Like most people, my only regular exposure to Sun City-ites is what I hear them say on talk radio. "Okay, next we go to Raymond in Sun City," the host says. "Ray, thank you for calling." What usually follows is five minutes of bitter invective aimed at politicians, liberals, lawyers, doctors and the media. Which is usually pretty funny, considering the topic of the day is how to repair screen doors. Judging from the call-in shows, having too much spare time is sometimes a problem in Sun City. Now, see? That's not a fair assumption. Like most people, I never get closer to Sun City than a quick drive-by on the way to Vegas. Some people have the advantage of having relatives who live out there, but they only visit when their relatives are sick with prostate problems or something, and that kind of thing pretty much skews their research, if you know what I'm saying. Forming your opinion of a place based on crabby talk-show callers is pretty dumb, but not nearly as dumb as doing your opinion-forming based on a visit to someone who's sitting on a blowtorch.
As team leader of Operation Geezer, I've just spent several days forming opinions about Sun City. Opinions, I don't need to tell you, based on solid, scientific research. My conclusions? I think Sun City is okay. I wouldn't mind moving there right now. But of course I can't. They won't let me. I'm not old enough and won't be for twenty years. Among the many things I've learned about Sun City, that's one that I love the best.
One of the things I love the least about Sun City is its location. Operation Geezer has required a lot of effort on my part, a lot of stomping around in the heat and a lot of heavy pollen-breathing. By far the most annoying thing about Sun City is getting to it, a process that I rather liken to getting to heaven, except that getting to heaven does not involve spending a cumulative 2.4 hours sitting at the light at Camelback and Grand during a period of four days, which I did while reporting this story. The two main approaches to Sun City are via Grand Avenue and Bell Road. On your way to Sun City (or, if you will, on your journey through life en route to heaven) you endure mile upon mile of unsightly roadside distractions. Self-storage lockers follow go-go bars follow drive-through liquor stores follow hubcap farms follow street-corner seatcover peddlers. At the end of your journey comes heaven, or, in this case, Sun City.
Of course, heaven is probably not as nice as Sun City. After 45 minutes on Grand Avenue, Sun City's whitewashed garden walls and immaculate rock yards look pretty cool. The sky is blue in Sun City, and the sun seems to shine brighter than it does downtown.
Upon my arrival on the first morning of Operation Geezer, I squinted through the glare and set about gathering "facts." Like usual I relied on a variety of time-tested journalistic techniques. For example:
* I immediately drove to the visitors center at 99th Avenue and Bell Road.
* I carefully watched a 25-minute video presentation at the visitors center. * I picked up a bunch of pamphlets and a local newspaper. So prepared, I then drove around for several days looking at buildings and bumper stickers, the most popular of which says: "I'm Spending My Kids' Inheritance." Sun City's streets are an agonizing maze of twists, turns, circles and cul-de-sacs. I was totally lost most of the time, which made me feel quite like a native. All of my hasty conclusions about Sun City were formed while creeping through traffic, totally lost, behind slow-moving golf carts, which are street-legal in Sun City and used for getting around by many locals. Like I say, the biggest challenge to anyone involved with forming opinions about a topic is overcoming preexisting prejudices. For example, I've always heard that booze is a big problem in Sun City. You know, Ray gets home from the golf course a little early. Betty's still off at bridge. Ray climbs into the martini shaker. Ray starts calling the radio stations to bitch about Ted Kennedy. And so it goes. Indeed, at first I thought a key part of my investigation would require sitting around in Sun City bars for hours at a time, talking to Sun City bartenders and Sun City drunks. You know, rip the lid off the dark underbelly of Sun City nightlife, that kind of thing. Problem with that is, the nightlife out there tends to end long before the "night" part of the day actually begins. Sure, a few ring-a-ding-ding types insist on ripping it up well into wee time, but for the most part it's safe to conclude that your real party guys and gals tend to peel off before they make it to retirement age. Besides, in Sun City, everybody gets up way too early to do much howling at the moon. Early in my investigation, I made my way to one of the rec centers. It was about 9 a.m. on a weekday, and gray heads were buzzing all around me. Classes were under way in several time-killing crafts, such as metal bending and clay squeezing. Laps were being swum in the big pool. Couples, carrying floor mats and long sticks padded at one end, were arriving for some kind of class I didn't feel like asking about. Over at the tennis courts, four red-faced guys were pounding tennis balls at each other. I wandered over to watch. From what I could tell, the two guys on one side of the net were at one point members of one branch of the United States armed forces, and the two guys on the other side were members of another branch. The vibes bouncing around that court were not groovy. There is a lot of retired military in Sun City, and lots of old vets. The Big One has been the dominant event in the lives of most of the residents, male or female. Sam Huff, the great linebacker, was fishing (sure) on a boat somewhere when he first heard the news that Vince Lombardi was going to coach the Redskins, Huff's team at the time. Huff said later that his first impulse was to row immediately to shore and start doing push-ups. After watching these ex-warriors bash tennis balls at each other for about ten minutes, I had the same impulse. But not all Sun City's residents are graying Great Santinis. After a couple of days out there, I realized that I probably prefer the company of most old people to most people my age.
Young people--defined here as those aged 55 and under, currently the demographic group that's ineligible for Sun City residency--are usually only as interesting as prime-time TV, their chief cultural reference. Young people think Andrew Dice Clay is funny, and they watch reruns of Three's Company. They attend concerts by guys who call themselves Three Dog Night. Old people have better stories, mostly because they've had more practice. Someone who's seventy years old right now grew up when movie stars didn't pretend to be intelligent, and you could whistle along with every tune on the radio. Old people read more than TV Guide. And, old people have a right to live apart from the rest of the world. That's another one of my big conclusions. Once they finished with World War II, old folks were forced to come home to a houseful of us, and we've been hounding them with our selfish demands ever since. When a guy who still remembers the Depression watches the evening news these days, I believe he has a right to run and hide from what he sees, to finish out his string with some distance between himself and the current swirl. And he deserves not to feel like a chump for being an honest, hardworking, taxpaying person, who usually paid cash and who usually had exact change, too. Someone who played fair and square to get where he got shouldn't have to deal with wretches like Michael Milken, Judd Nelson or the Trump family.
Deafness is only part of the reason the most-used word in Sun City conversations is "Huh?" If I make it to seventy, I doubt I'm going to care what anyone younger than 67 has to say about anything. I feel that way now.
My impression of Sun City is that it was designed to eliminate most opportunities for its residents to become irritated, except of course for the irritation supplied by talk radio and lifelong spouses. And that last one tends to iron itself out, too, after a while. There's nothing wrong with wanting to live in a place where people drive carefully. After living a dozen years in Phoenix, where every intersection looks like 15th Avenue and Thomas and where people solve parking-space disputes with pistols, I wouldn't mind moving to a place where motorists are forced to drive defensively because other motorists keep at least one turn signal blinking at all times. Nobody in Sun City knows if the other guy really intends to turn or change lanes or what. Buffer zones between cars average full blocks. That's not a bad thing. Also, I kind've like the idea that outrageous golf clothes are the acceptable fashion statement around town, even in church, and that every parking lot you see is full of row after row of whale-size American cars. Sun City people, the last generation of Americans with manners, are universally polite to each other (tennis opponents excepted), even strangers. Nobody litters, and if they do, everybody picks it up. A volunteer mob of litter police spend Saturday mornings picking up after tourists. Volunteerism is rampant. No worthy cause goes understaffed, and there's never been a meeting of volunteers in Sun City that didn't feature a table full of excellent cookies.
And whether they know it or not, Sun City residents had a desert-based, eco-consciousness long before the rest of us. Everywhere, solar panels shine from rooftops. Few yards grow water-sucking grass. If you set a newspaper down to blow your nose, someone from the Sun City Lions Club runs past and grabs it for recycling. Cool double-knit fibers clothe the populace. I suspect this is exactly how Del E. Webb, developer of Sun City, wanted it. Despite retaining his name throughout his entire life, Webb was no dope. Thirty years ago, he looked out on about a jillion acres of grungy cotton plants northwest of Phoenix and saw a place where he could sell houses to old people. In a courtyard off one of Sun City's many recreation centers, a much-larger-than-life green statue of Webb looks out over an unnaturally tidy garden. One of the great builder's feet rests on a sawhorse. He's balancing a blueprint in one hand, and the other hand points off to the horizon. "And we'll put the shuffleboard courts right over there," he seems to be saying. A sign at the base of the statue says Webb was a great sportsman. Nobody knows what that means anymore, and I doubt it has anything to do with shuffleboard. I believe the reference is to Webb's construction of that great sports town, Las Vegas, Nevada, and his onetime ownership of the New York Yankees baseball club, apparently an honorable thing at some point in history.
Webb's biggest accomplishment, however, towers over mere ownership of casinos and ballplayers. The guy was the Big Kahuna of geriatric marketing. Sun City is a tsunami. If the world economy doesn't completely collapse in the next thirty years, we'll all want to be living in a place exactly like Sun City. "Del" knew that. He foresaw a vast wave of aging jitterbugs who needed a nest. Today Sun City is home to more than 40,000 retired folks, most of whom refuse to sit still. It has its own hospital, restaurants, country clubs and several of its own suburbs. Also, I've counted at least four miniature golf courses out there, a statistic which I believe gives Sun City one of the highest per capita ratios of putt-putts on Earth, trailing only Anaheim and Myrtle Beach. Webb knew that his customers were real coffee-achievers, and that all he had to do was supply the bricks and mortar. Once the original Sun City development was sold out, Webb's company moved on to build and sell Sun City West. Because of the natural order of things, there is now considerable turnover in the housing market within the original city. Since Webb was spending money only to market new homes in Sun City West, a big group of civic-minded citizens of the original Sun City got together in the mid-1980s to work on backfill. Additionally, the group hoped to counter what they believed was a run of nasty old-coot-bashing in the local media. The goal of the Sun City Ambassadors--a volunteer outfit, of course--is to perpetuate the good life as blueprinted by Del Webb back in 1960. They're selling Sun City to the world, with no apparent payback other than to bring aboard more potential mini-golf players. If you go see them, don't be surprised if they ask how your folks are doing.
Sun City--truly the last resort--is the best argument I've seen so far for moderation in early life. If you live long enough, you get to move there and blow your kids' inheritance. So knock it off with the French fries. Get some exercise. And, for blood-pressure reasons, get a tape deck in your car. There will be plenty of time for talk radio later. Cap'n Dave pullquotes
Heaven is probably not as nice as Sun City.
Sun City's streets are an agonizing maze of twists and turns. I was totally lost most of the time, which made me feel like a native.
Ray gets home from the golf course. Betty's still off at bridge. Ray climbs into the martini shaker and starts calling the radio stations.
After a couple of days out there I realized that I probably prefer the company of most old people to most people my age.
He's balancing a blueprint in one hand, and pointing off to the horizon. "And we'll put the shuffleboard courts right over there," he seems to be saying. There's never been a meeting of volunteers in Sun City that didn't feature a table full of excellent cookies.
