​If you’ve got any questions about the past eight decades of life in Abiquiú, this is the man to see.
by David Pike 

Reprinted with permission from New Mexico Magazine

​​Napoleón Garcia has a loud voice and a cowbell, and he’s not afraid to use them.
In fact, you’re more likely to hear Napoleón before you ever see him. He’s the man in the house on the corner of the plaza in Abiquiú, the house with the blue railing and the green door, the one with the sandwich board sign out front reading TOURIST INFORMATION.

From his porch, Napoleón looks out over the plaza, and if he sees tourists, he’ll call out to them or ring his cowbell to get their attention. Then he invites them onto his enclosed porch, where he talks about the history of Abiquiú, about the traditions and the feast days celebrated here, about the distinctive cultural identity of the Genízaros, about the work he did as a young man for Georgia O’Keeffe, about the time he met Charo, and anything else that comes up.

I wanted to meet Napoleón because I saw in him a truly New Mexican figure. He’s a storyteller, but more than that he’s a link, an ambassador between eras, even cultures. I’d read the book he wrote with his wife, The Genízaro & the Artist, and I’d seen photographs of him on his porch, carving a cross by hand, a bandana around his neck. Even in photos, his eyes seem to say, “Go! Ask me!”

So I called Napoleón’s wife on the phone to arrange an interview, and I told her I couldn’t wait to meet him.

But I wouldn’t have a choice.

My timing was off. Napoleón was in Albuquerque, recovering from a fall. At age 83, his recovery was progressing steadily—driven, in large part, by his desire to get back to work talking with tourists. He was getting stronger every day, but he would not be home for another month.

A delay, surely, but also an opportunity for me. What better way to understand what Napoleón does, I thought, than to go up to Abiquiú before meeting him to get the lay of the land?

The beauty of the Río Chama Valley, in north-central New Mexico, is unmistakable—any drive through it, at any time of year, is a reward for being alive. Undulating brown hills freckled with plump green piñon and juniper trees. Horses grazing in fields lined with cottonwoods. Fog along the river on crisp autumn mornings, giant white clouds filling the sky in the summer. An artist’s paradise. Anyone’s paradise.

Two-lane US 84 seems to glide along the valley, not fighting the winding turns of the river but flowing with them in harmony, like a second river itself. Just past Abiquiú, the road passes vermilion cliffs so stunning that the pullouts along the way must surely have been placed to give motorists a chance to catch their breath. From almost every angle, the endearingly lopsided Cerro Pedernal mesa is visible, her amiable presence as welcoming as a grandmother’s apron.

I hiked the trail to Chimney Rock at Ghost Ranch one morning. A solitary bird in the canyon, auditioning for the role of Madame Butterfly, provided the inspiration I needed to reach the top. I was the only one up there; the view, mine alone to admire. I felt it was my personal responsibility to appreciate every detail of the panorama before me: the giant mesas, the shimmering waters of Abiquiú Lake in the distance.
Out over that eternal landscape, history has added another layer.

Back in 1754, Governor Tomás Vélez Cachupín granted land here and designed it as an outpost for protecting settlements to the south. The grantees, and the first settlers, were Genízaros—Native Americans who had been taken captive and raised as servants in Spanish households, often baptized, and freed when they reached adulthood. Abiquiú retains that heritage today, and its resources are still managed by its own land grant board.

Historically, Abiquiú was a boundary between a world that was known and safe and one that was unknown and mysterious. Maybe it still is today. Outside the window of the house I stayed in at night, I could see lights bobbing through the trees along the river, lights I couldn’t identify.

A layer of spirituality exists here, certainly. The ruins of the historic Santa Rosa de Lima remain, about two miles east of the village. On the plaza is the Santo Tomás el Apóstol church, where the Sunday service alternates between Spanish and English. Dexter Trujillo rings the bells here, three times on Sunday mornings for Mass. He’ll ring them as well if someone in Abiquiú passes away—by tradition, one toll for each year of the person’s life. The chimes make a plaintive but gently beautiful sound as they echo over the plaza, here for a moment, then softly gone.

