Santa Fe Walkabout, Part 2

Leading to Mr. Kite's History of New Mexico

Greetings, Santa Fe SubStackers,

If you remember, I last left you, high as a kite, on my edible-assisted Walkabout, wandering unsteadily from Santa Fe’s Central Plaza, to the Inn of the Anasazi, very nearby on Washington Avenue, where my wife, Surya, works as a restaurant server. She has, however, distinctly instructed me to never drop by when she’s working. She doesn’t like it, or find it friendly or “husbandly”, at all. She’s not there to chat or say hello to her “better half” and/or his friends, who he might merrily bring along; she’s there to work.

But as I said at the end of Part 1, I promised myself not to stop by. And I can keep a promise to myself, can’t I?

I turn right on Washington, just off of Palace, and there’s one of my favorite galleries in town, the (Bill) Worrell Gallery, with his primal shamanic sculptures right out front.

Just two doors down is the Anasazi. I can’t help but look in the window. Oh no! There she is. My wife! In her black server’s uniform with her hair pulled up in a bun. I have an adverse reaction - instead of waving, or going in the door to greet her warmly - I bolt across the street - to the opposite side! Don’t want to rile the wife!

But there, right in front of me - on the other side of Washington - is the entrance to… The New Mexico History Museum. Perfect! I’ve always wanted to visit. Why not now? On Walkabout impulse? Yes!

I walk up to the door and two casually-dressed people walk out. I don’t see any admissions booth or formal entrance. I ask the two:

Is this the History Museum?

Yes, one says, it’s the back entrance. Come on in.

It’s “an offer I can’t refuse.”

I walk down a short bright hallway into the main room. There’s a long table set up with cookies, napkins, and drinks. Two ladies who look like museum volunteers are cleaning up.

Do you want some very tasty cookies? Don’t let them go to waste.

I’m “pre-diabetic”. I shouldn’t be eating another sugary cookie. I already had a stoner oatmeal raisin cookie at the Casa Sena bakery. But how can I refuse these nice museum ladies?

Do you know where the New Mexico history exhibition starts?

Right through those double doors.

Thank you very much.

I take two cookies, take a bite out of one, and just before I enter the exhibition, “1540-1910”, I drop a cookie and a half into the trash bin.

The room is dark and carefully lit. It’s a big exhibition.

It begins with the first encounters between the indigenous native Pueblo-dwelling people of what will one day become “New Mexico” and the arrival of their Spanish colonizers. 1540 is only fifty years after Columbus has arrived in Hispaniola (“America”) in 1492, and not long after Cortez has “conquered” Montezuma and the Aztec empire in Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) in 1519-21 and Francisco Pizarro has toppled Atahualpa and the Incas in Cuzco, Peru in 1532-33.

I’ve always loved history, as far back as in roly-poly Mr. O’Sullivan’s class in 10th grade and in wild-eyed Miss Bandiero’s class in 11th grade, at Clarke High in Westbury, New York. And I’ve never lost my love for it. I have this absolutely crazy idea and life-long goal, that if you give me any year in recorded human history, say arbitrarily, 331 B.C. or 1763 A.D., I could tell you what was going on in every major civilization on earth. Not only in ancient history: Bronze Age Egypt, Middle Eastern Mesopotamia or Sumeria, Stonehenge Britain, Mayan Mexico, or Hittite Anatolia, but also in Western history as we learned in school: Greece, Rome, England, France, Spain, Russia, Austro-Hungary and all their colonies, not to mention in obscure non-Western history: Babylon, Persia, China, Japan, India, the Ottoman Empire, Cambodia, Vietnam… you get my point. As I say, it’s an impossible fantasy, but I’ve read or listened to (I prefer audiobooks these days) the biographies of Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Stalin, and many other ambitious conquerors. I love the rise and fall of empires. Don’t get me started on the rise and fall of the American Empire right now at this point in history!

Anyway, here I am, as high as Mr. Kite, in the big New Mexico History Museum. I’m on an adventure. Do you want to come along with me? I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll take photos. I’ll basically steal the history off the walls for you. Why try to explain it to you when it’s all right here in front of me? The “museum-ologists” have done an excellent job!

And hell, I’ve always been a thief. That’s what my documentary film, “The Poet and the Con” is basically about, how I relate to my criminal Uncle Harvey (Rosenberg), who at one time was the most renowned jewelry thief in Southern California.

So just follow along. Like Sesame Street!

The History of New Mexico by Outlaw Josey Wales

I mean,

The Edited History of New Mexico by Mr. Eric Kite

Sorry for the blur, babies…..

