Things I Should Throw Out: Phoenix Gazette, 1951
Published January 9th, 2006 in Trash Tags: Arizona, History, Housekeeping, Print.
Twenty years ago, I rented the back half of a cool old house just off downtown Tempe. The whole place was falling apart. I broke up with my girlfriend there, and spent the entire summer sweating and sulking alone within its dingy confines. It had a huge hole in the living room wall, through which an ancient evaporative cooler blasted fetid rusty air.
That fall, the city condemned the entire block to make way for new office buildings and high rise apartments. I pocketed a sizeable relocation allowance and moved in with friends. A couple months later, I went back to inspect the rubble of my former domicile. There under the floorboards, I found a bunch of tattered pages from the Phoenix Gazette dating back to 1951. I took them with me, and kept them all these years in the bottom of a file cabinet, where they grew slowly darker and more crumbly. I finally threw them out last month after scanning the still-legible highlights.
Imagine my delight as I discovered their historic significance. Amid the old funnies and goofy ads for local businesses and movies gone by was the story of a great event from our nation’s past: the fall of General Douglas MacArthur. It’s no wonder these papers were saved; the sacking of MacArthur by President Truman during the dark days of the Korean conflict was a profoundly emotional experience for many. His subsequent speech to Congress — where he implored the country to reject “defeatism” — elevated him from national hero to spiritual icon. Well, for a little while anyway.
The quality of some of the Gazette’s reporting makes Bill O’Reilly seem Solomonic by comparison. The paper evokes nothing less than the final battle between good and evil, with Truman and the Kremlin on the winning side and MacArthur, God and America on the other. Meanwhile, a town in Southern Arizona is wiped away to make room for a huge strip mine, and readers rage over some local ordinance or custom or another that makes western wear “mandatory” (???). Happily, there’s also plenty of diversion in town — Hollywood’s finest is playing downtown, and Nancy still rules the comics page.
Here are the links:
Phoenix Housewives Weep For The General
Phelps Dodge Ends Lowell, Arizona
Stalin Coordinates U.S. Foreign Policy
Check out the litho-crayon and restrained pen and ink work of that editorial cartoonist Werner. Look at that exuberant tattered umbrella sticking out of MacArthur’s
back! Sure Stalin may look like some giant atomic mutant Juan Valdez out of a Howard Hawks production playing at the Indian Drive-In, but the simple gestural Kremlin and all of that loose tonal shading is awesome.
If I ever go back to the future I’ve got to remember to wear my cowboy duds, beat the houswives without number to Reidell’s Beauty Salon Reducing Department for some body slenderizing, and make it to the box office in time to snag one of those $1.10 tickets to see
the Spike Jones Musical Depreciation Revue of 1951.
I hope you don’t mind, but I passed along the Indian Drive-In ads to the http://www.drive-ins.com site.
(See here: http://www.drive-ins.com/theater/aztindi)
I just thought it’d be cool to add these ads to breathe a little life into the listing for it.
Sad to see so few drive-ins left, but hurrah for you scanning those ads. Priceless!
Cool site!
The Gazette was, however, a Phoenix newspaper. I just happened to find it in Tempe.
When I was a child, the Round-Up in Scottsdale was the drive-in we visited most often. My final drive-in experience was probably a dozen years ago. I accompanied a friend and her son to a showing of “Mission Impossible” and “Strip Tease.”
Ah well… Tempe, Phoenix. At least the drive-in site has something cool to help fill out the Indian’s entry. I’ve found a few abandoned (sob, sniffle) drive-ins in my travels, and always try to take pictures for that site.
My “local” drive-in was the Algiers. Great playground with a minature train and (full-size) fire engine rides for the kiddies (which I was at the time) before the features started. I remember going there in my pajamas, and praying Mom wouldn’t bring food so we could go to the snack bar instead. (A treat!)
I now take my family to a drive-in at least two or three times a year. (Limited because it requires an overnight stay… 120 miles away, but the best in the state) We take our 1958 Edsel, which seems to add something to the event.
Anyhoo, I’m glad you didn’t mind my passing along the ads to drive-ins.com, and thanks for an interesting blog!