Home is Where Your Heart Is

My youngest brother and his family are moving to Colorado this summer. That makes me the last of my siblings to live here in the Valley of the Sun. sure, there is a nephew, a niece,  and some distant grand nieces/nephews, along with my daughters and grand-kids....but I alone represent the 'great' Adler clan that was a fixture here since the early '50s.

 What did the Valley and Arizona mean to the Adler clan?

Where do I start?

Little League Baseball on summer evenings, Madison Pool splashes, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Bell's Restaurant, Mining Camp, Papago Park and Legend City. Town and Country Shopping Mall, Thrifty Ice Cream, pretending to be mannequins. Finding junk in the alley, the Indian Trading post, Bayless Groceries and museum.

St. Thomas, altar boys, Catholic girls, nuns and swimming pools. Playing ditch'em, British bulldog, and kill the guy with the ball on the football field. Camelback Spartans, Brophy Broncos, and CCD.

Phoenix Giants, Dodger Broadcasts, Phoenix Suns and Gorilla. TGIF, Ramone's and La Placita. Wallace and Ladmo, Lew King Rangers, Gerald, Romper Room, and Dewey Hopper fan club.

Long bike rides all over the Valley, knowing where all the good drinking fountains were hidden. Pink Sidewalk and the reservoir, Squaw Peak (Piestewa), North Mountain, South Mountain, Estrella and the San Tans...not to forget Coon Bluff, Superstitions, Mingas, and the Bradshaws. Bapchule, Ditch Day, 7th Grade Dance, 8th Grade Dance. Ice Cream Socials, Big Surf, Cinema Capri and Chris-town Mall.

I'm sure I can go on an on.  The Valley has so many memories for my siblings and me. I don't want to be the old man/keeper of memories. But the memories stack up in my mind like vintage hub caps at a junk yard. I don't want to throw them away in case one or two of them are actually valuable to someone.

It is strange to think that I am the one that stayed. In my youth I was sort of the one that hitch-hiked around the country and seemed relatively unstable, like a tumbleweed. Yet, 55 years into the Valley I am the last of us 8 siblings still here. With daughters and grands, I am not going anywhere.

This is a good home, a very good home. And home is where the heart is.

Cheers, nca