Tales of the Southwest: J'arrivee a Albuquerque...Chapter 1: Destination New Mexico

  Portrait of the author not long after his arrival in New Mexico

  Long ago and far away I trainwrecked my life.

  Is 28 years a long time?

  Is the East Coast far away from The Great American Southwest?

  I’m telling you I trainwrecked my life because that’s how I ended up in Albuquerque 28 years ago this weekend…at the height of the 18^th Annual Balloon Fiesta.

  You know what a train wreck is…rail car after rail car piled on top of each other in a twisted mass of metal…a mess that takes a long time to clean up.

  As I sat in Florida in 1989 I sat in the figurative wreckage  like ol’ Job in The Good Book.

  I decided it was time to find a new place to start life all over again.

  I believed that if I could just have a new beginning that I could take what I learned from the trainwreck and come back stronger, shinier, newer.

  I researched, looked for great places to live.  There was this thing called “Places Rated Almanac,” a book that took things like cost of living, crime statistics and stuff to come up with rankings of great cities to live in America.  I thumbed through its pages looking for the perfect place to restart my life.

  I considered Ithaca, New York…what seemed to be an open minded town but too cold in the winter.  I pondered Oxford, Mississippi…an academic utopia, it seemed, but I imagined the sweltering summers.

  I thought about Los Angeles, but I had read too many Charles Bukowski books about the seedy side of L.A.  And there was the potential for earthquakes.  Denver crossed my mind but I thought if I lived in the Mile High City I might as well live in Aspen or Telluride but the cost of living in those places was stupid.

  As I perused the pages of the “Places Rated Almanac” some real candidates for new home towns emerged:  San Francisco, New Orleans and Albuquerque.

  All three had good job market stats there in 1989 America.  All three had significant crime problems but I reasoned if you kept your eyes open and watched who you hung out with you’d probably be okay. 

  San Francisco had a lively art and literary scene...it was the epicenter of the hippie movement once upon a time.  New Orleans seemed like a party town, and it was home to some of my favorite music.  And Albuquerque?  Albuquerque was in The West, the southern Rockies…and I’d always wanted to see the Rocky Mountains.  Albuquerque was south of Santa Fe and Taos, places I’d also wanted to see.  I also had a thing for Mexican food and Linda Ronstadt.

  But just like L.A., the chance of an earthquake also loomed over San Francisco.  And I had already spent a big chunk of time living on the Gulf Coast with it’s heat, humidity and flat land…I figured New Orleans wouldn’t be much different.

  So Albuquerque became my destination.

  I sent away for chamber of commerce stuff from The Duke City.  Imagine my hippie soul excitement to read the line:  “Albuquerque, where three ethnic groups live and work together in harmony.”

  If THAT wasn’t Utopia I didn’t know what was.  Of course it would be years before I would understand there is a difference between reality and sunny, peppy, feel-good chamber of commerce BS.

  The day came I bade farewell to the Florida Gulf Coast and headed west in my 1975 station wagon, all my worldly possessions crammed inside.

  I headed west for Albuquerque and a new life.

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