A day later, after traveling back to Tucumcari, where I had my first encounter with Hidalgo, we turned north on route 54 and finally arrived in Logan, New Mexico, ‘The Best Little Town by a Dam Site,’ the sign said. After driving through the tiny town and then out to the lake, we returned into town and stopped at the only place where people where congregating, ‘Whiskey the Road to Ruin Bar,’ and went in.
It was noisy at first, then suddenly quiet as we walked in. Everybody stopped talking and was looking at us. Then as we walked to an empty table, they turned their gazes away and resumed their conversations. I had felt it before many times, men always looked. Sitting down at the table we quickly realized that, despite the name, the bar was a meeting place for many of the locals who needed a place to hang out. Rowdy was not an appropriate description. Everyone was congenial and friendly and soon we found ourselves talking to a fellow by the name of Freddy Fetzner who took the initiative to introduce himself.
Everyone else, who had been staring at me went back to their conversations about the price of cattle feed, lack of rain and what they would like to do with a group of hippies that were camping down in the park. I seemed to have taken center stage only until the local boys realized I was wearing a wedding band and the two fellows sitting with me looked like people they would not want to deal with. But Fetzner made a point to be friendly anyway. He had grown up in Logan and knew everyone and probably everything about the tiny community.
After I explained what they were doing in Logan, Fetzner’s curiosity was piqued.
“Over the years I have learned to listen to other people, it is amazing what people will tell you,” said Fetzner with a sly smile.
With time invested in any small community, sooner or later a visitor becomes acquainted with many interesting characters. Often conversations occur with young characters centered around and involving sexual exploits by the men, and the foolishness of those men in conversations with or about women. In many ways Logan is just like all small communities in that everyone knows everyone, but despite that reality there is always something happening there to create an excuse for gossip and entertainment for the bored.
Fetzner directed the conversation to the excitement of stealing. The younger of us want to prove something, usually involving some form of bravado. The competitive male psyche always provides entertaining conversations regarding the assorted mean pranks.
“Take that fellow over there for example.” He pointed to a large, Hispanic fellow, who had been looking at Penny, then he would turn to a friend saying something then they would both break up in laughter. “Billy is a friend of mine. One day he just says to me;”
“You know, it is possible to make a sixteen wheeler disappear; it’s just a matter of knowing someone with a potato silo.”
“A month later two sixteen wheelers actually disappeared and the culprits were never caught. Eventually two different farmers discovered the trucks in their potato silos.”
Fetzner says, “The trucks were not stolen so they could be resold. They were stolen because they could be stolen and that provided cheap entertainment.”
“The most interesting stories around here come from those souls who don’t feel the need to brag about their personal exploits. They are the quiet ones, keeping away from people who try to belittle their ambitions. Small people always do that, but wise friends make you feel that you too can become great. They are the ones, those older ladies and gentlemen with leathery faces who know real stories. I have learned to seek out these gentle and wiser folks but sometimes you have to pry the stories from them. The memories of these people are their personal treasures. Each person is a world into oneself and often they jealously guard their memory treasures.”
Again, I prompted Fetzner with another beer to get him to talk some more. He obliged us after a gulp. “Take Eloy Casadas over there, he is a good example of someone who is older and has lived a world of experiences all stored between his ears. Eloy is a rancher who lives out on the edge of Tucumcari draw where it dumps its water into the Canadian River. He has spent the last two years raising cattle and selling them to afford a breeding bull. I don’t know if you know this, but those bulls are very expensive.”
“We live on a ranch,” Hidalgo replied.