Across the river is the Dar al Islam mosque, and Presbyterians run the retreat center at Ghost Ranch, a few minutes up the road past the village. Farther north along the river is the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, which I made my destination one morning. Cerro Pedernal kept me company for the first part of the lonely drive, until the tumbling waters of the Río Chama took over and guided me safely to my destination. Inside the monastery gift shop, two monks were fussing over a stapler that wasn’t performing as desired, a moment I will revere forever for its sheer ordinariness. Two candles burned inside the octagonal chamber of the church itself, which was bright with the sun and quiet except for the knocks that sounded every few moments as the walls adjusted to the accumulating warmth of the day.

In Abiquiú, there is another layer, left by a woman who found her own communion with this country.

She’s still here, her memory as strong as if she had become part of the land she venerated on her canvases. Not the rough-and-tumble landscape of the westerns being shown in movie theaters, but a land of ethereal beauty, soft forms that invite abstraction, a landscape of elegant geometry. In sharing her unique view of this world, Georgia O’Keeffe proved that the landscape of Abiquiú requires individualism, and also rewards it.
​
O’Keeffe lived first at Ghost Ranch, then bought a house in Abiquiú itself in 1945. I was able to visit that house one morning. My host was Agapita “Pita” Judy Lopez, who was O’Keeffe’s employee for many years and who still speaks of her with reverence.
The house was as quiet as the monastery, and just as calming. You can feel O’Keeffe’s presence in the simplicity of the lines that compose the furniture, the walls, the beams overhead. It’s there in the negative space, indeed in the very stillness of the house itself. There are collections of small stones throughout, on windowsills and over her bed frame. When she found a stone with a shape she liked, she brought it home to keep. I was surprised to see a stereo system, which she used to play Mendelssohn and Bach, and a dishwasher in the kitchen—they seemed strangely out of place, strangely modern. And yet, on a roof beam in the small herb room off the kitchen, part of the original house on this site, Ms. O’Keeffe left intact the inscription reading LE TECHO HOY 5 NOV 1865.
​
It’s only a short distance up the road from O’Keeffe’s house to Napoleón Garcia’s.

​Some houses in Abiquiú are grand in size, and some are grand in spirit. Napoleón’s is a little of both. And nowhere is that spirit more evident than on the porch, which doubles as his workshop, and triples as his personal visitor center. Adorned with hand-carved crosses, walking sticks and canes, photographs, ristras, and plenty of etcetera, the porch is a delightful landscape of peculiar things.

Sitting on that porch, I visited with Analinda Dunn, Napoleón’s wife, who told me the story of how they met one day back in 2006, she a tourist photographing the church on the plaza and he doing what he does still today: welcoming people like her.
​
Analinda took me through their garden of corn and tomatoes, left unharvested this year with Napoleón unexpectedly away, to show me the acequia running just behind their house. It’s the one that has carried water through the village from Abiquiú Creek for generations, the same one that waters the gardens of the O’Keeffe house. Back inside, she emptied piles of letters onto the living room table, postmarked from Arizona, Oregon, Wisconsin, even France and Japan. Each was a note of thanks from a visitor to Napoleón for his kindness in talking with them, singing songs, sharing history. “I think it is a revolutionary act to tell old stories,” one letter read.

I signed the guest book on the porch before leaving. Mine was the first entry in two months.

Around the corner is the gallery and home of Napoleón’s oldest son, Leo, known as the “Gentle Giant.” I entered his Galería de Don Cacahuate to the warm smell of beans cooking on the stove. True to his nickname, Leo towered over me, but his frequent laughter easily negotiated the distance. He showed me his painted wooden carvings of skeletons and other fantastic figures, while I admired the devotion behind every brushstroke.

I remembered the beautiful corn-husk crucifix I had seen hanging at the Santa Rosa de Lima church and wondered if Leo might know the artist. But I didn’t ask. Not everything about this place, I realized in that moment, was mine to know.
I was ready to meet Napoleón.

The meeting happens a month later. Napoleón is home, recovering. I ring the doorbell on the porch, the one above the cowbell, and Analinda welcomes me again.

There are two Napoleóns waiting to see me in the kitchen. One sits in a wheelchair with his deep eyes smiling; the other sits on the kitchen counter looking pensively into the distance.

The second Napoleón, the one on the counter, is a portrait of the man, sent to him by an admiring fan. For the rest of the afternoon, the portrait remains in the background just behind its subject, and seeing the two together, I get a strange sense of double vision.

The real Napoleón, sitting before me, is dressed in traditional Spanish colonial clothing, a white shirt with red sash, and a black hat. His goatee is neatly trimmed against his strong jaw, and a necklace and cross dangle from his neck.
He starts with a joke.

“When I was young,” he says, “I used to tell my friends that I wished they would go work somewhere else, so I could go visit them. But no—they’re here!”
Napoleón has lived here in Abiquiú almost all of his 83 years, except for a brief time in Utah for the National Guard.

As a child, he lived in another house. But after marrying Emma Rose Garcia, his first wife (who passed away a decade ago), he moved into the house on the plaza, then owned by his father-in-law, who gave it to the couple on the condition that he keep it in the family. He raised nine kids here, working as a subcontractor at Los Alamos for 35 years.

“How has Abiquiú changed?” I ask him.

He answers quickly: “It hasn’t.”

The houses are where they’ve always been, he tells me. Water still runs through the acequia, residents still gather firewood from the mountains, the hermanos in the moradas still pray for the dead and comfort the sick and grieving.
He remembers the construction of the Santo Tomás church, replacing an older structure, back in the mid-1930s. He even helped the workers.

“I was about three years old, and there were men building the latillas [roof beams]. We used to go and take a good knife from the house, and I used to try to peel the logs. Some men were very mean and they didn’t want any kids around. Other men liked us.”

In his adult life, Napoleón has served as mayordomo for the church several times, taking care of the building for a year, protecting the santo and keeping it in his house, tending to special functions. The mayordomo is also in charge of the feast day that year, until selecting a successor and transferring the keys to the church on the last day of the fiesta.

Abiquiú has two feast days—the first one of European heritage, the other Native American.

“There was a little carnival,” Napoleón recalls of the Fiesta de Santa Rosa de Lima during his youth, held in August. “Lots of people from everywhere would come. The celebration lasted two or three days.” And like they do today, vendors would set up booths and people would sell vegetables, jewelry, wood carvings. They had horse races and a merry-go-round.

“There used to be trucks selling ice cream,” Napoleón recalls. “We’d save a few pennies that Alfredo Maestas, owner of the bar, would give us. He used to pay us 25 pennies for a day’s work peeling latillas.” Mr. Maestas, Napoleón recalls, would jokingly call the kids, saying, “Vengan, ladrones!”—Come, thieves!—and then distribute their day’s wages. It was the only chance Napoleón had as a child to treat himself to ice cream.

He also recalls dancing at the Fiesta de Santo Tomás, held each November, when the village celebrates its Native American heritage. Dancers practice the dances for a month beforehand, and they construct their own outfits with headdresses, decorating them with colorful ribbons and beads. “It took time to get ready,” he remembers. “And it was expensive. You had to buy your own outfit, and ribbons and the mask—you had to make it yourself.”

We talk—about the women who plaster the church walls, about gathering piñons in the mountains as a child and selling them for two pennies a bag. When he tells me about playing Santa Claus for the village kids, I ask what the children request as presents—but that’s privileged information. At times, I have a hard time keeping up with him. No sooner does he finish one story than he asks for more questions. “Go!” he prompts. “Ask me!”

