during a windy parade , 1964 , an old navajo gentleman completed a sand painting in the window of a department store ; the big stores in downtown tucson hired the sand painters during rodeo week when crowds of snowbirds , many of them fresh from that dreadful place called back east , milled their cold corpses around the streets of downtown soaking up our bright , ebullient february sunshine , that valuable solar benefit which poured itself in great liquid lumps onto our colorful but slightly disheveled streets .