“The green chile harvest should begin in earnest in the next two to three weeks, said Stephanie Walker, extension vegetable specialist at New Mexico State University.”
“As long as the weather keeps cooperating, we’re going to have an excellent, excellent crop.”
Oh yes.
: Cue the wavy lines : Today we’re headed down memory lane.
The year was 1988. Hmm…I believe we’re talking Fall semester of school? My memory is often weak. If so, then the month would have been August, or maybe September.
It was warm, I remember that. Then again, it’s always warm in Las Cruces.
I was a student at New Mexico State University. Enrolled in the College of Business.
I was also a member of a social sorority. Yes, now it can be told. Me, I was a sorority girl. Though it didn’t mean what you think of when you think of that stereotype.
NMSU is a different sort of college and the group I belonged to wasn’t your typical sort of sorority. But yes, it can’t be denied. I’m a sorority girl. My husband never thought he’d end up with a sorority girl. I never thought I’d end up with an ROTC guy. Things change…
I had only joined the group just the semester before. It was all pretty new to me. But summer was ending and it was time to engage in “rush”, that every semester ritual whereby you try to convince new people to join (new members, the lifeblood of any organization).
We had to practice for days. Learning songs, doing skits, working on conversation skills, coming up with party theme ideas. Figuring out how to be little drone salespeople, I realize now, in my later years.
So we’d line up, white Keds sparkling in the New Mexico sunshine, shorts perfectly creased, hair teased impossibly high. We were a’twitter with anticipation about meeting the new young ladies who would come to our house to learn about us, and our particular sorority.
They would gather on the front walk and we’d run out, do some awkward singing on the lawn, then select one of the girls, cut her from the herd and bring her inside.
From there, we’d engage in some banal conversation for about ten minutes. Then with the subtle cue, we’d “switch partners” and go on to the next girl, engage is similar inane conversation, and on and on. So it went.
At the end of the day, we’d compare notes and decide who we wanted to invite back the next day.
So on that fateful day back in 1988, the theme of the party was somehow something Jamaican. We’d adapted the words to Bob Marley’s “One Love” to fit in things about our sorority (a travesty, if there ever was one).
For reasons I can’t explain, yards and yards of camouflage netting had been hung from the ceilings in the house…to really bring in that tropical feel?
Being the well-behaved drone, I lined up, I ran outside, I sang, I selected, and dragged this poor young lady into the house.
Her name was Kathleen.
She was extraordinarily tall, dark hair, face full of charming freckles, and the brightest blue eyes in the world.
At six feet all, she had to spend the day ducked under that low hanging camo net, but was a good sport about it. She was a little shy, but we hit it off. We saw the world in a similar way, and I really thought she was cool. Her mom had been a member of the same sorority, what they call “a legacy,” so she was pretty odds on to make the cut.
Ten minutes passed fast, and I moved on, reluctantly. Later, in the voting round, I gave her a big thumbs up, as did all the others.
She soon joined, became “a pledge” and I got to know her more. We became distant friends, she ran pretty thick with the girl who was my roommate. They did everything together. But we were friends and always got along.
The story goes on at some length from here. Too much to tell, really.
I’ll fast forward a bit. A couple years later, some adversity hit Kathleen’s life. Hard. Big. Overwhelming. In a bid to deal with a pending breakdown, she did some stuff that made sense in the mind of youth. Some crazy sh*t that seemed like a big deal at the time, but in my now grown up eyes, looks incredibly not even noteworthy.
Because of all of that, she lost a lot of friends back then. People with small minds who didn’t want to understand. People who maybe weren’t really friends to begin with.
But through all that, she didn’t lose me.
In fact, that adversity she struggled through moved us from being pretty good friends to rock solid life-long best friends. 99.999% of the fun I’ve had up until I met The Good Man is directly attributable to her. Pretty much every wayback machine moment I have written about on this site, she was either there or more likely was the catalyst.
A lot has gone on in the twenty-plus years since. We both graduated, grew up, became actual adults, all against our will.
Tomorrow evening, I have the honor of driving to the airport to pick up my best good friend of now some unbelievable twenty years. She will be here for a weekend that likely will move way too fast.
