Though I had never ventured this deep into the Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Superior, Arizona, as I looked at the rock jutting over the path, I felt like I had been here before. Then I realized: I had seen this site in the infamous Arboretum Picnic pictures.
I say “infamous” only because my grandfather, William B. Thompson, left behind a dozen photos of the event, which must have occurred shortly after his uncle, William Boyce Thompson, had died. None of the photos are labeled, so it’s not certain who attended that day, or even when the picnic was held.
It was a strange sensation to be walking in my ancestors’ footsteps. I could almost hear my grandmother Meanie’s laughter, smell the smoke from great grandfather J.E. Thompson’s cigar, feel the presence of his sister, Mabel Thompson, about whom we know very little.
My second thought, after walking around the park in the hot afternoon sun, was that this was a delightful, if not ideal place to have a picnic; in the shade of a rock outcropping, within earshot of meandering Queen Creek, where my great uncle used to torture his favorite employee by ordering him to search for gold, even though he had little chance of finding any.
John and I enjoyed visiting the Arboretum in the mid-90s on a trip to Phoenix for a cousin’s daughter’s wedding. We took the hike and visited the house-museum. The Arb was having a desert plant sale and I was dying to make some purchases, but couldn’t figure out how to transport the cacti back to Ohio without harming myself or other passengers, so I passed. Wonderful spot.
My guess is that these pictures were taken in 1938. The U identified “dude” is probably Samuel Wilson whom Mabel Thompson Filor married in 1937. The young man in two of the pictures is Jimmy Filor (probably a Stanford freshman at the time). I was at the scene of his fatal plane crash in 1951.