"You can never go home again."
I think my father said that. Or maybe what he said was, "You can never come home again." Whatever.
I am where I grew up. Since some time in August, I've been yo-yoing between Arizona and the Land of Enchantment. If a rootless person can be said to have a hometown, Albuquerque, New Mexico is mine.
Albuquerque is best known as the town where Bugs Bunny took a wrong left turn. Until Santa Fe chic became the rage among people whose only previous encounter with the desert was in dreams they suffered after drinking too much tequila, New Mexico was mostly known only for its footnotes in the annals of warfare.
Not too many miles north of Albuquerque, the best and brightest minds not hiding in Argentina from the Nuremberg investigators developed the atomic bomb. They trucked it south, to a remote part of the state - don't ask how they were able to tell it was more remote than the rest of the state - and created the world's first nuclear sunrise. One of them is remembered as saying, while watching the growing mushroom cloud, "My God what have we done?" Another, completely forgotten to history, said, "Hey, what did we ever decide about that fallout stuff? Is it dangerous or what?"
The people of Alamogordo, the closest down-wind town to ground zero, unwittingly became guinea pigs that morning. Having lived and worked in Alamogordo for the longest year of my life, I can say with some authority it represented a significant elevation in status for most of them. I can also say with authority, fallout has long-term side effects you don't want to witness first hand. Then again, I lived there during the disco years, so who's to say what was the result of radiation poisoning and what was culturally-induced polyester poisoning? Not me.
Albuquerque has the distinction of being the city more people will make you spell when taking down your address than any other. The town was named after a Spanish duke sent over to the New World to subjugate Indians whose most violent act up until that time had been the fashion faux pas of wearing white before Easter, a holiday celebrating a god they'd never heard of. As such, Albuquerque is a proper noun, a name with no other meaning. No hormonal boys ever shout out, "Hey, show me your albuquerques."
If you've ever been to Albuquerque, you can understand Bugs's confusion. It sits at the crossroads of Interstates 25 and 40, cultural conduits of America's melting pot. As a result, whatever distinct culture existed in Pueblo Indian and Spanish colonial times has been pretty much sucked into the vortex of fast food, strip plazas and cultural genocide that defines life in America today. Several examples of early culture remain, but recent events show even they are endangered.
The whole red-green show that happens whenever you order food is one. Being a major interface for the Spanish, Mexican, Indian and Anglo cultures, the local cuisine developed as a unique blending of influences. For simplicity, it was called Mexican Food, bearing no resemblance to macaroni and cheese. Now, with strange, foreign foods like arugula and papaya finding their way into dishes no one ever imagined they belonged in, people make the distinction between Mexican food and New Mexican food, although why they didn't make the logical, pretentious leap to calling it Nouvelle Mexican food, I'll never understand.
Anyway, when you order food in Albuquerque, the waitress, after patiently taking your order and not giggling at your gauche mispronunciation of simple words like tostadas compuestas or sopapillas, says to you, "Red or green?" If you answer "Red or green what?" the whole kitchen staff goes into paroxysms of glee.
Red or green chile, of course. All food served in New Mexico comes smothered with either red or green chili. It's what gives New Mexican food its distinct, rich, intoxicating and addicting flavour. It also explains the strange way New Mexicans speak and why real estate agents always show the bathrooms in houses first. Here's a bit of free advice. Never, under any circumstances, ask the waitress which chili is hotter if you don't want the hottest one. It's not that she will exactly lie to you, just that it's an irrelevant question: they're both hot. And they can both be made hotter. So if you ask, you're fair game; you've made the cook's day. Just go with one or the other like you know what you're doing. But never, never order red on pancakes; it's just not done.
A different cultural landmark was only recently outlawed, a victim of man's desire to appear to be doing something about a problem without actually solving it. Drive-up liquor windows across the state were permanently closed by executive fiat issued from the Governor's office. Closed at least until the liquor lobby's lawyers can spray enough money around the legislature to get them reopened.
Drive-up liquor windows were exactly what they sound like. You drove up, placed your order, got your six pack, and went on your merry way. Sure, there were excesses, variations on the theme of the basic idea. There were drive-up windows where you could order a cup of ice, a can of Coke and a mickey of rum, for instance. Not that you were going to drink it as soon as you drove away or anything like that.
But they were a logical extension of the mobile culture in America after WWII that spawned such conveniences as drive-in churches, wedding chapels, dry cleaners, banks, life insurance agencies and, of course, auto mechanics. In a land where Edward Abbey used the metaphor of roadkill rabbits and beer consumption to describe driving distances, drive-up liquor windows seemed a natural. After all, it's hot and dry here. Hydration is everything.
There was, near where I used to live, a very convenient drive-up window. On any night after work, but especially on payday Friday, the lineup was long. A party atmosphere prevailed. A cacophony of various radio stations wafted from the line of pickup trucks, punctuated only by the "pssst" of poptops coming from the head of the line. Near the window, there was always a small Chicano kid, maybe eight years old, selling tamales from a galvanized tin pail. His mother made exquisite tamales and he sold them at the drive-up window for 25 cents each. He did not ask if you wanted red or green; his was not a full service restaurant.
Friday night, half a dozen homemade tamales, a cold six pack. You want culture? There's culture. Alas, both are now gone.
