New Mexico #7: La Fonda

Right, so, last time, I'd gotten us to Santa Fe. We had come by train (almost magically) from the dead heart of downtown Albuquerque on a weekend morning, to the bright and sunny and oh-so-clear world of Santa Fe square.

And, just as we left off last time, we encountered a sleek young woman, almost a girl, careless and thoughtless, indifferent to others, in the way that only a certain class of wealth may allow.

Today, we move to the La Fonda.

*

The La Fonda is a hotel on the square, that is, the Plaza of Santa Fe. It is quite old. There has been an inn, or rather innS at the same location for something like 400 years. But, the La Fonda that sits now on East San Francisco Street dates from the 1920s, when Fred Harvey, whose restaurants and hostelries were once the stuff of legend, established his own hotel on the sight. It remained a " Harvey House" for generations until (at least according to the hotel's current website) it was purchased by a local businessman in the late 1960s.

It's quite beautiful, really—a large adobe structure, seemingly as ancient as the city itself, and with the graceful curves of a pueblo church. It is quite and cool, a little shadowy at times, but pleasant. I've stayed in it once. The rooms, too, a pleasant enough…a little expensive, perhaps, for the usual middle class, family crowd, but not too bad. And besides, that's Santa Fe. You wouldn't be in the city if you didn't expect to pay just a little bit more.

More often, I've eaten there. There was a restaurant on the first floor we would go to when I was a child and my parents would take me on a visit to the city. I believe it was there that I first tried something like Nouvelle cuisine, 'lo these many years ago. But it is hard for me to remember.

In the last few years, I have usually only gone to the café that's attached to the hotel. You can get quite good espresso there. It is one of the few places in the Plaza where you can. And you can see interesting people while you drink it.

But, there is a odd thing about my relationship with the La Fonda. On on hand, I very much like it, and I would recommend it to any one traveling to the city.

On the other…we have a history.


*

Martha and I made our way to the La Fonda where we would be meeting our parents. From there, we would go to lunch.

We turned the corner and there was the hotel…warm and white, and, on the inside, all worked wood and Spanish tile. We went through the doors and up into the lobby. I looked around. I saw the huge fireplaces that burn, as the saying goes, merrily in the winter. During cold weather, visitors come from the world over to ski at Santa Fe and the Taos, and then, they come here for wine and wood smoke.

And it was then that I had my memory.

I took my first degree at a University in New Mexico. To the annoyance of my poor father, I was an English major. And, while I worked my way through Early American Lit and Late European Poetry, I took Creative Writing Classes.

One of these classes was a disaster. It was taught by a writer whose name I will not reveal, but suffice to say that he was the first professor I had ever encountered who used his classroom as a weapon. Not to put too fine a point on it, he was a bully. I have met his kind many times since then, but he was my first experience of that particular breed. He surrounded himself with an elite crew of sycophantic students and, each class, would amuse himself by selecting one of those not in his band of groupies for ritual dismemberment. We would submit our stories and he would, with a robust and eager cruelty, rip them (and us) to shreds.

I am happy to say that he was, himself, not a particularly great writer. Oh, he was published and all that, but there was something missing in his work. There was something cold about it. He would write about emotions, but somehow, they did not reach you. They floated in the abstract, just beyond your reach, so that you felt you ought to feel sadness or joy or grief…but couldn't.

He was quite worldly. He'd been a journalist in Washington and Vietnam. That should have made him wise and insightful…but it didn't. He became one of those men and women who have Seen The Unvarnished Truth, and never let you forget it. You, they silently inform you with a sneer and supercilious look, haven't seen the Real World. You haven't seen people Die In Battle. You haven't Toughed It Out. You haven't heard the helicopters over Khe Sanh. You haven't seen the B52s in the sky.

The fact that his war had been, for the most part, spent a comfortable distance behind the lines, and that he left Saigon long before the choppers made their final, desperate flights…well, that was beside the point.

I've sometimes wondered what happened to him. I've Googled his name, now and then. There are a few references to him in the 1970s and 1980s. But, then, he's gone. It is as if he'd never been real.

But the one thing he left for me, for my memory, was…the La Fonda.

*

This man, my former professor, came from a well-to-do family that lived in the Santa Fe area. His father (or so he said) had come West after World War I and started a large sheep ranch. The sheep must have done very well indeed for the Dad, because the Son (my professor) was duly sent to an expensive college in the East…a college, in fact, only a short drive from where I sit now, in Winchester, MA.

After his time as a global journalist and (to quote the immortal Jethro Bodine) international playboy, my professor had moved back to Santa Fe. The city had, in fact, a considerable role in his fiction and his personal anecdotes, both of which we who were his students came to know rather well.

