Arizona Tales: We don't need no steenking university

Today I finally finished the late C.L. Sonnichsen's 369 page tome "Tucson, The Life and Times of an American City" published in 1982. Trust me, it wasn't light and fun reading like Roy Drachman's book. Nope. Reading Sonnichsen's book dragged on for days and daze. All-in-all, it was a very dry, suitably stiff scholarly ramble from Spanish settlement to 20th century urban renewal squabbles. I read Sonnichsen's book hoping to glean some interesting stories about highways US 80 or US 89. There was nothing to be found. In fact, in all those hundreds of pages, I found only one fun vignette of any kind. Luckily, it's such a fun vignette that I plan to memorize it and retell it whenever the time is right, such as when I am hanging out with some U of A people.

The fun vignette is about how Tucson got stuck with the university and how the local folks felt about it.

So let's jump into the Way Back Time Machine and rewind to 1885 when Tucsonians lusted to regain the Territorial Capital from Prescott. The 13th Territorial Legislature convened in early January. Local merchants raised $5,000 (a princely sum in 1885) and gave it to a guy to go schmooze the legislators. Meanwhile Tucson's own C.C. Stephens was an actual territorial legislator. He was told to bring the capital back or suffer the consequences. It was a bad winter and terrible weather delayed the schmoozer and Stephens. By the time they got to Prescott, the capital game was gone and all the good stuff had been assigned to other cities. All Stephens could get was a university. That's when Stephen's trouble started

C.L. Sonnichsen writes, "On his return to Tucson, Stephens was subjected to all sorts of insult and humiliation for his "disloyalty." Threats of violence made it necessary for him to hire a bodyguard. The "Citizen" informed him that his fellow townsmen looked upon him with "loathing and contempt" and suggested that it was hard to imagine what he was made for "unless to make a horse thief feel respectable by comparison."

When Stephens called a meeting at the Opera House to explain his actions, he was subjected to such a torrent of profane and personal abuse and such a barrage of rotten eggs, spoiled vegetables---and even a dead cat--that he had to retire from the platform. He did remind his hecklers before he left that someday they would thank him for what he had done, but at the time no one listened or believed."

As one saloon keeper said later, "What do we want with a university? What good will it do us? Who in hell ever heard of a university professor buying a drink?" (Pages 136-137)

It was worth reading that book just to get this fun vignette. We're already looking forward to retelling it around a camp fire someday soon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.L._Sonnichsen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_Arizona_Territorial_Legislature

This story has a slightly different spin but luckily, the rotten eggs, spoiled vegetables and the dead cat remain:
https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/the-founding-of-the-university-myths-and-heroes

There are other versions but we're not going to let facts get in the way of a good story. We'll take Sonnichsen's version and run with it.