I was driving around the other day running some errands. Now that is something you do not want to do in December. Be out period! I find I always have to add an extra 15-20 minutes to get from here to there due to the holiday traffic. I passed by a few malls throughout my errands and looked at the parking lots and the barrage of traffic, eagerly, and at times, rudely, heading to the mall to spread holiday cheer and this got me thinking….

 It is true that once upon a time I used to actually go shopping for Christmas gifts. I participated in the give the store all your money ritual. I was a kid, I did not know any better. As a young child living in Tucson, I did not have the Tucson Mall or Foothills Mall. Actually back in the day El Con Mall was all that and more. It was a great place to Christmas shop. It was all we needed.

 The El Con Mall had it all. For a kid like me with 40 bucks in my pocket and a Christmas-gift list, El Con was where I headed. Montgomery Ward, Skaggs, Woolworth’s, Levy’s, Goldwater’s, J. C. Penney, toys stores, shoe stores, food, and of course Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor. I was set.

 I could get my dad a tie at Wards for about three bucks and my mom a nice shirt for about five. My sister would get a poster, probably of Davy Jones, and maybe even yet another pet rock. Albums back then cost about $3.99; I could get my cousin an album, and Skaggs had 99-cent 8-tracks, so I could buy a few of those for my friends as well as pick up a few greeting cards and wrapping paper.

 Back in the late 60s and early 70s, El Con Mall was truly the one-stop-shopping place. It wasn’t filled with coffee shops and fashion facades. It had your basic five-and-dime shops, a good, old-fashioned drug store, and a couple of nice department stores. It was all a kid needed.

 Today I can not make heads or tails out of the bigger malls. Half the stores sell stuff that I could not imagine wearing. It seems like many of the stores contain an assortment of junk, do-dads, and this-and-that’s. So driving by the Tucson Mall today, and watching people hustle in and out of the parking lots, I felt bad for them; many of them will never know what a real mall was like and how a kid could drop 40 bucks, complete their shopping and sit down and have the world’s greatest ice-cream.

I was watching the morning news this morning while sucking down my protein shake. Normally I am writing a story for a different publication at this Godly hour but I wanted to catch the weather forecast as it seems to be the top news today. I found it odd that our newscaster said “blizzard warning” in certain parts of Arizona. I caught myself laughing a tad and it got me thinking….

 When I was a small kid, I would see it on TV. This weird thing called snow. Apparently it was flaky and cold and caused cars to collide in to one another, still. You could take a thing called a sleigh and apparently ride down hills. You could also make a thing called snow angels by laying down in the white cold powdery substance and spreading your arms and legs back and fourth.

 As a child I sure would wait for this white fluffy stuff to fall and I could play in it. I was fascinated by snow. Maybe it was because I was born in Tucson in 1958, the year that Tucson received 6.4 inches of snow during an unusual snow event in the desert southwest. Maybe as my mother passed that pleasure and information to me while I was still in the womb. What I know is I loved something dearly that Tucson had very little of, SNOW!

my house in 1966

 I have pictures of me as a young toddler in Mt Lemmon in some sort of bizarre snow suit playing in the snow. You could see even at the age of two or three, snow and I went hand in hand. There was always a smile on my face in all those pictures. For Tucson getting so little snow, there are a series of pictures of me growing up in the snow.

 As I got into school, me and some of my playmates used to get together and focus on snow in hopes that it would snow and schools would close. Yes indeed, as a kid growing up, if it snowed for more than 15 minutes it seemed like schools would closed. We crazy Tucsonans do not know what to do with this white fluffy stuff. Clearly we do not know how to drive in it, so why should we go to school in it!?

 As a kid I did not understand weather, all I knew was each night I would hope it got cold enough to snow. I felt disappointed each day I looked out the window and there was no snow. One year I believe I was in 4^th grade my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I simply said snow. I am surprised my parents did not tell me then and there that they were Santa. Instead they said, “We’ll let Santa know.” I remember that because that Christmas it was sunny and rather warm and I asked my parents if they told Santa, and my mother said, “Oh dear I forgot.” I was able to forgive Santa that way.

