New West Living

Yearning For A Better Life? Look Elsewhere

By Emily Esterson , 7-03-07

New Mexico isn’t little anymore. The state Bureau of Business and Economic Research reported that New Mexico’s population rolled past the 2 million mark on April 11, 2006, more than a year ago. Who knows how many people live here now.

Actually BBER knows. It estimates that the state’s population grows at about 2 percent per year, or about 117 people a day. That’s 117 people a day who know our little secret. Gone are the days when New Mexico had more people leaving than arriving. In-migration (as they call it) was slightly lower than out-migration, so we stayed fairly even, population wise, for many years. The relative cost of housing, the weather, the slow pace of our lifestyle, our green chile. Our secret is out.

For the past year or two, the traffic on the stretch of road that crosses the river to our house has gotten so bad we’ve started up-estimating the time it takes to get home. We’ve gone from “we can get anywhere in the city in 20 minutes” to “we can maybe be there in an hour.” We suddenly find ourselves waiting for a table at our favorite restaurants. That’s a Boston thing, not a New Mexico thing. Wait for a table? You’ve got to be kidding.

Is it our presidential candidate that’s drawing people in? Did Arkansas become a hip destination during Clinton’s campaign? I don’t think so. Is it that people who live in more crowded areas have finally figured out that it isn’t so great to spend two or three hours in a car every day, when you can live on the West Side of Albuquerque in a perfect adobe-stucco home with a mortgage of only $1,000 a month and spend only an hour a day in the car?

If you’re considering moving here, let me tell you a few things: New Mexico isn’t for everyone. There’s still a small job pool here. Friends who moved from Baltimore last year because she got a job at the university have found themselves in a conundrum: he can’t find a job, and she doesn’t like hers. They like New Mexico, but her career is fairly specialized (we’re talking something beyond Kinko’s clerk here) and she’s kinda stuck. He’s going for yet another degree, to see if that helps him land something besides bookstore jobs and part time teaching. So if you’ve got a good career, don’t come here. Your career will tank. I, too, had to look elsewhere when I left my newspaper job; I found employment out of state, but I get to stay here. Yes, there are frequent flier miles involved, and hotel nights, and a variety of crazy clients, but at least I get to stay in New Mexico most of the time. Not that I like it here. I don’t. I really don’t.

If you’ve got kids, forget it. Don’t bother. The public schools are pretty universally difficult, except for a few, and there’s a lottery to get in to those. The private schools have waiting lists. Really, we’re not kidding.

Have I mentioned the guns? Fourth of July is tomorrow, and we’re gearing up to shoot off our guns in the backyard. It’s something we do here in New Mexico, on the Fourth and also on New Year’s Eve, when we break out the AK 47s. We’re not the center of the universe, so just for a night we get to sound a bit like a bad night in Baghdad.

Our newspapers? Not the New York Times. Not the LA Times. Not even the Baltimore Sun. We try, but what’s news to us here in New Mexico just isn’t news to you-all. Have I mentioned that it’s 101 degrees here today? Yes, it’s a dry heat, but that’s still damn hot. Africa hot.

So if you’re considering joining those 117 people a day who are moving in, just fugeddaboutit. Stay in your crowded New Jersey neighborhood and send your kids to their exceptional public school in your bedroom community, and commute your two hours to work on the New Jersey Turnpike. It’s much better where you are, I promise.

Who needs to live in a place where the weather is perfect? Imagine, night after night, the weather man saying, “Sunny and clear today, and more of the same this week?” Who needs to live in a place where you still only have to get to the airport an hour before your flight (instead of two, or three). You’d miss those security lines. And who, in their right mind, would move to a place where we put green chile on everything from eggs to ice cream? That’s just a recipe for indigestion.

We’re all just dying to get out. Believe me, we are.

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