People From New Mexico

"Jimmy Santiago Baca writes of poetry as a birth into the self out of a disarticulated, violently unworded condition, the Chicano taught to despise his own speech, the male prisoner in a world...run by men's rules and maintained by men's anger and brutish will to survive, forced to bury his feminine heart save in the act of opening a letter or in writing poems. Every poem is an infant labored into birth and I am drenched with sweating effort. Tired from the pain and hurt of being a man, in the poem I transform myself into woman. Released from the anguish of speechlessness (There was nothing so humiliating as being unable to express myself, and my inarticulateness increased my sense of jeopardy, of being endangered),' Baca transforms himself into a woman who has transcended the pain and hurt of being female, who has actually given birth to words, not to a living, crying, shitting child. But how balance the hard labor of bearing a poem against the early depletion of uneducated women bearing children year after year? Or against the effort for speech by a woman who culture has determined that women shall be silent?"

"I was institutionalized from age five to thirty years, first in an orphanage and then in prison. I kept running away and escaping and escaping and escaping . . . I had tried to escape so many times. When I got to prison I refused to work; I wanted to learn—I wanted an education. I was ready to give my life for an education…"

"For me it's always been the visitation of characters. Since I was very young l've thought there is a natural creative spirit, a very romantic spirit, that we have within. That spirit seeks expression. It exists in those of us who want to be writers, or think that we are going to be writers; who want to write poetry, to write stories, to jump into novels. But that spirit, that energy, has to be channeled. I think a great deal of channeling for me has to do with the very strong characters that come to me and demand that their stories be told."

"One reason that I wrote Bless Me, Ultima was because, to me, the people I grew up with were so beautiful, I didn’t want them to disappear. I knew a book could be timeless. I knew the characters could be preserved."

"I think that my early novels certainly contained a great deal of autobiographical material, and drawing in of characters from my childhood. I identify in Bless Me Ultima with Antonio, in Heart of Atzlan with Jason, in Tortuga with Tortuga. I had been in a hospital like Tortuga. I had been in the body cast, I had become the Turtleman and I had to work my way back to being a man. All of that material is autobiographical. By the time I write Alburquerque, I am identifying with Ben Chávez, the writer and narrator of the story. But even in my current work, I identify with Sonny Baca, the private investigator in Zia Summer. It's a profession that l've never been in, that I know very little about, but he's still...Let me put it this way, writing is a way for a writer to give his personal "joumey through life" to the character. And so the character reflects the author."

"I think the minority cultural groups in this country have to form part of their identity in confrontation with the mainstream culture. We just can't get away from it. The social and political reality, and elements of bigotry, racism and prejudice are there, and we have to deal with them. I think what Bruce-Novoa may have been alluding to is that we, as Chicanos in the 70s creating the artistic Chicano movement, couldn't stay at that place. There were those of us who had to incorporate that dialectic into our work, but then move into all sorts streams. Our literary characters had a lot of other needs, desires, and passion of life to be lived, besides the confrontation with the Anglo-American mainstream culture.”"

"I felt something behind me and I turned and there is this old woman dressed in black and she asked me what I am doing. ‘Well, I’m trying to write about my childhood, you know, growing up in that small town.’ And she said, ‘Well, you never will get it right until you put me in it.’ I said, ‘Well, who are you?’ and she said, ‘Ultima.'"

"Studying with Anaya was a major awakening to me. I always thank him for his input in my life. He has been a great role model, and he influenced me a lot in my decision to finally become a writer."

"I remember the birds and the animals and going down to the river with my dog to play…My grandparents and uncles who farmed in Puerto de Luna were so beautiful, I wanted to keep them around, to contain them."

"My parents, uncles, aunts, they always talked about what they were doing, where they were working, what happened that day. Sooner or later, they’d be telling a story from the old days,” he recalls. “We were very poor, but proud of the hard work that provided what we had."

"The heart of New Mexico is, for me, the people, la gente—los compadres, las comadres, los tíos, las tías, los vecinos…It’s the connection and the understanding between my Indo-Hispano cultures. If people don’t make that connection, they don’t understand New Mexico."

"Dreams are important. They are messengers…Characters have appeared to me. They say, ‘Here I am. Tell my story.'"

