"Buffalo Ball" - An Okay Game

I thought I would talk about something almost timeless; something that embodies our culture, even right here in the high desert valleys, basins and mesas of Northern New Mexico;  something that so many of us can relate to, no matter where we are from.  I thought  about sports; thinking about how in 1971 China had basketball hoops in every village and factory and school; playing the game as an integral part of their lives.  They thought if we were American, then we would be very good at the game, so, during National Day in Peking they pitted us against the Peking University Team in front of a large audience (this was after the ping-pong “diplomacy” team and before Nixon).  Of course it was a joke (on us) and they ended up handing us the ball (like the globetrotters) so we could shoot!  We got better over time and played in front of huge audiences anxious to get a peek at us and the kids loved to run up and blurt out “OK”!  I thought about Herman Agoya from Okay Owinga, who came to a barbeque here and played hoops in our dirt driveway with the children, while the Chinese guests  they came to be with would not try horseshoes out cause they said “it is a children’s game”.  Hmm.  I recalled playing volleyball in our arroyo in Pacheco Canyon.    I thought about baseball, though, which everyone has a story about; a wound from sliding on the dirt, and special time hitting a home run or a tragedy like being “benched”.  I had all of these experiences and had begun to think that I just didn’t have the eye to hit or the ability.  It became a negative obsession until Roger asked if I wanted to play city league softball some  36 years ago.  I said, “well, I am worried that I can’t  hit and don’t want to embarrass myself or anyone else”.  I felt sheepish, like the guy tapping his foot and wanting to dance, but just feels he isn’t dance material.  I tried out and, wow, I did OK;  playing for many years  and there is, somewhere, a huge 3^rd place trophy at the then Santa Fe Reporter, the then Green Onion and even Vergara Printing.  I remember how we used to play in the meadow by the windmill, too, with neighbors and friends at kids parties, running around hoping to not trip over a chamisa or turn an ankle in a gopher hole; also the places we played and practiced, like Canyon Road Park (that’s what we called it; like we called Valle Grande “Valle Grande” and never dreamt  outsiders would hang a hat like the pretentious “Valles Caldera” on Valle Grande) and the field at the then College of Santa Fe, which had “Agujeras Grande” prairie dog holes and mounds tempting death  in the outfield.  I pass by the newly leveled ball field at the ECI, that Brian must have circled around on with their tractor a thousand times and think, “better than CSF”.  My favorite activity, though, was to gather buffalo gourds by the railroad tracks, put them in plastic buckets, grab some of the old softball bats and my huge first baseman’s glove (which I used in the outfield) and climb the gravel track’s “mound”  to pitch them to whichever children or passers- by  wanted to give it a shot.  It was as much fun as ‘taking the ducks to the river’ (an expression I made up based on that chest opening activity) !  These images, to me, are timeless.

  So when Bernard and Dave and Tom and I took a short hike up to the burned-out line-camp shack this cool spring day and scanned our eyeballs  over the Galisteo Basin to Lamy (home of the International Kite Flying Contest  ’81-‘87),  then clambered down to the other side where  we entered the zone which, like baseball and basketball and dancing and ‘taking the ducks……’; the arena where, for some reason, the camera is clicking right and left, the sky is blue blue, the senses are heightened, the imagination is stimulated and you feel like you are at a world class art museum or landscape (and you are!) as you perch on perfectly flat natural sandstone benches under timeless stone overhangs with soot stains in all the right places, the ancient junipers nearby have been hacked by axes a century or more ago to make a wooden club/bat and/or some charcoal (you know; for smelting silver in Socorro and such).  Here, someone had a contest, I think, hundreds of years ago;  to see which one could paint nicely  on this sacred stone and impress themselves (or someone else; perhaps a lover); the best “swing” they could take at rendering a lizard, a toad, and some buffalo gourd “b-balls” or their own “mitts”.  Batter Up…..Swing Batter! Okay?