I want to know about his mother.

She raised four kids on her own, working odd jobs to keep her family fed. Disciplined, he recalls, but, in his words, “happy-go-lucky.” As a kid, he hid from her under the bed, but she would prod him out with the handle of a broom. She lived to be 103.
I ask for his version of the story of how he met his current wife.

“I just called her to come in,” he recalls of that day. “And I talked to her. And she fell for it.”

The sun is warm on my neck, and the birds in the next room are singing sweetly in their cage. It’s easy to be here, easy to listen to the stories. I understand why so many people reach out to Napoleón to thank him after he spends time with them.

Sometimes, he tells me, visitors come and take pictures by his house. But they don’t come in. So he’ll call out to them, or use his cowbell.

“They won’t come otherwise,” he tells me. “They say they don’t know what I do, that my signs are very poorly written. But I write them like that on purpose.”

“Why?” I ask, laughing. “So they’ll pay attention!” he explains. There is a video of Napoleón in the Pueblo de Abiquiú Library and Cultural Center that shows him visiting with kids on his porch. Filmed in 2008, the Napoleón on video is in his element, telling the kids about their Genízaro heritage, answering their questions about his art. In the midst of all this, Napoleón raises his head to address a woman off camera he sees outside his porch, asking her if she needs any help.

She, like so many others who visit, asks where to find the Georgia O’Keeffe house.
Many in Abiquiú knew O’Keeffe or have stories about the artist; some even worked for her. As a young man, Napoleón did occasional work in her garden and also drove her places. I ask him about his time with her and am rewarded with a cautionary tale about temptation.

“She had a strawberry,” he begins, telling me of a particularly ripe fruit growing in the garden he was tending one day. “And she was waiting for it. It was a really pretty strawberry.”

A hint of mischievousness flickers in his eyes, and I suspect I know where this story is going. Indeed, with no words, Napoleón mimes tossing something into his mouth. His sly smile makes me feel I’m an accessory to the crime.

“The next day,” he continues, “Miss O’Keeffe asked, ‘Where’s my strawberry? It was almost ready, and it’s not there now. Do you know what happened to it?’”

“I ate it,” he confessed. His youthful honesty, in this case, came at a price. “She told me off,” he chuckles. “And she fired me.” It was the first time he was fired, but it wouldn’t be the last. He would get fired “four or five times” over the time he worked for the artist. But in every case, O’Keeffe would visit his house in subsequent days, she’d suggest they put the incident behind them, and things would go back to the way they were before.

He remembers the artist’s generosity to the village. She helped provide for community needs and sometimes offered to pay a resident’s medical bills. She liked to hear the singing, he tells me, the songs of praise, sung by the brothers from the morada as they walked in procession to the church during fiesta.

He happened to see what he calls the “big, big, big, big painting of clouds”--Sky Above Clouds IV—when she was working on it at Ghost Ranch. “Oh, wow!” 

After several hours, I can no longer ignore the changing color of light from the window and the sense that a later time has arrived. But before I go, I ask Napoleón the question that has most intrigued me:

Why does he receive curious strangers so often? “I like people,” he confesses. And then, after a quiet moment, he completes the thought. “I just want to share. Share my knowledge, my everything.”

That’s why, as soon as he recovers, he plans to be back on his porch. He reaches out to take my hand, and his palm is as warm as the gesture itself.

Walking me out, Analinda rings the cowbell at the front door, a boisterous metal clang escaping into the crisp air. And an effective one: It catches the attention of a man taking a photo of the church across the plaza. That bell is raring to get back to work.

Abiquiú is quiet in the early evening, and I pause on the plaza to listen for the long-ago sounds of Napoleón and other kids out here yelling, but there is only silence.
Actually, some things have changed in Abiquiú. Gone are the hornos, the outdoor ovens that once could be found in almost every yard. On the bulletin board at Bode’s General Store, you’ll find notices of upcoming yoga classes next to advertisements for hay for sale.

Fortunately, change offers a salve to soothe its own disruption: It can make us more aware of what hasn’t changed, of what has lasted. The land. The great art made here. One man’s indomitable spirit.

​We caught up with Ralph Vigil and asked him to tell us one of his favorite camping stories. It still makes him chuckle when he thinks about the time when he was about 12 years old and he went up into Santa Clara Canyon with his older brother Gilbert and two friends, Simon and Eloy. In those days anyone could go up into the Canyon but there were probably more bears than humans who did. Perhaps people held what they owned with a looser hand because there were fewer boundaries and nobody cared if 4 kids decided to go camping on their land. Ralph and his fellow adventurers liked to go high into the mountains and stay by the beaver dam at the river. They spent their days messing around and at night they would tell ghost stories. Since they didn’t have fishing poles they would dam the river with rocks so they could catch fish with their hands.
 
Ralph’s mother was widowed and she had 7 kids to feed so money was tight. The family wasn’t the only one struggling; many people in Rio Arriba county were poor. To earn money for their camping adventures, Ralph would collect cans and bottles for the deposit. He admits that he used to go behind the Granada Hotel and get bottles that had already been refunded and go return them at the Bar
again. He used the money to buy cans of Pork and Beans and Vienna Sausages.
 
On this particular trip their truck got stuck in the soft ground by the springs and sunk in up to the axels. They didn’t worry about that too much until after a week or so when the supply of beans and wieners dwindled. Then the older guys, Gilbert and Simon decided that it was time for someone to go to town for help.  “I think I was fixed,” says Ralph because he and Eloy drew the long straws. “They gave us the last can of pork and beans and they kept the sausages. Me and Eloy started down the old road up the canyon for the long trip back.” After walking about 5 or 6 miles Eloy said, “Let’s open the beans.” As they were sitting by the river eating, they saw a horse by the fence.
 
“Let’s catch him and ride back to Espanola” suggested Ralph. They went up to the horse who allowed himself to be caught with some bailing wire and rope. Ralph gets animated as he explains that he and Eloy had a heated conversation about who was going to get on the horse’s back. He gestures as he says,  “we went back and forth saying ‘saying you do it, no you do it’. Eloy finally convinced Ralph that he was too heavy, so Ralph got on to ride. In a matter of minutes, the horse threw him off in the ditch and the two boys set out on foot again.
 
As they trudged along they heard the sound of a vehicle in the distance. Then they saw the dust of an approaching truck and Eloy said, “Esconde te!” or “hide!” They quickly threw themselves into the ditch in the cover of some Pinon trees. As they crouched there, hearts pounding the truck pulled into sight and stopped. Ralph looked at Eloy and said, “Why are we hiding? We’re supposed to be getting help.” There was a long silence and then Eloy said, “You’re right- let’s get out of here”. The two scrambled out of hiding and clambered up the bank to where the truck was idling.
 
It was Eloy’s father who had come looking for the boys.
“Why were you hiding?” he asked.
“We dunno”, said Ralph sheepishly. “It was Eloy’s idea.”

Ralph’s words of wisdom are that “a tight knit community that helps you out is better than a can of pork and beans.”

​On this particular trip their truck got stuck in the soft ground by the springs and sunk in up to the axels. They didn’t worry about that too much until after a week or so when the supply of beans and wieners dwindled. Then the older guys, Gilbert and Simon decided that it was time for someone to go to town for help.  “I think I was fixed,” says Ralph because he and Eloy drew the long straws. “They gave us the last can of pork and beans and they kept the sausages. Me and Eloy started down the old road up the canyon for the long trip back.” After walking about 5 or 6 miles Eloy said, “Let’s open the beans.” As they were sitting by the river eating, they saw a horse by the fence.
 
