Roadside Rest

Roadside Rest From Big-time Wrestling to the Valley of the Suns

Yes, I was there. Along with a capacity 19,023 spectators caught up in a virulent Arizona epidemic, Sunsmania, I was screaming hoarse and turning deaf within 120 decibels of crescendo, applause, and ecstacy. All the world watched on television, but no electronic feed to the small screen could transmit the raw primal force generated by those thousands of basketball fanatics urging their Cinderella Phoenix Suns to defeat the NBA Champion Chicago Bulls. Every hometown hoop triggered an explosive roar that seemed to raise the roof of the spanking new America West Arena. Whenever Michael Jordan went to the line, stamping feet thundered through the stands. Let an official blow a call, and the boos nearly pushed out the walls. Scoreboards flashed. Clocks blinked. Searchlights panned. Lissome dancers in scant attire enlivened time-outs. During halftime a man in a hairy black suit-the Suns' Gorilla mascot -slowly slid down a rope from the rafters to the hardwood floor, sprinted the length of the court, bounced off a trampoline, sailed over a huddle of gorgeous girls, and slamjammed a basket. Although forward Charles Barkley was slightly off target, his Suns teammates turned their defense up a notch into the fourth quarter to cling to a slim lead for the final minutes. Suspense lumbered around the $89 million octagonal Purple Palace like a Jurassic reincarnate. Suns: 98-96, and 3.9 seconds to go. Throughout this intense contest, my mind kept drifting back to my first witnessing of a Phoenix sports event. Arizona's capital was still a farmtown of about 80,000 one Saturday in the early 1940s when an older boy invited me to the wrestling matches. We rattled off the Pima reservation in a tired old Chevy with a canvas water bag flapping, up through the one-drugstore towns of Chandler, Mesa, and Tempe, and between patches of dusty cotton. We wheeled across sparsely settled rolling cactusland on the north bank of the Salt River by the malodorous cattle feeding pens. When about 30 blocks from downtown, we passed biplanes and a fleet of military trainers tied down at a squat terminal about the size of a small house. Children swam in muddy irrigation canals. At 16th Street, we encountered the first of a straggle of secondhand stores. Waiting for fight time, we explored the city center. The streets swarmed with shoppers who had walked in from suburbs. Posters in windows touted the town's favorite athletes: women softball players. Indian matrons in long shirred skirts sat on the sidewalks and offered nine-petal, two-foot-wide baskets for $20. Trolleys plied main streets. City business cars were Model A Fords. Homemade candies filled the glass cases at Donofrio's. My buddy bought Levi's at Porter's. We peered into the lobby of the Hotel Adams, where the airconditioning consisted of a blower buffeting huge blocks of ice, while stockmen exchanged herds on handshake agreements. We squandered 20 cents at the Penny Arcade and wandered around the city's transportation hub, the railroad station. We caught an early supper of chicken-fried steak at the American Kitchen, the town's best-known restaurant. And then we drove the seven blocks to Madison Square Garden and delivered ourselves, along with 500 others, into the yeasty, sweltering, murky pressurized firetrap. There the Masked Marvel so repeatedly and flagrantly fouled the good guy, Red Berry, that by the second fall the citizens of Phoenix were hurling profanity and seat cushions at the myopic referee, a full-scale riot being averted only by Red's airplane spin of the Marvel into the third row. We fled. It was maybe 10 P.M. when we lit a shuck for the reservation via darkened Washington Street, where the worn-out wringer washing machines had been hauled inside locked fences of the usedstuff stores. "What'd you think of Phoenix?" my friend asked. "Is there any more to it?" "You saw about all there is." Actually it was love at first blush. After a hitch in the Marines, along with many other vets, I hustled back to make my life in the Land of the Second Chance. In the postwar decade, the lines on Arizona's economic charts tilted sharply upward, and cities took on size. Overflowing California contributed more migrants. Retirees drifted south by west. Still others came for the climate and opportunity and wide open spaces. Chronic drawbacks surrendered to technology. Real refrigeration triumphed over 115° F in the shade. Jets tugged culde-sac Arizona into the mainstream. Revolutionary advances in communications, finance, mobility, and life-styles found ready acceptance in Phoenix, where culture was invented day-to-day. High-tech manufacturing transformed the sleepy desert oasis into a humming beehive. A distinguished historian proclaimed that, "No city in history moved from scratch to the attainment of major urban standing in the like period of time." A territorial pioneer in 1975 said in awe, "To us who recall its horse-and-buggy days, its dusty, unpaved streets, and the unhurried air of its inhabitants, the present seems like an Arabian Nights' dream." What would he think today of America's ninth most populous city at more than a million, the largest burg between the West Coast and Dallas a community covering some 400 square miles and at its heart, Dan Majerle and the Suns leading the Bulls by two points and the clock racing? Sharpshooting John Paxton of the Bulls arced his threepointer nothing but net and it was over. Almost. On a following Saturday, braving triple-digit heat, 300,000 Arizonans peacefully if noisily convened in downtown Phoenix to shower affection upon their Suns. One wonders how many would have assembled had they won it all? We may find out this year, a mile and a light year from old Madison Square Garden.