Enjoying some sushi at downtown's On A Roll Sushi Bar and Restaurant are (from left) Javier Trudeau, general manager; Marcus Eldon, 7, a frequent customer and resident of Armory Park; Pablo Toscano, sushi chef; and Teresa Moreno, who with her husband, Dominic, owns the establishment.

I have been blessed to grow up and continue to live in Armory Park and work in downtown Tucson.

I’m even more grateful to have had the opportunity to share my memories with readers and to receive your positive feedback.

This is my last column for “My Tucson,” and I want to thank you. I wish I’d had more time! Don’t we all?

There are many more stories I’d have liked to share about days gone by, especially those even Rio Dinero’s spending can’t duplicate.

For example, I wanted to share my and other Tucsonans’ experiences in the Tucson Festival Society’s Children’s Costume Parade as part of Las Fiestas de la Placita.

That festival took place during the 1950s in the downtown commercial center that featured El Zarape and other restaurants, Ronquillo’s Bakery and many other businesses.

All were razed, along with a portion of a vibrant residential neighborhood, to make way for the Tucson Convention Center. Thankfully, El Minuto Mexican restaurant survived.

During the 2008 presidential election year, it would have been fun to share my political experiences from the 1970s.

I had a fabulous trip to New York City and the Democratic Convention in 1976 as an alternate delegate for then-congressman and presidential candidate Mo Udall.

It was an incredible opportunity to witness and participate in the building of a party platform. Meeting national elected officials and media celebrities was pretty neat, too.

Also, I would have liked to offer opinions on how to solve the economic crisis. One of my favorites is to give middle-class and low-income taxpayers a $50,000 rebate. We’d then have the money to buy a new car, catch up on mortgage payments, donate to church and charity and buy a few more necessities and maybe some impulse items. Economic crisis solved.

And I would have written a profile of local hero Gerry Verdugo, who, just before Christmas, donated a kidney to Barbara Valenzuela, both parishioners at St. Augustine Cathedral.

Gerry and his family made a courageous decision. Organ donation saves lives. Everyone should consider it.

Most important, with the start of a new year, it’s appropriate to look to the future with hope.

I believe downtown Tucson’s future lies in the hands of the tenacious businesspeople who have invested in my favorite restaurants: Enoteca, Caffe Milano, Casa Vicente, Ascolese’s and Barrio Grill. We need more.

Where are the Whole Foods, Sunflower Markets and Trader Joe’s that downtown residents and workers need and want?

Residents of Armory Park and surrounding neighborhoods want a grocery store and a bakery.

On weekends, I love walking downtown to my favorite restaurants, especially when events are taking place in the neighborhood.

It would be nice to be able to pick up a few groceries on the way home. Maybe my 7-year-old neighbor Marcus (pictured above) will live to see it.

When the economy stabilizes, we’ll all still be here. We’ll have a little less money in our wallets, but we’ll still need groceries. Believe!

Happy new year, Tucson!

Julieta González is a Tucson native, playwright and freelance writer who is active in the community and working for the Catholic Diocese of Tucson. E-mail: julietag2008@yahoo.com

Julieta González

Don't let this photo fool you: Julieta González loves the holidays, though on this day in December 1953, a nearly 2-year-old Julieta and a weary downtown Santa weren't getting along particularly well.

Once the Thanksgiving Day feast leftovers are eaten, it’s Christmas!

In downtown Tucson in the 1950s and 1960s, city crews strung up bright lights across Stone and Sixth avenues and Congress and Pennington streets.

Huge garlands of bright lights, giant gold stars, green and red tree ornaments and lighted Santa faces made downtown magical.

The Pima County Courthouse set up an exquisite larger-than-life Nativity scene.

On Congress Street, busy stores painted their windows with wintry scenes of snowmen, elves and reindeer.

Christmas carols rang out from the banks, five and dimes, pharmacies, shoe and jewelry stores for frantic customers who sang along with the tunes.

Pennington Street, from Stone Avenue and eastward, was witness to the upscale retailers, including Steinfelds, Jácome’s, Cele Peterson’s and Levy’s.

Sears anchored the retailers at the southwest corner of Pennington and Sixth Avenue.