Attached is a very small photo (sorry about the size, I don’t have the original handy) of my best friend and me on my wedding day. I wouldn’t have anyone else at my side. She’s just said something that has cracked. me. up.
You don’t laugh that hard with someone who you kind of feel fond about…you laugh that hard with someone who is family.
I love that girl. I can hardly wait to see her!
P.S. Not to be all selfish, but to have both my best girlfriend and The Good Man together this weekend, two people who are always in my court, it’s kind of all about me, and…well, hell, it’s *good* to be me!
Some webfame for our Fair New Mexico.
From the “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks
I’ve never been prouder to be a New Mexican.
Gotta love Grants.
Earlier today, in a meeting at work, one of my teammates was given a gift from our clients. It was a really nifty wool stadium blanket.
Another lady asked to look at it, and when it landed in her hands, she brought it to her nose and took a good deep smell.
Just writing that…I know you know that smell, right? Nothing else smells like wool.
I smiled, because I was across the table and I knew exactly what she was smelling. I thought to myself about my own memories of the smell of wool.
Usually winter, outside, snowy day in Albuquerque (the only time it would be cold enough to wear a wool sweater). That perfect storm of smells combined, wool, a snowy day, a bit of sweat and the dirt on my mittens (that got there from making a snowball to lob, offline, at my brother).
Yeah.
So then this got me thinking about the deep associations made from odors, both good and bad.
But I was thinking about good…about the smells I deeply love.
The first that immediately came to mind was leather. I mean, unless you are a PETA advocate, who doesn’t love the smell of good leather?
Just that smell can dredge up lots of happy memories.
Like…the combined smell of leather and saddle soap you get upon opening the door to a tack room. Especially when I was taking riding classes at NMSU, because that tack room had rows and rows of saddles, all smelling nice.
Or…back when we first started dating, The Good Man had this black hard-leather jacket. It’s now too big for him and I think he recently gave it away, but I can easily remember that smell. Hugging him really tight, sinking my face into the shoulder of that jacket and inhaling deeply, tattooing the scent of cute boy and leather deeply into every single cell of my being.
Yeah.
Or, or….how about the smell of a new baseball glove? So many kids will get a new glove and spend lots of time with that thing firmly over the face inhaling. Nothing like that smell.
But I seem to be stuck on leather…
What’s another good smell?
Oh, I know! So…up and down the peninsula here, they have tons of Eucalyptus trees. Early in the morning or very late at night (depending on what side of the nightclub you’re on), when you get the heavy damp fog, it makes those trees let go that very distinctive scent.
The moist, cool damp and Eucalyptus smell… when I travel somewhere else, and then come home, I always latch on to that smell first. It’s SO the Bay Area. Easily identifiable by anyone who has ever lived here.
Here’s an easy one for all the New Mexico folks…the smell of chiles roasting. Utterly identifiable…for miles. So reminiscent of home.
Summer rain on hot pavement. God I love that smell!
Sheets washed with Downy and dried on the clothesline. Haven’t done it in years, so who knows if it smells good anymore? Doesn’t matter, in my memories, it’s always fantastic. I think it helped being in NM because stuff dried really fast and didn’t pick up too much environmental yuck.
Home baked cinnamon rolls served on Christmas morning.
The soap and water smell of my husband just after he emerges from the shower. So delicious! (ok, that’s two about The Good Man, sorry!)
This is kind of funny, but how about the first time you noticed the distinctive smell of money? For me, it was after getting paid allowance for the first time with the kind of money that folded, not jingled. That dollar bill smelled like potential to me.
Aw, heck, I suppose I could go on all night this way.
I’m sure there’s some scientist who would explain how odors can make such vivid memories (like here), but I don’t need to know the science.
Right now, I’m sitting on the couch, watching a baseball game…thinking of how the yard smells on a nice July night like this. Garlic fries, hot dogs and marine layer.
Indelible.
Thanks to Jim Baca for the link to:
Put together by former reporter Tracy Dingmann and former Albuquerque Journal reporter and editorial page writer Denise Tessier to take a closer look at the shenanigans over at New Mexico’s only paper.
I’d say this blog is much necessary and long overdue.