Day: December 12, 2014

Phoenix – Andy’s Memories

Family trip to the mainland for an early Christmas with Andy’s family. Leaving Lihue, the airport had the nicest Norfolk Island Pine Christmas tree I’ve seen. A pretty tree with tasteful decorations:

The next day, we drove around Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix where I (Andy) grew up. I went to middle and high school here (6 years), then summers during college, but I had never returned since 1994. Everything was vaguely familiar, and I recognized many things, but I did not remember exactly what they were like until seeing them again:

The house where we lived (with the desert landscaping that I had helped my father to install):

The sidewalk I took (walking or biking) to go to school every day for 6 years:

Driving around my old neighborhood, one house had a very nice front yard with beautiful cacti:

And another with lots of Christmas decorations (I even saw a Christmas train in the open garage):

I couldn’t remember where my friend Pete’s house was, but just by driving around and looking at street names, I found it and recognized it (on Echo Lane):

I attended Horizon Middle school, but now it is an elementary school:

I spent a lot of time playing on the basketball courts with Pete, since his house was nearby. I would go to his house after school, and we’d come back to play basketball (or stay at his house to play Vectrex or watch MTV–back when they had music videos–now get off my lawn). For some reason, basketball was popular when I was growing up in Arizona: playing after school with friends, the Phoenix Suns (especially when they played against Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, or Magic Johnson), and later my high school team:

When I attended, there were “portable” classrooms behind the school. There seems to be only one left, and no longer used as a classroom, but I think this is in the original location.

I remembered a lot of the typical desert plants, Sonja and Leilani are learning them now. This is the palo verde (green branch) tree:

We spent the most time walking around my old High School. I went here all four years and graduated in 1990, so it brought back a lot of memories. Apollo is/was a big school, there were 500 students in my year, so 2000 students at the school. I once had my name on this sign for being a National Merit Scholar, but the sign was not electronic back then:

The main entrance to the administration building, this plaque was new when I was here, so it looked very familiar. Each year, the senior class raises money and donates some decoration or equipment to the school, so you see them around:

I remember liking my school, it had a large open campus and we had to walk between classes each hour. There was space to hang out before or after classes, or to go eat in a quiet place:

When I was here, this was one of six locker buildings on campus. Every student had a locker with a rotating combination lock to put books between classes, but they were now closed and blocked. Leilani is hiding inside. She had fun running around the campus, climbing on walls, and listening to my stories:

This was the gift from my class, some sort of landscaping or walls where seniors can “hang out.” Honestly, I don’t remember anything about it, or even that “we” donated it. I think it was the student body government (class president, vice-president, secretary, etc.) that did it, and I didn’t really participate in that:

This is a typical hallway and a typical classroom. I probably had class right here one year or another:

Basketball was a popular sport at Apollo, and when I went, our basketball team was very good. We used to come and watch the games in this arena, though I remember it was bigger than this. The banners are all the championships that we won. This day, there was a junior varsity game, and I’m happy to say that Apollo (in white) was winning:

And this was the trophy for 1988-89 season when Apollo played in the top division state-wide finals. We lost and received the “runner-up” trophy (on the left):

In high school, I didn’t play basketball anymore, but I learned to play racquetball on these outdoor courts (later I played indoor on 4 walls and switched to squash in France):

I never attended Glendale Community College, but I was familiar with the campus. My dad taught a computer course there, we ate at their fancy culinary school restaurant, and I remember going there to take photos for my art class. Today, we just drove around to refresh the memories, and then there were some orange trees that nobody (but us) was picking:

After all the memories, we still needed to drive to Sedona. It was a bit late, but we pulled off the freeway (I-17) to see the “real” desert at the exit for New River. At first it looked like a ghost town, the tourist trap gas station was for sale:

Here the roads turned to dirt after a few turns, and even though there were houses, in between and beyond was untouched desert. We found an unused road, parked, and walked around to look at the cacti and the sunset: