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 Baragain. He used the money to buy cans of Pork and Beans and Vienna Sausages.
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Although Napoleon is no longer with us, this year marking the fifth year since his passing we have been given permission to reprint this article from New Mexico Magazine. Enjoy If you’ve got any questions about the past eight decades of life in Abiquiú, this is the man to see. by David Pike 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.
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. |
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