At the top of the classic staircase at Steinfelds, Santa waited in his chair. Macy’s in Manhattan had nothing on this retailer’s offerings in terms of variety and quality in everything from fine china to designer clothing.

Jácome’s offered the latest in unique items, many imported from Spain. Fashion, style and customer service were Jácome’s middle name.

Next door, JCPenney welcomed shoppers, too. And Levy’s was not to be outdone. Its bargain basement allowed a broader customer base to enjoy the decorations, excitement and high-quality merchandise.

Sears, with something for everyone, including blue-collar dads, boasted the largest toy train display in town.

Mom and Dad always donated to the Salvation Army bell-ringers, who seemed to be on every street corner.

It was a bright and festive milieu. I miss it.

Christmas at home was the stuff of legends.

Dad, despite long hours working on the Southern Pacific Railroad’s wrecker crew, always brought home the best Christmas tree. He welded his own tree stand, strung up the bubbling lights and toasted his accomplishment with his secret eggnog recipe.

By the time midnight Mass came around on Christmas Eve, Mom had cooked another turkey with the trimmings, made dozens of tamales and tortillas, refried enough beans and made enough rice for every guest, planned or not.

Our tiny home in Armory Park was the gathering place as relatives and friends made the rounds.

Almost everyone went to St. Augustine’s Cathedral at midnight to celebrate “the reason for the season.”

I say “almost” because Dad stayed home to greet visitors and keep the eggnog fresh. As a toddler, I stayed home, too. You didn’t want me in church. Just ask the Santa in the photo above.

Aunt Ana brought giant homemade decorated sugar cookies and beautifully wrapped gifts from Levy’s, where she worked as a hairstylist.

The uncles, Gus and Juan, exchanged funny stories with Dad. The cousins and I played games. Times were good.

Despite the tough economic hits from which we’re all reeling, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas one month from today.

Share what you can with your neighbors, give to strangers and thank the Lord for what we have. Times will be good again.

Julieta González is a Tucson native, playwright and freelance writer who is active in the community and working for the Catholic Diocese of Tucson. E-mail: julietag2008@yahoo.com

Pfc J.A. González, somewhere in Germany, Jan. 15, 1945.

I heard about war and tough economic times at the dinner table growing up. As the adage goes: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Decades after the Great Depression and World War II, war and the economy are at the forefront again.

My parents, J.A. and Alicia González, were married Aug. 22, 1942. A month later, Dad was gone to what he called his “all-expense-paid trip to Europe.”

Mom and my grandparents and aunts would have slept better had they exchanged daily e-mail messages or been in touch via cell phone with their loved ones in the armed forces.

If the relatives were lucky, letters crossed the ocean and reached their destination months after they were sent.

For three years, Dad missed Christmas tamales and Easter hams. He talked about how there were things in his C-ration meals that “even starving dogs walked away from.” He may have seen Paris, but there were no Thanksgiving turkeys served up by the president.

A Tucsonan, he learned to sleep standing up under icicles in bitter English and German winters “as the snot froze on my face.”

Dad served his country proudly in the Army Air Corps as a military policeman and 28 months as a medic. He administered aid to wounded soldiers on the battlefield and assisted medical doctors in field triage. Dad also talked about gathering body parts to make a whole for burial.

Some of Dad’s stories weren’t gruesome but amusing. As an MP in England prior to the June 1944 invasion, he broke up brawls between the Yanks and Brits.

One such melee erupted when a group of American soldiers walked into a shop to buy hand-knitted warm woolen caps. A GI said to the shopkeeper, “Give me a couple of those caps.” The shopkeeper replied, “We don’t give them, we sell them.” The fight was on. British troops and citizens joined in to bash the Yanks.

Dad also talked about how the British “stopped the war for tea every afternoon,” and American soldiers held up their pinkies and spoke in British accents to mock teatime. More fights.

Meanwhile, in Tucson, everything from gasoline and beef to nylons and linens was rationed.

My mom, Alicia, raised chickens in the backyard for eggs and meat. She and my grandmother sewed for the family and sold their creations for cash.