“Oh,” says Fetzner who thought he was telling them something they didn’t know, then he continued, “It had taken him two years to save enough money to buy the bull and you can bet your booty he was proud of it. Well to make a long story short, a person has to cross the railroad tracks off of route 54, and you immediately come to a locked gate. Eloy’s ranch house is back along the canyon requiring the visitor to go through at least two more gates before they even get to his house. Once there he unloaded his new prize bull out of the cattle trailer and let it wonder into the pasture behind his house. Eloy felt that the bull was absolutely safe there because there was absolutely no access to the pasture without going through several locked gates, one of them actually attached to Eloy’s house. The back of the pasture is inaccessible because there are sheer bluffs that drop down into the floor of the canyon. Those cliffs could only be climbed by a mountain goat or someone with climbing gear. Needless to say, the bull should have been safe out in that pasture.”
Fetzner stopped long enough to allow Hidalgo to order another beer for him. Then after another big swallow he continued.
“Early the next morning Eloy walked out into the pasture to admire his new bull but was dumbfounded when he discovered the animal was dead. It looked like something had gotten to it but it must have been something very strange indeed. The animal had been drained of every drop of blood in its body; the tongue had been surgically removed along with the rectum which looked like an apple corer had been used to remove it. He could see no tracks or signs of any predator activity around the bull. What he did find was very strange though. In a circle around the animal was traces of a white powder that turned out to be magnesium dioxide, you know, the burned metal they use in flashes for cameras.”
“That does sound interesting,” says Corey. “What happened then?”
Well, there was a rash of cattle mutilations around the county, then it all stopped. Billy over there was involved in one particular tough incident though.”
Everyone turned around and looked at Billy who looked startled when he realized that everyone was looking at him for a change.
“Billy was put on night patrol overlooking a pasture on his family’s ranch. He parked his old Buick up on a ridge overlooking a pasture with about three hundred head of cows in it. Being easily bored, naturally he took a cooler of beer with him so he would still be able to enjoy himself while watching the cows.”
“All went well until about four in the morning. Slumped down in his seat, he was almost asleep when he noticed the car starting to move. First it was just a little wobble but soon the car was literally bouncing up and down. In a panic and with thoughts of alien abductions going through his mind he grabbed his gun and jumped out of the car.”
Fetzner stopped at that point for dramatic effect and to finish off another beer.
“There he stood, face to face with a bull who had been scratching its butt on the fender of the car. The indignant bull blew snot all over Billy and then stomped off.
The story brought a round of laughter from everyone and another beer for Fetzner who continued with his stories.
“Old-timers describe Logan as a completely different world than exists around here now.” Fetzner, who has lived in the best little town by a dam site for all of his life, remembered a wild and unpredictable river instead of the one that now lazily seeps through a magnificent sandstone canyon. The character of the Canadian River in New Mexico for at least the next millennium or so was completely changed by the construction of Conchas Reservoir, and later, Ute Lake. Below Ute Lake, the character of this ancient river is now permanently changed. It is now a much more difficult canoe run, due to a multitude of manmade situations and creations such as barbed wire, weirs, dams
and artificial lakes.”
After redirecting the conversation several times from family genealogies he eventually got back to the town of Logan. “Logan was named after a Texas Ranger but was really founded he alleges, after a train robbery. The story was brief. It was an unsolved train robbery. The thief robbed the train then blended into the Canadian canyons. In a short time he became an influential rancher. Slowly, over the years the money provided the initial economy that built the town. Later, that economy allowed the thief to get involved in politics.”
“In those days, there were twenty-two bars in town but only one church. Now there are twenty-two churches in town but only one bar. The town has gone to hell.”
Having heard a similar joke before, I took to dragging the conversation back to the river, but he hushed me, explaining that the history of the community and the river are intertwined. He began by asking us to reflect upon the cliffs of the canyon, next to the bridge on route 54. There, much higher than the present bridge, remain cement abutments. The pillars that once served as supports for a railroad bridge vanished years ago.
