If her four grandchildren ever come back from Nebraska, Lynette will be ready. She keeps a blue dirt bike propped against the wall of the back porch, and she has plastic-covered children’s books, like Peter and the Wolf and Smokey Bear, stacked in one corner of her living room. The…
Back in 1898, when the cornerstone of the Chipman-Petersen building in Tempe was laid, the national battle cry was “Remember the Maine!,” referring to the U.S. battleship that blew up in the Havana harbor. In fact, the cornerstone was laid the same day the United States went to war against…
The Don Bolles case continues to be a political tar baby for anyone who gets close to it. The latest Brer Rabbit is new Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods. One of Woods’ first acts as successor to Bob Corbin was to fire Judson Roberts, an assistant attorney general who was…
Dick Jonas is a guitar-pickin’ Vietnam War hero who says he still gets a kick out of putting on his blue air force suit. “You can call me a true-blue kind of guy,” he says. “You can call me an old pilot who likes to have some fun every now…
For several weeks last spring, angry parents besieged radio talk shows with tearful complaints about their children having been removed from their custody. Their hysteria was directed at the Child Protective Services branch of the Arizona Department of Economic Security. It resulted in joint legislative hearings to scrutinize the inner…
Two men from Harvard. Their names are Samuel P. Goddard III and J. Fife Symington III. Both seek to become the next governor of Arizona. How do we choose between them? What can we expect from either of them? Goddard, the son of ex-Arizona governor Sam Goddard, has never held…
Thousands of years from now, when archaeologists unearth the ruins of my home, they will no doubt assume they’ve stumbled upon a holy shrine constructed by a small but fanatical sect of cartoon-animal worshipers. And they won’t be far wrong. I am married to a woman with an insatiable Disneylust–which…
Pete Rose deserves to be in baseball’s Hall of Fame. The preliminary committee which chooses the names to be placed on the ballot has decreed that Rose’s name will be kept off because he is still on baseball’s ineligible list. Rose was suspended for “life” by A. Bartlett Giamatti, the…
It came so unexpectedly. Congress had been debating for three days. Now it was almost time for the final vote in the United States Senate. Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii was one of the last speakers. A camera poised high above Inouye picked him up as he strode wearily to…
Andy Conlin can’t decide whether he’s happy or wary about the antiwar demonstration that turned up at Arizona Center shortly after its November opening. “I was flattered,” says the Rouse Company’s Phoenix point man at first, “because it showed that people were recognizing this as the community’s focal point.” But…
Forget love at first sight. Get ready for marriage on first date! “It seemed like a fun idea at the time,” chuckles Phoenix deejay Danny Bonaduce. “Of course, my fiancee back in Philadelphia wasn’t too thrilled about it.” The erstwhile smartass of The Partridge Family recently married a woman he’d…
The door may be opening a little wider for water raids on rural Arizona by the big cities. And the threat comes from one of the least likely sources–a state senator-elect who hasn’t even taken office yet. Carol Springer, a Prescott Republican, announced December 13 she would introduce legislation to…
When Arizona intrudes on the national consciousness the way an angry red pimple pops up on prom night, expatriate Steve Benson gets tears in his eyes. Then, when he stops laughing, it’s time to get back to work. It’s been a year since the cartoonist left his job at the…
For a comic-book superheroine who hasn’t been in wide circulation yet, the Incredible Librarian has quite a following. She gets fan mail from Australia. Her exploits are publicized in newspaper stories and trade journals. Her image is printed on coffee mugs. Incredible Librarian tee shirts are available in several languages,…
Mario Puzo has always insisted that when he wrote The Godfather, he knew so little about organized crime that he had no real Mafia dons in mind as models for Don Corleone. From his writing, it is clear that he regards them as a higher form of life than politicians…
An anthology of minitales that couldn’t be padded to full-column length–or sold to Reader’s Digest on short notice. If Uri Geller, What Am I? As my wife walked our son home from kindergarten in the company of a new classmate and his mother, the kids got into a bitter argument…
Now, nearly fifteen years later, Don Devereux still remembers the empty feeling. He had just received word that Don Bolles, a reporter he much admired, had just been blown up in broad daylight by a bomb placed underneath his car. “I was working in Santa Fe on land-fraud cases,” Devereux…
When Joe Rogers first read Martin Luther King Jr.’s words in public, something strange happened. As president of the Congress of Afro-American Students at Colorado State University, Rogers was no newcomer to public speaking. He had participated in several public debates as an undergraduate, had introduced Jesse Jackson at a…
The life of your average barroom sot is getting better. No, beer and whiskey have not become cheaper or any less debilitating. No, the long-term health benefits of cigarette smoke have not finally been revealed. Neither pool nor darts has been proven to be an IQ enhancer. Pickled eggs are…
“He is wrong and I am right,” the voice says. “Clearly, I am right and you are wrong, and you surely must know it,” comes the reply. Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah! Will they stick out their tongues? Pout or resort to spitballs? No, these attacks are not squabblings overheard in a schoolyard. Rather,…
Blame it on the holidays, the leftover eggnog or those sappy long-distance telephone commercials on TV, but I’ve been thinking about calling my father. It’s not like we chat at the beginning of every new year. Or at the beginning of every new decade. I haven’t seen or spoken to…
The caller wanted to talk to Peter Hester about death. Hester, a self-styled adventurer, amateur archaeologist and the most notorious of Arizona’s pot hunters–those who excavate long-abandoned Indian villages and burial sites for knowledge, fun and profit–is familiar with the subject. Digging from the ground what is left behind by…