Aunt Artemisa, was the family’s “Rosie the Riveter,” working at the local airplane manufacturing plant.

Aunt Lily, in high school, and Aunt Carmen, at the UA, rolled bandages. Aunt Ana operated a beauty salon out of the family home.

Grandpa Juan worked at the Southern Pacific railroad – and worried.

Uncle Gus, one of Dad’s two younger brothers, joined the Arizona National Guard in the late 1930s. As a “Bushmaster,” immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack, he, too, was serving.

Uncle Gus was sent to Panama to guard the canal and saw action in the Pacific. Several years and two Purple Hearts later, he was discharged.

My mom recalled that the day he returned to Tucson after months in a San Francisco hospital, “Gus went straight into the kitchen and made himself a bean burro.”

Aunt Artemisa married Kenneth Clayton, a much-decorated former POW at the Battle of the Bulge. He saved many lives and – together with the González men – gave us, the next generation, great pride and appreciation for the sacrifices of all of our nation’s active military and veterans.

Honor them and their families Nov. 11.

Julieta González is a Tucson native, playwright and freelance writer active in the community and working for the Catholic Diocese of Tucson. E-mail: julietag2008@yahoo.com

Somewhere in Tucson, standing left to right: Artemisa González, Alicia González and Lily González. Seated is Carmen González.

Sister Corina Padilla (left) and Sister Ester Calderon, share fond memories of service to the community as "White Sisters."

As a 4-year-old in 1956, I could read and knew my numbers, including my address and telephone number. But I couldn’t quite grasp that I wasn’t old enough to go to school.

I figured I could walk three blocks to Safford Elementary, and I was at school. Getting inside was another matter.

When school officials and police delivered me into the hands of my angst-filled mother, they brought information about Pio Decimo Kindergarten nearby.

My first day at “school,” I was impressed by the giant “Jesus and I” flip charts of illustrated Bible stories. The most inspiring presence, however, were the “White Sisters.”

I had little appreciation of who they were. I just knew that they were angelic, loving and extremely bright.

They were the Eucharistic Missionaries of St. Dominic, who came from New Orleans in 1939 at the invitation of Bishop Daniel Gercke to organize a Religious Vacation School.

In the early years, their classrooms were in Carrillo and Davis public schools. By the time I went to kindergarten, they had a convent and classroom building in the 800 block of South Seventh Avenue.

It wasn’t long before their mission expanded to social work in the neighborhood and outside Tucson.

They organized Religious Vacation Schools in Continental, Marana, Jerome, Clifton, Morenci, Bisbee, Parker, Willcox, Safford, Phoenix and beyond.

Sister Corina Padilla, active in ministry since 1950 and now semiretired, recalls teaching catechism under a tree in Sahuarita.

She lived at Pio Decimo for 20 years and made home visits. “We weren’t trained social workers, but we did a lot of social work,” says Sister Corina.

They collected clothes, food and other resources to help meet community needs.

Sister Maria Teresa Apalategui took her vows 46 years ago. She recalls stopping at Pio Decimo as a sixth-grader on her way home with a friend who picked up bread for her family.

“From that time on, I fell in love with the sisters and the rest is history,” she says.

She earned a master’s degree in social work and is associate director for social services at Catholic Community Services. “We reached out to children and their families, just as Jesus did,” says Sister “MT.”

Sister Esther Calderon, a registered nurse, is part of the St. Mary’s Hospice Program and volunteers for the Diocesan Prison Ministry. She, too, lived at Pio Decimo.

While difficult, Sister Esther’s prison ministry is rewarding when she helps inmates and their families make positive changes.

Her hospice work is similarly gratifying. “I talk to people as they die and truly feel the presence of God at this sacred moment.”

Former students recall the young sisters’ athleticism.

Bill Moten, a 57-year-old financier, wasn’t Catholic, but he was never made to feel left out of the basketball and dodge ball games at Pio Decimo.

“They showed us that they were nuns, but they took us on. They’d pop us with that ball, apologize and pop us again.”

Retired educator Gene Benton remembers summer Bible School at Davis School in the 1940s.

“The sisters wore full habits and played softball with us,” he says. “I remember the rattling of their huge wooden rosaries as they ran the bases.

