Tucson Lawn Ornaments

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 3 years and he or she will soon be bragging to you about the number of vehicles they have parked in their yards.  It seems everyone's hobbie or part-time business is restoring old cars. Every fool knows that if you keep a vehicle long enough, it will appreciate in value.  The trick is finding that one other person who shares your belief in the appreciated value of your old heap and is willing to fork over real cash to you.  Come to Tucson, where we have an immense and growing inventory of potentially valuable vehicles just waiting to be discovered. Keep in mind that with our dry climate, these vehicles are even rust free!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's a Swamp Box?

Image
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
Read more

Desert Fruit

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
Read more

Figaro - Growing Figs in Tucson

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. 
Read more