 I did love it when school closed on snow days. It happened perhaps 3 or 4 times through out my 12 years of school. I figured I would outgrow this fascination with snow, however I am over 50 now and that fascination still stays with me. When it snowed in 2007, I had video cameras and cameras and I was driving and video taping at the same time. I simply had to record the snow. I do so every time it snows.

 I, like that child was disappointed this morning when I awoke to just a wet sidewalk and my backyard a little damp. Parts of Arizona have a blizzard warning and I have a slightly damp backyard. Don’t get me wrong, I do not want snow everyday like in Main or Michigan. No thanks! But snow a few times a year just for a few hours would be nice. There is nothing like our beautiful cactus covered in snow.

A young Clapton

Last night I decided to go 92.9 The Mountain radio station’s CD release party at La Encantada (I call it la-spend-a-lot-a). Free music and five bucks for the CD, why not? They had a band called Parachute playing; I figured it could be some cheap fun. As I stood there in the freezing cold with fake snow falling on me in a crowd of people who, like me, were cold and restless, I got to thinking….

 I am almost 52 years old. What am I doing in this crowd with tons of valley girls and plastic boys wearing the latest fashions and texting each other despite the fact they were standing right next to one other? It seems like the younger generation has lost their ability to use their voice. Sure there were older people like myself there and sometimes we would catch each other’s eyes and smile.

An aged Clapton

 When the band Parachute was finally introduced, most people were cold and tired and had been standing for way over an hour waiting. We had endured fake snow, cold, crowding, and a barrage of announcements, but we all were ready to listen to the music. I squinted as they took the stage. They sure did look young. After their first song, I had to giggle as they talked about being each other’s BFFs in high school (best friends forever) and, for a moment, I thought I saw peach fuzz on the lead singer’s face.

 I looked at my spouse and said they look very young probably 22 or 23. This got me thinking, why did they seem so young? It did not make sense to me after all, Eric Clapton was 17 when he first toured with bands and made it big in the music field. He must have become God by the time he was 19.  

Steve Winwood was only 17 when he joined the Spencer Davis Group. That was fairly young as well. At the age of 15, Paul McCartney met John Lennon and joined The Quarrymen. At the young age of 14 Jimmy Page appeared on TV’s Search for Stars talent show, and Van Morrison was 17 when he started to tour and record.

 So why did the boys in Parachute look so young to me? Could it be back then Clapton donned a beard and long hair? Was it possible that in the 50s and 60s men’s hormones were different and they grew thick beards rather than peach fuzz? Did too many energy drinks and video games affect men’s ability to look older?

 I got frightened. Could be a possible that all the chemicals and preservatives that people ingest have side effects and preserves them? Then it dawned on me, when I was watching people like Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Steve Winwood, and my other idols, I was a kid. They might have been 17, 18, or 19 years old, but I was a young girl and they looked older to me.

An Aging Jimmy Page

They were giants in their music. There was so much talent in many of these people that they had musical wisdom. They did not talk about BBFs and video games. No the idols of yesteryear focused on sex, drugs, and rock and roll. After all, once upon a time, wasn’t that what music was all about?

I left the concert early. I suspect it was my age. My feet were hurting from standing so long in the cold, and I wanted to beat the traffic. As a young kid, who cared about traffic, but as an aging adult, in an over-priced mall, in the middle of holiday shopping, I CARED!

 I left with some knowledge that money could not buy. I had a better understanding about age. That the young kids of today stay young. They do not have a hard life. They can live on texting and energy drinks, and BBFs and video games. The youth of today are not like the youth of yesterday. Today’s young people one simply plugs them in.

 For some of the teens that were there, I have no doubt the young men from Parachute looked older and wiser and did not appear young at all. To them, they are musical giants. My musical giants, Clapton, Bono, Page, Morrison, are, for the most part, now greyer than me. They have all earned their grey hair! I still think they rock better than any of the newer musical talents, but perhaps maybe my ears have aged too, who knows.