This is where things get interesting. Where what they taught us in school doesn’t quite match the reality on the ground. Then again, maybe there’s already been a big disconnect: forcing Native Americans to give up their indigenous form of worship, forcing them to build Catholic missions, killing them with European diseases…. but now here it comes: “Manifest Destiny”, the idea that it is God’s Will for the great country of United States of America - to spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans - and anyone, or anything, in the way - be damned!

This one I remember: the Mexican-American War. It was on Disney! It’s where my boyhood hero, Davey Crockett, died, along with Jim Bowie, and 200 others, at The Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. Hey, not to diminish the battle or the heroism of the defenders of the real Alamo, but how many of you can tell me who played Davey Crockett in the Disney tv series? Think… it was back in the day… back in the 50s! It was… Fess Parker! And it’s the only role Fess is remembered for. But it did earn him enough money to buy himself a winery in Los Olivos, California, in the Santa Ynez Valley, and that’s where I went and visited Fess, and from where I bought an authentic, signed coon skin Davey Crockett cap from him, shortly before he died in 2010. Naturally, I have it too, right here in Santa Fe.

History is always personal.

Billy the Kid and his family moved to Santa Fe in 1863. It’s believed that The Kid shot and killed twenty-one men before he was shot and killed himself at 21 years old by the legendary lawman, Pat Garrett.

Cowboys & Indians. That’s what I grew up on, and with. Geronimo and Cochise? Both Apache leaders, duped by the U.S. government? They weren’t “the bad guys”, just because they were “Indians” - any more than Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Jesse James, or Wild Bill Hickok were. (It was in Wild Bill’s actual jail cell in Deadwood, South Dakota that I spent some real time in 1970: https://erictrules.com/episode26).

But as I said in my last post, all these “cowboys & Indians”, both historical and on fictional tv, were the equivalent of today’s Marvel comic book heroes, but of my 1950s childhood. All outlaws, renegades, and superheroes. Yet it strikes me, even today, how I grew up identifying with the word, and idea, of “outlaw”. Equating the word “artist” with “outlaw”. Or perhaps, as Mr. Dylan, the artist-outlaw of my generation sang,

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

“Cultural Explorer”? “Artist”? Is that me? Have I too, come to Santa Fe - to join a new “community”? Perhaps. Let’s see. Time will tell………………..

But that’s as far… as the first room goes, fellow travelers. Up to the turn of the 20th century. Whataya think?

I find it incredibly fascinating. Almost 500 years of time travel across the “American” Southwest. Definitely not a pretty picture of the white Anglo-Saxon race. But perhaps, a pretty accurate one, by today’s anthropological and historical standards.

But it’s time to go. The staff is kicking me out. I’ve done it again. Stayed in a museum until closing time. I’m the last man standing.

But… but… but… I haven’t seen the most ancient thing here - the Palace of the Governors, right across the courtyard, the oldest seat of government in the United States.

Sorry, you’ll have to come back another time, sir.

But wait… what’s your name, man?

It’s Leon, sir.

But Leon, man, I have to see the Palace of Governors. Just two minutes, I promise. In and out! Whataya say? Pleeeeeze!

Let me call ahead, sir. See if it’s locked up yet.

Thanks a lot, Leon. I really appreciate it. Just two minutes, I promise.

Leon calls the guard up ahead in “The Palace”. After a long minute, the heavyset dude walks into the lobby - the real lobby with the entrance desk - and he gives Leon a smiling “thumbs up”.

I scurry across the courtyard into the 400-year-old Palace of Governors, built in 1609 by the Spanish to govern “La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís” = “The Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi!) The full official name of the City of Santa Fe.

“Like wow”, says Mr. Kite. “Look at this!”

My two minutes inside the restored Palace of Governors are up. I scurry back to Leon, who’s waiting for me.

I’ve settled down a bit. My edibly-assisted high is few feet lower. My Walkabout through half a Millennium for the last three hours has had that kind of effect on me.

Thanks, Leon. You’re great! I’m gonna write you up in my SubStack blog. I want to give you a shout-out. I’ll be sure to send it to you if you give me your email address.

He doesn’t know what Substack is, but he does give me his address.

I head back the way I came in.

Sorry, sir, you have to exit this way.

Of course. He shows me the correct and legal way to enter and exit The New Mexico Museum of History. On Lincoln. Not the incorrect and illegal way I “snuck in” through the Employees’ Exit on Palace.

But sometimes, ya know,

You just gotta go with the flow……………………………..

Live honestly,

Outside the law,

Trules

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