The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
I spent my childhood in a Tucson that is much different today. My old stomping grounds could be called the Sam Hughes Neighborhood, except that my former home on East Fourth Street is now University of Arizona property due to the university’s eastward expansion in the 1970s.
Our house was razed and buried somewhere under the present McKale Memorial Center parking lot.
Life was much different for a child growing up in my section of Tucson in the ’40s and ’50s. For one thing, we didn’t own a TV set until I reached age 11. Then, we’d sit in front of the TV staring at the KVOA test pattern until a program came on — any show would do.
Saturday morning cartoons at the downtown Fox Theatre were a prime source of entertainment. Our parents would drop us off and we’d join the horde of kids lined up to enter. We settled in for the cartoons, usually Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and the Roadrunner. And, finally, the much-anticipated serial.
It was usually a cowboy adventure, where Roy Rogers or the Lone Ranger would be heading for some disaster like riding his panicked horse off a cliff, then the scene would freeze and the screen would shout: “To Be Continued!!” What that meant was come back next week to see if our hero survived. He always did.
We felt safe in our neighborhood. I don’t remember ever hearing about a burglary, car theft or vandalism. When I was only 5, I walked by myself to and from Little Bear School on East 1st Street. From first grade on, I walked or rode my bike to and from Sam Hughes Elementary. The only time my mother picked me up from school was for a doctor’s appointment or music lesson.
When not swimming at Himmel Park, we kids played “cops and robbers” armed with wooden sticks as our weapons. We roller-skated around the block with metal wheel skates secured to our leather shoe soles.
The vacant dirt lot in the middle of our block was our ball field. A hole in the ground by first base was said to have a gila monster dug in there. If you reached in there to retrieve a ball and it bit your hand, it would not let go until sundown. We gave that hole a wide berth.
Every house on our block had a front lawn. Warm summer evenings after dinner, our parents turned us kids out to congregate for unsupervised games on the grass such as “mother may I,” “red light/green light,” etc. Then, it was home for a bath. I might be permitted to listen to the radio before bedtime, depending upon how the day went.
A much-anticipated yearly event was when the Barnum & Bailey Circus came to town. The tents and runway were set up on vacant land south of Congress and just across the Santa Cruz River. For a child growing up without television, the clowns, trained animals, and trapeze acts were magical. Cracker Jack never tasted so good as at the circus.
Each Christmas holiday meant driving over to Winterhaven to view the decorations and lights. Afterwards, we’d drive to Hidden House on Sixth Street for ice cream, listening on our car radio to Jack Benny, the Cisco Kid and Pancho, or the Green Hornet.
I’m forever thankful to have grown up in a more innocent time and shall always cherish fond memories of growing up in old Tucson.