How to Re-Create or Wonderful New ‘USes’

Years ago there was another drought coupled with swarms of grasshoppers chewing my veggies , sparking an interest in raising turkeys which, I found out, are grasshopper eating machines and you just had to be careful with the turkeys around your children because they tended to go for the little dot eyes, being capable but not all that smart; (not the child; the fowl, of course).  I even bought a bb gun to use them for target practice (not the child, of course) and even tried to teach my teenagers how to shoot, until I had to put a halt to that because of the car windows they were shooting out by mistake when they missed the grasshopper.  I ventured up to the other end of our valley to visit Suchi.  I am not sure where she is now and haven’t seen her truck, riddled with progressive bumper stickers and loaded down with manure, for a while.  Her garden was stunning; the corn plants were taller than me; the soil was the proverbial “sponge” we yack about at watershed restoration meetings; when you walked on it.  I said, “How do you do it” and she said, and I quote, “Soil is Everything!”  I continue to think about that statement and what it means and I take it to perhaps even loftier levels than she might have.  I am still working on the soil in my little way, having raised donkeys for many years and I have used their ‘road apples’ for mulch, fertilizer and for blackening steel, which I discovered when I remembered that Maria the potter discovered the black glaze she is so famous for because when they were firing, raku style, there was manure in the straw and the rest is history. I also compost and save or recycle almost everything.  There is that word again; a dirty word in family squabbles; I have learned not to talk in generalities like, “you always……. everything”; that is a recipe for disaster!  But, with things, which many people eschew, preferring a minimalist, non-material, Zen sort of existence where objects are tossed or given away with fervor; and I am often the recipient, therefore have a fairly large ranch style ‘boneyard’ for objects of interest to me (everything) and I often sing the little song as I cart away ‘unwanted items’, “I’m just a guy who can’t say “No”; I’m in a terrible fix….”.  So I have stuff to make stuff with and that is what I do.  I love old weathered wood because I do not have to put a finish on; maybe some wax; saving  time and my health.  I save trips to town because I have the “raw materials” on hand to create with.  It is a lifestyle and sort of a choice.  An old pet travelling container on end makes a great compost bin and mine have survived a few bear raids.  Cardboard is great for working on cars or making templates. Pallets are very useful; I even made an emergency railroad crossing.  I mix oil and sawdust to start fires in my shop.  I use steel for making stiff things and tools, like the great spud that I call “The Tool” out of a broken leaf spring; wire is always handy, iron is for melting with the Iron Tribe, dead piñons have warmed our house for years.  The list of resourcefully created objects  drones on, including an outdoor reusable dance floor that Keith helped me put together a few times, a log splitter, bridges and road drags, plant holders and sheds, fences and sculptures.  When talk arises about “reconstruct, recycle, reinvent, restore”, my eyes light up and the juices get flowing and I am off; “cooking soup with stale words and fresh meanings; it tastes soo good”, thinking outside of the “crate”. Now we are talking ‘sustainability’ , helping the “soil”, the milieu, as it were;  get better and better, until we are rich and fecund and useful, like the busy beavers of old or my two year old grandson, Abe, who made a Play-Doh blender; with fruit, ready to whirl,  the other day.   And these concepts all apply to our personal desires to rebuild our contentment, reinvent our attitudes and priorities; take the raw materials of our past, pay attention to the values, find our voices, remember our experiences and create wonderful new “USes”!  Good pun, if I do say so myself!

 

Keith: Rebuilding (first draft)

Keith

“cooking soup with stale words and fresh meanings; it tastes so good.”

