Apache Junction, AZ High 81 Low 63
We stopped in to visit with Aunt Happy. She’s doing good but was really missing my Uncle Don. She just wanted to talk about him so we reminisced together for awhile.
However, I must tell you she really shocked me. We arrived at her place just as she was getting home from the doctor’s office. She had gone to see a new doctor because she needed an internist. And Happy really liked this doctor. Which is just amazing because the doctor is a woman. Aunt Happy has always insisted that women are nurses and men are doctors. Remember she is going to be 100 this August so she definitely grew up in a different time than we did. I’m still shocked that she likes this new doctor good enough to continue to see her.
After visiting with Happy we decided to head to downtown Phoenix. Now doesn’t that sound like fun – downtown in a major city. But I really wanted to go to the Wells Fargo Museum. So off we went. We actually found parking on a meter only a half a block from the bank.
In 1852 Henry Wells and William Fargo opened an office in San Francisco to serve the Gold rush prospectors who needed to send their Gold east. Within 15 years Wells, Fargo and Company had absorbed or driven every serious rival out of business and had become the most important mail deliverer, bank, express agency, and stagecoach company in the West.
Notice the different sizes of the bills.
The name of Wells Fargo is well entrenched in Western history and was so well known that miners swore only "By God and Wells Fargo."
At one time they were so efficient in the mail business that they were charging only six cents for a letter, while the Post Office was charging 25 cents, and the Post Office demanded they stop undercutting their prices.
At the peak of their operations Wells Fargo employed a large force of Police and Detectives and more or less stopped the robbing of its Stagecoaches, by capturing about 240 what were called "Road Agents" including the famous Black Bart.
The railroad eventually made the stagecoach obsolete but it is still used today as the symbol for Wells Fargo Bank.
Not a big museum but interesting. Glad we went.
Ah, our American bank.
ReplyDeleteThere was a Wells Fargo office museum in Old Town San Diego when we were there this winter and they had another stage coach in there as well.... It was painted about the same with the red and gold lettering... Wells Fargo must have been in control of everything West of KC here....
ReplyDeleteAunt Happy looks great. Remember it is a woman's prerogative to change her mind whenever she chooses.
ReplyDeleteLooks like a wonderful museum, small or not.
Can't imagine traveling across country in one of those stage coaches!
ReplyDeletealways like seeing Aunt Happy... isn't it amazing how the older generation women regarded our sex... my Mother was the same way. didn't much care for that assessment... ;)
ReplyDeleteI have often thought of how the pioneers made it across country. me and ol Homer had some pretty hairy times ... I guess horses .. hmm well, dunno .. amazng, really
Those small museums are fun:)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Wells Fargo tour. My dear husband really liked his female rheumatologist--she was the only doctor who he listened to!!
ReplyDeleteAunt Happy's views of occupations for men and women aren't so different than many much younger folks today. I'm always amazed with people thinking if you retired from an airline and were a female, you were a flight attendant. Or, if you were a male, you were a pilot. It's the same archaic thinking. The good thing is that Aunt Happy is still thinking!
ReplyDeleteWow, how great Aunt Happy looks -- one would never know her age by looking at her, or probably even hearing her conversations. Out here in Benson, AZ, we look to the Butterfield Stage more than Wells Fargo. I suppose Wells drove Butterfield out in the end, but we don't mention that to ourselves or our tourists.
ReplyDeleteWhat a nice museum! Well Fargo has certainly been around for a long time!
ReplyDeleteAunt Happy looks great!
Aunt Happy looks great, I can't believe she will be 100 in August. Good for her!
ReplyDeleteRuth
www.travelwithkevinandruth.com
Aunt Happy looks great! Sandie, you and Jim are so intuitive. You gave Aunt Happy the greatist gift you could give her. I think about Rich all the time, and miss him with all my heart, as you know. Most people do just the opposite of what you and Jim did for Aunt Happy. They avoid talking about Rich because they think it will upset me. I sometimes want to scream, "Don't you remember how wonderful he was, what a great man he was, what a great sense of humor he had? Don't you remember that he was here on earth and you really, really liked him and I really really loved him? Remember the time we all…, then there was the time..." "
ReplyDeleteWell, now, that was a little dramatic, huh? LOL I should erase it, but I'll leave it because you and Jim "get it", Sandie, and maybe someone else who reads your blog will "get it" and help someone they love who has lost the love of their life.
Glad you liked the museum. I helped fund it by paying the mortgage on my house. Happy to see it has not fallen into disrepair since we sold the house and paid off the mortgage. ;c)
ReplyDeleteSilly me, I actually thought the museum was about the bank. But now I remember Wells Fargo Express.
ReplyDeleteInteresting story. Loved the stage coach. The size of the "dollar" really did shrink!
ReplyDeleteAnd Aunt Happy still looks like she could go anywhere & do anything she wanted to.
DeleteGlad Aunt Happy is doing well and that she is giving her female doc good reviews. The Well's Fargo museum looks interesting but I am not sure I would want to drive into down town Phoenix. We've driven in that city and its just a little crazy.
ReplyDeleteAnother place to see next winter in the Phoenix area.
ReplyDelete