"Max was born in Ropes, Texas, in 1924. Not long afterwards, Hazel and W. B., founded a town called Humble City in New Mexico's far southeastern Lea County. He left here for the Hi-Lo country of northeastern New Mexico when he was about twelve years old. An infantry veteran of World War II combat, he tackled a number of career options before... the 1960 publication of his breakthrough novel, The Rounders..."

"I can see why the two men liked and admired each other. Max had been a cowboy, a soldier, a smuggler, a painter, and, most importantly, a storyteller. Sam had been a would-be cowboy, a soldier, a would-be smuggler, a director, and, most importantly, a storyteller. They were roughly the same age when they met up early in 1962, and they both achieved success in their respective fields—Peckinpah in film, Evans in literature—within a few years of each other. Perhaps Sam filled the void that the death of Big Boy Hittson... created for Max after Big Boy was shot by his younger brother in the late 1940s..."

"A new documentary about his life, Ol’ Max Evans: The First Thousand Years... Made by Lorene Mills, Paul Barnes, and David Leach... paints a lively portrait... a man who worked as a cowboy, rancher, soldier, miner, con man, painter, mystic, and writer. He is also a seeker and a survivor. The monkey business didn’t kill him. Neither did the bottle, D-Day, bad reviews, a busted bank account, or the various men who bested him in windswept barrooms or dusty desert streets. He’s written about 30 published works (he tries to count them up, but can’t quite get the sum right), seen two film adaptations come out of two of those works, rubbed shoulders with the Hollywood likes of and , and earned a number of literary awards."

"Several times, Emilio had taken Ty to the mountains to fish for trout. ...The gurgling, forever-twisting little snowmelts coursing, playing, singing over millions of differently shaped stones deeply fascinated a young man from the dry, flat plains of Lea County. It was a gift of beauty sparkling in the sunlight to out glimmer all the diamonds in the world. ...He would have wagered on it. Emilio had introduced him to a ceaseless wonder. ...and the fishing was almost as exciting. He could never stop marveling that these small streams could be home to foot-long brown and rainbow trout."

"As beginning buddies do, Ty had casually mentioned that he'd overheard his grandfather saying to his grandmother, "That Ty is always running for the far horizon, but it keeps moving ahead of him," and Martha had answered as always in his favor, "Yes he is. And someday he'll catch it, and it'll be downhill from then on.""

"Emilio said "I'm swearing you to secrecy, amigo, and I feel guilty for telling you... There is a secret room in our basement where both mom and dad go to worship in Jewish. They even light the menorah there during Hanukahh." Ty made a zipping motion over his mouth and said, "It stays here, amigo.""

"In the wondrous brew that makes up life, that novel, The Rounders, created a bittersweet effect on Max Evans' life. It made his reputation. Despite a lifetime of writing perhaps the finest literature ever written about life in the West, it is still this one book about two cowboys who can't seem to win but refuse to lose that people tend to remember best. It brought Max his first real money, his first real fame, his first movie."

"The beast of war belches and passes almost endless odors. There is the acrid smell of freshly detonated gunpowder and burnt steel. There is the sweet scent of newly freed blood misting above the dead, dying, and mutilated bodies, little red streams forming pools that begin to turn brownish as they seep into the bruised earth. There is a special combined smell when a shell penetrates, explodes, and sets fire to a tank—a mixture of steel, powder, human flesh, bone, and blood, gasoline and oil, clothing, and stained and torn family photos. There is the unforgettable stench of bodies long past the first discovery of flies. This is a forever odor. So is the scent of villages, towns, and cities burning."

"I left the heart of the Hi-Lo country, and went to Taos. I bought some sub-irrigated land and a house and moved there amongst the founders and old masters of the famed art colony. I also obtained my first Taos horse, Brownie. ...for the thiry dollars I paid Horse Thief Shorty for him, he turned out to be quite a buy. ...Brownie was pretty darn good at everyting, outstanding at none, but a loyal friend all the way. A partner. ...I rank him pretty high for that priceless underrated loyalty. ...I would ride him for pure pleasure. We would move across the great sagebrush desert on top of the west mesa where the Indians held their annual, ancient horseback rabbit hunt."

