The Piece of Me in Albuquerque
The Piece of Me in Albuquerque
Another circle running through my first seven-year cycle of retirement in New Mexico concerns the casita I’ve owned in the North Valley of Albuquerque since my first winter in La Joya. Financial considerations of selling it and saving the overhead have finally tipped the balance toward letting it go, over the inertia and ongoing enjoyment of owning this special place, amid its lovely surroundings.
Escrow closed last week, so I won’t be going back, except in vivid memories of the comfort and soul sustenance it gave me over those seven years. My life has been much the richer for it, and I’ve left a piece of me there, through which I can feel it as presently as if I were there, anytime a visceral memory of it shoots through. It’s been that deeply ingrained; yet at the same time, that cycle is complete, and I’m happy to have let it go.
That first winter in La Joya, like all of them, was cold and quiet, very quiet, and I decided that a pied a terre in the city would brighten the dreary months and become a needed point of connection with interesting people and things beyond the vineyard. Santa Fe was closer, but also colder and much more expensive, so I focused my home search on Albuquerque, another hour further southward. I had had a fondness for Albuquerque since my days of calling on UNM as a book rep in the late seventies, though I didn’t know the city very well at that time. Santa Fe seemed a bit snobby and pretentious by comparison (though I was overly generalizing from a small sample).
I looked at a number of places, in the northeast heights, downtown, Old Town, and all around before I happened onto this place in the North Valley, a tiny one-bedroom, one-bath condominium in a large, spread-out, beautifully landscaped development just south of the Los Poblanos Farm on Rio Grande Boulevard. Built in the late seventies, it was constructed respectfully in the old-fashioned way, of traditional adobe with stripped pine vigas, rustic wood ceiling, and red brick floor. That resonated so strongly that I came to imagine it radiating like an aura.
Some very bad interior alterations had been made over the years that made a poor first impression – so much so that the realtor who took me to see it urged us to move along expeditiously to view more presentable properties. But I asked her to give me a few minutes to soak in the feel of the place, which, I told her, seemed to have a lot going for it.
She stepped out, while I proceeded to sit on the floor to get the feel of the walls and ceiling and space they enclosed, and also to get an idea of what might reasonably be done to bring the place up to a presentable standard of comfort, appearance, and functionality. The answer soon revealed itself - as a new kitchen and bathroom - from scratch. But the tiny unit was priced so low that even with the extensive remodeling I could swing the deal without scraping. More importantly, something in the essence of the place whispered to me, in nebulous but wholly amenable terms.
By the power of compound interest, I was buying it purely with market gains. In a rising market, I had more money after the purchase than I had before. I thought it would be a good investment, but in the end it exceeded any expectation I might have had for capital appreciation (at an average of fourteen per cent per year over the seven years).
Remodeling, with the contractor recommended by the realtor, resulted in impressive features in an open design, though some of his plumbing and electrical work was shoddy, necessitating later repairs. But after all was said and done, it turned out to be a living dream of a man cave in the city. A handyman named Gustavo, also recommended by the realtor, assisted greatly with these repairs, and, over the whole cycle, with many other chores as well, in the process becoming a good and reliable friend.
While I was sitting there on the red brick floor getting the feel of the place, just before I bought it, I didn’t have a clue as to what lay just outside the back gate of the compound. By blind, dumb luck, though, it turned out to be a priceless amenity of walking trails, on which you could ramble until you could hardly walk any further, along flowing acequias and through the bosque and pastoral neighborhoods of gardens, fields, and cottonwood trees. It was a fifteen-minute walk to the bank of the Rio Grande. That was quite a discovery once I’d arrived, and I’ve counted my blessings endlessly since then for the frequent pleasure and energy infusion of those bright walks.
It didn’t feel like you were in the city out there, though you actually were. Over time, as I opened my senses more fully to it, I imbibed an energy that put a consistent spring in my step. That distinctive wavelength of energy will be hard to come by elsewhere, but I can still tap easily into it in a vivid revery. Those trails indeed hold a piece of my spirit in Albuquerque, as does the old adobe casita. As for other amenities of the compound, the ones included in your HOA dues, I never much appreciated or used them.
From La Joya, I would go down and stay for weeks in the winter. I found people in the compound generally pleasant and neighborly and developed a couple of special friendships. With the casita as base, I took some good advanced Spanish classes (pedagogy, writing) at the Instituto Cervantes, an institution of the Spanish government, at the Hispanic Culture Center and met some interesting people who became good friends. I would meet frequently with Miriam, a brilliant young historian, and Diego, a Ph.D. student in Latin American literature at UNM, before both of them moved out of the country, Miriam to Germany and Diego to Spain. They once came up and stayed at my place in La Joya and helped pick the grape harvest. I miss them both. I also developed meaningful relations at the University of New Mexico through the New Horizons Foundation, my archaeologist friend Dave Phillips and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, and the Presidential Scholarship program and regularly saw doctors and dentists in Albuquerque as well.
