New West Living

Welcome Home and Howdy Do

By Alan Kleinfeld, 10-28-05

It was the early 1990s. Murphy Brown ruled the tube, Hootie and his blowfish rocked the radio and Pierce Brosnan, FINALLY appeared as super cool Bond, James Bond. It was also my “country western song phase.� I totaled my car, I lost my job, my credit cards were maxed out and my life-long friends where heading to greener pastures far away from New Mexico. Land of Enchantment? Hardly. So I followed suit and got out of dodge. I made it all the way to Boston, followed by even a longer stint in Washington, DC.

And now, a gazillion years later, I’m back in New Mexico. It was a mix of work, family and affordable housing costs that brought me back. Will it be more enchanting the second time around? Lordy, I hope so. But I’m off to a slightly rocky start. I’ve been back now about four months. For the first three, each morning I smacked my forehead and asked myself, “Why the hell did I move back?�

How can a place grow so much and change so little? We have people from all over the country (and some from other countries) moving here, yet we still have neither a decent jazz or NPR radio station. Where the rest of the country has primetime TV at 8 p.m. and “news at eleven,� we have tired Dick Knipfing and graying Tom Joles an hour earlier. Heck, even Steve Stucker is still doing the weather. Does he ever get less annoying? The Journal and The Tribune haven’t changed a bit. Both wonderfully stewed in mediocrity (and still so stingy as not to allow open access to the Journal Web site).

Driving conditions certainly haven’t improved with time. Traffic may have worsened with growth, but still no one out there knows the purpose of a rearview mirror or a turn signal. Have you ever looked to the person in the next lane at a red light? They’re in a vegetative state, as if catatonic, never knowing — or caring — what’s going on around them. That may explain why on the same road in the same direction you have one person driving 10 miles per hour below the speed limit and another 10 miles per hour over. You can waste your lunch hour trying to make a left turn around here.

Most of my social life, aside from my family, revolves around people not from here. Two new friends coincidentally both hail from Manhattan. Not just New York City, but its heart (and a former weekend getaway via short train ride from DC). We commiserate by recalling stories of trying to find Hummus in Albertsons (and laughing even harder when trying to find an employee that knows what Hummus is). We enjoy complaining about the lack of good and varied restaurants, the poor to non-existent public transportation and the fact that even with more than 700,000 people in the area, Albuquerque has experienced only the smallest growth in sophistication over the last 15 years. Where it could be a world-class destination for travel, tourism and home life, it remains a Wal-mart town, a place where art, culture and education take a back seat to Olive Garden Restaurants and Family Dollar stores.

When I left New Mexico, we were a Blue State. Now we’re a Red State. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se. But I suspect it became a Red State at the hypocritical and illogical hands of religious groups. As far as I’m concerned, religious fanaticism should be classified as a mental disorder and we should revert back to a Blue State by default.

But now on my fourth month back in The Q, I’m beginning to settle in. I’m thrilled with the weather. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of sunny days and the arid climate. The scents of the Rio Grande and the smoldering fireplaces in the evening take me back to childhood and put a grin on my face. I never acclimated to the humidity of our nation’s capital, which was built on a swamp. There were times, especially in the summer, where I was so wet and sweaty I swore mushrooms would grow from my bellybutton.

Though I still miss the “big city rush� now and again, the slower pace of New Mexico grows on me. Running into old friends who have moved back (or never left) feels homier, too. We’ve become native-friendly, planting indigenous plants in our yard and collecting rainwater from our roof. Owning a home with a backyard ranks steps above apartment living. We spend time with our neighbors, eat green chile cheeseburgers at Blake’s and take day trips to Santa Fe (where, incidentally, some former Washingtonian friends now reside).

I think the nights are my favorite part of being back. At the end of the day, I’ll sit in the backyard (MY backyard) with a cigar or a cup of hot cocoa and enjoy the cool, fresh air, gazing upon stars I rarely saw in Washington, DC. That’s when I realize there’s more to life than a subway system and East Coast style. That’s when things become clear and I grasp that I am home.

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