nostalgia – Page 12 – Oh Fair New Mexico

Everything Old is New Again

Posted on April 2, 2012April 2, 2012
by Karen Fayeth
3 Comments

Take a look at this photo. It’s not my photo. I came across it yesterday and I kind of liked it.

It’s got that color saturation and green tinge that you see in a lot of these new square format apps for the iPhone and Android (my personal favorite is Hipstamatic).

Actually, I like this photo a lot. But I didn’t heart it on Instagram. I didn’t like it on Facebook. I didn’t re-Tweet it either.

Because this photo was found inside a frame and mounted to a wall at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.

This photo is part of their Walker Evans show.

This weekend, my photography group took a field trip to check out the exhibit. Going in, I knew very little about Walker Evans other than he had captured a lot of powerful black and white images from the Depression. I purposefully didn’t study up before my trip because I wanted to learn about the photographer through his photos.

Well. Knock me over. I was really, seriously and deeply educated by the time all was said and done.

First of all, Walker was a writer, and then moved into photography. He did both for most of his life. So take that you scallywags who say an artist should pick a medium and not dabble. Feh! Also, I really came to appreciate Walker’s sense of irony. You have to get up close and look around the frame of his photos to find it, but it’s always in there.

That said, the part of the exhibit that gave me the “holy crap!” moment of connection was at the very end when I saw the photos tucked away on the back wall.

It seems that in his early seventies, Walker Evans was left tired and uninspired and found himself unwilling or perhaps unable to create.

And then he got himself a Polaroid SX-70 camera and an unlimited supply of film.

“I bought that thing as a toy, and I took it as a kind of challenge,” Evans explained. “It was this gadget and I decided that I might be able to do something serious with it. So I got to work to try to prove that. I think I’ve done something with it.”

As I stood there looking at the photos, I was at first jealous. Jealous of that “unlimited supply” of Polaroid film. I am completely devoted to the Polaroid camera and used several different versions growing up and well into adulthood. I shot Polaroid until the film was no longer available.

Thanks to the Impossible Project, it’s still possible to buy Polaroid film, but at almost $24 a pack, that easy carefree snap-whatever-you-feel-like and just buy another pack mentality has to be reined in.

So I stood there feeling jealous about having all that free film on hand.

And then…my hands came up and framed either side of my whaaaat? face as I realized…

I have access to an instant camera and unlimited film. But in a different format. Sames tools, different age.

I have Hipstamatic on my iPhone. And Instagram. And a bunch of other toy camera apps.

All of these beautiful color saturated photos. They can still be made! I can still snap with reckless abandon! Oh dear god I have this gadget and I might actually be able to do something serious with it.

Oh my goodness. Oh. My. Goodness!

This realization left me dazed and confused and happy. So happy.

And inspired.

Top photo, “Untitled, 1974 Unique Polaroid” by Walker Evans and used here under Fair Use.

Quote from The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer.

I Know Your Shame

Posted on March 6, 2012March 6, 2012
by Karen Fayeth
3 Comments

This morning I was at my local Peet’s waiting on a latte when I noticed the line behind me was getting pretty long. Like out the door. Commuters were starting to get the angry eyes.

The guy behind the counter pulling coffee shots and making drinks was moving slow, and when he noticed the backup, he got a little flustered. The more he eyed the long line of impatient workday people, the more flustered he got.

Suddenly, one of the other people behind the counter went, “whoa! Ok, you work the register” and then she physically pulled the guy away from the espresso machine and shoved him at the register. The young man sighed, dejected, turned to the next customer and said “can I help you?”

The kid was put in the hot spot, the bottleneck, the key role….and he couldn’t handle it.

And I felt bad for the guy. Then I slipped into the Wayback Machine.

The year was 1990. It was summertime. My folks were living in Carlsbad, so I went back home to C’bad to spend my summer between semesters at NMSU.

My salt-o-the earth parents insisted that I couldn’t enjoy the summer break. I was required to get a job.

Times were a little tough in Carlsbad in that year. Many of the potash mines had closed and jobs were a little scarce. Any good summer job had already been snapped up, and that left me with only one place that would hire me.

Taco Bell.

I slipped into my double knit polyester rust colored uniform, pinned my name to my chest, and went to work slinging beans.

I had worked a cashier’s job in high school, and one of my coworkers taught me how to count change and keep my till balanced to the penny. The Taco Bell people loved me. My till always balanced, I was pretty good as customer service, and I kept the place clean.

Inevitably, the manager decided to give me a shot working on the drive thru window.

The hot spot. The bottleneck. The key role.

It started out ok, I guess. I was a little confounded by taking the order but not taking money right away and keeping track of which car owed what amount and which order came next. The line of cars started to back up. It extended out onto Church street.

I managed to give the wrong order to at least three different cars.

Some guy came inside the restaurant all pissed off and complained to the manager. Cuz, you know, his tacos weren’t right. Or something.

Anyhow, I was unceremoniously pulled off drive through and put back on front register.

It was clear that I’d failed, and my failure was Very Bad. My coworkers wouldn’t make eye contact with me. I’d once been a star employee. I was now disgraced.

I was never given another shot at my nemesis the Drive Thru. Never had another chance to prove I could handle it (not that I cared, honestly).

I made it through the rest of that summer working register and of course went back to Las Cruces. Classes began again at NMSU and over the years I graduated, got a job and lived my life.