“Let’s catch him and ride back to Espanola” suggested Ralph. They went up to the horse who allowed himself to be caught with some bailing wire and rope. Ralph gets animated as he explains that he and Eloy had a heated conversation about who was going to get on the horse’s back. He gestures as he says,  “we went back and forth saying ‘saying you do it, no you do it’. Eloy finally convinced Ralph that he was too heavy, so Ralph got on to ride. In a matter of minutes, the horse threw him off in the ditch and the two boys set out on foot again.
 
As they trudged along they heard the sound of a vehicle in the distance. Then they saw the dust of an approaching truck and Eloy said, “Esconde te!” or “hide!” They quickly threw themselves into the ditch in the cover of some Pinon trees. As they crouched there, hearts pounding the truck pulled into sight and stopped. Ralph looked at Eloy and said, “Why are we hiding? We’re supposed to be getting help.” There was a long silence and then Eloy said, “You’re right- let’s get out of here”. The two scrambled out of hiding and clambered up the bank to where the truck was idling.
 
It was Eloy’s father who had come looking for the boys.
“Why were you hiding?” he asked.
“We dunno”, said Ralph sheepishly. “It was Eloy’s idea.”

Ralph’s words of wisdom are that “a tight knit community that helps you out is better than a can of pork and beans.”

We caught up with Ralph Vigil and asked him to tell us one of his favorite camping stories. It still makes him chuckle when he thinks about the time when he was about 12 years old and he went up into Santa Clara Canyon with his older brother Gilbert and two friends, Simon and Eloy. In those days anyone could go up into the Canyon but there were probably more bears than humans who did. Perhaps people held what they owned with a looser hand because there were fewer boundaries and nobody cared if 4 kids decided to go camping on their land. Ralph and his fellow adventurers liked to go high into the mountains and stay by the beaver dam at the river. They spent their days messing around and at night they would tell ghost stories. Since they didn’t have fishing poles they would dam the river with rocks so they could catch fish with their hands.
 
Ralph’s mother was widowed and she had 7 kids to feed so money was tight. The family wasn’t the only one struggling; many people in Rio Arriba county were poor. To earn money for their camping adventures, Ralph would collect cans and bottles for the deposit. He admits that he used to go behind the Granada Hotel and get bottles that had already been refunded and go return them at the Bar
again. He used the money to buy cans of Pork and Beans and Vienna Sausages.
 
On this particular trip their truck got stuck in the soft ground by the springs and sunk in up to the axels. They didn’t worry about that too much until after a week or so when the supply of beans and wieners dwindled. Then the older guys, Gilbert and Simon decided that it was time for someone to go to town for help.  “I think I was fixed,” says Ralph because he and Eloy drew the long straws. “They gave us the last can of pork and beans and they kept the sausages. Me and Eloy started down the old road up the canyon for the long trip back.” After walking about 5 or 6 miles Eloy said, “Let’s open the beans.” As they were sitting by the river eating, they saw a horse by the fence.
 
“Let’s catch him and ride back to Espanola” suggested Ralph. They went up to the horse who allowed himself to be caught with some bailing wire and rope. Ralph gets animated as he explains that he and Eloy had a heated conversation about who was going to get on the horse’s back. He gestures as he says,  “we went back and forth saying ‘saying you do it, no you do it’. Eloy finally convinced Ralph that he was too heavy, so Ralph got on to ride. In a matter of minutes, the horse threw him off in the ditch and the two boys set out on foot again.
 
As they trudged along they heard the sound of a vehicle in the distance. Then they saw the dust of an approaching truck and Eloy said, “Esconde te!” or “hide!” They quickly threw themselves into the ditch in the cover of some Pinon trees. As they crouched there, hearts pounding the truck pulled into sight and stopped. Ralph looked at Eloy and said, “Why are we hiding? We’re supposed to be getting help.” There was a long silence and then Eloy said, “You’re right- let’s get out of here”. The two scrambled out of hiding and clambered up the bank to where the truck was idling.
 
