After watching a special about how the states came up with state lines, I made a comment on how much we do not know about the real history of our county. Oh sure we know about our founding fathers, constitution, when stuff was ratified, all of the wars we fought; however, how much do we really know about our back yard. What do “Old Timers” have to say about our history? Danna came up with an idea to “Discover Arizona”. For me this was foreign since I am third generation Arizonian and thought I knew all of the history. After allot of opposition from me, I finally reluctantly decided to go along with the crazy scheme. Danna has a way to wear me down, kind of funny Zachary has that same ability. So off we went on our first junket to the great Unknown Arizona!
The weekend was to start on our 18th anniversary and we decided to visit Danna’s parents in Bagdad Az. First stop Bagdad mine. What impressed me the most about the mine was the community, the whole town is owned by the mine. This is foreign to all of us because this does not happen in America 2010 , or so we thought. We have been conditioned to believe that corporate America is evil and only have stockholders in mind when they make a business decision. Last year this mine made cutbacks to avoid closing the mine all together. The people that I talked to said that the mine was very close to shutting down if they did not make changes. The mine decided to cut back on future expansion in order to save the town and the mine. Not necessarily a good short term decision for stock holders, but the mine wanted to keep the workers together for the future since they operate so efficiently. After the cutbacks the mine produced more copper with less overall people. Unlike most jobs these people live the mine , love the mine and adore the mine. This Mine invented new ways to extract copper years ago that is employed by mines across the world. This mine reminds me of what it would be like working for Westinghouse in 1940 or Motorola in 1950. I felt like I have stepped back into time where the “Company” is a good thing, the mine cares about the employee’s. I realize this is foreign to most of us but companies do at times take care of their workers.
After Bagdad we made our way to Skull Valley Az. I remember when I was a kid uncle Harry used to take us to Skull Valley to visit his friend. I do not remember the historical stuff that they have now. The train station was very interesting, the former Principle of the school greeted us and was our personal Historian. What I learned the most was skull valley was a thoroughfare for Indians and miner. We enjoyed all of the places we visited.
tom
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