George Golden is not now and never was a fan of rock n’ roll music. And, at the age of 79, it’s a virtual certainty that he will not soon convert. But in early March 1957, the 40ish Golden was singing a considerably different tune. A phenomenon named Elvis Presley…
On December 16, the day he would be killed, Fred Schrader got up before dawn, made a pot of coffee, turned on the TV, and sat down to watch the morning news. His wife, Elaine, was still asleep when she first heard the creaking of the approaching bulldozer. In her…
Indignation, and some amount of beer, compelled Robert Carter’s first telephone call. Carter had just seen Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio on television, he said. The sheriff was bragging about the county’s work-furlough program for jail inmates, and defending his department’s recent inability to keep prisoners from escaping. Carter had…
Ellen Avilla was a good soldier in the war on disease. For almost five years, while working as a technician in the Arizona Department of Health’s state laboratory, Avilla performed tests on thousands of blood samples–checking them for HIV (the virus that causes AIDS), hepatitis, measles and other infectious and…
The first letter I read upon coming back from vacation had this to say: “How come you wrote about the Suns the way you did? How dare you sell out to Colangelo like that?” Wonderful. Things are back to normal. Let’s get a few other things out of the way…
“Domestic or imported?” That’s a question that local Coca-Cola drinkers are facing with increasing regularity in small madre y padre Mexican restaurants around the Valley as they’re offered a choice of two varieties of Coke when they order that beverage with their meals. One choice is a domestic Coke, the…
Senator Dennis DeConcini has contradicted his own sworn testimony in the Keating Five scandal. On Monday, DeConcini admitted he was aware as early as 1984 that his chief fund raiser, Earl Katz, was in business deals with the recently convicted financier Charles H. Keating Jr., who controlled the failed Lincoln…
“Would you like to spend some time alone with him?” “Yes,” I said. The vet looked down at Ramble the Dog. He shook his head from side to side. I caught my breath. I realized I had committed myself to something irrevocable. Ramble was spread out on the floor of…
HORTON BAY, Michigan–The road is narrow. No traffic. I haven’t seen another car for a long time. I hoped it would be this way. It’s like a journey back in time. This is the little town in which Ernest Hemingway really grew up. Hemingway spent all the summers of his…
During an after-Christmas sale last year, at the Dillard’s store in Paradise Valley Mall, Billy Mitchell went to a sales counter to purchase a pair of pants. He gave the salesclerk a hundred-dollar bill and waited while the clerk got change from another part of the store. As he waited,…
Amid racks of guitars and stacks of amplifiers at the Arizona Music Center hang autographed publicity photographs, the type most any music shop will accumulate over time. Inexpensive frames display the grinning likenesses of Tanya Tucker, the Bellamy Brothers, Barbara Mandrell and others who have passed through the Glendale store…
No one knows better how handy the Arizona State Retirement System fund can be for speculative forays into Arizona real estate developments than Governor Fife Symington. Symington found the system to be an easy touch when it came to borrowing money for his real estate gambits. Like many of his…
Mark Sullivan can smell blood. His body tenses, focusing all energy on the prey. Only 40 yards away, a huge lion sits under a bush, with languid eyes fixed on the human hunters moving slowly toward him. Crouching, Sullivan scoops up a bit of dust and watches as it trickles…
The lead story in the June 9 Washington Times was a bombshell. Under a page-one banner headline boldly proclaiming, “Casinos Checked Out Babbitt, His Denials of Gambling Don’t Fit Record,” Washington Times reporter Jerry Seper gave Washingtonians something to chew on with their morning coffee, as he recounted the lurid…
Casinos Checked Out Babbitt @deck:His Denials of Gambling Don’t Fit Record @body:Four Las Vegas casinos ran credit checks on Bruce Babbitt in 1976, when as Arizona attorney general he is said to have run up substantial gambling debts, a previously undisclosed grand jury transcript and a report by the Arizona…
Gila Bend is a stock-in-trade joke in Arizona. It is the kind of town summarized by dismissive epithets like Armpit, Bumfuck or Toilet Seat, as in, “I spent a week there one night.” That rude description about where you would put the enema also applies. Gila Bend is one of…
The lineup of stars sounded like the cast from a Love Boat episode, but the production was Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods’ movie, The Hound of Publicityville, which premiäred June 22 at a fund raiser for Woods at Symphony Hall. With a cast that includes Richard Anderson (the Bionic Man’s…
In an old school a block from the State Capitol sit 62 electric solar panels, donated to the state Department of Commerce’s Energy Office six years ago by Phoenix developer and solar-energy advocate John F. Long. While some of the panels are cracked and shattered, many only need to be…
Dan Jessup and John Stempniak were playing a friendly game of golf on the Sun City Vistoso course in Tucson five years ago. Things went awry on the way to the 13th tee. Between holes 12 and 13, the golfers had to drive across a public road. Stempniak, who was…
There is nothing this newspaper would like more than to celebrate the downfall of Dave Pratt. Over the years, New Times has feuded gloriously with Pratt, the KUPD-FM morning man who has ruled local rock radio for what seems like forever. One Wednesday, when Pratt encouraged listeners to deposit stacks…
Look into a radio executive’s heart and you’ll find Arbitron scars. The national ratings service, which counts radio’s unseen audience by mailing out weekly diaries, has been the industry standard for decades. Arbitron’s numbers–500 to 600 diaries are collected every month to measure this market of roughly 2.5 million potential…
Riley Briones was suicidal. His girlfriend was breaking up with him. He and his parents were constantly fighting. He didn’t fit in at school. His life was a mess. But Riley, who was 14 at the time, didn’t have the nerve to kill himself. A cousin suggested he accompany him…