It was Eloy’s father who had come looking for the boys.
“Why were you hiding?” he asked.
“We dunno”, said Ralph sheepishly. “It was Eloy’s idea.”

Ralph’s words of wisdom are that “a tight knit community that helps you out is better than a can of pork and beans.”

We sat down with Isabel Trujillo in her cozy home on Valentine’s Day. To say that Isabel is still beautiful in her 80’s is an understatement. Isabel is radiant. Her quick smile and warm eyes immediately put you at ease. Perhaps because it was the day of love, her thoughts went to how she and her husband, Henry met. She shared some memories of coming of age in Espanola.
 
When you don’t have a car and you need to get somewhere fast, you run. That’s what Ernest Victor Romero did when his wife Ernestine Montoya was is labor; He ran from Guachupangue to Espanola to get Dr. Nesbit to come and deliver little Isabel.  She grew up an only child playing happily within her large extended family.
 
It was at the eighth-grade dance in the Espanola school gym, that Henry Trujillo invited Isabel to dance. Isabel had never danced before. He was a year older than Isabel and he knew the popular dance moves. Isabel loved it all, especially the jitterbug. Not long after that, Henry invited Isabel to go dancing in Abiquiu at El Pinon up in the plaza near St Thomas church. Isabel’s parents weren’t happy about her going so far out of town. Abiquiu was a long way from Espanola!
 
She put on her best dress with a wide skirt and high heels. Henry wore his black dancing shoes. Henry didn’t dress like the Pachucos in their baggy pants and chains. He was a “good boy.” Isabel remembers that not too many people could fit in El Pinon, but “they had a lot of fun.” It did bother her a little that Henry knew his way around the dance halls of Abiquiu and lots of other girls knew him there.
 
When Isabel wanted to learn how to roller skate, she went with her best friend, Josie Montoya to a bar in El Rancho. Her daddy took them in his red and black Ford. She “tore a lot of boys shirts that day but she learned how to skate,” she says with a twinkle. Now it was Henry’s turn to feel the burn.
 
Another time, Isabel went dancing with Henry in Ojo Caliente which she said felt so far away it was as if they went to California. California was the place everyone from Espanola went in the 1950s to make some money. She thought her parents wouldn’t approve but she told them about it anyways. To her surprise, they weren’t upset. That’s when Isabel learned that it is always important to be truthful.
 
Henry did go away to California after he graduated from Espanola High School. Isabel gave him a prayer book as a graduation gift. But he didn’t forget those nights dancing with Isabel at El Pinon in Abiquiu. She got an engagement ring in the mail and she said yes.
 
Isabel and Henry got married a year after she graduated from High School in 1957. She devoted herself to her family but also worked as a secretary for the school, the government and Los Alamos labs. She laughs when she says that when she started her career the “best part was that I got to wear high heels.”
 
Isabel continued to celebrate many of life’s joys by going dancing with Henry.
 
Isabel’s piece of wisdom is to always be honest and tell the truth. Lying never makes things better. She says that there will always be trials and difficulties, but God will use them for your benefit. Don’t twist the truth to try and make things easier. Instead, ask God and He will help you to succeed.

Image:  Pepe, Credit Brooks Coe Shea

Abiquiu got to be a better place when Diana Coe moved here from Colorado.  She quickly became an integral part of our community and was loved by all.
 
Among Diana’s horses and donkeys was Pepe, a miniature donkey whose forebears originated on the Island of Sicily, off the coast of Italy.  This breed of donkeys is known for its gentle disposition and for having a cross on the back of the animals.  Pepe certainly was gentle and often gave rides to children on his cross-marked back at community events to which Diana took him and donated his services.  “Pepe is a celebrity,” Diana would boast as she fondly scratched him behind the ears.
 
