Things changed...

I'm old, but not elderly. I was born in the late 1970s, but we were very poor. Everything was used and handed down. We weren't the first family to use whatever it was, and we weren't the last. Things were built to last. My crib had three of my older cousins in it before me, and God only knows how many after me. It was like living in the late 1950s or early 1960s. All my Aunts and Uncles were already in their late forties and early 50s when I was born. My mom was a late baby, her mom was over forty. Half of my aunts already had kids before my mother was born. My mom's cousins were more like siblings. They always saved the baby and child rearing gear. My highchair was a chrome steel deathtrap that taught me quickly to keep my hands on my head when my mom put the tray on.

We moved to Arizona in December of 1983. We were promised sunshine every day. It was never going to get cold and it never rained. Lies! Up until about 1990 I remember flooding in Glendale. I remember the monsoons were wild! We would all lay on my mom's bed and watch the light show through her large picture window that overlooked farmer's fields. In Glendale, the storms would always sweep in from the east. We would watch central and west Phoenix being hammered for hours before the storm reached us. 

I was prime age for choring which I why I remember this. One of my chores was to pull weeds. It took me all day to pull one side of our gravel yard. I wasn't allowed to use tools or gloves. Well, more like there weren't any tools or gloves for me to use. I'd often make due with something makeshift like a screwdriver or a sturdy spoon. I remember the volume of weeds was unreal. Looking back I know there were huge stands of enormous Prickly Lettuce, not the pitiful less than a foot tall specimens I've seen the past 30 years. 

I had to finally sneak the hatchet out of the camping box because you couldn't pull them out because they are named prickly for a reason. I had to chop them down and they were taller than me, even years later when I was 13 years old. I'd chop one down and toss it over the block wall into the farmer's field like I was tossing an old Christmas tree into a dumpster. We had these little green paper covered tomatoes things everywhere. Huge orange daisies would just blanket every yard in the neighborhood.

Us kids made good money, $2 a yard hand pulling weeds. We'd gang up three or four of us. The two boys would pull the weeds and the girls would pick up leaves, twigs, and trash. We'd all walk to the mile to the 7-11 as the sweat dried on our sun tender skin. We'd walk the mile back sucking on our extra megasized slurpies clutching paper sacks of Bazooka Joe bubble gum, atomic fireballs, Jolly Ranchers, and various flavors of now and later taffy. 

Looking back I can see in my minds eye that the weeds grew smaller and there were less of them every year. I'd say 1985-86 was the wettest year. We lost a shed and both awnings on our trailer to a storm. My mom and the guy she hired to replace them drove around the entire next day looking for them in the hopes they could be repaired and reinstalled. They never found them. We got a slightly scorched set from a trailer that burned down and I guess my mom pocketed the bulk of the insurance money. We certainly needed it. The shed was repaired with much hammering by my grandfather. 

We were out and it took forever to get home because so many roads were flooded. By 1990 there was a definite decline in the weeds. I could weed the whole yard in 2 hours. Sometimes Id only do it twice a season. Yard jobs dropped off so we'd collect cans for candy money. Then I stopped noticing weeds because we moved into apartments and I found guitar and books, and a girl or two.

The last big monsoon season was 1995. We were now in a manufactured home, but still in Glendale. It was like news footage of a hurricane. I don't know how me and the young girl that would later become my wife got home alive but we did. Huge trees were downed. Power lines were downed. I watched Spanish tile roofs blow off like playing cards in front of a fan. We didn't have power for two weeks. Many houses in my mom's neighborhood took major roof damage. Some of my friends spent months in a hotel while their houses were being fixed.

1996 was a very dry year. The first of nearly thirty years now that we have been in a drought. Imagine having to depend on the rain to nourish the food you required to live on for the entire year. Droughts of this length are not uncommon. They think it was something like this that caused the Anasazi to abandon their cliffside fortresses for riparian areas along the Salt and Gila rivers. Eventually they made their way to the Babocamari and San Pedro rivers. They called themselves Tohono Odahm, Sabopouri, and Pima. When the drought ended they stayed and when a drought started they moved. Water is life. 

People have been inhabiting this valley for the last 15,000 years. I wonder if that's why out of the 130 plants I have identified so far that maybe four or five are poisonous. This soil is poor and you might get two or three years of crops with intensive agriculture before you just couldn't grow anything and have to move up or down the river a bit to fresh crop land. That lean year I guess they learned what was safe to eat as wild forage goes and spread those seeds as a kind of back up.

These plants do not informally blanket our valley. It would be interesting to get funding and access to some satellite imagery and do a good study. I bet that you would find a direct correlation between the presence of a certain density of edible wild plants and historic village areas that can't be explained by soil type and the amount of rain that area gets. I have some anecdotal evidence that Whetstone is not the first village that existed on this piece of the map.

We have large washes that once may have flowed year round or for most of the year. We have seasonal tanks or ponds that we didn't make. Villages are always near water sources for two reasons, drinking water for people and livestock, and water for crops, even if it had to be hauled from the source. 

Just my pondering on how things change.