“They were the first nuns I ever saw driving cars. They made things fun.”

In the 1980s and 1990s, Pio Decimo expanded under the direction of Margaret Kish.

Joyce Walker, director since 2004, says she appreciates “the rich history of the convent that became a neighborhood campus complete with services for individuals, children and families.”

“When I give tours of the center,” she says, “I always tell them that the building is a former convent, and we might in fact be standing in one of the areas where a sister slept and said her prayers.”

Julieta González is a Tucson native, playwright and freelance writer active in the community and working for the Catholic Diocese of Tucson. E-mail: julietag2008@yahoo.com

Julieta, almost 2 years old, occupied with one of McLellan's famous kid-sized candied apples, strolls up Congress Street with her dad, J. A. "The Champ" González, Dec. 5, 1953.

Walking daily through downtown Tucson evokes fun memories as well as conflicting emotions of hope and frustration.

Congress Street has a great number of demolished and empty storefronts where a variety of establishments once greeted shoppers.

I find it difficult to believe that after years of talk and expense by the city of Tucson and its “Rio Dinero” revitalization project, there appears to be just one visible sign of life to come.

In that little sign, though, I find hope for more.

The sushi restaurant On a Roll might be near completion.

A poster on the door says applications for employment are being taken.

I love sushi, and I’ve been waiting since December for this place to open.

Its location, 63 E. Congress St., is in what was part of my favorite “five-and-dime,” McLellan Store.

They sold everything and had a great lunch counter. In the 1950s and 1960s you could buy a hamburger, fries and Coke for 59 cents.

They also had balloons you could pop and pay anywhere from one penny to 29 cents for a banana split.

Giant bags of fresh popcorn were a dime, and so were the candied apples. Amazingly, I never broke a tooth or had a cavity.

My parents would stop in on the way home to buy me a candied apple only if I had behaved well and my mom had been able to shop and complete her errands.

During one such stop, when I was 4 years old, my mom bought a tiny 5-cent fern at McLellan’s.

More than 50 years later, that now giant piece of greenery still adorns my backyard.

The other five-and-dimes were cool and sold great stuff, too.

Kress, one block east of McLellan’s, had escalators and sold canaries and parakeets.

Woolworth’s, just west of McLellan’s, was the happening place for its 45 rpm record shop and 25-cent slice of pizza with Coke.

A contemporary and co-worker, Mike Berger, remembers that he and his family did their Christmas shopping at Woolworth’s when downtown “was decorated and bright at night.”

Although they lived in midtown, they made the trek to downtown weekly to spend an hour or two at the public library and then have ice cream.

I also remember hearing adults complain about the signs Woolworth’s had posted, stating they would not hire “Negroes or Mexicans.”

We must have started shopping there after the signs came down.

Gene Benton, 66, has fond memories of the movie theaters.

He remembers the cheap prices at the State Theatre, which was on the same block as Kress.

“They showed mostly westerns and old war movies around 1948 through the late 1950s. I was especially impressed by a movie star named Lash LaRue, who carried a bullwhip. We kids thought it was so cool,” says Benton.

Benton, who lived in Barrio Anita, says he and his friends and family would stop at “Sallie and Sam’s” for ice cream cones on the way home from the movies at the Lyric and the Plaza.

“The Lyric was inexpensive and ran movies after they’d been at the Fox for a while. The Plaza, the Spanish-language theater, let you bring in your own food,” he says.

“Both theaters had barber shops next to them. The barber shops were always crowded. They were the gathering places of the time.”

Berger says his two memories “reinforced the notion that downtown was a special, important and fun place.”

I believe and hope that it can be that again.

Julieta González is a Tucson native, playwright and freelance writer active in the community and working for the Catholic Diocese of Tucson. E-mail: julietag2008@yahoo.com

"Little Golden Books" fueled a reading habit that lasted into adulthood.

A visit to a friend’s house brought back childhood summer memories.

Michelle Antle’s 15-year-old daughter, Mary, of Salpointe High is enthralled with the newest in the “Twilight” series.

Michelle says she’s spent a fortune on books for Mary’s summer, and Mary read them all.

