Still reconstructing but.......

At least it's back the right way.   I put Alice on as an admin on my blog and she was able to tweek and do a few things and voila!   

There was a reason that you guys could see it correctly and on my end it was all jumbled up.   But it's three in the morning now and I can't remember what it was.   She said there was a problem with that video of the woman and her dog so she deleted a couple of posts.  

Thanks Alice!    I love you!!!!!!!!

 

 

Tovrea Castle

Yesterday I went through a building I've always wanted to see. The Tovrea Castle is an icon in Phoenix. For years upon years, I've seen it passing by it on the byways and freeways. Phoenix finally got the rights in the 90's to keep this magnificent building from destruction and restore it back to its originality. It was lived in up to the past several decades and pretty much everything is original. Finally they opened it up for tours. When I found out, I was on the phone to get tickets last January and couldn't get on the list to get in until May 17. Really worth the wait.

The history of this place is so interesting.   I wanted to just jot down a few facts over the years, but there are too many interesting stories about it.  I found this history on the web and believe me, I shortened it quite a bit.  Just skip through if you want.

"Alessio Carraro, who was  an Italian immigrant and a San Francisco busnessman who heard that land in the Phoenix area was good and relatively cheap.  [To us now it was cheap.]   He looked the property over, tasted the water from the well and bought 277 acres for about $68,000. His plan was to build a hotel on the hilltop, subdivide the land and sell homes on the rest of the grounds.   He had no building experience and one of the stories the docents told was that Carraro would come out and draw in the dirt what he wanted to do that day.

 He did not install heating or cooling, but he laced the property with 10,000 feet of wire to power the 1,000 lights. And at Christmas 1930, Carraro placed red, green, yellow and blue bulbs in the fixtures to win a "Yule Spirit" contest sponsored by The Arizona Republic. "A brilliantly lighted castle," the newspaper called it. The display could be seen for miles.

Now the property had a nickname, "the Castle," but reality was beginning to cloud Carraro's vision. The Great Depression had poisoned the investment climate, and a neighbor, Edward Ambrose Tovrea, was expanding his stockyard. Tovrea bought a flock of sheep and unloaded the animals next to the castle grounds.

Whatever his reasons for leaving, Carraro lived in his mansion for less than a year. When someone offered him about $21,500 for the castle and 44 acres, he took the money. The buyer was E.A. Tovrea, the livestock man. 

The new owner of the mansion, E.A. Tovrea, was 20 when he came to Arizona in the 1880's, driving a horse-drawn freight wagon. He eventually met Della Gillespie in Bisbee, AZ and they married in 1908.  She was 20 and he was 47.   E. A. moved into the castle in 1931 with Della.   He died in 1932 and Della stayed there until she died in 1969.

Della never married again.  She became a recluse with some dogs for company.  She was getting older, and when she was unable to get around the 5,000-square-foot house, she moved a bed into the kitchen area. She feared someone would break into the house, shove her into the very large bank vault in the basement  and shut the door, so she had the vault door removed. That fear was prescient.

One rainy November night in 1968, she awoke to hear the dogs barking outside. Then the dog inside the house began to bark. She entered the dining room, where she was met by two men [who had heard she was alone and wealthy]. There was a struggle and a gun went off, the bullet putting a hole in the ceiling that remains to this day. Della was not badly injured in the scuffle, but her days in the mansion were nearly over. She died two months later of pneumonia.

Della's death was followed by legal disputes over ownership of the property, and the property was left to caretakers. A great-grandson lived there from time to time and made some repairs.  Eventually, Phoenix acquired the mansion. Crumbling ceilings were repaired, union electricians donated their time to restring wire, and volunteers pulled weeds. Volunteer gardeners also worked on the cactus plantings around the property.

Carraro's expansive dreams for his property never panned out. There are no hotel guests strolling through the garden, no luxury homes on the desert grounds below.    His grand-daughter now is working at the building and helps with tours along with keeping the castle clean."