I also lost a very good friend over the weekend, Keith of “Dia and Keith” who we often went to dances all over the state with (you can check out my facebook page about it). Very tragic; sudden death and will leave a huge hole in our lives, and, of course, Dia’s.  I had two bizarre and related things happen over the weekend; I got to the show down at Highlands and was walking in the street and saw the guy who set the show up and he said that someone had knocked over my “fragile culture waltz” piece (that was in the EXEX show) and knocked the dancers off and they broke! and he didn’t know quite what to do so I said I would take care of it (the reception was, literally, a few minutes from then and get it back on the piece.  The odd thing is that it broke right above where the hands are joined for the two dancers (two arms) and a leg broke off of the man.  After Keith died I could not avoid the fact that their dancing life together was gone and shattered, that their lives had in fact proved to be fragile and that Keith had also had a damaged leg a week ago!  Then, to top that off; I am not sure exactly when he died up at the ski basin (on the mountain overlooking both Santa Fe and Las Vegas), but at about that time I was setting up all of my musical equipment and had just put my book of lyrics onto a music stand and had bungied it down pretty well, when, all of a sudden, a microblast of air hit the stand and completely yanked out dozens of pages of my book and cast them to the street and against the screen wall nearby.  I got them all back, but that wind was no ordinary wind, like the butterfly who flapped his wings, sort of thing.......amazing life we lead, even if these are just coincidences, they send shivers up my spine as I contemplate the tightness of our lives, thoughts and images and experiences.

North, south, east , west

Rebuilding

‘Yea, we used to have family picnics over here, cause we lived up north past Silver City, raising livestock and scratching out a living, getting beat up because we were white, but that was ok; its just the way it was;  we would get on  the boulder, run up to the brink, plant our feet, throw open our arms for that last balance, and make a little screech, , Erhh!,grinning,  like we put on the brakes just in time.’ So Keith and I did it a half century later, like those giddy boys he described, grinning from ear to ear, scampering around in childish ecstacy.  No more little cowboy shirts , boots and hat; traded in for a cool panama, some shorts and a pair of sandals; boots are for dancing only; for this re-invented cowboy who knew that the rancher wore the simple hat; had nothing to prove.  But boyish  fun is universal and will not be stopped.  So my brother Keith was up on the slopes of the Sangre de Cristos, reinventing himself again as a retired man skiing and became a part of the mountain.  Now, at the time I was in Las Vegas pouring cast iron and playing music for us, then going over and pouring metal; the windy spirit of profound change came and his spirit roared off the mountain and became a microburst that blew my book of lyrics and the bungee that held it down and cast the pages everywhere;  re-shuffled the deck and I realized the lyrics were gone that Saturday; the music died as fate turned the page on us; no cheat sheet; gotta persevere beyond that microburst.  And the cast iron sculpture entitled Fragile Culture Waltz in the art gallery nearby was crashed to the floor earlier; breaking the clasped hands of the dancing couple above their wrists;  we rushed to a hardware store and got some epoxy and I managed to glue them together before the big reception.  And his broken  leg was repaired too.  We all know that a glue job cannot really replace the solid cast iron that is created by shattering old radiators and such, melting them down (with some old man singing faked lyrics to old Leadbelly  bues) and casting them into a mold.  Yes,  the glue cracks show, but it seemed to be the right thing to do; re-make somehow; fake it till we re-make it.   I learned about Keith’s death at 11 that night and I was unable to have a reaction; my feelings were locked up tight and it was disturbing to be like that; I realized I would have to re-invent my  locked emotions  and accept the truth somehow; the fun we love just died.  I broke down sobbing the next morning as I watched a clip of him letting er rip to Rosie Ledet and the Zydeco Playboys down south last year.  I thought about how how we four, like the main characters in a compass rose, travelled all about in that Cadillac, having so much fun for so many years, arriving, Keith parking, then polishing the floors, thinking; is it really ok to have this much fun; it’s not a sin?  Being with Dia and Keith was so much fun!  I remember Keith coming twice to take my odd painted  assortment of plywoods and particle boards and help piece them together onto shimmed up rough sawn one-by-six cull  wood, destined for a Pecos woodpile; $1 a board, screwing them down in the hot sun, Keith smiling and movin boards like he was at his best friend’s  birthday party and there to have a good time.   He was reliving his past as a lumberjack  and  also knew there was a dance at the end of this or-deal and that a floor with bounce and some smoothness  was a good thing.  I hope we find ways to pick up the shattered pieces, re-melt them, perhaps use spit and bubble gum for a while, sweat in the hot sun, pick up the lyrics that were cast onto the street and get back up on our horses or cadillacs and ride like the wind towards our own brinks, with our own grins beneath our own cool hats; not sinning again as we reconstruct  our new adventures, in peace. I want to trust that a sunset is the promise of a sunrise next day, somehow. 

