George's Oral History

My name is George.  I have lived on Tivani Dr. in Indian Ridge since 1956. We visited the model house and we liked it so much that we decided we wanted to own that house so I asked the salesman if he had a lot on a cul-de-sac which faced the mountains in the back.  He said come on over I’ll show you.  So he showed me this lot and I said okay, we’ll take it, how much?  He said give me $500 down so I gave him $500.

I was born in Tucson so a lot has changed.  Well Tanque Verde Road was just a two lane highway. It was paved, but it was just two lanes so you are seeing what happened to the whole area.  It was nothing but desert so I guess we were not the first but the second ones to buy in this area. The first one was over on the other street over which was owned by a Lusk executive.  It wasn’t this house plan. It was another house I can show you. This is a letter to my partner that he got from the Lusk Corporation telling him about this new subdivision called Indian Crest Estates.  He got this and it shows here two different houses that were available.  The Caribbean and the Conquistador. This is a Conquistador that I live in but the garage was here and I wanted it over there so they favored me by putting the garage over here which did several things. It was a good entrance to the street and not only that it was against the sun, but that is a house right there, but the carport is over here.

We back up to the University Indian Ruins.  I did write a letter to everyone in this part of the neighborhood, giving them a copy of the deed from the Indian Ruins. It states that the Indian Ruins property should never be sold or otherwise disposed of or be used for any other purpose, except for archaeological investigation and study, and the maintenance of a park.  I said that I believe this accomplishes two things.  One it gives us peace of mind that there will be no construction behind us to hinder our view or cause traffic or noise problems and two, to maintain or possibly increase the value of our home because having a deed in hand to show perspective buyers should we ever decide to sell, enhances the desirability of our properties.

Well, the main reason that we chose Indian Ridge is that we were looking for a house and my partner got that letter from the Lusk Corporation so he showed it to me and he said this might be something you’d be interested in so we came out and we saw the model home and that’s exactly what we wanted. We wanted four bedroom with three baths, the dining room, living room and a nice kitchen. It was exactly what we wanted. The model house was located over on Mohu. The only difference is we wanted it on a cul-de-sac and we wanted a view the mountains so we asked for those and we got them. He was a salesman for Lusk.  He was representing Lusk in this area so he brought us right over here - my sweet wife and I Mildred who passed away recently, about 3 1/2 years ago.  She was a wonderful woman.  That was July 23, 1956 when we bought the lot.

I was a partner and one of the owners of Whitaker pools.  We had a good company and a good product. We had a really good situation. We built pools all over Tucson and even in Indian Ridge. We went to New Mexico and built one there also built one in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  We built more 50 meter pools than anybody in the United States.  At that time 50 meters which is a Olympic size pool was 162 feet long.  We built the Casa Grande city pool and the Wilcox pool which are 50 meters.  But of course the bread and butter business was residential pools. We got to design a lot of backyards with pools in them.  That’s what I did. My kids did swim in the pool Indian Ridge pool but we belong to the Tucson Country Club so we didn’t get involved much in this pool over here.  I was president of the Tucson Country Club so we spent a lot of time there. We built the big pool over there.  We did quite a bit of work on the Indian Ridge pool, but we didn’t build it originally.

When we first moved here there wasn’t even any grocery stores close by.  I forgot where we shopped. She did all the shopping. My oldest daughter went to Catalina High School and she graduated from there.  My other daughter was at Palo Verde. They went to Fort Lowell and Townsend for elementary and junior high.

I do see wildlife in my yard.  We have had coyotes, skunks, wild pigs, and Gila monsters. I saw Gila monster in the backyard one time in the front driveway so I got a shovel and pick him up and put him over in the desert.  Of course snakes, the non-biting kind.  We hear the owls, the hawks and the buzzards and the crows. So we sit out here underneath the porch when it’s raining out and watch the lightning storms, listen to the thunder.  We had a big storm about 1987 I think.  I belonged to the Country Club and it took out number five on the golf course.  It took a lot of dirt and money to rebuild it.

There was only one other house and that was on this side of Indian Ruins Road when we first came. It was a Lusk executive who built that house and he built the first house outside of the model house, but it wasn’t the Conquistador. Julian, I think his name was. The model house was the Conquistador and we were the first Conquistador to buy.  There was one, two, three, four, five in a row here Conquistadors.   Then one across the street so there’s about seven Conquistadors here.

Dooley Bookman was a business owner downtown, had a smoke shop and he used to sponsor the Halloween parade every year downtown.  He’d have them parade and he got permission from the City of Tucson to rope off the entire block, and the kids will come down in costumes and they’d get awards. My two brothers and I got awards.  One evening. Dooley was visiting my parents at our home. He said to us kids, “Who wants a piece of gum?” We, of course, we responded enthusiastically in the affirmative. So Dooley said,  “Get me some scissors,” which we did. He took out a pack and cut it in three pieces.

My wife and I were married 63 years. I wrote her this one year - Don’t go away folks.  Hold it!  The passing of presents is not quite finished, though anticipation and excitement have been diminished. This gift from grandpa to grandma will be quite a surprise. You’ll drop your false teeth and pop open your eyes. It was never meant to be a sensation, just only for amusement and recreation, and also for a good healthy exercise to flatten your tummy and reduce your thighs. Could it be barbells? A trampoline? A jungle gym?  To afford sport and physical fitness for her for him?  Yes! These will yield fun and exertion, true, but no, ‘tis none of the above. It’s a bike built for two. We used the bike and later I gave the bike to the kids next door, two little girls. Oh we had a Japanese student from Palo Verde live with us. He was from Japan. He was made Rodeo King. He was a little guy, but he was king and he was a soccer coach. Thank you so much for letting me participate