I just have to say: I love my Grandmother (a lifelong Democrat)

[politicat]

12. ... I know that area really well.

I can picture that intersection -- those are really lovely buildings. Your great-grandfather did exceptional work.

I lived in Holmes Elementary cachement as a little girl, then (officially) near Higley as a late teenager and at the bottom of the mesa on Center during undergrad and grad school. Grandpa is in the cemetery at the top of that hill. I walked everywhere for most of the year and did work study in the building right behind the public library for most of my undergrad years. (Most of my fam is still there, but I need snow and several hundred miles between me and them.) Gran's been in the East Valley for 35 years now. (I know they left the midwest for AZ before my father got TDY'ed to Williams for the shutdown/transfer. That's why my father requested that duty station.)

My immediate fam migrated in in the 80s for Reagan's War on Bases. Being non-LDS in Mesa must have been... interesting. It was still difficult even in the 90s.