 

As a final note,  we saw Dia and Keith last Thursday; we were just getting ready to leave ‘cause Belle was getting tired and in walked Keith and Dia and they sat down with us and we stayed and danced and talked till the Buffalo Nickel stopped playing.  We shared the same sort of time that was now common for us; just being friends and wanting to be there with each other.  Some profound talk was exchanged about how much Keith appreciated having Dia to “keep him  along a good life path”, for instance.  It was special and they invited us to go the next night, too, for Bill Hearne, but I was super busy that night and we opted out, sadly.  What I really wanted to say was that I was telling someone a few days ago that I go down to the draw, the creek bed whenever I am getting ready to do something important or I need guidance….and I am never let down by the experience.  This morning I walked all the way to above the falls, looking for signs of water in this drought.  I noticed that the watercress patch that I had planted near the creek, in a spring 20 years ago was gone; finito; no signs of green, no trickles of water.  I thought about what I should do next; go back to Chimayo and get another bunch after the drought breaks, just forget it and go on with my life, what.  I don’t have the answer.  The other thing that occurred to me because of all the rocks down there, that there are different kinds of rocks, some that you could carve a cool basin out of with the right tools and some that we call huecos; they are natural bowls that catch water and share freely with the animals and humans after the rains; they are not the kind of thing you can just  say, “I think I will go find a hueco today”, like saying  “I will go find a metate today”.  Well Keith was like a  creekbed hueco; naturally sculpted, generous and beautiful and very hard to find and you are always amazed and glad when you do see one, because you are in the presence of greatness.    As one other final note, I wanted to mention that Keith pointed out a very cool framed quote on the way to the bathroom of one of their favorite restaurants in Silver City the last time we were there.  Of course we were treated like royalty once they saw Keith and Dia but what he pointed out was the piece on the wall that said,              thanks

Waltzing with Rattlesnakes; Chickens

 

 

I really don’t like Chickens that much and have avoided raising them for all these years, partly because I got caught trying to steal eggs as a (hungry,  young) boy and got fooled by the glass egg, too.  It left a bad taste in my mouth, but I moved on with my life and eventually raised some turkeys, ducks, pheasants and, of course, a rabbit or two.  My neighbor across the tracks, whose name rhymes roughly with hen, well … he was sitting there with Leroy and Leroy asked if there were any (wild) turkeys around this area.  Just then one of my wandering turkeys, the gimpy one, almost full grown and fond of crossing over  to the ‘other side of the tracks’ (don’t ask me why);  to the neighbors and harassing their dogs, limped around the corner, in full view.  “Well, yes, and there is one right now!” said Ben with a twinkle in his eye.  Now we also had a dog and Ben had chickens and the chickens got killed by a dog and I was telling him that my dog didn’t kill chickens and he said, “then what is that pin feather hanging off the corner of your dog’s mouth?”, to which I had no defense, but still thought, silently, that my dog was not guilty, but in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I could go on, but the real point I want to get at is that chickens like to sit in trucks as the beloved pets of crane truck operators in ‘the city different’ area, because this old guy, not Roger Lamoreux of crane fame in these parts, that I hired to lift vigas for my brother in law, Andrew Lovato (whose wife kept doves  flying around the house);  had one he travelled everywhere with, sitting in the passenger seat and I got the definite impression that they were friends for life.  So consult your neighbors to find out if they want any chicken stories to tell before you go out and get one.  ….and don’t steal eggs!!

really funny "don't judge too quickly" commercials

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QOixDP-SdKw#!