Books were always my companions, too. They were my best friends, especially in summer, when my school chums and I went our separate ways.

Ever since I could talk, my parents splurged on “Little Golden Books” for 25 cents apiece in the mid-1950s. When I began kindergarten, we trekked to the local library, then in Armory Park.

I participated in the library’s summer reading programs, with a goal to have read as many books as possible. Sometimes, I was even the leader.

During this period, I discovered the “Golden Book of Astronomy” and went to bed many a night in mortal fear that a giant rock would fling itself from the asteroid belt and strike the earth.

Being in fifth grade during the Cuban missile crisis did little to dispel this fear. Astronomers I met as an adult assured me it still could happen.

During high school, I wrote extensive books reports for extra credit and typed other people’s reports for extra cash.

College and graduate school “suggested reading lists” were treats. My student job was in the library, typing corrections on catalog cards.

After college, extraordinary women founded the Southern Arizona Book Club. No, Oprah didn’t invent the book club.

We formed ours in 1982, and we’re all still friends and voracious readers. Our founders, Frances Gonzalo and her sister, Lillian, are deceased.

Our club met monthly, reading everything from John Naisbitt’s “Megatrends” to Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero With a Thousand Faces.”

We interviewed Carol Gilligan at Harvard by telephone about her just-published “In A Different Voice,” wherein she explained how men and women differ in corporate and life situations because of how they act out on the playground as children.

Next we read “Why Jenny Can’t Lead” by Jinx Melia. A few months later, I met her in Denver at a Junior League Conference.

We read Thomas Merton, Jean Auel, Tom Miller and Jorge Amado. We attended book events and invited local authors to our meetings.

We club members shared fabulous meals, wine, conversation and friendship.

Lives were changed as a result of our book club. Jane Gray, a foreign service officer, recently retired from the State Department, credits a member with providing her with the information and impetus to take the foreign service exam.

On a cold December morning in 1984, Jane took the exam, and the next 20 years of her life were an adventure worthy of a book.

“People always asked me how I got into the Foreign Service,” says Jane. “I told them about the very smart women in Tucson who embellished my intellectual life and who became each other’s support group.”

And it all began with summer books.

Julieta González is a Tucson native, playwright and freelance writer active in the community and working for the Catholic Diocese of Tucson. E-mail: julietag2008@yahoo.com

The UA Mall was the happening spot in the 1960s, a place where you might even spot a Kennedy

Presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy makes a memorable landing on at the University of Arizona as his car stops suddenly to avoid hitting pedestrians during his visit March 29, 1968.

Growing up and living in the Armory Park Neighborhood had many advantages.

As children and teenagers, we took many of those for granted. One included the short drive to the exquisitely maintained lawns and gardens at the University of Arizona. We considered it our very own backyard.

On almost any Sunday after Mass and while dinner was cooking at grandma’s, my father filled up the family car with me, my cousins and some friends and took us out to run free on the UA Mall.

My grandmother’s house was in John Spring Neighborhood, just a few blocks from the Main Gate, so it was an even shorter trip from there.

Easter Sunday, we had two egg hunts – one at grandma’s and one in and around the fountain at Old Main. The photo sessions followed at the former rose garden just east of Bear Down.

Our attitude about UA and its activities continued on into high school. Not only were we all headed to college as students after graduating from Tucson High School, but we attended as many UA events as we could. These included football games, plays, operas and my dad’s favorite – baseball games.

There was always something going on at UA and with Tucson High just a couple of blocks away, we felt we could go and join in everything – including catching a glimpse of visiting political candidates.

While still not old enough to vote, I paid close attention to world events. My parents and I talked politics at the dinner table.

Forty years ago, in 1968, the Vietnam War was raging. Dad, a proud veteran of World War II, had many co-workers and friends whose sons had been drafted and were serving in Vietnam.

From 1966 to 1968, we had attended three funerals for Marines killed in the war. They had been brothers of former schoolmates from Safford Junior High.

While Vietnam took top billing during the nightly news, there were many other issues exploding: the Middle East; poverty; job equality for women and minorities; race relations; unions and the economy.