The thing I remember most about his picture of Santa Fe was that it really wasn't a city at all. His Santa Fe was a great comfortable place, almost an extended family, in which everyone (or, at least, everyone who mattered) was accepted and cherished. In a scene in one of his fictions, he presents us with him and his family and his friends, gathered around one of the great fireplaces of the La Fonda, celebrating the holiday season on a cold evening just before Christmas. A lovely image, indeed.

Ah, but there's the rub. It was not a scene into which just anyone was admitted. As he, himself, was quick to admit, HIS Santa Fe was not everyone's Santa Fe. There are other Santa Fes. There was the Santa Fe of the politicians who came and passed laws in the capital building. There was the Santa Fe of the locals, the men and women whose families had been in the city for generations. There was the Santa Fe of the tourists and the visiting movie stars. And, there was the Santa Fe of the servants, the men and women who staffed the hotels and restaurants.

Of these other Santa Fes, my professor remained proudly ignorant. Except in so far as they impacted his life or comfort, it was as though they did not exist.

And thus, as he dreamed before the fire and awaited the coming of Christmas morn, he felt quite alone …except for his friends. They and he had (they felt) an almost infinite privacy. No one, other than they, was there. In their room. Before their fire.

Only, lots of other people WERE present. The staff, the tourists, the locals…all of them passed through the lobby on their various missions. But, he did not see them. They did not belong to his circle. And, so, they went by, as transparent as ghosts or gusts of wind, leaving no mark, and making no sound.

*

We entered the hotel. We marveled again, as we always do, at its woodwork and tile. We visited the shops in the lobby and admired the jewelry. Once more I asked Martha if she wanted something. Once more, she declined. (Though, happily, later and in another place, she would allow me to buy something for her.)

We waited for my parents. They duly appeared. We discussed lunch. They had a place they wanted to take us—a restaurant they’d found last time they’d been here. We said it sounded fun and they led the way out the door.

And yet, even as we walked, I began to feel something very strange. Even as we made our way through the Plaza, in the gentle air, feeling the sun on our faces…

I began to feel…

Unreal…

*


But that’s for next time.










Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker

New Mexico #5: The Alvarado

Okay, so, this time, I’m finally going to get to the next installment of the tale of my recent trip to New Mexico.

It will involve The Alvarado. Beautiful and gracious.

And gone.


*

I am a little melancholy in this one. So be prepared. But it does end on an up note.

Anyway, when I left off last time, in New Mexico #4, we were heading downtown. My parents wanted to take us on the “Rail Runner.” This is the new, relatively high-speed train that goes from Albuquerque, where they live (and where I grew up) and Santa Fe, which is the capital of the state and perhaps its most famous city. Santa Fe is the romantic city, where movie stars go.

Oh, some other New Mexican communities likewise have their claims to fame. Taos is where D.H. Lawrence and a host of artists and poets went to be very, very trendy and counter-cultural together in the 1920s. Meanwhile, Truth or Consequences (yes, that is its name), may be the only town in America named after a quiz show. Los Alamos is linked forever (if not quite fairly) with the Bomb. Gallup is both loved and hated for its relationship with Native Americans. Roswell has its Aliens, as imaginary as Mickey Mouse and, in their way, as much a part of pop culture.

And Albuquerque? My hometown? Largest city in the state?

Well, it’s where Bugs Bunny inevitably failed to make that left turn on the way to California.


*

My father drove us through the streets of downtown Albuquerque. Last time I talked about that a bit. How the city’s heart is nearly empty on weekends. At least before noon. Oh, you have a few souls here and there. A few business-folk going to their offices for a spot of extra work on Saturday. A few churchgoers on their way to Mass. The very, very, very few…vanishingly few … people who actually live there.

And, of course, the street people. And a few criminals. They are present. They can be found.

We parked in a large garage, took the elevator to the ground, and then walked to the train station. It is new and clean and very much out of place in the city.

I remember it from years ago. As a boy, my parents would take me east to visit my grandparents on the El Capitan or The Superchief—travelers’ trains, comfortable, elegant, exciting. Some of the last such in America. I have never forgiven the auto, the plane, and larger American culture for allowing them to die.

The station, too, is vastly changed from what it was. When I was very young, it was a magnificent place. It was, to be precise, The Alvarado. Say that word in a whisper, as though you were invoking magic. For, in fact, you are. It was glorious. A complex of buildings and shops, all in the Mission Revival style (look it up). It was a hotel, a station, a place of transport yet, also, a destination famed for its luxury. People came expressly to stay there because it was an attraction in itself.

It was lovely and elegant and …and…it is all gone now.

