Honky-tonk Birthday

us at the bar


It was Gary's birthday last week, so he got to do what he wanted - which was have dinner at the local cowboy diner and hang out at Bootscooters - which is exactly what it sounds like. I got to be the designated driver. Bootscooters is definitely the place to hang out - couples, groups of guys, groups of girls, all decked out in Western wear, and low neck slinky tops (the girls, that is) and everyone drinking and dancing and having a good time. The parking lot was full!!
After a few drinks, even Gary got up and danced the Texas two-step. (sorry, I don't have any pictures of that event!)

girl's bathroom boy's bathroom

And, just to make things interesting, the woman reported missing last week was found - decapitated and chopped up in pieces small enough to fit inside 3 cardboard boxes. The alleged murderer had lived on her property in a rural (oxymoron) part of town, got mad at her one day, and hit her with an axe. A lot of times, apparently. He then stuffed her pieces into the boxes, loaded up her pickup with her furniture and the boxes, and hightailed it to Texas, where he got picked up on an outstanding warrant. As the paper reported, when the officers investigated the pickup, "they were met by a strong odor of decomposition." You don't need the rest of the details, but the paper was very graphic. Oh, yeah, he sold the axe at a flea market before leaving town.

lyric for the day: " I ain't as good as I once was, my how the years have flown; there was a time, back in my prime, when I did hold my own; I ain't as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was."

Never a dull moment in Roswell.

weather

there's weather and then there's weather. last week it snowed. then it warmed up and the wind blew 80 miles an hour, and blew everything sideways - sand, dust, roofing material, tumbleweeds, fences, limbs from trees, anything that wasn't tied down, and a lot that was.

then today, it dawned bright and sunny - 85 degrees, the warmest since we arrived - and no wind at all.

tomorrow is predicted more wind - even heavier. they are issuing an extreme high wind warning. stay inside.

and, it's supposed to snow again Sunday.

If you don't like the weather, stick around a couple of days, and you'll like it even less!

today's country song lyrics: (actually, 2 days)

1. You're not woman enough to take my man (sung by a female, of course)

2. I don't think she's in love any more, she's hanging up the phone and locking her door; I don't think she wants to hear any more of my lies, the only thing she wants out of me is goodbyes. (sung by a man, over beers in a dark, smoky bar)

life goes on

They're everywhere! at Arby's, at the mall, downtown, even at the post office!!














Intergalactic mail drop

Then there's the hippie section of town. You are looking at it! There also appear to be 2 head shops, but we haven't been in either one. Hippie Chicks sells California cool stuff - like surfer clothes and rhinestone studded purses and stuff 19 year olds like. I also visited the "alien souvenir shops" which, curiously enough, are almost all owned and operated by very overt Christians. Isn't there a contradiction here?

got a new haircut - now I look like the locals. Took a look around the civic part of town: the federal courthouse, city police, city hall and muni court, and of course, the ten commandments on the lawn of the county courthouse.

here's the federal building

city hall

police and muni court

county courthouse

and the ten commandments (no aliens there)










Our house is within a block of the military institute ("Rooty-toot-toot, rooty-toot-toot, we are the boys of the Institute, we don't drink and we don't chew, but we sure like the girls who do") which signals reveille, mess, classes, dinner, lights out, taps, and many more. It;'s a 6 year high school and junior college school, boys and now girls also, in uniform, marching everywhere, looking buff. The good news is they have a major sports complex, available to the public! Swimming pool, fitness machines, etc. Ask me when I got home if I availed myself of this opportunity to work off the tamales and barbeque and ice cream and other assorted caloric goodies. Probably not.

Main street is a divided highway (also the state highway north and south). The divider runs along, shaped like a river (there are several small "rivers" in Roswell; none has water at the moment - or ever in my memory) in blue stones with sandy colored stones as the banks. Looks really neat - like in Albuquerque, where the dividers were decorated with Indian symbols, big stone pots, statues of kokapelli etc.

Roswell apparently has no zoning - houses and businesses everywhere along the same street, and some houses look like McMansions, with tended gardens and lawns and big trees, porticos, gazebos, etc and next door is an adobe shack with the windows boarded up and a dirt yard strewn with trash. some parts of town look like a third world country and all of it is dry and dusty and sad.

The symphony plays 3 concerts a year; the only live "little theatre" shows 3 plays a year, for a weekend apiece and in neither case will any of those happen while we are here.

Roswell

The house is single story adobe covered with stone, built in 1942 by German POWs held in a camp near Roswell during WWII, who helped the farmers with crops and the city with construction projects, like the Spring River embankment downtown, where they embedded an Iron Cross into the stone pattern.

front porch


view from the street






dining room



Gary looking out, view of street

view to the kitchen




me in the living room


That area is now a city mia/pow park and has a piece of the Berlin wall, given by the Luftwaffe to the city in 1989 in appreciation for the hospitality shown them in WW2.








(the pictures don't always come out positioned where the caption is, so bear with me)

We have lots of birds: grackles, jet black, with long tails; doves cooing incessantly and building nests in the ivy growing on the sides of the house; robins, especially a pair we named Bob and Ray (robin = rob = Bob, its partner = Ray, for those of you old enough to remember radio).