Cesar Chavez was on a hunger strike, Martin Luther King Jr. was marching and Sen. Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy was running for president. They were exciting and inspiring people.

So when Kennedy came to Tucson for a speech at the UA Main Auditorium (now Centennial Hall), it was only natural that I was going to see him – one way or another.

March 29, 1968, Elsa Martinez, my classmate at Tucson High, and I politely informed our fifth- and sixth-period teachers that we would be absent and off we went. I was armed with my tiny plastic Kodak Instamatic 110 camera in case we got close enough.

There was no way we could get into the auditorium since we didn’t have UA student identification cards. Besides, it was standing room only.

So, we waited outside. And we waited until finally Kennedy emerged, surrounded by what we thought were mean old men who kept pushing us away.

We refused to be pushed away and grabbed at the senator and stayed with him until he got into his convertible. The crowd was thick and just as quickly as the car began to move forward, the driver slammed on the brakes to keep from hitting a few pedestrians. The senator fell on his behind in the car, and I snapped the photo I have treasured my entire life.

As the car headed west through the Main Gate, Elsa and I ran after it like a couple of star-struck fans. They sped away but we ran as fast as we could. We both shouted “We love you, Mr. Kennedy. Don’t go!” I distinctly recall hearing Elsa scream “Stay here with us! Please!”

If only he had stayed with us. Two and half months later, he was assassinated in Los Angeles.

Julieta González is a Tucson native, playwright and freelance writer active in the community and working for the Catholic Diocese of Tucson. E-mail: julietag2008@yahoo.com

Many faces and businesses have changed, but newcomers and old-timers alike can still see all the area has to offer. A downtown grocery would be nice, though.

"The Hiker," erected in 1959, still stands watch in Armory Park.

My parents were fortunate to find an affordable, tiny, two-bedroom house in Armory Park during a housing shortage in the early 1950s.

Dad worked for Southern Pacific Railroad and recognized the value of living near his job site, then at the Depot on Toole Avenue.

Additionally, Pio Decimo Kindergarten, run by the “White sisters,” was four blocks away.

Safford Elementary and Junior High schools and the now closed All Saints Catholic Church and School were three blocks away.

Major department stores – Levy’s, Steinfelds, Jácome’s, Sears and Myerson’s – were a short walk away, amid the thriving downtown business and government centers.

Banking, jury duty and shopping were a leisurely stroll through the very lovely, clean and safe Armory Park.

The park had swings, a slide, monkey bars and sandbox areas, where we made a mandatory stop for me to play.

While neighborhood children played, our parents chatted, read or just relaxed while munching on freshly popped hot buttered popcorn purchased from the elderly vendor who operated his cart daily in the center of the park.

When I began kindergarten, we included more-frequent visits to the public library in the building now occupied by the Children’s Museum.

The Saturday morning cartoons thrived at the Fox Theatre, and Mexican movies played at the Plaza.

Jake’s and Kippy’s served up burgers and fries all weekend and evenings. We didn’t have to guess their business hours. They were always open; so were El Charro and El Minuto.

We had everything we needed within blocks of our house. Although we always had one, we never depended on the family automobile for every errand.

Even our family physician’s office was a mere seven blocks away on Jackson Street, between Stone and Scott avenues.

In a pinch, the nearest hospital with an emergency room was downtown as well. The Southern Pacific Hospital was at Congress and Granada.

Roy Laos’ Arizona Pharmacy operated at Sixth Avenue and 17th Street, serving almost everyone in Armory Park.

While supermarkets were already on the scene in Tucson, the neighborhood markets in and around Armory Park were critical to area residents.

The OK Market on my block and nearby Gin Soo’s were lifesavers, especially in summer when neighborhood children needed a constant supply of Popsicles.

Moms also needed last-minute supplies of apples, bananas, salt, sugar, laundry detergent, toilet paper, crackers, canned goods and the all-important carton of milk or loaf of bread.

These little markets were near enough for children to actually “run to the store” during a cooking emergency.

During a downtown freeway scare, thanks to the hard work of neighborhood residents such as Annie Laos and Gerrie Braummeir, Armory Park was saved from potential destruction in the early 1970s.