In 1970, Those Who Knew Best demolished it. They ripped it to pieces and carted it away as trash.

When I heard, I wept. At the age of 13, and far too old for that sort of thing, I wept.

*

Oh, God! Those Who Know Best…

May they rot in hell.

*

Today, the “Alvarado Transportation Center” is a much smaller place, more utilitarian, more in the spirit of the bus station and the commuter rail stop. It isn’t bad, really. In fact, it is much better than what was there just a few years ago.

You see, when they tore down the old Alvarado, nothing much took its place for quite some time. It was nothing but an unpaved parking lot for decades. The dust would rise from it at rush hour and settle over the streets of downtown.

I’m not sure what it was that motivated the vandals in three-piece suits who murdered the Alvarado. But, if it was their intent to profit from their actions then they gained nothing. No new and expensive office buildings took the place of the station. No business renaissance revived the area. It just sat and withered, or else attempted to give itself back to the desert from whence it came.

Or, maybe, that was the point all along. Maybe those who moved with such unseemly haste to destroy the Alvarado (sending in the bulldozers before the building’s defenders could organize or even know the crime was coming) had no intention of constructing something new. Maybe it was all simply a message. Maybe it was the way that Post-Industrial America explained itself, said Behold, the day of the train is over. The day of comfort is over. The day of your being a “passenger” is over. From hence forward, you are live freight, at best.

Get used to it.


*

Anyway…

We made our way to the new station. It required we move through the first real crowd since we’d gotten downtown. The homeless and street people of the area use the station as a refuge. Through their numbers we made our way.

My father bought us tickets. I looked around the place, intrigued by the renewal of the area. We used the restrooms and bought a cup of coffee. Then, my father said we really ought to be heading out.

We followed him outside and up a set of stairs. Then, we were on a concrete platform beside the tracks. A small but respectable group of fellow travelers were with us. We all enjoyed the sun and the felt the air.

I had memories. I remembered coming there with them when I was oh…so painfully young. I remembered waiting in the lobby. I remembered going with them to the gift shops, the restaurants…all of it. I remembered walking with my father to the newsstand. He showed me the first issue of _ Playboy _ I’d ever seen. I remember right then and right there, realizing that I was —in spite of what the coaches said during PE— very heterosexual. And that, by Heaven! my childhood was drawing towards its close.

*

I saw a sign next the stairway that led back down to the station. I can’t remember exactly what it said, but it was something along the lines of, “Okay, you’re in Albuquerque…what now?” Below that was a list of things to do in the city.

I had a vision of tourists . . . perhaps Europeans …who had come to Santa Fe and then thought, What the Heck? Let’s see Albuquerque as well.

So, one Saturday, they take the train and find themselves…

Here. In the midst of concrete and steel. And echoes. And the nearest attraction is a half hour’s taxi ride away. If you can find the taxi in the first place.

*

And, then, the perfect symbol. No director of melodrama could have planned it better. No prophet could have provided a better sign of things to come...

Of would wait for us upon our return to Albuquerque after our time in Santa Fe.


*

There were pigeons in the place. They flew in circles around us, taking rest for a moment on the roofs of the buildings, then dashing to the concrete platform to see if we’d dropped anything worth eating.

A woman beside me said, “Look! His leg!”

I looked where she pointed. One of the birds had landed beside us. He limped, dragging one leg uselessly behind him.

“He’s got a thread around it.”

She was right. There was a length of something around his leg—thread, or fish line, or something plastic, I couldn’t tell for certain. All I could see was that it cut deep into his flesh.

“Can we get it off him?” she asked.

I lied. “I don’t know.” I knew we couldn’t. I knew he’d fly the minute we got near. I knew that he was dying. The leg would wither and become infected. He’d perish. It was only a matter of time.

We heard the train in the distance. It was coming toward us.

I took off my coat and held it up. I hoped I could throw it over him, like a net. Then, if I could hold him still, maybe I could get the line off him.

The woman took the other side. We circled him. He eyed us uncertainly. I prepared to throw the coat.

The train pulled into the station.

The bird was gone in a flutter of wings. We watched it fly away towards its inevitable destruction.


*

Now, forget that small tragedy. Forget the bird and his fate.

For a moment…that is.

We will, however, return to it later.

But that’s for later.


*

The train pulled into the station. It was bright and new, as shiny and wonderful as a toy. Except, of course, that it was real, and so all the more magical for that.

Young people in conductor’s uniforms appeared and greeted us. We trooped inside and found seats upstairs on the second story of the train. Great windows opened up and we could see out and everywhere. The sun seemed already brighter.

I felt my spirits rising.

And, a moment later, we were on our way.


*

Until next time…






Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker