Why I Live in Northern New Mexico

I’ve been working on a series called “Acequia Stories: The Democracy of Dysfunction, or How Everyone is Equally Crazy,” the first installment of which I was getting ready to post after Sunday’s typically contentious acequia meeting with all the usual suspects. But then on Monday and Tuesday I was reminded of why I live in this yes, crazy but benevolent, unique place and I decided to write about that instead.

On Monday morning my friend Peter, master woodworker from Chimayó, came up to replace my funky kitchen cabinets with the elegant doors and drawers he’d crafted. Mark and I always wanted new cabinets but never had the discretionary money. But Peter wanted the work and gave me a good deal. He’d already built me a beautiful tongue and groove cabinet for my bathroom in return for my help putting together a book of his oral histories of workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, an incredible accounting of what went on from the beginning of the Manhattan Project until the year 2000 (we’ll let you know when it’s ready for purchase).

On Tuesday I loaded up the truck with the old doors to my cabinets, along with the rest of my trash (which included a couple of bales of hay that had been sitting outside for a year or so, turning to mold) and went to the dump. Paco, my year old blue healer, went with me, of course. The cabinet doors were headed for the reuse building at the dump, a recycling project that came to fruition through the efforts of Jean, a local artist who was an original member of the Hog Farm commune. While waiting my turn behind a woman in a car tossing various things into the dumpster I discussed the upcoming Kit Carson Coop election with Jerry, a land grant activist who manages the dump, about which corrupt board members we would be voting against. The folks in the truck who pulled up alongside me when the car moved on were the sister and brother-in-law of my next door neighbor and whose kids went to school with my kids. When they saw the old cabinet doors in my truck they asked if I was going to dump them and when I told them they were headed for the reuse building they said, we’ll reuse them, and we transferred them to their truck.

Then Paco and I went to the post office in Chamisal, where Noami the postmistress asked me what I was doing that day. When I told her I planned to rototill my garden she told me about the time her dad was tilling his garden and he said, why don’t you give it a try, which she did, and proceeded to overturn the tiller and herself at the same time. Many years ago Noami and I hiked to the top of North Truchas Peak in a single day, which she periodically reminds me of when we’re complaining about our daily aches and pains.

When I came out of the post office the woman who I had seen at the dump called me over to her car and said, I just wanted you to know that it wasn’t me who drank all that beer you saw me throw into the dumpster. Now, I hadn’t even noticed that she’d thrown away a bunch of beer bottles, and even if I had I probably wouldn’t have thought much of it, but she wanted me to know that she doesn’t drink the stuff she only picks up the bottles from the roadside between Chamisal and Las Trampas. This initiated a discussion about why we can’t ever seem to get a bottle bill through the legislature to provide a financial incentive to not throw beer bottles on the road. When I told her she was a good Samaritan she gave me a big smile and went off to collect more bottles.

While driving back to El Valle I ran into Albert and his dog Pee Wee, a little terrier mutt who goes everywhere with Albert. He had stopped me on the road a few weeks before and asked if I would write a story about Pee Wee, who he accidentally ran over with his car, popping out one of Pee Wee’s eyes. He rushed her to the vet, who couldn’t save the eye, and then the second eye developed an infection and the vet couldn’t save that one either, so Pee Wee is now blind. Albert takes Pee Wee with him to Peñasco, where he goes to hang out with his buddies, she follows him around the yard when he’s at home working, and he keeps her inside with him at night. I’m going to go over to Albert’s mother’s house later today to sit down and write the story of Pee Wee. Corina, Albert’s mother, who is a good friend of mine, will help me communicate with Albert, who is almost completely deaf.

And finally, while I was rototilling the garden my neighbor Nelson came over to bring me some eggs. I gave him the last of my chickens a week ago when I decided that after 34 years I was going to quit keeping them so Paco and I can have a little more mobility, meaning I can leave the house for a few days without having to ask Nelson to come over the feed the them, which he always willingly does. I now take him all my compost for the chickens and he gives me as many eggs as I want (he also keeps ducks, geese, and guineas). While he was here he offered to weed whack the rose hips along the ditch that I’ve been meaning to cut back for the last few years.

Tomorrow Peter will come and finish installing my new cabinets. I’m going to enjoy this aesthetic improvement to my house, work on my story about Pee Wee, start planting my garden, and bask in a good norteño feeling that sometimes slips away from me, especially after I attend an acequia meeting. I’ll get back to the Democracy of Dysfunction next week.