CHAPTER SEVEN
August 25, 2013, 8:30 PM
Monti’s La Casa Vieja Restaurant
100 S. Mill Ave, Tempe, Arizona
Gretchen and I were finishing up our dinner at La Casa Vieja, a restaurant that I’d frequented in the ’60s and ’70s while I studied at Arizona State. Parts of the building had been the childhood home of Senator Carl Hayden, a renowned statesman.
In the late 1800s, Hayden’s home sat on the banks of the Salt River. It served the tiny frontier community as a ferry crossing, general store, restaurant, and hotel. By the 1950s, a New Jersey businessman turned the old homestead into a fine steak house.
I loved the old restaurant, its history, its location near ASU, and its willingness to accommodate an adolescent suitor like me.
In the 1960s, I used it as an upscale place to take a speci
