RETURN TO THE ADOBE HOME

While Mom, Nanna (my grandmother) and I lived in Albuquerque I went to Saint Mary's Catholic School. There I found to my amazement that the nuns in Socorro were far superior in their teaching than the nuns at Saint Mary's.

My Nanna was called by the Mother Superior at Saint Mary's to come see her about my not paying attention in class. It appeared that my attention span was about as long as snowflake on a hot stove. However the real problem was that I had already been taught the subject that I could not pay attention to again. And so for the rest of the year I was left pretty much to my own devices, mainly staying ahead in other subjects, and trust me just keeping up was really a bit more honest.

At Saint Mary's we were forever putting on a play of one sort or another, and this provided me with my first encounter with the subject of talent. It seemed that all the boys were incapable of following directions in art of what at the time was called 'black shoe' dance. It was a sight to see the everlasting miss steps that were produced by a group of boys with only left feet. There seemed to be no end to NO talent. At least for the boys. With all of that, miss steps by the boys, great singing by the girls, and the home made polka dotted shirts for everyone, the show was a smashing success, at least that is the story given the next school day.

My best friend, Jimmy Sheperd, gave me a real teasing about a very pretty girl in my class, Helen Binkert by name, I admit that I was at the ripe old age of eight or nine smitten by Helen. She was to become in my mind the measure by which I would judge girls for some time. That method of measure stood until we returned to Socorro.

The return to Socorro was everything I had hoped it would be, no there were no fireworks or parades but there were my old friends near by, and the pleasure of seeing them was fireworks enough.

One of the first to come to see me was Frank Naranjo, my special hero. Just a year older than I but in stature much bigger. For some reason, and that reason will never be known. Frank took it upon himself to be my benefactor and instead of me being the recipient of a black eye I became the witness to the dispensing of same to one of Frank's cousins. And soon the assaults stopped entirely.

Now, you must know that Frank was a craftsman first class. He would not build the kite for me but would rather direct me and together we would build great, high flying kites of different sizes and shapes. Traditional four sided, thin paramecium shaped, obese cross shaped, there were the five sided (Chrysler logo shape), and box kites.

What made these so unique was the use, at Franks insistence, of Sunday comic pages, or any type of colored paper available. The same multi coloured tail rule also applied. And so up, up and away in our beautiful kites, higher and higher to where
the rocks from the beanie shooter would not reach. We would learn to dip, to turn, to yaw and gee the kites. The Master at his best.

The boys of our time all played the Westerns as seen through the eyes of the supposed fastest gun, the best bronco rider, the most fearless pony express rider, and from my back yard to the railroad track we had lots of sage to herd our imaginary stock and to chase the bandido's, we were all hero's.

The mulberry tree was not really a mulberry tree but rather it was a multi-service structure, one day a tree, where the Tarzan portrayed of the day would swing out from the lower limbs, safely land in the dry river bed and make way to some adventure in the nearby forest (the quince tree).

The lower limbs provided the corpus of the bomb bay of the secret aeroplane with a minimum crew for this dangerous mission. The cockpit was of course in the higher part of the tree actually at the crossing of two of the larger limbs. The bomb run
was skillfully carried out and the water filled balloons dropped to precision on an imaginary target. Yes we were hero's.

Long before high school I had a long standing relationship with the daughter of the man that wrote a book about the West. It was about one seeking revenge and in the end found that tho the law was lean it was still the law. For many years she and I would play at being nothing but neighbors, but for my part I felt a particular attraction for her.

As the weeks passed by and our COMIC BOOK trading continued, it seemed that years would not come between us. In the growth of the comic book collection there was the inevitable growth of the principle reads also.

It was during this time that I began to notice that certain portions of the feminine side began to have bulges that couldn't just be muscle. When I asked my grandmother what was wrong after describing the growing affliction. My grandmother reached over taking me into her arms and laughingly told me I was growing up and so was Cecilia Flynn. Yes, Cecilia lived just around the corner, her father Thomas Theodore Flynn wrote the award winning story, made into a movie staring James Stewart. The book was "The Man From Laramie". I would date Cecilia occasionally over the years but not with the ardor I felt for her during the COMIC TRADING TIME.

I went back to Mount Carmel and the strict regimen of the Sisters Of Loretto. My measuring model soon faded and I found that many of the girls were far prettier than my original measure. There was Vonna Belle Hendren, tall, blond, slender and for me the best part seated next to me. This was a friendship that would end up being on and off through our high school years. It was strictly that, a good friendship.

It came to pass that my Aunt Rose decided that I should have a small easy part time job. Thus, after telling my Mom " David needs to grow ' I began my apprenticeship as a Printers Devil for my Aunt Rose (Rose Lyon) the owner of the SOCORRO CHIEFTAIN, the weekly newspaper for Socorro and the County. My job, simple, come to work Saturday morning, sweep the print shop, gather used print, melt same, pouring off hot lead into ingots, get a little dirty go home.

As I grew a bit I would get to do more in the print portion of the Chieftain, and was soon running one of the small slow presses, printing legal posters, sales fliers, and any political poster printing job that Franco was able to secure,(you may remember that Socorro County was virtually and politically owned by the Water Commissioner, and my Aunt Rose was a long way from being of the Democratic party ) so getting very much political work was next to nil, but there was plenty of regular printing to do.

