A group of three women came into the shop yesterday and one of them asked me if it were true that the mayor of Madrid is a dog. I was taken aback a little and before I answered I asked her where she was from. She said two of them were from near here in El Dorado and their friend was from New York. That sufficed, so I answered, “Why, yes it is, or was once. Where’d you hear about this?” She said she had read about it somewhere. I started thinking, “Hmmmm..I’m the one who started that rumor and started writing about it. Maybe someone does read the words I put together. Gosh, I hope no one in town is reading the stuff I write about Madrid.”
I immediately wondered why I would be afraid of someone in town reading my semi-fiction about Madrid. Hadn’t people been doing that ever since the town began? Maybe not. “Come to think of it,” I mused while interacting with the three customers, “I guess people around here are awfully concerned about the facts. Facts? Who decides what is fact, what is fiction, or what is embellished a little to make it taller and more interesting?”
When I first moved here in ’99 I heard all kinds of tales about this person and that person, or this strange event, or that weird situation, most involving some sort of violence with a hint here and there that the mine shafts here abouts might have disposed of more than one feuding Madroid and his cousin too. I heard about one long time resident grabbing over stimulated patrons of the Mineshaft Tavern by their collars and the back of their belts and tossing them off the balcony like so much drunk cordwood while he served as the bouncer. I heard about a guy falling off a ledge outside a cave here in town off Cave Road one night at a party and landing on his back in a patch of Cholla Cactus. I heard it was lucky he was stoned out of his gourd when it happened because it took two hours and a pair of bloody pliers to pull out all the spines. I heard about the drive-by shootings by groups of Hispanics from Cerrillos, down the hill from us a few miles, upset presumably because the entire town of Madrid was populated by Anglo Hippies, or so they thought. This was the time of Hippies being burned out by the Hispanics in Villanueva and Tiera Amarillo, so it might be true. I also heard about lost Spanish gold from the Pueblo revolt of 1680 and where it’s hidden, UFO’s, desert Sasquatch, inbread cougars who guard secret caves filled with the treasure of Montezuma, and much, much more. To say Madrid is an interesting place is to understate in the extreme.
That potentiality and many of the persons mentioned to me in these stories were still alive and still living in Madrid or in the surrounding hills when I first came here. I stayed then for around five or six years before moving closer to Santa Fe, or maybe, farther away from Madrid and its vibes. Now that I have come back, a number of the key figures in those earlier tales have either died and been buried up on the Mesa South of town in the town cemetery, have had strokes and survived if somewhat diminished in vigor, or have drifted away to parts known and unknown. The town itself has quieted and started a process toward gentrification. Many shops have become upscale Galleries, and the remaining shops have really gotten nice. There are many less loaf abouts perched on the stone wall across from Java Junction, and the darker characters are easier to pick out in the new light cast about in Madrid’s uplift.
Some things have not changed at all. Gaven’s house, next to Java Junction looks exactly as it did when I lived here, indeed, it looks exactly like it did back in the early 70’s when he and his wife bought it for two-hundred dollars or so. People come here to the shop, excited to have found, “An Abandoned House!” Only to be let down when we explain to them that, “No, someone lives there. They’ve just preserved the architectural integrity of the era in which it was purchased by the original Hippy re-settlers.” He still runs the water department. When we first moved back, I warned Lynn not to drink the water, but I was surprised how clean and odor free it seemed. It was a month later that it was difficult to take a shower without gagging, the toilet water was black, really black in the bowel, and the water out of the kitchen faucet got the dishes dirtier than they were after a meal. It’s better now, but that’s exactly how the water was when I lived in the Old Stone School House when I first moved here. The same guys we didn’t trust back then, and who had a violent aspect to their personality still cruise up and down the main street in what looks like the same trucks they were driving years ago, only with more bailing wire and duct tape holding them together. I still don’t trust them and since I’ve been back I’ve seen them in states of antisocial behavior, or have heard about it. I still deal with them with civility and receive the same response from them most of the time. That undercurrent of agitation is still there though, just under the surface and capable of jumping out unless coddled and mulified. I stay away from them when they are acting out in the streets, or in the Tavern.
Madrid looks different now. The shops and Galleries are more brightly painted. The displays of art and merchandise are really thoughtfully displayed both inside and out. Fountains bubble here and there, wind chimes play out their lively tunes, birds sing happily from the trees that have grown so much since I have been gone, and the whole place seems more civilized somehow if quieter. It’s as though Madrid has become wholesome, or is headed toward wholesomeness. My partner pointed out to me that the children who grow up here stay here for the most part. It’s true. It seems unusual to me in modern America somehow, but it seems like a good thing. I keep meeting, or re-meeting young adults who I knew as little kids, or little kids who were infants when I left. There are kids, young adults, middle aged people, elderly people; people of all ages living here together. Madrid has become a real, viable community, not just a hideout for outlaws and hippies like it once was. People raise families here. It’s a much kinder place.
And the other people I used to know when I lived here before? The ones still alive are grayer, have less teeth for the most part, but are still those unique characters they always were. They have gotten older, but they’re still the same fun, quirky people that makes this place so interesting and so endearing. Without them Madrid would have disappeared into the coal dust of the gulch in which it clings more than thirty years ago. These good people have shored it up with intention, courage, and imagination. They recognized Madrid and what it could become. They are the glue that bound this place together and their kids are taking Madrid into the 21 st Century with mellowness, peace, and a sense of place unlike any in America today.