Twenty years later, the embarrassment is still fresh. Another minimum wage employee has learned the humiliation of not being quite good enough to handle the hot spot.

I hope he gets over it quicker than I did.
.
.
.
.
Tangentially related, two years later, a F2 tornado ripped through town, injuring 6 people at the Taco Bell and ripping the bell off the top of the building.

The tornados in Carlsbad are the stuff of nightmares. My personal tornado story is well documented here.

A short Google search, and lo and behold, a photo of the 1992 tornado. The Internet is a weird thing.

Image from Southeastern New Mexico Weather Web Page.

Noise Pollution & Tasty Morsels

Posted on February 22, 2012February 23, 2012
by Karen Fayeth
2 Comments

So there I am, Saturday morning, sleeping in a quiet bed in a quiet room at an undisclosed location somewhere near Radium Springs.

It’s the first real quiet I’ve enjoyed in six months. That was the last time I visited Southern New Mexico.

And then, literally cutting through the early morning hours comes, this:

That’s a lot of saw blades!

It’s tree trimming time at the pecan farm next door to my best friend’s place.

A piece of heavy farm equipment with six whirring saw blades cutting through hearty pecan wood sounds, well….just about as awful as you’d expect. Every once in a while they’d hit an especially green branch and the sound was the stuff of nightmares.

After the saw passed by, the trees looked like a line of military recruits with brand new flattops.

Evidently pecan trees will immediately put out new growth in the areas where they have been cut. Futher, pecan nuts flourish on new growth, so pecan farmers cut back the trees to boost production.

I gotta say, back in my formative years, I don’t remember pecan farmers cutting back trees so much. But then again, we didn’t have the robust demand for pecans from Asian markets that we see today.

From a 2011 WSJ article: “Five years ago, China bought hardly any pecans. In 2009, China bought one-quarter of the U.S. crop, and there’s no sign demand is abating.”

So farmers will do just about anything to boost production.
.
.
.
Hey, did you know that pecan trees are notorious water hogs? And right now, the drought in New Mexico is palpable.

Oh, but that’s a different story for another day.

Photos Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth and subject to the Creative Commons license in the far right column of this page. Top photo taken with my Canon Rebel, bottom photo taken with my iPhone4s and the Camera+ app.

In the Box

Posted on February 7, 2012February 7, 2012
by Karen Fayeth
6 Comments

Despite the fact that The Good Man and I actually moved two weeks ago, we didn’t fully depart the old place until this past weekend.

That last mile is a sonofabitch.

I guess we just wanted to save the best for last? Or something. Basically, the last stuff to exit the old place was the stuff from deep in the dark recesses of storage under the house.

Let’s be honest, this stuff it wasn’t “our” stuff, it was my stuff. Lots and lots of boxes, some of which hadn’t been opened since they made the 1,200 mile ride from Albuquerque to the Bay Area.

The goal this weekend was to open those deteriorating boxes, get rid of what I could, and what was left, repack into fresh boxes and move on.

This proved to be a more difficult task than I had expected.

There were some surprises in those ol’ boxes. Especially the one I’d jauntily labeled “Karen’s Childhood.”

What a doozy that one was.

Sunday morning, there I sat on the cold floor of my now former garage, used my Buck knife to slice open the “childhood” box and dug around in there. I extracted a now almost fourteen year old gallon size Ziploc bag containing a bunch of papers and stuff I clearly didn’t know what to do with when I left Albuquerque.

I unzipped the bag, pulled out the contents and went through it piece by piece. I turned over photos, old love notes, and a ticket stub.

I gasped and my eyes got a little watery from both joy and memory.

The Wayback Machine gobbled me whole.

Here’s what I found:

The year was…um….yeah. 1990? Maybe 1989? Oh jumping jehosophat! I don’t know. A long time ago when my skin was elastic and my pants were not.

It was Ag Week at NMSU. An annual celebration that was a week full of fun, games, and dancing for all us kids in and around the Ag College. It culminated in a big concert and dance at the Pan Am center on the last day of the week.

This was a special year. My best good friend excitedly told me that her Uncle Bax would be performing at that year’s Ag Week. And by Uncle Bax, she meant Cowboy Poet and legendary New Mexican, Baxter Black.

That year there was another yahoolio on the bill with Bax. Some nobody named Vince Gill.

Yeah. That Vince Gill. Before anyone knew who he was.

Friday morning we were invited to come to the Ag Lobby to meet and greet. Bax was there holding court and signing autographs, and gave my best friend a huge hug when she walked up. We talked and laughed with Bax a while and then we went over to check out this Vince Gill character. He was wearing a pair of NMSU sweatpants, a three day old scruffy beard, and hair that hadn’t been washed in a good long while.

He was nice enough. Looked totally exhausted. He signed a glossy black and white promo photo (I found that in the bag too) and we walked away wondering who that rube was.

He put on a hell of a show that night. And so did Uncle Bax.

Let’s just say this, it was a hell of a party.

One for the history books. Sure would be fun to live that one again.

When the trash went out at the end of Sunday, the Bax and Vince ticket didn’t go with it. It went back into the Ziploc bag, then into a new box.

Maybe in another fourteen years I’ll slice open that box and discover it again.

And gasp.

And well up.

And remember.

Those were salad days, indeed.