Albuquerque in a larger view is a troubled city, but one with a whole lot going for it. It occupies the vast incline of valley sloping down from the rugged Sandia mountains on the east to the Rio Grande, running through the wooded ribbon of bosque, and extends still further on to the west mesa. The culture that has evolved in the valley is a distinctly mixed bag. There are large stretches of it, primarily through the South Valley, where poverty, homelessness, and violent crime are endemic, and visitation ill-advised. Many other stretches laced through the Northeast heights are hardscrabble and unattractive, with fair numbers of old cars, rusting washing machines, and pink flamingos decorating front yards.
But of course there are beautiful, attractive neighborhoods scattered about – up in the foothills, around the university, in west downtown, and in the North Valley, where my place was located. Proximity to the river and trails, along the acequias and through the bosque, made that location optimal for me, and it was easy to feel a deep physical, as well as mental connection with it. I felt strongly inter-connected with both the unit and the serene bucolic surroundings. That connection developed quickly and naturally once my dog and I began striding those dusty, cottonwood-lined trails multiple times per day, as we were wont to do over the course of those seven years.
Perusing the local alternative weekly newspaper at the Flying Star Restaurant across the street from the compound made clear that an active hip community kept progressive thoughts bubbling up like a fresh spring, touting a lively, but low-key music scene and keen interest in literature, cannabis, and local culture. They favored the moniker Burque for the city, but that never resonated with me. I much preferred the more literal Querque. When I would tell my dog Leah that we were “going Querque,” she would just hop in the car, ready and eager to get going.
In due course, I became as familiar with the city and many places in it as any run-of-the-mill citizen. Cottonwood Park (formerly Kit Carson Park) in far west downtown, just south of the Albuquerque Country Club, became a sacred nature shrine to my dog and me through daily early morning romps around it. I always had to take a moment in the center of the park to sit on the bench and soak in the majesty of those holy ancient trees, hundreds of them, and pay my due respects. They turned me into a literal tree-hugger. Leah would spin and run in circles of joy to express her own enthusiasm.
Selling the place in La Joya and moving into the historic district of Santa Fe might have seriously changed my relationship with the place, but it really didn’t, at least for several years. From that time, when I began living in the heart of the capital city, I had no further need of escape to the city, which had been my original motivation. But by that time, I was so attached to the place and felt so at home there that I couldn’t bring myself to let it go. The special energy wavelength that it gave complemented the one I feel along the river flowing past my Santa Fe home and in other special places in and around town.
In retrospect though, I see other inertial forces that must have been at work holding me to that status quo. Specifically, I had furnished and decorated the place rather expensively. Whenever the notion of letting the place go would cross my mind, as it occasionally did, I found it hard to imagine disposing of all that stuff. It would be very hard to get fair value for it, and it seemed to have found its highest and best use in that place. The ongoing fixed costs of maintaining the place, the HOA fee, utilities, and regular maintenance, were significant, but affordable, and I felt like the intangibles, the beautiful unit, great walks, and enjoyment of attractions in the city, overweighed the material costs.
It was Thoreau in a rereading of Walden who pointed out so eloquently that, while we may own our possessions, they own us at least as much. Once that stuff was in there, it was settled in its place, and getting clear of it somehow would be a formidable challenge that I didn’t feel up to facing quite yet. When I finally did bite the bullet, the tentative plan for disposing of the furniture and junk did devolve into a mixed-up exercise in logistical improvisation. But everything did get disposed of, if only for a pittance, or a Goodwill receipt, and I’m now clear – to forget the pains of selling and moving, and revel in fine memories of that erstwhile second home.
I’ll miss the old place whenever something in Albuquerque calls. In the meantime, I’ll miss those ladies at the Avanyu Plaza Starbucks, poring my tall Pike as soon as they see me walking in, and old Vivian at the check-out early morning at the Lowe’s at 12th and Lomas, and Amy with her dog Puppet at the compound dog park, along with so much else that hollers Querque to me. I imagine that all the good soul I derive from these and other familiarities is as present with me now as it ever was. And I’ll think of it as the piece of me still down there in Albuquerque, soaking up the energy and vibe -- from Santa Fe, or wherever my steps may roam.
