Things get new names.
Route 66 becomes Interstate-40. Bruce Jenner becomes Caitlyn Jenner. British Honduras becomes Belize. Climate warming becomes a Religion. Kentucky Fried Chicken becomes KFC.
Before Truth or Consequences adopted its new name in the 1950’s, to promote a popular television show,this sleepy New Mexico burg was called Hot Springs.
For hundreds of years, Indians, cowboys and locals partook of mineral baths by the Rio Grande river. They put differences aside, slipped into above 100 degree waters, and looked out across the river towards the mountains where they hunted. In old times, before Elephant Butte Dam, the Rio Grande ran deeper and swifter. There are times of the year now when the river runs dry as southern New Mexico chili farmers scramble to pull allotted water and flood their fields.
While you soak you can watch ducks bob in the Rio Grande or follow the trend line of Turtle Back mountain from its tail to the tip of its nose. For fifteen dollars an hour you have your own personal retreat, cool the upper half of your body as your lower half cooks like a chicken in a crock pot.
Names change.
Conservative and liberal are not what their parents named them. Going to war to make peace is an old song. Spending your way to prosperity is preached from pulpit and podium. Voting for the least of two evils is how we participate in our Constitutional Republic.
When things get rough, soaking in hot mineral springs on a cool morning is a perfect tonic- no matter what they are named..
T or C is a place that sounds a whole lot more interesting than it will ever be and hot mineral baths take a little chill out of this winter that seems to drag on and on and on.
Leaving Roswell for Midland, Texas you start seeing oilfield pump jacks right off the highway.
There are no trees or bushes to hide them so they can’t be missed, look like grasshoppers, and have been shot with twenty two’s more than once. Some of the pump jacks are alone by themselves while others cluster in a circle the wagons formation with big collection tanks nearby. These fields have been producing for decades providing oil, jobs, tax revenues to the state of New Mexico and at least once a week a scruffy man in oil stained levi’s pulls his tank truck up and drains them of all the oil that came out of the well casings that go down deep into the ground.
The United States burns up millions of barrels of oil per day and oil has been pumped for a hundred and fifty years in this country to supply a modern world. Roswell and Midland is oil country and roughnecks is a word that doesn’t just describe men crawling around drilling rigs in oil stained coveralls, work boots and hard hats.
In this landscape, pump jacks work mechanically, without complaint, twenty four hours a day. The well sites are clean and not near as dirty as people’s back yards in Roswell or any of the small towns dying along the highway.
Pulling the handle off a gas station pump and sticking it in your tank is the last small part of a long chain of effort. It takes millions of years to make oil, months to make it good for our uses, and minutes for us to burn up.
When oil stops flowing, we see how uncivilized people can be.
Clines Corners is a travel center on I- 40 east of Moriarty, New Mexico.
It opened in 1934 at the intersection of what was then Route 66 and highway 85 going north to Santa Fe or highway 85 south to Roswell.
1934 was long ago, at the end of the Great American Depression, written up in history books, documented in stark black and white photos of dust whipped people with belongings piled into pickup trucks heading for California’s Garden of Eden. Some say those days are coming again, with great billowing clouds of mid west dust and stockbrokers jumping off big city balconies.
As you draw closer to the Corners, their billboards promote cheap coffee, clean restrooms, authentic Indian moccasins, salt water taffy, cheaper gas. Inside the center are trinkets, enough to buy five Manhattan’s. The postcards are catchy, the candy tempting, the restrooms clean. I don’t buy anything but linger at a rack of postcards that reminds me of Scotttreks, my digital postcard rack.
1934 is an eternity ago in a century of exponential change.
How do young feel when confronted with a generation of elders who grew up with black and white tv, rotary phones, Phillip Morris cigarettes, Schlitz beer, the Little Rascals and Post Toasties cereal? How will the young be looked upon by their children who will ride in cars that are driver less, have their moves documented by security cameras and do school on computers with a virtual teacher who never gets mad, always is prepared, and doesn’t have to deal with bad behavior or inappropriate clothes?
Even though we look amused at the past, we too are going to be in someone else’s rear view mirror.
Yogi might not have said “, It’s deja vu all over, ” but, if he didn’t, he should have.
The day after my trip to warmer climates is in bed, Mother Nature spreads her winter blanket and dumps snow on Albuquerque.
In the foothills, east of Albuquerque, snowflakes nestle between cactus spines, but, before noon, the sun will start to erase the white. Footprints ahead of me point up the trail and my eye catches a rabbit cutting out of a ravine and darting under a scrubby bush by a granite boulder. He might worry but I couldn’t hit him with two shotguns.
I watch as he freezes in what he believes is safety.
He is still motionless as I move again up the trail. His territory is more limited than mine but we both deal with Mother Nature, he with fur and me with a coat.
It’s winter, and, just back from a trip, I’m already packing my Toyota Sunrader again for a jaunt to Padre Island, Texas.
The last few years the only sign on my front door has been the one that says ” Gone Fishing. ”
It seems that I’m gone more than I am home and this, I figure, is as good a definition of deja vu as any.
It isn’t here yet but Halloween is galloping down the road and the headless horseman will soon be here.
New Mexico and Mexico have much in common this time of year as our town celebrates both Halloween and Dia De Los Muertos or ” Day of the Dead. ”
There is no border between the countries of Mexico and the United States and buses run regular from Juarez to Albuquerque. Everyone here knows border talk is just talk and the cultures of North, South and Central America are merging like shoppers at a great flea market.
Brother Mark, visiting for a few days from Denver, wants a photo in front of the Breaking Bad Bus that takes visitors on a tour of Albuquerque locations featured on the popular TV series of the same name.