Pepe immediately came to mind when fellow mayordomo Ray Trujillo and I learned that we were in charge of the annual Christmas posadas that started out each year in Abiquiu’s church, Santo Tomas el Apostol.  We learned of our responsibility from our pastor, Father Joseph Vigil, just a few days before the first posadas, and the very first thing we did was to call on Diana, who happened to be home, to ask if we could have Pepe carry the young girl, who would portray the Blessed Mother in the procession before Mass.  Diana thought it was fitting that this breed with the cross on its back would carry Mary, and she said, “Yes.”
 
Our second step was to recruit young parishioner Christina Crim to portray Mary and to ask her to ask a fellow student to portray St. Joseph to accompany her during the procession.  She did, but he was a no-show, so Christina’s mother Erma pressed into service another young man, Matteo Garcia, who asked, “Do I have any speaking lines?”
 
The third step was to call a number of people and to ask them to bring food for the after-Mass potluck in the gym, which we quickly set up with tables covered with green cloth and red ribbon and pots of poinsettias that someone had donated to the church.
 
Father was so thrilled when he learned that we would have a live donkey carry Mary that he asked us to have the procession go throughout the church plaza before evening Mass.  The night of the first posadas, however, turned brutally cold with a strong bitter wind sweeping across the plaza.  Father Joseph said that he did not want anyone to get ill and directed us to walk only a few feet from the library across from church.
 
Diana parked Pepe’s trailer there, and, when he emerged from it, we could tell that he realized that something special was about to happen.  He stood patiently and proudly as he awaited his passenger.

When Christina got close to Pepe, she became frightened, saying, “I don’t do donkeys.”  Her dad Allen stood on one side, and on the other side Ray picked her up and set her on Pepe, who immediately made Christina feel so much at ease that with a smile she said, “I can do this.”  With silent St. Joseph at her side and with Diana leading and Ray following, the group processed to the front door of our church.
 
Inside, the church was dark, lit only by the altar candles.  St. Joseph knocked on the door, and the choir outside sang the traditional request for a room in the inn.  Pepe cocked his head and looked at the choir and listened.
 
Then the congregation inside sang its traditional denial.  When Pepe heard the singing inside, he lunged toward the church door as if he wanted to enter.
 
The choir outside and the congregation inside repeated the request/denial verses about a half-dozen times, and Pepe paid attention to each group, again lunging toward the door each time he heard the singing inside.
 
Finally, the innkeeper opened the door, the congregation changed its tune to one of warm welcome, and the church lights and the Christmas-tree lights were turned on.
 
Pepe immediately felt that he needed to be a part of this celebration and charged into church and headed toward the main aisle with Diana holding Pepe on one side and Ray securing Christina on the other side of the happy animal who then fell into a dignified gait as he headed to the front pew.  Surprised congregants were saying, “Look. . .that is a real live donkey!”  Father Joseph and I were the last to enter, and I said to him, “Father, this was not planned,” and he replied with a laugh: “It’s okay.  It’s wonderful.”
 
And it was.  Amen.
 
Another time, Diana brought Pepe to our parish’s annual Fiesta de Santa Rosa de Lima, which occurs every August, so that Pepe could provide rides for delighted children.
 
Thank you, Pepe.  Thank you, Diana.  May you rest in peace with our heavenly Father.
 
Hilda M. Joy
April 2016

​Posadas Afterword:   My first Christmas season in Abiquiu, I attended my first posadas in Canones with Agustin and Merlinda Garcia and with Alfonso and Ninfa Martinez.  It was a very cold, clear dark night, and the stars were enormous.  After the church service, we were welcomed to a dinner of posole, which really took off the chill, and other posadas delights in the gaily decorated church hall.
 
On the way home, Agustin asked, "So, Hilda, what did you think of your first posadas?"  I replied that I thought it was all wonderful except for one thing---NO LIVE BURRO!  He said they were hard to find, and I said that if ever I were responsible for a posadas, I would find one.  In Pepe, I did.