And the weather is anything and everything: lightning strikes, thunder, and even a little moisture, almost 1/3 inch of rain; and this morning we awoke to snow on the ground. Very strange as the house has automatic sprinklers that run 3 times a week for about an hour, and even after that, the ground feels just as dry to the touch.

3 times a week - water conservation? what's that? ditto recycling, not only does the city not require any, but we are supposed to throw everything in huge rubber barrels in the alley and the trash truck scoops them up 3 times a week and carries them off to who knows where landfill. Could be the same landfill that currently takes all the spent nuclear waste - it gets buried in the salt caves near Carlsbad Caverns south of here (that's why the road from Albuquerque is so good - to haul the waste).

Being in a house instead of a hotel is very different, many of these are obvious, like no maid service, and no free breakfast, but some are quite unexpected. For instance, there I was at the grocery store (not a place one would go as a hotel stayer) and suddenly I was in a different world. Groceries, yes, and many Spanish speaking people and specialty foods, yes, but I expected that, but different, sort of surreal. More than checking out exotic shops in a foreign town on one's way, I will be living here and shopping here for a month. Yikes.

Overheard in same grocery store, 2 men both dressed in full cowboy outfits, boots, shirts, levi's, hats, rough worked hands and neck, chatting in the produce aisle, "well, there's Passover coming up and ..." Cowboy Jews?

And of course,the radio - there isn't a house radio so we are streaming our music, so we hear what we want at home. but in the car it is a different story. There are about 10 AM stations we can get and they are all country. In today's country lyric: he sings about all the things he loves, ice cold beer, NASCAR races, honky tonk Friday night bars, but ends up with the chorus, "Hell yes, I love my truck, but I want you to know that I love your love the most." Note that he doesn't say I love you the most, but I love most that you love me, Egads!!

And, in today's news: New Mexico now has an official state cowboy song. not just a state song, but a cowboy song. They had a contest and this is the winner (no audio, sorry): "Under New Mexico Skies" by Syd Masters, who said of his masterpiece (no pun intended) "I write a lot of songs about NM, but with this one, I was having a photo taken, leaning against an adobe wall....and there was a creek running by. It turned out to be the right thing to describe."

And there is even a headshop, at least we think it is. Has a colorful acid-like mural painted along one side, and is called "area 420", after another one of those off-limit places like area 51.

The birthday party for my mother in law was a smashing success. 20 old ladies drank 11 pitchers of margaritas and demolished 2 platters of enchiladas, and endless chips and dips and cake and ice cream. We had a pinata (dubbed Betty Crocker for her perkiness and apron) filled with the accouterments of old age - flexident, gas-ex, immodium, etc, You get the idea. They loved it.

Gertie (in red) with friend and Betty Crocker

more party-ers








I brought out some Women's Press that I had brought, and they devoured them and wanted me to autograph their copies! Ah fame. I had to come to Roswell to find it.

The aliens have landed in roswell

We had a great time in albuquerque, recuperating from the road, and luxuriating in the Hacienda Antiqua. First thing was order out Chinese. I had to drive to get it, in the dark, on a city freeway, after days of just driving straight ahead across great expanses of nothingness. The restaurant was in a shopping mall, where there was also a walk-in trust and estate planning office. Had to take a picture!

My sister drove down from Santa Fe the next day; we went to the Rio Grande Nature Center and walked the banks of the bosque, the old colonial Spanish "forest." You should excuse the expression, as you can see from the pictures, but she swears in summer it is thick and lush and green.







Her husband, the museum curator, joined us after lunch and we saw the special exhibit at the Albuquerque Museum - a side by side analysis with artifacts and neat stuff, of the first three settlements in the New World, of each major culture: English in Virginia, French in Quebec and the Spanish in Santa Fe. The exhibits were divided by area of life: family, commerce, war, trade, etc. Interesting to see how differently each place reacted to its surroundings.

And, of course, a wonderful authentic Mexican dinner at the old roadhouse that's been there since 1890 something - La Pinta.


That's Will and Deborah and me.





On the road in the morning, after a stop at Traader Joe's to stock up on wine and necessities before heading into the hinterland. Here's some shots of the road to Roswell: land, and more land, and occasionally some cows, and occasionally a train, and even a house. I emphasize "a" house.

through the wild wild west

Mt. Taylor, the highest peak in Arizona, and snow along the roadway in the Coconino National Forest.










Lots of pit stops by the road - not many gas stations or rest stops, and the ones that there were, were closed for repairs!





A bluff or two...









Signs for flying deer and dancing elk abound, but no animals. In fact, not much of anything along Route 40. The prevailing color is dirt, occasionally enlivened with splashes of color advertising Indian trading posts, or casinos, or even presidential candidates (who was Baldwin?).










Indian casino









Long, long trains carrying boxcars and tanker cars, and still, lots of trucks on the road.






home on the Rez







"Ridin on my way to Albuquerque; saddlebags all full of beans and jerky; heading for the KCircleB, the TV ranch for you and me, KCircleB in Albuquerque - yodelay, eyah, eyah" - the theme song from a 1950's Roswell TV show for kids, and just perfect for the scenery. The radio stations are KUZZ - that's cuz, and KCKN - klassic kickin' kountry with song titles like, "You're the reason god made Oklahoma".

there should be more pictures, but I'm not yet adept at this program so I think I lost them! They may turn up in some other post.