The Five C's

History Lessons and Homesickness

I used to wonder why I got such awe-stricken looks when I told people I was born and raised in the greater Phoenix area up until the age of 30 when I moved away. Like I was some ethereal creature that shouldn't exist in the waking world. It turns out that Native Phoenicians are rare... everybody's always just passing through on their way somewhere else out there. According to local census data less than 40% of Arizona residents were born in the state, and only 20% of Arizona residents 25 and older were born there.

I spent my childhood moving from one neighborhood to another... Maryvale, Coronado, Willo, Encanto, Fountain Hills, Deer Valley, a few winter months in a duplex in the then-rural Chandler or a very uncomfortable fall in a camper in someone’s downtown backyard. We spent every summer on the Salt or Verde River, staying at a riverside campsite from the end of one school year to the start of the next while my parents found someplace else we could crash by the next semester. I changed schools 14 times before graduating high school, and in each one they emphasized the Five C’s Of Arizona; Copper, Cotton, Cattle, Climate and Citrus. These were the things that drew people in and kept them in that desert town, and the things every Native Phoenician holds in their heart, and somehow getting the same lesson at every school created a consistency for me that I didn’t find very often so it stuck like glue.

Copper

A self-titled hippie in the 90's told me that wearing copper can draw other people's energy to you. A heads up copper penny is said to bring good luck. Copper wire is the chief target of drug-addled scavengers nationwide. The state capital is capped by a glorious copper dome. Clearly the value of copper surpasses social boundaries.

In the same way that copper tarnishes over time, so do my feelings about my home state. Some of them are dark, bitter memories and some take on that bright blue-green patina of nostalgia. If I scratch at it long enough, there are parts of it that shine as bright as the sun. The older I get, the more complicated it feels… I’m homesick all the time, but I also can’t imagine ever calling it home again.

Cotton

So I snuggle up in a soft cotton shawl and write about my feelings as a way to sort them out. To make peace with the parts that don’t shine, and pay tribute to the beautiful bits. And I try to weave that peace into some idea of what comes next.

I struggle with reconciling the rough past I had as a creature trying to survive in an inhospitable desert with the soft life I live now where my biggest worry is how bored I get, how rurally distanced I live from any spark of culture and how I still feel like an outsider in my own community. I’ve been gone from there long enough that I shouldn’t still feel like I just got here, right? I should know what I want to do and where I want to be, and how I want to accomplish the goals I set for myself, and yet for some reason whenever I think too hard on my future, little threads of memory pull me back to Arizona.

Cattle

The first house I bought was near 91st Ave & Northern, across from a commercial dairy farm. Four entire city blocks of cattle packed in like sardines across from my front doorstep. I was stretching my pennies at 18 to make the payments against my 40k mortgage. I just wanted to stop moving. To plant roots at last, and be the master of my own domain.

Every afternoon when the hot summer sun reached its peak the smell of the nearby manure mountains would wash over my townhouse like a thick cloud. No wonder the place was so cheap. What was I thinking? I sold the townhouse during my divorce when I was 23, and shortly after the area around it was converted to a state-of-the-art entertainment district, complete with stadiums, a resort, and a casino from what I hear. The cattle farm is gone now and that townhouse recently sold for over 300k. Apparently my thinking was short-sighted.

Climate

It sure is a dry heat, and now that I have lived in the heartland I appreciate and miss it more than ever. No humidity. No hair curling into a frizzy mass with a life of its own. No mosquitoes. That alone makes me homesick a little bit.

When I do travel back I look forward to the feeling when I first step off the airplane and my skin immediately draws in tight like I’ve just been shrink-wrapped by the very sun. In the winter in the Ozark foothills I curse all my friends that are basking poolside in the Valley while I’m warding off the chronic coughs and cold bones brought on by the last round of “thundersnow” that I was never built to endure. I finally understand the snowbirds’ annual migration and I kind of want to become one… but only if I owned a home between 7th ave & 16th street north of I-10. Color me picky, but I still need established trees.

Citrus

The smell of citrus grounds me like the sight of saguaro cacti or the sound of a pack of coyotes howling on the wind. It grows everywhere back home. The Chandler duplex I lived in during my 5th grade year was on a farm that split its’ fields between citrus and cotton.

But in the Valley more often than not they're growing ornamental bitter imitations of citrus. It's indicative of the collective mindset the Valley had when I finally decided to leave. Gentrified art districts, a lightrail loaded with police but blocking the walkable intersections, and inedible fruit trees. Thorny waxy-leafed branches that spilled over back fences and dropped bitter orange balls of mockery on the sidewalks every summer as the hungry homeless sheltered under them for shade.

The city started to dress itself up choosing fashion over function at every turn. Damn the needy, we need more murals, STAT! Tear down the art deco bar and put a 4 unit storage container concept condo complex in its place, never mind that those steel boxes will roast in the 120 degree summers.

I was the one who hosted weekly open door dinners for my punk friends in my rented 1912 bungalow. I didn't want to erase the people or the past... I wanted to be a part of it, but it was always being replaced by some new idea.

Phoenix was a place for self discovery and testing your mettle, but once you have a concrete sense of self... maybe you realize it's not a place to stay. Maybe that’s why the word “homesick” doesn’t really fit my feelings anymore. But what word describes the nostalgic longing for the basic elements that make up who you are and how you came to be the way that you are? And how do we continue to reshape ourselves to accommodate newer experiences? What mantra would fit the “Five C’s” space that leaving Arizona created in my heart?

While you don’t have to subscribe to read my new posts, a round of coffee or cocktails is always appreciated!

Reading: “Atlas Shrugged” (By Ayn Rand).

Drinking: Coffeeeeeeeeeeee, extra cream, extra sugar

Listening to: “Banditos” by The Refreshments