Highway 285 winds it’s way through Espanola, Ojo Caliente, Tres Piedras, Antonito, and eventually Alamosa, Colorado.
Another way to see this high country is riding a narrow gauge railroad that runs from Antonito, Colorado to Chama, New Mexico and back.
This narrow gauge train runs on steam and there is a man who works his shovel the entire trip, pushing coal into a hot firebox that heats water that makes steam that moves rods that turns wheels rolling on narrow tracks.
Richard and I pull off the highway and watch the antique train pull into the Antonito station.
These cars used to carry goods and people but now carry sightseers who want to revisit the past, imagine themselves in an old John Wayne movie and take their kids on an afternoon trip.
I look for John Wayne to climb down off the train with a big wide brimmed stetson, a red bandana around his neck, six guns wrapped around his waist and a badge on his chest.
All that get off the train this afternoon are kids with cell phones, overweight adults with walkers and oxygen, and railroad employees getting ready to go home.
Re-living the past is not for the faint of heart.
Real railroads, these days, carry shipping containers filled with stuff made in China.
Old photos, especially black and white, have a nostalgic quality.
They often have no names or dates on the back, have edges that are dogeared or brown, wrinkles, mustaches drawn in with ball point pens by pranksters. They are sometimes in albums but often are tossed into shoe boxes like shells found on the beach. Sometimes pictures are artistic. Oftentimes they bring back memories, brain chemistry recreating images you can see if you close your eyes and focus, seeing people places and events that have been long gone.
These photos bring back heady dates of the 1950’s when Baby Boomers went to grammar school, Elvis brought his hips out in public, Eisenhower played golf, and Kerouac penned long winded novels, his words rolling across the page like a hot tenor sax solo by Dexter Gordon.
In Albuquerque, Blake’s Lotaburger was a place to go after we kids worked on one of our Dad’s rentals, mowing lawns, raking trash, washing windows, painting, fixing screen doors and broken windows. We would finish, load tools into a roomy Plymouth station wagon, and go to Blakes for a Lotaburger, fries, and a Coke.
With these 50’s folks there was no self indulgence, no sense of entitlement. They were working and glad to be flipping burgers for three dollars an hour and most families were supported by one income.
Blake’s in still around.
We’ve been through oodles of wars since this hamburger stand was built and we are still not at peace.
These days the proverbial tail wags the dog.
Back in yesteryear, a school assignment, in English, was to compare and contrast apples and oranges.
The assignment was dropped on us to develop critical thinking, stimulate observation, and bring order to our primitive minds. The assignment proved that apples are not oranges and oranges are not apples but they do have things in common, and liking to eat either is not a bad thing.
This snail and tortoise have things in common.
Both, on this day, are sticking heads out, coming out of their shells, testing waters, seeing if the coast is clear, checking weather, on the prowl for morsels.
The snail is on Alex’s front porch and moves slimy, leaving residue on the tile as he moves. He peers over the edge of the porch,seemingly oblivious as I bend down to take his photo.
The tortoise is on the backyard path I follow to feed Charlie and Sharon’s adopted deer, who come to their back yard in the Albuquerque foothills for snacks, water, and rest .Their tortoise sticks his head out for a moment, but he pulls it quickly into his shell as I step over him on my way to fill the deer’s tub with cracked corn and chicken scratch.
Sticking one’s head out is dangerous.
When you are comfortable and safe in your shell, why would any living being ever want to stick their head out?
The washer and dryer at Ms. Sue’s starts early in the morning and ends late at night.
With forty two kids, clothes get dirty and, even with throw away diapers, there is hardly time to wash, dry,fold, and hang. Some of the clothes are hand washed in buckets in the front yard and the girls are most often saddled with this task, though Peter was scrubbing his white sneakers yesterday morning in a sink in the laundry room..
Ms. Sue wants the outside laundry location changed, because, near the house, the soil gets wet and makes mud that gets tracked into the house by almost a hundred little feet..
The new outside laundry area is in the shade, pebbles bordered by a square perimeter of heavy rocks borrowed from a collapsed retaining wall next to the guest house where I bivouac during my volunteer visit.
The girls are washing in the new place today, but, mostly, they laugh, talk, learn.
Clean clothes are a treasure, especially when you have no treasure chest to put them in.
Making do doesn’t mean you can’t have fun doing,and kids, even in rough times, always find ways to have fun.
One of the kid’s lifts the slow running hose and sprays the others till the hose is wrestled away and staff gets them all quiet again.
Having to do your laundry is a lifetime chore and having a little fun, when you do it, makes you like it more than you should.
In a hallway to the tv room, on a wall in front of the boy’s dorm, is a tree with kid’s photos hanging like fruit.
These photo’s were taken some years back and the children have long since outgrown their photos, each day becoming something new, their emotions taking them on minute by minute roller coasters.
For businessman, kids are future buying customers or part of their future labor force.
For schools, kids are society’s future mom’s and dad’s and bring money from the state.
For politicians, kids are future voters who will have to pay for current policy mistakes.
For Jesus, children are to be nurtured.
At Ms. Sue’s, children give this home its life. They run down halls, swing on swings on the playground, sharpen pencils at school, recite devotionals, watch Disney movies before bedtime, do their chores with only a little complaining.
It takes a long time for human fruit to ripen.
Yesterday’s photo’s don’t do justice to today’s faces.
It is, I’m observing, time for some new portraits.
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