"Jiggs loved playing his old Victrola in the early evening and often asked Ty to sit with him and listen. The music wasn't always what Ty was exactly interested in, but he listened to please his grandfather. ...Accidentally he found out that reading was allowed while listening to great music. His grandparents had read to him regularly and insisted that Ty read some of the classics."

"When I was still a teenager, I acquired a small, well-watered (with springs) ranch in northeastern New Mexico. It was located fourteen miles east of the village of Des Moines—which I would later call "Hi-Lo" in my many writings and a major film. ...In those poor struggling days, coyote hides would bring from five to fifteen dollars—a ton of money at the time."

"On Glorietta Mesa south of Santa Fe, I went to work on a cow ranch about three months before my twelfth birthday. Almost everyone—in this time and place—was so poor that it was a common practice for ranchers to loan themselves and/or their hired hands out to help each other—especially with big jobs like branding and roundups, and even fence building. It made survival possible."

"I was having more trouble putting a rein, a stop, and instilling "rope and cow sense" in this horse than ever before. ...She literally loved and lived to run after the dogs as they ran down one of the smartest creatures ever born. She must have had the ancient genes of some great general's best war horse for she had a true blood lust. Molly loved to watch the dogs' fangs still a freshly caught coyote."

"Jiggs, with his sharp, dark eyes smiling from a weather-seared face, used to say, "I tell you what, son, if a man is real lucky he'll find that what he wants to do is what he likes to do. That is, of course, if he's lucky enough to take the time to discover it.""

"Max Evans was once an eleven-year-old cowboy... in the foothills of New Mexico. For years he lived the life, roped the calves, rode the horses, drank the booze, fought the fights. He spent his nights reading in the bunkhouse too. And then he taught himself to be an artist, and later he taught himself to be a novelist. Literature about the real West has never been the same..."

"The story of Silver City Millie is the story of one woman's personal tragedies and triumphs as an orphan, a Harvey Girl waitress on the Santa Fe railroad, a prostitute with innumerable paramours, and a highly successful bordello businesswoman. Millie broke the mold in so many ways, and yet her life story of survival was not unlike that of thousands of women who went West..."

"I will now hope for the near impossible: that the essence of her bravery, the dedication and suffering she afforded those she loved, and above all that indomitable will to have a good laugh no matter where the stones fell, will be as indelible to the reader as they are to me."

"Silver City Millie contains sordid details and frank language that will make many readers blush, but before her bawdy, drunken life is condemned, readers must become aware of the full context of prostitution in the American West. It was like motherhood and apple pie. It was expected, condoned, appreciated, and segregated. ...The ratio of men to women in the frontier West was frequently seven to one."

"He was always grinding on forward... Grinder... observed Bluefeather through slit, knowing eyes. The quality he looked for was definitely there. It... was obvious in the alert, almost regal, manner he carried his head and the way he climbed the Taos mountains with a long-stepped, but smooth, attacking stride. ...Bluefeather Fellini was from the people of yearning. Whenever one walks or rides with yearners, the world becomes generous with great gifts of almost ceaseless adventure—and makes one pay terrible prices for the ultimate joys. Grinder knew this... for he was a grinder himself."

"For decades the old prospector had walked the sizzling southwestern deserts, climbed the jagged mountains, chewed the dust, dodged the blizzards without complaint or defeat."

"This was the most difficult book I have ever put together. No matter how I checked out some of the wild stories—wild by their locale, time of occurrence and nature of her business—they were not only unutterably true, but actually understated in some cases."

"I was amazed to discover my award-winning racehorse story, "Showdown at Hollywood Park," was a short sequel to the famed "Seabiscuit" story. Also I had two more, over 90 percent true, stories that I slightly fictionalized... "My Pardner" was one of these. ...... loved "My Pardner." He optioned it many times over. ...I traded him "My Pardner" for ' so I could get a Martin Scorsese, ' film made. ...This book brought about the very last conversation I ever had with Peckinpah—two weeks before his untimely death. He was on his way to ... and pressed for time, but promised that on his return he would sign all film rights for "My Pardner" back to me. But... he died, and it never happened."

"One from the Heart for... , the great director who taught me to feel the color, see the sound, and hear the unsaid in such great films as LaStrada, LaDolceVita, and 81/2."

