From New Mexico Looking Back at Texas

So much has changed since I started this blog in 2007. For one thing, I’ve grown old, now staring at my 78th birthday on September 16. Back in 2007 I had just lost my mother, I had decided I wanted to try living at least part time in New Mexico, which to me of course meant Santa Fe, and I was one year shy of 65. I had been enamored of the capitol city since our family’s first and only true vacation. I’m uncertain of the year, either 1952 or ’53. I’ve written about that before on this blog, and I’m not going to rehash it here.

For the first few years of this blog, I had a lot to say about the things that had been brewing in me for my entire life. Family, people who have made their mark on me over decades, religion, social justice, history, the world of collecting of which my interests are a minuscule part, more. Photos were an important part of what I posted. Then somewhere around 2012 I lost my steam, so my time in blogosphere was reduced to pics and only brief comments, if I said anything at all. It didn’t take long for me to lose interest altogether. I’ve tried regenerating that over 10 years, posting a piece maybe two or three times each year, but I’ve lost the need to say something. I hate to think that I have drained the well. 

Well, crap, why am I now connecting that I had heart bypass surgery in November 2012, and one year before I had a stent. The spring of 2012 was the last time I exhibited at the Round Top Antiques Fair. I sent what remained of my collection of Texana to auction in July that year—two 26 foot van loads from my two-story barn home in Leon County Texas. That 200 acre place had become part of my family in 1973, and in 1999-2000 I had had about 2000 square feet of the barn that had been built in the early ‘60s converted to a living space. I created a native garden that had grown shovelful by shovelful over several years.

After sending off those two van loads of my collection, there was plenty of unrelated but very cool stuff still in the place. By 2013 my twice-annual trips to Texas were reduced to one. In the winter of 2017 I made another significant run at reducing the contents of my barn home. That summer I deeded the place to my middle sister. I had bought a home here in Albuquerque, which I love about as much as anyone can love a place. At times my heart still mourns giving away something that at its foundation was a gift to me from my mother, and in which I had invested so much spirit, talent, physical energy, and money. Reality dictated that I give up something, the hard lesson of resources.  I haven’t been back to Leon County since May of 2019. A friend here in Albuquerque who buys and sells carried me to Texas then, pulling a 20 foot cargo trailer behind his crew cab truck to bring back everything we could haul for a sale here in Albuquerque. It happened, a more than modest success, still falling short of an outright success. Action. Cut. To be continued.