it.  Coming from New Jersey,  where all shopping centers are accessed via highway exit or entrance ramps, and  local roads are mostly the two-lane variety;  driving around town inTucson took some getting used to.  I-10 is reserved for traveling outside of the City.  Try to imagine New Jersey's US Highway 22 or 17 as your main street through town; but with fewer cars.  What was really unsettling at first, was making left-hand turns and U-turns while crossing 6 lanes of oncoming traffic.  You won't find a jug handle anywhere in Tucson.  Don't even mention a circle or "rota

Jim and I spent a pleasant spring afternoon driving from Tucson north to the historic town of Prescott, AZ. The trip also served as a shakedown cruise for Jim's new wheels, a Silver 2006 Impala SS, named "Brandy."  Prescott lies about an hour and half drive northwest of Phoenix.  It is regarded as the most Midwestern-appearing city in the Southwest due to its many Victorian-style homes that still grace the town.  It's a wonderful city with a very walkable downtown.  Named for historian William H. Prescott in 1864, it served as the capital of the AZ Territory until 1867, when the AZ Territory capital was moved to Tucson.  Tucson held the honor only until 1889, when the capital was finally moved to Phoenix. The town boasts 809 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places.  At an altitude of 5,400 feet, Pescott has a 4-season climate with mild winters. Pine and cedar trees abound all over town, which is a bit surprising considering the town is surrounded by dese

One thing you notice as soon as you start driving around Tucson is the many  beige-colored metal boxes  you see sitting on the roofs of houses all over town.   Some look pretty neglected and rusted out.   At first glance, you might mistake them for air conditioning units, and they are, sort of.   They are often referred to as “Swamp Boxes” by the locals.   A Swamp Box is what the heating and cooling industry calls an Evaporative Cooler.   It works much like a home humidifier.   The cooler contains a basin of water and a rotating drum with a foam pad.   Air is blown over the wet pad and into the house to produce cool moist air.   With an A/C unit, humidity is sucked out of the interior air in the cooling process, whereas with a swamp cooler humidity is blown into the interior air.   Since Tucson is a desert climate with very little humidity, for most of the warm season, an A/C unit is of little use.   The locals who have lived with their quirky swamp coolers since the 1960’s, like to

“The White Queen” is how Jim refers to my classic roadster; a 1986 Mercedes Benz 560SL white convertible.   It was one of my personal goals to acquire an SL convertible as my 50th birthday present to myself.  I had seen a butter yellow one with a tan ragtop in a movie back in the late 1970′s and made up my mind that I would own one someday.   While I didn’t find the car of my dreams for my 50th birthday, a very strange thing happened a few months after my 55th birthday. I was at my local auto body shop having my ten-year old Saab hatchback repaired following a minor fender bender, when I mentioned to Wayne, the owner, that I would soon be leaving NJ and moving to Tucson, AZ.  I explained that once I was settled in Tucson,  my plan was to sell my black Saab and replace it with my dream car; a butter yellow classic Mercedes Benz SL.  While I loved my Saab, it and I had not been a match made in Heaven.  On the other hand, Wayne and my Saab had  spent much more time together o

Fred is Green for St Patrick’s Day « Copper Country Antiques  Check out Fred's holiday look!

Things to do in Tucson - Expedia

Sunglow Ranch A Unique getaway not far from Tucson.

Father Kino's 300th Anniversary Without Father Kino and the Jesuits there would have not been a Tucson.

Gun-control foes, supporters unsatisfied with Obama's stance - KOLD.com Here is what Tucson locals think about Obama's latest opinion on gun control.

3/7/2011:   Tucson is blessed to have the most wonderful, easy to get around in international airport in the country.   From the moment I first stepped off the plane at Tucson International Airport; I felt that I had been transported back to a 1960’s flying experience.   There is only one terminal, everything is clean and spanking new, the staff is friendly and courteous, and everyone speaks and understands English.   Even the parking attendants who take your ticket and parking fee make eye contact while passing pleasantries.   The entire experience is an amazing pheonom for someone who is more accustomed to the brutality to your senses commonly experienced at EWK and other large regional airports.    I was sure I was going to love living here. Once we were settled into our new lives in Tucson, I soon learned the downside to having such a friendly and quaint airport just minutes away from our house.   THERE ARE NO DIRECT FLIGHTS FROM TUCSON TO EWK.    Just a few months after moving