"One from the Heart for... My wife Pat, my number one critic, who also suffered safely through all those long decades of my taking notes, thinking and figuring on Bluefeather Fellini, and then the five and a half years of actually writing it down. ...Also, much appreciation for the painting you created for the cover."

"One from the Heart for... Those deeply loved and influential amigos and amigas who have gone on the "Long Adios", including my mother, Hazel, who taught me to read, and love it, before I started school. Wiley (Big Boy) Hittson, whose brief life of daring courage, total loyalty and sudden shocking death by gunfire inspired my novel TheHighLoCountry. Luz Martinez, the "Santero" who followed me to Taos and carved cedarwood into permanent beauty and dignity. Woody Crumbo, the great pioneer Pottawatomie Indian artist, who became my artistic and spiritual mentor and whose spirit is in every chapter of this book. And finally, our little dog Foxy..."

"He looked just like a groundhog coming up for air when he crawled out of his bedroll in the morning, and he didn't look a hell of a lot better now... His legs was bowed so bad that if you was to straighten them up he would be twice as tall."

"I could see... that there was healed-over spur marks in that old pony's shoulder. That could mean just one thing. Trouble. I had worked for outfits that gave spoiled horses like that one away just to keep from crippling up good cowboys."

"I had my right hand around that saddle horn like it was the doorknob to heaven's gate, and my right elbow was crimped down over my hipbone like a vise. I was pulling on the them hackamore reigns like I was dragging a pot of gold out of a deep well. But it just didn't do any good. That son of a... bogged his head and jumped way off toward the Arizona border and came down hard on his front legs, driving them in the ground plumb to bedrock, the way it felt to me. The next jump was just as high and just as long, but when he drove into the ground again he was headed for the Texas border, and in between that old roan horse was sure tearing hell out of New Mexico."

"It was a time of youthful jubilation, and Bluefeather Fellini—the chosen one—knew that never, never, never before had anyone been so blessed. In just a few days, they would be rich..."

"THE HORSE (and the mule—which is half horse) had given more to mankind than all the rocket scientists, presidents (all forms), dictators and financial geniuses with all their billions of dollars combined. The horse's hold on mankind, joining in all human glories and foibles, could actually fill many great libraries."

"[O]ne of [my] students said his father was a Santa Fe cop who had arrested Max for "cutting down all the stop signs in Santa Fe." Max later admitted going on a... mission... as a way of avoiding getting more traffic tickets... As he put it, "Hell, I didn't get more than half of them cut down before they caught me.""

"We called them wrecks... And the great mystery in the sky does not allow you to have all that fun unless you have some wrecks."

"For me, the code of the West is simple. You never let a friend down... ever. And you don't go after your enemies if they leave you alone. You can live a long time on those two things."

"Jim Ed Love is a very funny name for a man who likes nothing better than to see a cowboy get what little he's got get kicked out by a rawboned, walleyed, bucking, ground-stopping bronc."

"He ain't no cowboy, this Ed Love, but he is a cowman. ...He can dicker for six days and nights for one-fourth cent cent a pound for his beef. He can get more work from and give less pay to a cowboy than anybody I ever saw."

"Now, to make horse breaking easy you need two cowboys—one on the bronc and one on a gentle, well-broke horse. This way if the bronc tries to cut your leg off on a barbwire fence or jump off a bluff, your partner can ride in front of him or gather up your hackamore reigns."

"It was about three miles by bird travel to the gate opening into home pasture. That was where Old Fooler was headed. He was still bucking, and I could see those stirrups clanging together over his back. Then he disappeared over the rise and there wasn't a thing to keep me company but one little white cloud about a thousand miles off over the northern mountains. I saw that cloud when I looked up at the sky and asked the Lord to please not let me kill myself and to give me the wings of an angel so I could fly after that horse and break his ...dam neck."

"Colonel Perea, always fond of the higher dramatic art, was present at Ford's theater when President Lincoln was assassinated, his seat being in the orchestra, immediately in front of and a little below the President's box. The play being performed that night was known as "Our English Cousins" and was given by the Irish-American comedian, John McCullough. In the midst of the performance a pistol shot was heard near the box occupied by Mr Lincoln and a few friends that were with him. In a very short time all knew the president had been shot."