“Every spring the river becomes a raging flood, with only the old rail road bridge, between here and Tucumcari, being able to withstand the force of the flood. The Mexican’s used to gather down at the railroad bridge after the water dropped and haul out great trees that had accumulated there. They cut the trees up for firewood and for poles to make pens. Trees, cows, windmills, and everything else would occasionally be swept into the raging and unpredictable current.” He then leaned over to me and his voice became less animated and more serious;
“One year a farm house was found down there. No one knew where it came from. There was clothes and stuff still in that house, but no one ever found the people. Afterwards the townspeople searched the canyon for days but never found anyone. Eventually a fisherman discovered a skeleton of a small child way up the canyon but no one could identify who it belonged to.”
“Usually, late in the summer the river will drop to a tiny green trickle that won’t even cover your ankles. Then after a weather system comes in from the northwest, the river literally explodes into a raging red river, it is dangerous. Now day’s the river is pretty tame. But you know, above Conchas Reservoir it can still flood to an amazing degree. On wet years the flood trail from the Canadian, as it dumps into the Reservoir, can be fifteen feet above the level of the rest of the lake.”
After the sixth beer, Fetzner’s stories began to have more meanders than the river. “Years ago a bunch of Hell’s Angels Bikers attacked the town looking for women to have their way with. We had to hang them all because we don’t have a jail here in Logan. The worst one was an Indian....” At that Hidalgo stood up and started toward the door followed by Corey and me who could of course see the humor in the situation and were fighting back laughter. We drove back out to the lake, spent the night and after breakfast in town, we began the arduous drive all the way back to Serpiente.
Learning Spanish
By the time we had driven all the way back to Serpiente, we were dog tired and terribly in need of a rest, but to our astonishment we discovered that Aunt June was already making plans to journey into Mexico to both document the McKnight escape and to visit an archeological dig that she was invited to participate in. It all seemed a little much for Hidalgo and Ken who needed to catch up on ranch work and especially Hidalgo was tired of traveling anyway, but the rest of us were game for another trip. We argued for Hidalgo to go because of his command of the Spanish language, but to no avail, he was going through one of his stubborn times. In reality Hidalgo felt uncomfortable going into Mexico. He had already experienced some very negative confrontations with the drug cartels and he didn’t want that kind of confrontation. “You will be safer without me.”
We took the back roads down to Magdalena then over to Socorro before hitting the interstate that would eventually take us down the Jornada del Muerto and into El Paso, the gateway into Ciudad Juarez. Traveling in a car at 65 miles per hour it still took most of the day to get there. It made us wonder what it would have been like for Robert McKnight’s crew to have been boxed into crude wagons and slowly driven in the hot sun all the way down to Chihuahua, Mexico. Even more amazing would have been the return trip. They walked the entire route while hiding from the authorities going in the opposite direction all the way back to the Eastern United States and of course it was entirely different back then. There would be no help from anyone.
All the way down we practiced our Spanish with June offering suggestions. The problem was she herself knew only the basics. Corey could recognize more praises than I could but he couldn’t really keep up in a conversation. Hundreds of Spanish words were in my vocabulary but I only had the crudest idea how to use them in a coherent sentence. Proper Spanish grammar was beyond my abilities and conjugating verbs was a knotty problem for all of us.
To pass the time we settled on a game where we were figuring out the origin of the words and names that we were sharing.
“Cafeteria,” was the first word I tossed out. “Even I know that one. Isn’t it the same in Spanish; a place to eat.”
“There are many cognates in English which are the same words in Spanish” says June. “The places around here may be one key to learning a few words. Sandia Mountain or watermelon mountain, Manzano Mountain or ‘Apple Mountain.’ There are names all over New Mexico that have Spanish names that people use. Even surnames are common, Mr. Mantano is mountain, Mr. Luna, or moon, Calderon or caldera or kettle, Mr. Blanco or white, Mr.Cabeza de Baca or head of cow, the examples are endless but a true understanding of Spanish requires an ability to conjugate verbs; I am, you are or yo soy, tu eres.”
I mulled all this over for a moment then asked, “How in the world am I going to learn enough Spanish to get around in Mexico?”
