The Road to Despair

This is a bougainvillea that is in front of the Casa Sneed. It is native to Brazil and is popular in tropical locales. Even though the high Sonoran desert is not tropical, bougainvillea does well here. It freezes out in our winters if it is exposed, but even if it dies back to ground level it will grow back in the spring. The dead parts of the plant can be cut back and new growth will sprout. This particular plant is about 10 feet tall and is in the entryway to the house, so it is spared most of our infrequent freezes. Bougainvillea has very showy color, although it does not flower. The plant has bracts, similar to leaves, that are the red portion of the plant. Bougainvillea is available in several colors. Among other items. In the days before the interstate freeway system reached our particular neck of the woods, travelers passing through our fair city did so on a stretch of what we called the highway. The highway's name at any given point proclaimed where it went. We had the Benson highway going east out of town to Benson, AZ and beyond, the Nogales highway to the south, the Casa Grande highway to the north and on to Phoenix, etc. These roads were lined with motels, bars, stores catering to travelers and bustled with business. The highway also took you through downtown in those days, past the grand hotels and department stores. The interstate highway changed that. Nowadays, the remains of these highways are lined with broken down motels catering to the desperately poor or the drug and ho trade. I was thinking about that today because I had to visit a construction site in an area called the Vistas on the southside. The Vistas is a neighborhood of boarded up windows, broken down cars and stray dogs. Most of the homes in the area are ramshackle duplexes in various stages of decay. It is incomprehensible to me that people live in these conditions. The Vistas has a very tough reputation for gang activity. I have long assumed that it must be the worst area of our fair city for crime. Well, I decided to look up the actual statistics to confirm my suspicion. Turns out I am wrong. I know that it is hard to believe that I am wrong, but in this case it is true. According to information supplied by our very fine police department, the Vistas isn't even close to the crime leadership. That distinction belongs to the corridor along our former north-south highway through town. These areas are often like ghost towns plunked into the middle of the city. There has been no incentive for people to redevelop them, so they breed crime. Another thing that jumped out of the map plotting crimes by area, is that crime is prevalent in the areas where there are more than the average number of apartments. I guess proximity increases tensions. I wonder how different our society would be without the interstate highway system. I was talking to a guy who works these high crime areas all the time and he told me that the trick is to go there in the morning while the hoopleheads are still asleep. Go in the afternoon you never know what you may find. Good advice. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong and sometimes just full of it. Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor