Editor's Letter

It didn’t take much. Just a simple trade-off. “I’ll tell you what, boys,” my father said. “If you finish painting the porch, I’ll let you ride your bikes to Dairy Queen.” We didn’t hesitate. Like slaphappy Labradors doing tricks for Milk-Bones, my brother Jeff and I raced to the shed, grabbed our paintbrushes and went to work. What a coup, we thought. For just a few hours of painting, we’d get to go downtown. On our bikes. To Dairy Queen. The thing is, the ride downtown was a long haul on narrow country roads, with Myklebust Hill looming in between.

From our driveway to the walk-up window at DQ, it was only 5.7 miles, but on a bulky three-speed made of heavy-duty steel tubing, it seemed so much farther. Still, we took the deal. Anything for a Mr. Misty Float.

That was in the early ’70s. In a small town where Thursday night softball was a cultural event and catching a record walleye made headlines in the weekly newspaper. John Mellencamp wrote a song about small towns like mine.

Well, I was born in a small town, And I live in a small town. Probably die in a small town, Oh, those small communities.

His small town was in the Hoosier State. Mine was in Wisconsin. On some level, though, they’re all the same: tight-knit places with deep roots, a volunteer fire department, public library, post office, Dairy Queen, churches, bars and a bowling alley. Lake Wobegon had the Chatterbox Café and Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility. We had Monk’s Bar & Grill and Saint Cecilia. In small towns, the line between Saturday night and Sunday morning can be hazy at times. Most times.

There’s no definitive measure for a small town, but the U.S. Census Bureau generally considers them to be places with fewer than 5,000 people. There were 3,891 people living in Flagstaff in June 1928, when we published our first full-length feature on “the city of ‘Sun-an-Sno.’ ” Two years later, a few months after Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto from an isolated hilltop on the south side of Flagstaff, we ran another piece.

“Flagstaff, located on the top of the world in Northern Arizona,” Leo Weaver wrote in July 1930, “offers perhaps more scenic beauty, more genuine Western hospitality to the traveler and pleasure seeker than any spot in the entire West, because it is still so new, so untouched and so beautiful.

“Located in the heart of one of the largest standing pine forests in the world, the summer visitor finds himself in an amazing profusion of summer verdure and loveliness. Giant pines, spruce, fir, and the fresh green of the aspens, make of every spot an ideal place in which to stop, to camp and to while away the cool summer days.”

In May 1950, we did another big feature on that small town.
 

“The average Flagstaff citizen,” Cecil Calvin Richardson wrote, “is a family man who works hard at his job, belongs to at least one club or civic organization, and is intensely interested in the welfare of his community. Many worthwhile projects are being carried out, and many more are planned for the future. In the past ten years the population has more than doubled.

“Churches are said to be the ‘backbone’ of any community. If this be true, then Flagstaff is indeed fortunate in this respect. Some fifteen denominations, and more than twenty churches of all types are located in the town proper. Some of these are fine architectural buildings, while others are only make-shift frame buildings. But all of them have their adherents and hope for the future. Many of these little churches are on the south side of town, but others are scattered throughout the whole of Flagstaff.”

One of those churches, on South Ken­drick Street, is still around.

“I went to Catholic school at Our Lady of Guadalupe Chapel,” said Jesse Dominguez, a longtime resident, in an interview with Northern Arizona University. “It was built for the Mexican families in 1926. Every stone in that building was touched by human hands. People went and gathered those rocks to build that building … they were brought in by the Vasquez Brothers Logging Co. I always brag about that little church. It’s a small church, but if you look at every rock that’s there … you can appreciate that building. It’s beautiful.”

On Saturday, May 16, the chapel will celebrate its centennial. The invitation reads: “Join us in the celebration Mass of Our Lady of Guadalupe Chapel as we honor one hundred years of faith, devotion and community. Through scripture, gospel and uplifting hymns, we celebrate the enduring love for Nuestra Virgen de Guadalupe and the Chapel that has been a safe haven for generations. We remember with gratitude the founding families whose dedication built this Chapel and whose legacy continues to inspire us today.”

The fiesta program also includes a mariachi orchestra, baile folklórico and food. The best food. At Saint Cecilia, in the early ’70s, there would have been a potluck in the basement, with scalloped potatoes, tuna noodle casserole, seven-layer salad, sloppy joes, a relish tray and lime Jell-O mixed with fruit cocktail.

“Bless us, O Lord! and these Thy gifts,” the adults would pray. The kids, in their clip-on neckties and saddle shoes, would lip-sync the words, but, silently, they’d break from the herd: Dear Lord! If I can somehow finish everything Sister Mary Catherine has piled in front of me, will you please, please, please whisper in my father’s ear and suggest he take me to Dairy Queen when this is over? I promise I’ll eat all seven layers of this salad.

Anything for a Mr. Misty Float.