Shopping, we find pinon incense for his wife Leigh in one of the shops off the main plaza. There are also flashy ceramic tiles, polished rocks, pinon coffee, chili socks, wooden Indians, serapes, Day of the Dead skulls and statues, turquoise jewelry. One shop has Breaking Bad posters on the wall, and, in another, Sheldon looks at the world with his Big Bang Theory.
When you say the words Halloween and Albuquerque, over and over again, you start to lose your mind.
On the way out of Old Town, I scratch my head to make sure it is still up there, and, thankfully,it is.
I’m on my way soon for Belize and Ecuador.
I don’t, like this headless horseman, want to go anywhere without having something between my two ears.
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There aren’t many rides on this Midway but those that are here give kids a thrill.
Precious children are flung through space, turned upside down, and hold on screaming for dear life.
This circus has an old time Ferris Wheel. There is the Hammer and the Swinger, the Fun Slide, Mad Hatter Tea Cups, a Spinning Wheel, and a Fun House. Families buy ride coupons at small booths and hand them to scruffy men or tall lean teenagers wearing John Deere ball caps. They wait in lines for a ride to finish and then are loaded into seats, baskets, or capsules like bullets into a chamber.
The amusement area at the Punkin Chunkin Festival is a maze of pipes, high voltage electric cables, gears, pulleys, wheels, wire cages and seats, sounds of straining engines, lights, chain link fences to keep people going the correct direction. Machinery is always looking to grab hands in the wrong places.
Parents take pictures of their offspring spinning through the air, rushing down a long slide sitting on burlap bags, spinning in tea cups, or locked inside a metal cage that keeps them from falling when they are upside down twenty feet in the air twisting like a dust devil.
In old days the circus had elephants, animal acts, bearded ladies, carnie games, clowns and dancing girls. The circus has shrunk, almost vanished.
You don’t need a tattooed lady when women in the crowd have tattoos of their own inked in public and private places.
Video games have become our new Ferris Wheel.
In the distance, ATV’s and pickup trucks wait for this year’s contest to begin, looking themselves like small tin cans hung on a fence post for target practice. They scurry around after each shot, mark where pumpkins come back to Earth and send back GPS co-ordinates that help calculate the distance of each shot.
On the firing line there is activity as half a dozen cannons are lined up and crews are checking mechanisms, counting pumpkins, and figuring how to beat competitors. The King and Queen of the Punkin’ Chunkin’ Festival has been crowned. Winners of raffles have been announced. Lunch is winding down and stragglers hurry to grandstands from full parking lots.
There are a few issues, but, by one in the afternoon, pumpkins are being launched, one after another. There is a siren to warn us of a firing, then, a few seconds later, an explosion.
Pumpkins shoot out of the barrels hot. If you are sitting just right, you can track the pumpkin as it leaves the barrel, follow it in its arc till it plummets into the field and splatters into harmless slices of pumpkin pie. No one gets injured, maimed or killed in this war. It is country fun for country folks.
The distances are announced over a simple public address system and the crowd cheers for a good shot.
The winning shot, this year, travels 3185 feet. Competition is fierce and people enjoy the annual event.
Trying to do it better is what keeps this country alive, even if it is chunkin’ punkin’s, spitting sunflower seeds, or tossing cow chips.
Granite boulders are common along this foothill trail.
They are spread like giant marbles dumped out of a cloth bag onto the school playground at recess. Some of the boulders are clumped together, others stand alone in a patch of cactus or in the shade of a stubborn juniper with gnarled branches.
Along this trail, lichen cling to the granite.
Lichen comes in shades of green and consists of two symbiotic organisms. The fungi part sinks roots into resisting rock, extracts nutrients, holds on for dear life. The algae part piggybacks on fungi and uses photosynthesis and nutrients to make food for both of them.
Winding up the trail on a morning hike, through a planet in transition, all looks stable, but nature is far from stable.
Googling- lichen on granite- brings you life’s variety, delicacy, and will to survive.
Symbiosis describes human relationships, as well as natures.
Music is accessible.
You can be wearing a tuxedo and tails, coveralls, golf shorts, uniforms, diapers, or your birthday suit, and it sounds great. You can be wearing a wedding dress, a pearl necklace, spiked heels, a flimsy cocktail party dress, cowboy boots, turquoise earrings or a bikini and it sounds great. You can be white haired, bald, or a long hair and enjoy. You do not need to know how to read or write to get the rhythm right.
This afternoon a little girl stands in front of the Band with her father’s approving look and does an impromptu dance.
She can do worse than hang out with serious musicians wearing suits and swinging with intent.
There is her future ahead.
Possibly she will fall in love with a man who fits her and walk down the aisle with her father holding her arm to be given, with her father’s blessing, to a lucky guy? Possibly she will have happy children and a family? Maybe she will fall into a career that fits her abilities and interests?
This afternoon the band plays and people move into and out of the picture. Some tarry. Some show appreciation. Others barrel through the moment like ordnance in World War 1. Some try to avoid the camera.
Music speaks across place, time, people and ideology – in its own voice.
In the saxophone family you have a number of siblings.
The shortest boys, who sing the highest, are the C Melody and Soprano saxes. Then you move to Alto and Tenor Saxes who are the most common kids on jazz bandstands. At the back of the parade you have Baritone Sax. The lowest voiced saxophone, and biggest of all – the Contra-bass saxophone- seldom gets out of its case because it is an elephant at the tea party.
This afternoon Sax Therapy performs in Old Town during the annual Albuquerque balloon festival.
Dressed for this performance in suits, the quys move through their songbook with style.
A few listeners take photos, engage the musicians in conversation, and dance, especially when the ensemble launches into a spirited version of ” When the Saints Come Marching in. ”
The guys play like a family, and, on this song, a happy family.
Everyone knows their part and they play well together.
Sax Therapy is therapy everyone can use.
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