Albuquerque

Summertime in Albuquerque was (and I can only assume still is) hot, dry, and unbelievably sunny. Mother and I walked along long, straight streets, wearing our hats, of course. The hats' lightweight synthetic fabric that didn't absorb the sweat from our brows, but wicked it away, helping us remain cool. Actually, during the days, we were never actually cool, but at least we weren't sweltering.

On both occasions when it rained, we ran out into the freshened air to catch sight of double rainbows in the pale azure sky. Most days, that sky domed over us as the sun made its daily sojourn fiercely, savagely, monotonously.

“Hot as Hades,” Mother said, “though nowhere as humid. No burning flesh or cauldrons of boiling oil, you see.”

We encountered some desert wildlife in New Mexico, as well.

We came across colonies of prairie dogs, who may have been introduced to the region by humans, but, if they'd always been there, it was through human support that their numbers increased, exponentially, it seemed, to what it was during our tenure. The prairie dogs built vast underground networks of tunnels, some of which led up to the hard, yet sandy, surface of the earth. They were not particularly scared of humans. A local volunteer group collected unsold produce from grocery markets and fed the still-edible vegetation to the prairie dogs. It was not unusual to see, off the side of the road, a prairie dog crunching a carrot, or tearing leaves from a head of iceberg. It was also in Albuquerque that we saw our first roadrunner. It did not look anything like the animation on television. Nothing like it, at all, so that Mother had to point it out to me. It's a smallish brown bird, with a long, long tail. And it ran. It stood still in the middle of the quiet street. Then, without warning, it darted out of sight, into the open desert.

Mother had brought my push-scooter from Pennsylvania. I enjoyed using it around the quiet streets of our immediate neighbourhood. Unlike the hilly landscape of Buttfuck Nowhere, Albuquerque, at least our neighbourhood within the city, was relatively level and easy to scoot around.

After the rains and the heat, however, the joints on the scooter became rusted and unworkable, so we donated it to the local landfill. It had been a birthday present to me the previous year, from Mother and Daddy. And now, it was leaving our life, and, like Daddy, would never return.

Mother rented a storage unit about a mile from Antique Alice and Uncle Rick's house. It was an unconditioned space in a metal structure with a rolling door, not unlike a car garage. It was hot during the day, behaving not unlike a solar oven, but without the clear roof. Since there were no light fixtures, however, Mother tended to go in the early morning to collect the boardgames with which we passed our time, and, later, to reorganise and repack possessions once it became clear that Albuquerque would not be our final destination.

Antique Alice became less patient with both Mother and me as the days and weeks passed. We obviously upset her routine, although it was hard to tell that she really had any regular routine to interrupt. She had just started her own business, so I guess a lot of her time and energy were spent establishing her company and finding work. Uncle Rick worked at a government facility as a scientist. He'd leave for work around the same time every day, and he'd return for dinner in the evening. He seemed to have a very regular schedule.

Unlike Antique Alice, who was short if not petite, Uncle Rick was tall, with a full head of fluffy blonde hair. He had the sort of body that I would later associate with teenage boys. He was quiet. Neither Uncle Rick nor Antique Alice played games with Mother and me. They just weren't the gaming type, I guess.

Most often, Mother and I played card games. When we were lucky, Mother would learn of a game day being hosted by a friendly neighbour and we'd go play games with them. Mother was quite happy to introduce me to the other players, who were mostly, if not all, older than she was. I did my best to play well, of course, because I loved playing, even if I didn't always win. The other players complimented me on how well I played, and I could tell that pleased Mother.

Mother also attended the local Bridge club on Tuesday afternoons, when they held a game specifically geared toward players who were returning after an absence or who wanted some tutoring prior to playing a game. She'd leave just before lunchtime, then return in the mid-afternoon.

Either she or Antique Alice would cook dinner. Antique Alice preferred to do the cooking herself, however. Her methods for handling some ingredients were very different from Mother's and Uncle David's. The only thing that didn't cook well at that altitude was one of our staples: rice. Since water cannot reach the same temperature prior to boiling, rice didn't cook quite as thoroughly, and, therefore, tended to be very al dente. Antique Alice lacked a pressure cooker with which to provide the needed pressure and therefore temperature to cook the rice thoroughly. When Paw-Paw came, she wouldn't eat the rice that Antique Alice prepared, and it was not only because it was brown rice instead of the white rice Paw-Paw was accustomed to. It didn't take long for me to start rejecting the rice, as well. I'm sure it did nothing for Antique Alice that nobody outside of Uncle Rick would eat her rice.

By the end of August, Paw-Paw and Gong-Gong had a new home for us. They helped re-pack our belongings from the storage facility and from Antique Alice and Uncle Rick's house. They helped load a moving truck, then drove the big yellow vehicle out of Albuquerque, heading west. About a week later, Mother and I followed, on a passenger plane, to San Diego, California.