And I found this on YouTube.   Blessed be the Internet.



 

Help!

I'm going to visit a castle this morning at 6:30.   Get ready for pictures.

Brag Brag.

I'd apologize in advance of this pure unadulterated bragging moment with my grandchildren where they live.

But I'm too proud of them to do that.

Go to Alice's blog to see The Dormouse and The Caterpillar.

http://ngunderground.blogspot.com/2013/05/where-ive-been.html

Mothers in the Middle

There is a special kind of remembering on the second Sunday in May for Mothers in the Middle.  It has nothing to do with the carefully cultivated Hallmark commercial reminders that have made Mothers' Day a highlight on business charts.  It is unrelated to flowers and cards, slippers and new sweaters - all the pat little presents that quiet a conscience that reproaches for the too little time spent with a mother during the year.

It is in the middle that you remember.  When you have, happily, a mother to salute and growing children of your own.

She was so lucky. . . . you thought then.

She could stay up as late as she wanted to at night.  You could hear her going downstairs to company after she firmly turned out the bedroom light without letting you finish the story you were reading.   And you could hear footsteps down the stairs and laughter drifting up from the living room.

Now you know most of her evenings were spent finishing up kitchen work, putting up a last load of laundry, mending one more torn jacket and suddenly being too tired to finish her own book or television program.

She could dress any way she wanted to and buy a new dress whenever she felt like it even though she hadn't outgrown her old dresses.

Now you know how long she weighed the merits of new tennis shoes for rapidly growing young feet against the importance of her own shabby coat and how often she decided that the coat could serve another season.

Nothing was beyond her reach.  When Dad came home from work, the family car could take her anywhere.

Now you know how carefully she pieced together food shopping and doctor appointments with a visit to the repair shop because the car had to be babied along.  There wouldn't be any money for a new one.

She could do anything she wanted to all day long.  No racing to beat a school bell for her.

Now you know she had to be up for breakfast, hunt up school books, find clean socks even though she might have walked the floor half the night with a croupy child.

She could say. . .'NO' . . . and stop all your plans to go out or stay home from school or to visit a friend.

Now you know how, caught in a spiral of disciplining and cautioning, she searched for times to say 'yes' to approve a plan, and how heavy a responsibility rested on her shoulders when she did.

Then, her life seemed totally enviable to you.


 When did it happen, you wonder.

When did you stop seeing motherhood through a child's eyes.

When was it that a wand was waved over your head and a voice said . . . ."I pronounce you a mother.  You will always be reasonable.  You will always be fair.  You will never lose your temper.  You will always put the rest of the family before yourself, in sickness and health, poverty and wealth."

You won't hear a top of the lungs argument, but you will hear a whisper for comfort.

You will be quick to say  'thank you' for small favors and not wait for gratitude when you have re-arranged the whole household to meet a young emergency.

You will remain a whole and alive individual while always ready to submerge your own interests in favor of others.

You will be ready to acknowledge your own mistakes, but never leap to point out what was not your fault.

And you will always, always resist the temptation to say to a rebellious teenager . . . ."I only hope I live long enough to see you going through this with your own children".

Because when that time comes, the old scars have faded and you find yourself saying to a grown child who is struggling with the hurts and difficulties of motherhood . . . .'Let me help'.

Author  . . . Zedro Ara Now

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The photo is a picture of my mother not too terribly many months before she died in 1990.  She would kill me for putting this particular photo on.  Well - any photo of her for that matter.   I have photos taken professionally of her, but I like this one because it shows her just as I remember her.

   She was always smiling like that, always wearing a skirt and a blouse or a dress, always wearing nylons and sandals, and always sitting in some rocking chair somewhere.  The only thing missing was her hair being done up (she probably had an appointment later in that day) and her make up all put on and everything nicely adjusted.  She never went out without those two last elements.  


Happy Mothers  Day!

Double vision

Can you believe that this great big guy.......

..........used to be this precious little baby?

He was all ears then.  Should've named him Dumbo.