dream ranch

In the back of my mind I suspect I might be called out one day to attend the burning of Zozobra with someone’s grandkids — a duty I could not decline — but for this year I am glad to have missed it once again.

This was my Zozobra view from Placitas last night, or at least what I was looking at as Santa Feans prepared to burn Old Man Gloom for the 102 time. Forty-six thousand people in Fort Marcy park is too crowded for me. I haven’t been since the early 1980s and I have a scar in the palm of my right hand from having to climb a chain link fence to get in.

The rest of my history with Zozobra is blurred with the smoke of time.

With photographer Tony O’Brien, I remember covering a bottle-throwing melee involving out-of-town bikers and local kids at La Fonda as a reporter for the Santa Fe New Mexican in the mid-1970s.

During the Zozobra aftermath in the early 1960s, when Zozobra goers flooded on to the Plaza for food booths, dancing and bar-hopping, my mother was hit on the head by a flying Coke bottle in front of Zook’s pharmacy.

The best experience I can remember, other than enjoying the food booths, was coming into town from the far end of Tano Road in a open-topped Jeep and riding the La Fonda elevator up and down while adults hung out at the Plaza Bar. We hoped not to be caught by front desk superintendent Mr. Wilson, husband of my sixth grade teacher at Acequia Madre Elementary, Mrs. Elizabeth Wilson.

I guess one of the best newspaper assignments I ever had was sampling food booth cuisine for the Santa Fe New Mexican in the mid-1970s. And I feel a kind of allegiance since the Kiwanis Club, longtime sponsor of the Zozobra production, also sponsored my Coronado Kiwanis Little League baseball team for two years in the early 1960s. Thanks, by the way, to Mr. Padilla, our patient coach.

So, my feelings are mixed but I remain a Zozobra believer, at least in the wild Santa Fe artist concept of having a party and burning away gloom. I think it should be part of every Santa Fe kid’s experience if they are up to the challenge and wouldn’t be too scared.

I would go again if called to duty but in the meantime am glad to watch it from afar. Thanks to this year’s New Mexican reporter and thanks to ever-faithful Zozobra fans Steve Terrell and Inez Russell Gomez for their Facebook photos.