It's only taken four decades for the light to come on, but it finally did.
It was on the occasion of my 19th birthday, and several of the friends from Tucson I'd made since coming out at the start of my second semester away at school made the trek up to Phoenix to help me celebrate.
As I was now of drinking age and could finally legally go out to the pubs, the biggest question was where to go?
The decision was unanimous—and it was to become my favorite watering hole/dance-my-ass-off venue for the next two years. It was a cavernous place on the east side of 16th Street, tucked up against the canal just south of Indian School Road that went by various names as it kept reinventing itself (or changing owners). That first night—and for probably a year or so thereafter, I believe it was going by the name Moon's Truck. Then one night out of nowhere I arrived at the door to see it had became HisCo. Disco. (The order of those names could be reversed. Cut me some slack; it's been nearly four decades!) All I know is that anyone who'd been going there for any length of time simply referred to it as Maggie's and regardless of what the sign on the outside of the building said, that's what we called it.
Anyhow, one of the great mysteries of my life had always been that name: Moon's Truck. Never made a lick of sense to me or anyone else. Whereas The Connection (which became my preferred place to pick up men in the early 80s) had an actual Mac Truck parked within the building, Maggie's had no such claim. And Moon? What was that all about?
Well today, while going down the Internet rabbit hole and trying to find something—anything—about the place, it finally dawned on me:
Moon's Truck = Moonstruck
I can be so dense sometimes.
And I still couldn't find a thing.