We were designated a Historic Neighborhood and heaved a sigh of relief when our homes were saved.

Young families began moving into affordable “fixer-uppers.” Others returned to houses once owned by their parents and grandparents.

New residents included refugees from the downtown “Mexican removal” project, which made way for the Tucson Convention Center and destroyed a significant ethnic business and residential area in the heart of downtown.

Subsequently, Armory Park has become a very desirable location. Fifty-four years after my parents chose to live here, a new neighbor bought the house next door for basically the same reasons.

A mom and artist, Kim Eldon, was thrilled to find a home in an area near the Temple of Music and Art and downtown that’s close enough that she can walk her son to school.

A former New Yorker, though, she misses being able to stop by a grocery store for a carton of milk or some fresh produce after leaving her first-grader at school.

We have the 17th Street Market. That can be a fun place, but it’s not what I consider within a safe walk, nor is it an accessible wheelchair ride across railroad tracks and into an industrial area with much truck traffic.

A newcomer to the area, the Barrio Market at 20th Street and South Sixth Avenue, has potential and, once the construction around it ends, might even succeed.

But it sure would be nice to be able to stroll down a safe sidewalk to fetch a few necessities. Maybe even some ice-cold Popsicles in summer or fresh, hot buttered popcorn in winter.

Julieta González is a Tucson native, playwright and freelance writer active in the community and working for the Catholic Diocese of Tucson. E-mail: julietag2008@yahoo.com

Steinfelds department store was one of the anchors of a vibrant downtown in the 1950s.

I wonder if there had been a border fence then whether St. Augustine's Cathedral would have been built at all.

In my historic Tucson, everyone had a nickname. My father grew up in Tucson’s Barrio Anita in the early 1900s.

During dinner conversations about Tucson’s history and colorful characters, he spoke often of an elderly gentleman who lived around the corner.

The man’s nickname – everyone had nicknames in those days – was El Viejito Encyclopedia” (the encyclopedic little old man).

The gentleman in question knew everyone, everything about them and then some. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how he got his nickname.

According to my dad’s telling, the old man told stories about Tucson when our borders were roughly what we now refer to as downtown. What is now the city center or the Old Pueblo’s “heart” was the actual city.

The old man recalled how when the bishop of the Diocese of Tucson wanted to build his new cathedral on Stone Avenue in the late 1800s, he had to make a pilgrimage to Mexico for the funds.

Apparently there weren’t enough rich people in town or at least not enough viatos (devoted Catholics), so the bishop had to beg money from wealthy families in Mexico.

I wonder if there had been a border fence then whether St. Augustine’s Cathedral would have been built at all.

But the border that crossed Arizonans is a topic for another column.

I recall from childhood an elderly woman, La Chu, who referred to herself and her family as “the ones Santa Ana sold,” referring, of course, to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

The old man also talked about the full-body dunking baptizing that went on in the Santa Cruz River when the aleluyas were in town. That was the nickname for the evangelicals who had tent revivals near the river, which actually had something called “water” in it at the time.

And so it went. A local family that sold burros and other Mexican foods from a push cart around town were called Los Enchiladas; a local horse trainer was called El Bronco and his children Los Bronquitos; a large family that had many milk bottles delivered to their doorstep were called Los Bebe Leches, the milk drinkers, etc.

Of course my dad had a nickname, too: The Champ, El Campión. His school chums at Davis Elementary gave him that moniker when he beat up the school bully on the playground.

The bully was two years older and terrorizing smaller children. According to those who witnessed the incident, my dad just delivered the perfect uppercut, and the bully went down for the count.

In retelling the story, Dad would smile and say, “I admit I had to jump to punch him, but he stopped picking on us little kids and started playing and sharing his baseballs and bats with us.”

This was one of those incidents in a time in Tucson when the teachers looked the other way and no one called the cops or sued the school district.

You know, back in the day when all of Tucson celebrated Christmas, now nicknamed “the holidays.” But that’s another column.

Julieta González is a Tucson native, playwright and freelance writer active in the community and working for the Catholic Diocese of Tucson. E-mail: julietag2008@yahoo.com