On top of Sandia Peak is a rock house built in the 1930’s by the Civilian Conservation Corp. Coming out of a government prolonged Depression, the CCC was created to provide relief to unemployed men by the U.S. Congress and F.D.R.
During a short decade, over 300,000 young men got a place to stay, food to eat, and a small salary for working on public projects. They upgraded services in rural areas, built and upgraded National Parks, helped build Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge, gained dignity in hard times. This program was one of the more popular out of Roosevelt’s New Deal but it was shut down, unfunded, when World War 2 provided more grim employment possibilities.
The rock house, which would make Fred and Wilma Flintstone a nice vacation home, is perched on the edge of Sandia cliff with a million dollar view of Albuquerque. To the west is the Rio Grande river. To the north is the Sandia Indian Casino and golf course. In the middle of town is an eight story bank building at San Mateo and Central, the original Albuquerque skyscraper. To the south is Sandia Labs that engineers weapons and conducts weapons research, and Kirtland Air Force Base, storage home for nukes.
This afternoon there are scattered hikers and curious on the promontory. The rock house is a mile and a half hike from the visitor center and tram and there are small pockets of snow left in shaded areas by fallen logs or clusters of granite boulders.
Unemployment is still with us, a stubborn reality.
Finding men and women to join the CCC would be difficult these days.
Picking up your check at the mailbox is much easier than stacking stones.
The N.A.U. auditorium is filled with parents, friends, graduates, speakers, security, and interested observers.
The event is graduation for the 2015 class of NAU Lumberjacks who have spent their last several years sharpening axes, learning to identify trees, and borrowing money to pay for the experience of reading, writing, attending lectures, doing group projects, and getting indoctrinated in a variety of subjects that might or might not lead to paying the rent. There are student loans to be paid, job interviews, moving, trips to Europe.
This is Calley’s Day and she receives, on a snowy day in spring, a Bachelor’s Degree in Business with a specialty in Accounting.
The speeches are dull but there is pomp and circumstance as participants march into the auditorium wearing gowns and caps with tassels and ballooning sleeves and dignitaries give themselves Honorary Degrees and remark on the importance of the occasion and how graduates should be committed to contribution, caring, and consensus. Once it is all over, all file outside to take photos and celebrate.
Graduating from college is still an achievement, even in 2015.
It is good to congratulate a niece, done with class and on her way to a backpack trip to Europe.
Uncle Scott will watch her cat Pickles.
Pickles, we all know, will have a better life, no matter what, and he never had to go to school to get it.
The real surprise is snow in Flagstaff in May.
As everyone we talk to says, with laughter, ” This is so Flagstaff.”
Los Angeles has Forest Lawn and Beverly Hills. Memphis has Graceland. Florida has Cape Canaveral. Texas has the Alamo. Albuquerque has the hit television series ” Breaking Bad. ”
This television show is a crime drama and crime and Albuquerque have more than a casual acquaintance. One can’t truthfully claim that Albuquerque is as bad as the show portrays it, but low life drama is not as uncommon on our streets as we residents would wish.
” Breaking Bad ” reigns as the Guinness Records most watched television series of all time. Its actors have won awards galore and the series has a cult following even after its dramatic final episode. A spin off series ” Better Get Saul ” has already been created and follows the vagaries of Saul, an ethically conflicted lawyer, who gets paid to keep guilty out of jail and lives off the change jingling in criminal pockets.
Those of us who live here tend to accept our city as ” already broken. ” We accept the way Albuquerque is – a laid back, sprawling country town pretending to be a big city. We are not surprised to see a Mexican flag flying in front of City Hall and Indians/non- Indians selling turquoise jewelry under the porches of the La Placita restaurant in Old Town.
Neal, Joan and myself finish our Old town stroll and drive to lunch at our favorite red/green chili haunt – El Patio, by the University of New Mexico. On our drive we pass locations from the Breaking Bad series and find them to be as sleazy as the TV show shows them.
In a terminally ill world, Walter White and Jesse Pinkman are all too familiar.
Reality and fiction, these days, look like twin brothers.
Albuquerque, for all it’s bad reputation, is still where I live and call home, by my own choosing.
I don’t expect our city, even with Hollywood’s meddling, too ever change what it is, a northern territory of Mexico.
When I travel to foreign ” Third World ” destinations, I am never far from my comfort zone.
The Albuquerque Museum is in Albuquerque’s Old Town.
Old Town is not far from the Rio Grande river and train tracks that spurred growth in western communities in the nineteen hundreds. Old Town is a part of Albuquerque that is older than the city itself, originally a stopping point for Spanish explorers looking for their ” seven cities of gold. ”
Founded in the 1700’s and named after a Duke in Spain, Albuquerque is still a footnote to big brother Santa Fe that came of age in the 1500’s. We have a mix of Indians, Spanish, Europeans. We have cowboys, farmers, mad scientists. We are a melange of old, new, secular and spiritual, all explained by the state nickname ” Land of Enchantment. ”
The Museum is free today and filled with school kids. One room we enjoy features New Mexico artists. Another features the historical development of the ” Duke” city. Another is closed for construction with a sign apologizing for the inconvenience.
Neal and Joan, visiting from Colorado on their way to watch their daughter Calley graduate from college in Flagstaff, Arizona, make this time special.
One black and white framed photograph on an exhibit wall is of a solitary man wearing a hat and standing in the middle of an empty mesa by a sign saying” Nob Hill.”
Nob Hill was then the edge of town, fit only for jackrabbits, coyotes, rattlesnakes and buzzards. Now, it is trendy. There are shops and restaurants and the area is a playground for University of New Mexico students with live music, brew pubs, used book stores and boutiques.
New Mexico has turquoise and silver jewelry, beautiful hand thrown pots, the Kiva, cliff dwellings, the atomic bomb, Indian rugs, roadrunners, top secret research facilities, military bases and Indian reservations. We have Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands, Los Alamos National Labs, Chaco Canyon, and the Catwalk.
New Mexico holds to its past firmly as we barrel into the future.
It is like holding a horse blanket as you ride a rocket into space.
Our tour boat docks, by a grouping of mangroves,and we disembark into a thatched eating area where a local family will serve us lunch in a few hours.
While they prepare our tour’s meal, we are taken for a look at this island’s coconut farm, watch Polo skin a coconut using a metal spike stuck in the ground.
There are chickens roaming free around the homestead, pecking each other in territorial disputes. In one cage is a crocodile, and, in another, snapping turtles fight over fish in a small bowl.
When done watching the coconut skinning, a gray haired man in a ball cap loads our group into the back of a long wagon, with wood seats and a canvas top, starts his tractor, and we are pulled up a winding sandy path to the uninhabited beach on Stone Island.
“Be back in an hour,” Polo says to us, as we hit the beach, then he looks for a chair and a shady spot to talk with the tractor driver, a couple of young men renting ATVs, the skipper of our boat, and a few tourists who don’t care about seeing more sand.
The beach here stretches unimpeded for miles, in both directions, and coconut trees tower over all. It must have been what islands in the Pacific looked like to our father who fought in World War 2 , as a LST Captain. He didn’t talk about the war but I’ve seen old black and white filmstrips of action in the Pacific and it was never a tourist vacation.
Members of our group spread out along the beach according to their interests.
The island has been protected by an order of a past President of Mexico – Felipe Calderone. He decided that the island, once owned by a rich family, would serve the public interest by being left protected. This simple decision has probably had a more lasting influence on his country than some of his more lofty calculations. Presidents can do many things but not all of them are right, or necessary.
After our beach jaunt, we are taken back and have lunch on a big covered patio.
On our way back home, Juanito, Polo’s tame pelican, revisits us again on the Acutus.
It is a memorable expedition. No one gets lost. There are plenty of refreshments and diversions. The price is cheap, thirty U.S. dollars, our guide is informative.
It would be fun to spend a night on the beach and have a bonfire made of driftwood and listen to pirate stories.
I would pay to go on that one too.
Outside the Happy Trails Resort, to the southwest, is a nature preserve named the White Tank Mountains.
Whereas Surprise is a continuation of development, an encroachment upon the desert, the White Tank Mountains are resolutely clinging to nature. Within fifteen miles of Surprise, this preserve takes you into wilderness with some modern conveniences. There are picnic areas, a winding loop road that returns you to the visitor center, RV spaces for rent, clean bathrooms. Some of the trails are okay for patrons in wheelchairs or using canes, and on other trails you see mountain bikes, horseback riding, and hikers.
Leaving the visitor center and driving into the park, there is a pull off place for active souls who like to run, ride bikes, horseback, train for athletic events. This time of morning, on a weekday, there are only two cars in the parking lot when brother Alan and I pull in.
Walking the trail, it isn’t hard to imagine grizzled prospectors leading a donkey deep into the mountains looking for precious metals. It isn’t hard to imagine ranchers chasing down cattle or Indians fighting troops stationed at old time forts.
There are still places you can disappear in Arizona.
Staying on Pathways has always been difficult for me, but I am not the only one who has trouble walking a straight line.
Brothers keep us grounded by knowing who we used to be.
The Costa Rican National Museum is not world winning architecture. It is a renovated Spanish fort, and, for that reason, has little frills. Inside you see thick walls, peer through lookout holes in towers, pass through heavy wooden doors with huge iron hinges and visualize old days of conquest.
From our guide, we learn that Spanish dominance in Costa Rica was limited because there wasn’t much gold. The gold that did exist was placer gold from rivers and streams, not the huge deposits mined in Peru or Mexico. There was no Inquisition here and the Costa Rica fight for independence was short.
Costa Rican life revolves around weather, nature, rain forests, co-operation, community, family. There is no standing army and the police force doesn’t disappear people.There are over a million students in the free University system, the population is literate,their government provides a safety blanket.
One of the exhibits in the fort is an old Spanish jail, where misfits and law breakers, political prisoners, and trouble makers were confined. When you want to hurt someone, you take away freedom of movement, put them in a non-stimulating environment, control the food they eat, when they sleep, who they see.
You are always going to need jails but graffiti on the cell walls say you won’t ever be able to shut people up by locking them up.
Even Ancient Rome, powerhouse of the ancient world, couldn’t stop dirty jokes and rude pictures scratched on public bathroom stalls.
Hearing just what we want is not always what we need.
Tourist days come in all kinds of packages.
You are sleeping in strange rooms, surrounded by people you don’t know, eating food on the go that your stomach doesn’t recognize. There is television in a different language, obsessing with schedules, making connections, keeping up a big river ride on a little inner tube.
Your tourist day is as free as you want to make it, but limited. You don’t have friends here.You don’t work or have responsibilities. You are passing through. How involved you want to get depends on your mindset.
Standing at the hotel desk listening to three hotel employees talk is an education.They know enough English for me to understand what they are saying and I want to hear what they have to say.
Patricia is a hotel maid who lived in the U.S. but came back to Montevideo to be with family. Veronica is one step away from becoming a Doctor and is studying to re-take a final board oral exam that has to be passed before she can practice her passion. Virginia, another maid, speaks very little English but nods her head when she agrees. As a tourist, you don’t always have a chance to know people in a country you visit. People in the tourist industry are unappreciated Ambassadors for their country.
” It is hard, ” all agree. ” My paycheck, ” Patricia says, “doesn’t even pay my rent. Without family, it is really difficult. ”
Glowing reports about other countries often fall short. For people who hold Uruguay together by their daily work, economics is a daily rope climb in a daily obstacle course.
Even in Socialist countries, you still see people sleeping in the streets.
There is a security blanket here, but it has some holes.
To achieve what they want, people, around the world, still have to work hard, no matter what kind of government they have.
As in Montevideo, there are antiquated homes in Salto too.
This old casa, on a street off the main thoroughfare, is one that needs more care than it will ever get. While it waits for someone with a dream to fall in love with it, it is a garden shop – El Nuevo Vivero. Inside, plants and trees for sale are placed in empty rooms and since there is no roof on much of the building, rain waters them right where they stand.
The sign in front says the business is open on Saturdays and Mondays. This morning the front door is open and someone rustles inside. It is Wednesday.
A young man comes to the front door to see what I want and invites me to come inside to look at his business even though he is closed officially.
Guillermo is having mate first thing this morning and shows me some of his plants. He is wearing a Brazil soccer shirt and we laugh about that. People take soccer serious on this continent. How can you be a good Uruguay citizen and not wear a Uruguayan soccer shirt?
In the U.S., this place would be closed for code violations. Here, there is no harm, thus no foul.
When I leave the nursery, the ” Closed ” sign, in the front door, still hasn’t been replaced.
A business, it seems to me, that won’t open its doors for a customer, even when the closed sign is in their window, isn’t much of a business.
Guillermo, owner and caretaker of El Nuevo Vivero, has his finger on the pulses of both plants, and business.
There must be as many real estate sales offices in Punta Del Este as there are places for sale and rent.
No one stays put these days and for all the places here that has someone living in them, you still have plenty of places that are empty. This is a real estate broker’s paradise. Customers come down, fall in love, buy a place, move here, then lose their love and bail out. You get to sell a place over and over and over and you have nothing of yours at stake.
The area is seductive. It is clean, has shopping, has the beach, is easy to get around, is safe. The fact that it is expensive and is a resort community that expands in the good months and shrinks to a skeleton staff in the winter is easy to forget..
If you buy a place here are you going to live in it full time?
How much use will you get out of it?
Who will watch it when you are not here?
Is renting it practical?
Are property values going to rise or fall in the next few years so you don’t lose your reason for investment?
What is the government going to do that will impact the value of your investment, the income you might make from it, or whether you can sell it or not?
Is it really any different here than in Fort Lauderdale or Padre Island or San Diego, California?
If you are in business how are you going to survive lean months.
Wherever I go, real estate is for sale and people are either buying, selling or trading..
As far as I know, Gerardo is the most honest man on the planet and can, for a price,he will find you the castle of your dreams.
My dad was a realtor so I know there are honest ones on the planet.
The need to own a home is not going away anytime soon.
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