Bringin’ the 70′s to Arizona

When my parents moved to Mesa, Arizona, I could only try to imagine what kind of house they owned and what kind of subdivision it was in.  Was it surrounded by desert?  Did they see any scorpions or rattlesnakes?  Why the heck did they decide to move to Arizona!!!

They bought a newly constructed house that had 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, a formal dining room and living room plus a family room and eat-in kitchen.  There was an enclosed patio and a pool in back.

My daughter visited them by herself at the age of 10 or 11.  My Mom sent me pictures of her by the pool.  It looked nice and they also sent me a photo of the front of the house, which looked cute.

When I finally took the leap to visit them (after more than 10 years of them living there), I was excited to see how a home in Arizona is decorated.  I’m not a fan of mock southwest decor.  I like rustic, but not the phoney stuff like couches we saw here in the Midwest for awhile with the zig zaggy southwest patterns on them.  That’s what I expected to find at my parent’s house.

But I was a bit let down

As I stepped into their nice foyer, I couldn’t believe my eyes.  There was the same couch they brought with them from Oak Lawn, IL.  At least the plastic seat covers were removed.  But this was not what I expected.  You can’t move old 70′s midwest furniture to a brand new house in Mesa, AZ, no matter how good the condition is.

And even though I wasn’t into home decorating as a child or teenager, I always thought our light wood dining room set was ugly.  Yet there it was, in all it’s unglory, in the formal dining room of this newer Arizona house.  I wouldn’t have known I was in the southwest once I stepped inside this house.  I guess I was expecting adobe and rounded archways and something of a bit of southwest architecture.  But what I got was a deja vu moment.

The family room was a little better.  Although I think they originally had the couch from the family room back home in IL, they eventually replaced it.  But they did have one of those southwest “paintings” hanging over the couch.  The nice brick/stone fireplace was the only real architectural delight inside.

Don’t get me wrong, the house was cute and I would have loved it.  The backyard gave me a taste of Arizona living with some nice big palm trees, stones and the pool, all surrounded by a brick and block fence.

Another thing my Dad couldn’t give up, besides the old furniture, was grass.  He had grass in the front of the house.  I was prepared for this since my Mom told me about it.

But my favorite memory was my introduction to their big, beautiful bougainvillea.  What a beautiful flowering shrub.  And this one flourished with my Dad’s loving care.

All in all, I was pleased with the exterior of their home as it brought a tiny sense of what I expected living in Arizona to be, but the old furniture had to go!  And it didn’t until Mom finally moved after Dad passed away.

But it wasn’t just my parents

After my parents moved to Arizona one of my Mom’s cousins moved there too.  When we visited their house I felt the same thing.  Old fasioned midwest decor in a new Arizona house.

Not too long ago when I had a Girl’s Weekend Away in AZ we stopped in at the house of elderly sisters that used to work with my friend’s Mom many years ago.  They actually had plastic covers on their heavy French provincial furniture.  Not a hint of southwest decor in that house!  It was like a museum!

So I guess you can take the old people out of IL, but you also get their furniture.

Note:  photo of bougainvillea provided by v.plessky