Letter from Slim Wolfe
Road Trip – April 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
Cheez Louise, Ed,
If anybody ever doubted your proletarian credentials you have at least proved yourself to be a glutton for punishment by giving in to those two quagmires, the caucuses and the motherboards. We’ll take your word that there’s a meaningful relationship to democracy and progress, and hope those mothers don’t nail you for child support. Wouldn’t you rather have a staff of unreliable humans to raid your fridge, do substances in your backyard, trample your flowers, and whine about paychecks?
Here on Desolation Row I kicked the radio habit for the first time since the 2000 campaign. As one friend puts it, listening to the news is about as rewarding as picking on a scab, and that supposedly non-commercial classical station kept primping itself and whining for money. I got the seven-year itch and hit the road for a few days, a rest for my slowly healing arm which thinks a Volvo stickshift is more friendly than a pile of firewood. But the snow caught up with my escape, making the roads around Silver City sloppy-to-perilous; the hot pools had been flooded out along the Gila River; the muffins and buns were a bit stale in the java joints (there oughtta be a law) and the dubious comforts of home in the San Luis Valley started to seem downright appealing.
Despite the shameful consumption of petrol, there’s something cathartic about sitting behind the wheel and taking a big gulp of Rocky Mountain scenery. The return took me through Magdalena and the Plain of San Augustin, which had been my first big gulp when I was a greenhorn in my very first pickup thirty years ago. That old step-side Chevy Apache was underpowered even by my old standards and had to creep up those interminable grades of desolate ranchland in second gear. I’m much happier about doing 55 or 60 or whatever it takes to give the well-build-Swede enough momentum to save fuel in overdrive.
Faithful Colorado Central readers may remember an essay I wrote here about ten years ago on the desolate stretches of Highway 50 and other roads in northwest Nevada with zero concessions for travellers. The same is true for the highway leaving I-25 west out of Socorro.
And what wag named those plains after Saint Augustine? My map calls it a “depression” but it looked like a high mountain valley, almost a dead ringer for South Park in the days before progress set in. A bit lower, perhaps, with a few more Spanish names in the mix. Hardly a motel, a campground, a filling station, or a trinket-shop for hours on end, nada, just old-style ranches and one outfit with a help wanted sign, peddling irrigation pipe. Not so much as a center-pivot, either, or a visible field of alfalfa. The only improvements since the government punched wells for the stock- drives (back after the Civil War) seemed to be a few new pickups and a rare coat of new stucco. Now that, my friends, is the rural West. If you don’t mind a giant array of radioscopes all aimed at Venezuela.
Silver City, on the other hand, is the old artsy West where an artsy Salidan might feel right at home. A clash of bright colors marks the arts district in the old downtown, and an elegant but short (three-block) stone-and-iron riverwalk runs along the creek or ditch. The old neighborhoods are hilly and not too presumptuous, and, like Salida, there’s a separate commercial district out on the highway. Judging from the monthly local news rag, the writers are a cut or two below Colorado Central standards, but not bad, and there’s an abundance of healers and therapists with advertising budgets.
If your taste runs to ticky-tacky subdivisions, you might want to forgo Silver City and check out Belen and the area just south of Albuquerque, instead. But don’t expect to find your dream cottage in slate or blue or any of those cool Colorado front-range colors. Just beige or salmon, please, and that goes for your major employers as well, the state pen and the casinos. There’s a new casino for every band of Indians and they rise up like latter-day cliff-dwellings, dwarfing everything in sight except perhaps the interstate highways. Whatta world.
Slim Wolfe
Villa Grove