Things were to happen to effect my life. First I was to get a bicycle and Aunt Rose was to sell the Chieftain. Tom Dabney bought the CHIEFTAIN from Aunt Rose, I was on the way to being a full apprentice printer.This was not to happen, and in retrospect, I sort of knew that soon I would leave Mr. Dabney to gather his own print. Now don't get me wrong. Mr. Dabney was a good man, except for his loose appliance.

I will call it an appliance as opposed to what it was in actuality. It lead me to my last day at the CHIEFTAIN, and happened in this way. Mr. Dabney could on occasion get jumpy at the slightest change in his perception of normal behavior. It was on this, my last day that as I melted the used print I accidentally spilled the hot (damn hot) lead on a section of oiled floor in the print shop area. The smoke from the oiled floor was rapidly filling the print shop and would soon be in the front portion of the building. Well about this time Mr. Dabney came rushing back, yelling as loud as he could, and with a mouth full of appliance that escaped its hold and fell, one bounce, two, three, and wouldn't you know it? Yeah, right into the spilt lead, disaster at the fall of a set of false teeth. And my last day.

During the years I was at Mount Carmel, I gained a good respect for the guys with the heavier fist or longer arms or what ever else they used to rule the roost. I also gained a life lasting hatred for nepotism in any fashion.

Remember, during this period of time there was a depression and it was something that effected every day life. Teachers at the public school were not the highest paid folks around, and you also know the nuns were far from overpaid. Yet on the campus of both the public school and convent there were bullies. The political hacks in those demanded and got their ten percent from every city, county or state employee in their wards. It was tribute paid because the democrats in power made it so. Thus the teachers paid their dues, the nuns pressed by the forces that existed, passed the offspring of the vermin to the next grade. I do not know personally that the passing was real all though I know that when I reentered the convent I had class mates that had been behind me when I moved and were then in the same grade, and these were the off spring of politico's. Tribute at its best.

Even though there were hard times, the world was in tumult and trouble it couldn't handle but life went on and some sort of reverie was had as often as possible. Birthday parties continued and were enjoyed to the fullest by those invited to attend. It was one of these that brought me to my first meeting of the Harriet Family. Grace the eldest. Marianne, Alice and as I think I remember brother Michael.

I knew I was close to heaven when my grandmother took me to the big home with a huge porch, with a chain suspended swing. And then the games, wow, and the ice cream and cake. But I'll never forget. Alice(Harriet Caldwell) Duquet has kindly given me permission to include a picture of the Harriet Home (index will take you to it)
I have heard the Harriet Home called by other names, however I insist that the only name that should be associated with it is "Harriet", for within the structure was not just a home, but a living mechanism for "fun, laughter, friendship" just to name a few.

During the same summer I met and fell off my bike for the granddaughter of Mrs. Fitch, Ann Augustine. She was to spend the summer in Socorro and to my great delight she consented to spend much of it with me. She had a cousin, Kit Horne, who also came for a part of the summer. The three of us and Miquette and Rudy Padilla were pretty much joined at the hip.

I won't go into the reason that I left the convent and enrolled in the public school, only to say that I didn't suffer a poke in the back too well. Mr. Stapleton, the principal of Socorro Grade School, was not quite sure what to do with me, enroll or not. With not much more than "Here is Dave Anderson" I was given to the first male teacher I had ever had, Mr. Vernon Cox. Mr. Cox, coach, math, science teacher, and all around great guy did a superb job of keeping the seventh and eighth grades from killing each other. And it in this venue that many long lasting friendships developed and would carry on , some through high school others through several tough life times. I will loose many young friends to various causes, cancer, alcohol, road rage, and the great sacrifice of self in war.

The close bonds between Gordon Stirling, Neil Gray, and me would at times prove to be the near down fall of all three. For if it was not really supposed to happen, well tough, it did. You would have to remember that Neil was the son of the Socorro County Sheriff, Gordon the son of the Baptist Minister, and me the miss placed Catholic. There would be in time the incident of the bottle of EVERCLEAR, the street lights, the potato in the tail pipe, and the forever no school "its Friday".

I'll cover these when the time is right, for now there is the female aspect that needs to be touched upon. Oleta Fowler was the first girl that gained my full attention. Slender, blond , blue eyed and one of nicest people I have (even to this day) met. We would walk home together after school. We were pretty much together during that summer and remained good friends throughout the next few years and into high school.

Bill Caldwell and his sister were a year ahead of me and they traveled in a different crowd and in a different sector of the community. (buses were a non item then as well as now) In their group was one Gwendolyn Ivy, red head, freckled faced, had one slightly chipped front tooth, yep, down right beautiful girl. She toasted mud in my eye in the school annual.

Another member of the more elite group of girls was Billie Jean Reese and Dorothy Lopez. The big difference was that Billie Jean would be true friends with the masses, Dorothy on the other hand more or less became private property and didn't associate much with the rest of us.

Though I did not return to the convent for my eighth year I did maintain a friendship with some of the kids that did go the convent. Kenneth Edwards, his grandfather owned the grocery store where most of the community traded, was a close friend, though his participation in the scandalous exploits was nil. Once in a while he would join in the "great watermelon raid" however for the most part he kept to the quiet side.

Bobby Henderson came to our class and group in the eighth grade, as I remember. He and Don Wakefield were frequent participants in the November ritual of "tossed cans" which in later years would become "tossed houses". These pranks did not endear us to the local Town Marshall (I think his name was Polo Pineda). But then that was to also escalate a few years later and incorporated the use of a very large potato and a part of an automobile.