Yes, there were Sadie and Molly, who were here 23 years ago, when I could count neighbors on one hand and the creeks still ran.
They loved the water here — in Orno and Las Huertas creeks — but I’m showing them here in the East Fork of the Jemez, where we might go for a treat on the hottest days.
As for chile, I recently wrote that I usually crave red when driving up Fourth Street in Albuquerque. I’m not sure what the association is, although it’s probably the remembrance of meals in restaurants along the way. I want to add, however, that my taste buds turn quickly to green if it’s roasting season and I catch the smell wafting down old Route 66.
And on the cooking gear score, where in a narcissistic state I have repeatedly published photographs of my kitchen stove top, I have to admit I am a little embarrassed about the barely concealed electric burners.
For one thing, a favorite Tweeter with a flair for cooking recently warned her followers away from bachelors with electric stoves instead of gas.
Well, in my defense, my stove came with the house, builder-installed to stay within a pre-arranged price. The house was a spec house with only the slab down — the then-unobstructed views sealing the deal — and my former newspaperman salary allowing for neither a Range Rover nor a Vulcan. I will further point out that I think I have come close to mastering the preparation of just about anything on the laggardly electric range.
Home to Cooper, who is exhausted from five days at the Canine Country Club.
Home to the land where we wring our hands over Google moving 35 jobs out of Moriarty to a bigger place. Home from Houston, a city of as many people as all of New Mexico and second only to New York in Fortune 500s.
Home to news of a state representative’s 18-year-old son arrested in connection with the fatal drive-by shooting of a high school senior — my heart aching for the families of both.
Home to news of a rescued pit bull escaping from his yard and killing a neighbor’s dog — my heart aching for the owners of both.
Home to a smoky horizon that almost — because I know it is temporary — spoiled my $10-day habit of always parking on the top floor of the airport parking garage so that I can see the mountains and sky sooner upon arrival.
Home to craving chile — either color, although I usually think red when I’m driving up Fourth Street — steaming tortillas and melted cheese. (But, yes, closer to home, I will wrench myself away from the Range in Bernalillo and try Matt DiGregory’s new place up the camino).
Home to a place where I can still drive 55 up old Route 66, along the railroad tracks and past the alfalfa fields of Sandia Pueblo, instead of joining the crowd on the interstate.
Home to good neighbors. And home to good people like former state Rep. Ed Sandoval, who really do think about others, write me nice notes and remind me that the world is not all about Trump.
Home to a place where we probably should do a better job of agreeing on what we are — We are not Houston — and go from there.
Home to turn 66, stop on the road to take pictures and write a few words.
Waiting area, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center imaging department, 9 p.m.
One hundred and four degrees. Thunderheads building. From the air, I study the geometry of center-pivot irrigation and oil and gas fields below, trying to read tea leaves, wondering about meanings, even though it’s only alfalfa, soybeans and service roads.
Short stories by T.C. Boyle sparkle and crack and require less craning of the neck, the page easier to see than the sprawl of Texas through the tight aperture of the airplane window. I read Modern Love, Greasy Lake and Sorry Fugu as we approach the fourth largest city in the U.S. If I were a millionaire, I would fly around more to take iPhone photos of road cuts and subdivision plats from the air, showcasing the dusty quilts of utility and greed. I am in awe of how much T.C. Boyle has written — and how well — in less than one more year of life than I.
George H.W. Bush and Barbara live here when they’re not in Maine, I’ve read. I stay at a hotel connected by a “skybridge” with the MD Anderson Cancer Center, but I can feel the throbbing economic pulse of this all-business city, 20,000 working at MD Anderson alone, with 28,000 admissions last year. In the Texas way, Houston for sure, everything is big. Wikipedia calls it a global city with a most diverse population, a giant port and a gamut of Fortune 500 companies second only to New York. I see the Minute Maid baseball stadium as I near downtown.
Skybridge to MD Anderson Cancer Center
I was last here in 1984, traveling with the Walter Mondale presidential campaign because New Mexico Gov. Toney Anaya was giving him a hand for the Hispanic vote. I was thoroughly in the bubble: campaign planes and buses, overnight at the Four Seasons; telephone in the bathroom and Texas-thick towels.
I am here now in a nice but more modest hotel for cancer treatment next door. I hope I fare better than Mondale in ’84. I get good news on Wednesday but see later on Twitter that kindly old Jimmy Carter is being treated for cancer east of me, in Atlanta.
Thunder booms more deeply and broadly here than in New Mexico. I think it is the aural effect of the humidity. It wakes me at 5 a.m., storm rolling in from the gulf. The picture window in my hotel room shakes. I, from one-story, flat-roofed New Mexico, am already intimidated by the thunderous water pressure 10 floors up in this near tropical city.
I drink orange juice at a table on the skybridge as hundreds of MD Anderson staff stream through in the morning to jobs in the “main building.” Many wear white coats and most look down at their phones as they walk. Thinking of the chewing gum saying, I think this probably is a good sign of medical dexterity, too.
The hotel is finely geared for cancer patients. You overhear people talking about melanoma and pills and scans as you pass in the halls. One man sighs at the dinner table and says, “Lots of developments,” when the waiter asks how his day has gone. Most of the cancer-battlers I see, however, are polite and intentionally cheery. I get good wishes wherever I go. You can tell in the restaurant that the place is full of careful eaters. The staff seems to be instructed that their customers might not be feeling well.
I see all kinds of people, all ages, many degrees of sickness, hurting and wrapped in blankets to tanned and taking two steps at a time. I probably do not see the sickest, including children, but I fear the guant-faced, silent families camped out in waiting rooms, trying to sleep on chairs, are theirs.
I imagine we share a password in our battles against chaotic cancer cells. I guess the password is hope.
Pretty easy deal to stay at the hotel I took this from and walk down that glassed-in walkway to get to your appointments across the way. Plus, I had a great doc who flies back and forth from Houston to Corrales, where he has a home and keeps llamas.
dreamranch 