Not long after settling into our new place in Tucson, I discovered a garden center just down the street that specialized in native plants.  Great!  I could now start learning how to identify and name all the local desert flora.  As I browsed the aisles and started noting names on the tags of the most interesting plants, I found my way over to the fruit tree section.  Just beyond the lemons, oranges, and grapefruit trees, I spotted an aisle of trees that looked surprisingly familiar. Could they be? Was it possible?  Was I really seeing rows of fig trees? Yes! They were truly fig trees. I had never expected to find fig trees growing in Tucson.  It was early September, and the figs were just beginning to ripen. Unfortunately, some trees were infested with fig beetles.  Fig beetles are gigantic iridescent purplish black things the size of a cockroach.  When they begin to feast on a fig, they swarm on that one precious fig until they are hanging from it like a bunch of deep purple grapes. 

Wine Depot is the best little wine shop in Tucson! Check it out! http://www.winedepottucson.com/

What distinguishes our Tucson home from all the rest in our post-WWII tract-home development are the two stately olive trees that grace our front yard. Our property is the only one in the neighborhood that retains its original curbside olive trees. When our development, and others just like it all over Tucson, were first built, its streets were lined with olive trees.  Over time, the trees died or were chopped down my homeowners who found the trees to be more of a nuisance than a distinctive shade tree.  The city of Tucson has since band the planting of fruit-bearing olive trees anywhere in the city.  Olive trees have a nasty habit of producing tremendous amounts of pollen and dropping huge numbers of olives all over sidewalks and streets. Believe me when I tell you that fallen olives will turn a sidewalk into a slippery purple-black mess. They are so bitter that the birds won't even eat them. People who come to the desert to get relief from their pollen allergies, have little appr

KOLD News 13 Links - KOLD.com

The Three-Dog Minimum : Soon after we settled in Tucson, I started to notice the frequency in which things appeared in 3's.  I'd be driving around our neighborhood streets or any street for that matter and see someone walking a dog.  What was amazing is no one ever seemed to be walking just one dog.  It was always three dogs!  Not three dogs that all belonged to the same breed, but three totally different dogs.  It might be a Pit Bull, a Chihuahua, and a Dachshund.  The three dogs are always these outrageous combinations of large, small, long-haired and short haired.  You might see someone walking a Greyhound or Doberman along with a Beagle and a Husky. Great Danes are very popular, too.  You will see lots of mixed breed dogs, too.  No matter what the socioeconomic strata, everyone abides by the three-dog minimum in Tucson. I ask people why they have three dogs, and they may tell me that they used to have five, but one died and the other one went back to live with one of th

I never thought I would miss the flavor, the smell, and "meat" of a true New Jersey tomato until I spent my first summer and fall in Tucson.  You'd think that being so near to California, the freshest and juiciest beefsteak tomatoes would be arriving daily in all the local supermarkets and specialty grocers. Tucson is even blessed with 4 Trader Joe's, along with several other local organic-style grocers.  Wrong!  Oh, so very wrong.  I quickly learned that all the freshest produce is either shipped from Mexico, which is a mere 60 miles away, or from Wilcox, Arizona.  When you hear the name "Wilcox," it is said in such reverence that you can almost hear the choir of angels singing the name and giving praise to the glory of all the produce grown there.  Wilcox, AZ is north of Tucson and at a higher elevation, which means cooler temperatures and a bit more rain.  It is also the home of the largest array of hydroponic greenhouses in the southwest.  This is where 

In Tucson, junked cars serve as lawn ornaments The quaint wagon wheel you sometimes see displayed in someone’s front yard? It’s really archeological evidence of Tucsonans’ compulsion for parking old vehicles in their front yards. When we first moved to Tucson, Jim tried to convince me that the “abandoned” cars I saw on many front yards (no grass in Tucson, so can’t call it a front lawn) were merely “temporarily parked” until the owner could come up with the money for repairs. Actually, often the cars have been there for years, sporting registration stickers from 5 or more years ago. My suspicion is that people keep one or even several non-running vehicles from which to harvest parts to keep another vehicle road worthy. This is something I know about from my New Jersey childhood. That’s how my father ensured that we always had a lawnmower that worked, well sort of worked. It's the same with the cars. Start talking to anyone who has grown up or lived in Tucson for more than