“What you are going to learn,” answered June, “is that most people that you will need to deal with speak some English. In fact, despite the fact that English is far more difficult to master than Spanish, people in other countries usually speak more than one language.
I frowned then asked, “Shouldn’t they all speak English?”
June thought for a moment before answering her. “Yes in America, certainly everyone should speak English but remember you are going to be a guest in another country. We make two basic mistakes here in America. One, we should teach our children foreign languages early in life when they learn like sponges soaking up words effortlessly, and we think everyone should learn English because it is what most people grow up with around here. Actually we limit ourselves in business opportunities around the world because of our ignorance and arrogance.”
Hatch, New Mexico
By afternoon we had gotten to Hatch, New Mexico, where growing chili was becoming an up and coming occupation of the community as the value of the chili has been discovered by all of American. In the alluvial volcanic soil the chili grown here developed a sweet taste which is coveted by all those who enjoy Mexican food. Hatch chili has become known as Rio Grande food, a mixture of Indian and Mexican food, with many dishes that are entirely different than those served in Mexico. Every variety of chili is grown there, chili ancho, chile de agua, chili poblano, chili piquin, chili marillo, chili chipole, chili costeno, chili guajillo, and chili morita, but the most common varieties are simply known as New Mexico mild, Big Jim, Sandia, and the hottest chili; Barker.
Over plates of fine Rio Grande enchiladas made from red Big Jim peppers, and while learning the names of the basic implements used in eating such as cuchara, tenedor, and cuchillo or spoon, fork and knife, June changed the conversation and began to educate them on the community that they were traveling into. Paraphrasing her words;
“First of all, archeological work there is considered unimportant by the Mexican government. Since the local ruins at Paquime are relatively new compared to the spectacular pyramids and city complexes found further south there is little to draw the tourist dollars to this site. However, from the point of vi
ew of the archeology community, Paquime is a huge archeological site that resembles a maze rather than a Mayan complex and is very important for understanding what happened to the Anasazi who originally left Chaco Canyon.
All archeologists know that the present boundaries that separate the United States and Mexico where nonexistent in the distant past. The early people who lived there were the same people who made up the indigenous peoples who had originated in Chaco Canyon as well as all over the American Southwest. For several thousand years, people who had lived in Chihuahua had trading relations with Native Americans in New Mexico. Yet they were always at war with invading groups of natives such as the Apaches which is why they built their city with many blind alleys and entrances, a maze to confuse and confound invaders.
The Tatahumara Indians were the largest and most defiant group who lived in the area. They were particularly defiant against the invading Spanish, French, and later outside Indian laborers who invaded the area in search of work in the Chihuahua silver mines. As Chihuahua became a center of the silver trade, the tremendous pressures on the indigenous inhabitants inflamed and provoked a flurry of revolts. By the middle 1600s many of the native tribes joined together in an effort to rid themselves of foreign rule but again the indigenous natives were conquered.
When the Great Northern Revolt took place in New Mexico, it did not just affect the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, as many believe. It spread throughout Chihuahua and Durango. From Casas Grandes to El Paso; Conchos, Sumas, Chinarras, Mansos, Janos, and the Apache Indians all took up arms. The Tarahumaras also revolted once again in 1690 and were not defeated until 1698.
During the Eighteenth Century the Apache Indians became a constant and unrelenting enemy of the Spanish administration as well as to the Indian settlements. The Apaches adapted to a different kind of warfare with the Spanish, being highly skilled horsemen they effectively eluded the Spanish military forces. The Apaches continued to defy both Mexico and the United States for many years until 1886. Then Geronimo, the famous Chiricahua Apache leader was surrounded in the Sierra Madres by American forces that had crossed the border for the purpose of capturing him. He surrendered because he found himself fighting more conscripted Indians than solders. Without the help of native Indians the United States soldiers didn’t have a chance of capturing him.
The Family at Serpiente Page 55