Settling in Prescott

When my Mom brought me to Prescott, Arizona in the summer of 1947, the little town, then population 6,000, already had a reputation for clean air and had become a mecca for those with respiratory disease. Like the rest of the country, Prescott was still in the grip of post WWII euphoria, and all things seemed possible.

I hadn't wanted to move, preferring the stability of my Grandparents home in Nebraska. I was finally persuaded to a more positive attitude when a map of Prescott and the surrounding area showed a place called Skull Valley just a hop and skip away. I was, as most children of that era were, a huge fan of western movies and radio programs. I pictured a wide valley strewn with skulls and myself accumulating a huge collection that would include cowboys and Indians as well as cattle, horses and an assortment of wild critters. Well, that part was a disappointment, but the breathing made up for it.

Now this is a little embarrassing, at nine years of age, I should have made some mental note that my Mom's sister, my Aunt Doris, accompanied us on the train journey from Nebraska, but when I asked my Mom when she joined us here, she laughed and said that Doris had been with us all along. I suppose I had my nose in a book and my mind occupied by daydreams as usual.

We found Prescott to be a pretty town with wide streets, set around a Court House square where bands played in the gazebo on special occasions. The statue of Captain William, "Bucky" O'Neil who rode with Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders is still prominently displayed in front of the Court House.

This is pretty much the way Prescott looked the day we arrived

This is the way it had looked in an earlier time, and I include this photo because it's fun to see Prescott not only with horses and wagons on the street, but streetcars as well..

The little building with the pinkish awning in the lower left corner was a Pigley Wigley Market for many years and it was there that we bought groceries in the early days.

At first the sisters rented a little house, but after pooling their resources and borrowing some money from a brother, they went house hunting. They looked at what was available, a series of nice little houses on tidy little lots. Nothing suited them. Finally the Realtor said he'd exhausted the possibilities in their price range.

"I do have one more I can show you," he said, "but I can tell you right now, you won't like it."

It was August in Prescott in the middle of the rainy season, now called the Monsoon season. (This amuses me because now days there is so much less rain and the word monsoon somehow conjures up a mental image of a tropical downpour.)

The Realtor parked in front of a tiny white shack during a typical afternoon rainstorm, meaning the sky had opened and water was falling in buckets while lightening split the air and the earth shook from thunder. Water had turned the road into a muddy stream that rushed down, past the cabin, to join the churning waters of Butte Creek less than half a block down the road.

A huge pile of granite boulders studded by an occasional tall Ponderosa pine, rose behind the little dwelling and the closer lightening strikes sparked blue on the rock.

What I remember best is my Auntie Doris joyfully crying out, "This is it! This is the one!"

The Realtor was completely nonplussed!

The adults in my life, somewhat incredulously to my nine year old mind, continued to extol the virtues of this wonderful place even after they had been inside to see the one huge room with various pots and buckets set about to catch the leaks pouring through the roof, the step down "kitchen" with the dirt floor, the added on "bedroom" that was the length of the big room, about twenty feet, and about eight feet wide. And most significantly, what wasn't there at all...a bathroom!

Thus, the thirty-something sisters who were totally lacking in carpentry skills or experience, embarked on a period of extensive remodeling, while I learned to climb and jump from boulder to boulder trying to imitate a mountain goat. It was a good time. Next time I'll post pictures of the remodel.