Epilogue?

I’m sorry for the lack of updates.  I’ve been busy with my other projects, of which the main one is my new son.  He just turned three months about five or so days ago.  I’ve also been trying to figure out how to wrap up this small chapter in my life.

I’m still not sure why I became so fixated on Farmington earlier this year.  I started this blog just to write about it, and that concept doesn’t lend itself to a long life.  I’ve covered most of what happened on the trip, or at least what I remember.  Next August it will have been twenty-five years since that month in 1984.  I have one of the best memories of anyone I know, but even for me it’s getting hazy.

Part of me wanted to go back to Farmington in 2008, but financially and time-wise (the start of my family) it just didn’t make sense.  I don’t think driving across the country with a one year old next summer is a great idea, so I don’t think I’ll get back anytime soon.  I will get back there someday, and maybe I’ll find whatever it is I thought I was going to find this past year.

Anyway, back in 1984 things returned to normal.  The kids in school, who picked on me a bit, were all happy to see me back in Veblen.  Everyone was quite surprised that I was back.  “Didn’t you move?” was the common question, but I got some chuckles spinning that answer for a few days.  They didn’t have enough desks the first day I was back, so I had to sit at a table in the back of the classroom.  My scout troop left a note wishing me farewell, and since I was back I could have gone back, but I didn’t.  I was never that into the scout thing, so I just let that lapse.  My mother and her boyfriend resumed their relationship, and were married a few years later.  My brother was transferred from Farmington to Minnesota, then to Arizona, then someplace else I think (he wasn’t there long) and finally he landed…in Pierre.  He’s been there for a while, and I’ve been there to see him a few times.  I still love the city of Pierre, and Dakotamart was still open the last time I was there in July.  My mother and brother patched things up, and now they seem to be quite okay with each other.  I tried talking to my mom about Farmington once or twice, but she doesn’t like talking about “horrible” things.  I’m not sure what was so horrible, but she has a unique way with words.

I was going to delete this blog a bit after it was over, or I was going to reboot it with a new topic or focus.  I’ve decided to let it sit here until I actually get back to Farmington.  I’ll have a place to share the experience , but don’t expect many updates until then (my blogroll links on the side are other places I write, in case this wasn’t enough).  My little man is stirring from his nap, so on this final update until a later date, I wish you all a great 2009, and Farmington…I hope to see you soon.

Veblen, South Dakota (arrival)

I almost don’t want to title this blog “Veblen, SD”.  It is the town I grew up in (except for that month in 1984) and just one blog with that name seemed painfully inadequate.  Still, as I’ve been documenting the journey taken back then, each destination was mentioned in the title.  So, rather than change it now, I’ll press on.

My mom wanted to get an early start in Big Springs, Nebraska.  I’ve never been much of an early riser, and even in 1984 I was tough to wake up.  My mom was able to get me up and at ‘em, and back to the eatery by the hotel where we had supper.  I’m pretty sure I had some kind of cereal there, and my mind tells me it was either Special K or Rice Krispies.  I’m not sure what my mom ate, but I’m guessing it consisted mostly of a cigarette and black coffee.  I don’t remember much of what she ate on the trip at all, and that probably isn’t too surprising.  What kids make a note of what their parents eat?  I was so very tired, and I didn’t want to be up and at ‘em at 5:30 AM.  My mom was eager to get going, and she told me I could sleep in the truck as we drove East.  So, I arranged the seat-belt in such a way that I could get some sleep.  I must have slept most of the morning, but it wasn’t a restful sleep.  What seemed like every few seconds, a semi truck shot past us.  My mom isn’t exactly a slow driver, but she’s no lead-foot either.  For a few hours, I would sleep and occasionally open my eyes to watch a truck fly by, and usually gone before I could see what it was carrying or what was written on the side.  It was on that drive that I think I most wanted to be a truck driver.  They seemed to be moving so much faster than we were, and they had someplace to go that may have been totally new to them.  This drive was nothing new to me, as the rest of the way was already road I knew.  My wife hates the fact I’m always looking for new ways to go places, or that sometimes I want to take a bit of a scenic route.  She’s all about getting from point to point quickly, where I like to see things I’ve never seen before on the drive.  That might be the topic for another blog another day.

I gave up trying to sleep around 9 AM or so, and not too long after that we rolled into North Platte.  I double checked the map, and told my mom what road we needed to get on to head North to South Dakota.  The drive North was a lot more scenic than the previous several hours on the Interstate.  I remember quite a few more trees popping up, and some twists in the road.  My mom’s mood had changed slightly as well.  Rather than being worn down and pensive, she seemed happier and more focused on the destination.  Once we crossed into South Dakota, my navigation had its first challenge.

We drove North to Interstate 90, and then we had to drive Eastward again.  My mom was suddenly annoyed with me, as she thought we were much closer to Pierre than I had let on.  I insisted this is exactly the way my brother had taken us, and that Pierre wasn’t that close to Nebraska (the town is practically in the middle of the state).  This back and forth went on for a few miles, until we hit the Pierre exit.  She thought that Pierre was going to be right off the exit, but we still had 30 miles of driving before then.  She was mad at me, but I insisted on pleading my case.  Eventually, she dropped it and said something to the effect of “well I just misunderstood you” or something like that.  30 miles of grassland and a few hills later, we pulled into Pierre, South Dakota once again, and I talked her into stopping at the Red Owl Superstore.

The Red Owl Superstore is one of my favorite places of all time to go to.  Some of my first memories of wide aisles of toys, Charles Schulz books on the shelf, and elevator rides were at the Red Owl Superstore in Pierre.  It seemed to have everything that Stavig’s in Sisseton didn’t, and it had an elevator, which gave me that big city feeling.  Every trip to Pierre when my brother lived there wound up at the Red Owl Superstore at some point.  I still have my die-cast Millennium Falcon that my parents bought me, along with a few Peanuts books.  The store is still there, but since Red Owl faded away it has become a store called Dakotamart.  I’ve been there a few times, and it’s mostly the same.  It doesn’t seem as impressive or magical anymore, but it still demands I go to it every time I’m in Pierre.

Anyway, back in September of 1984 I was in the Red Owl superstore, and I was looking for a new Star Wars figure.  I was all about Star Wars action figures then, but I should have seen the end of that hobby coming fast.  Jedi had been out for a year, and it wasn’t the same since most of the bad guys were dead, and the rebels had won.  I didn’t find any Star Wars figures, but I found something better.  Something I didn’t know I wanted, but I knew I wanted it when i saw it.  There, on the shelf, were Optimus Prime and Megatron.  I’d seen a few commercials for this new Transformers line here and there, but I’d never seen them in a store, and they looked so freakin’ cool it hurt.  I wanted both, but I couldn’t have both.  It turned out that at twenty dollars a robot, my mom didn’t have the resources to buy me either.  I was usually a pro at twisting my mom’s arm into buying me toys, but she just didn’t have the money.  I remember going back and looking at her, but her tired face kept telling me no, even though I knew deep down she wanted to say yes.  I wonder if she was thinking about the past month of uprooting ourselves only to try to replant ourselves back in Veblen after giving up on New Mexico.  Maybe I’m just assigning what I’d like to think she was thinking at the time.  I think a more realistic thought in her mind was “hurry up, I want to go home.”  So, Optimus Prime and Megatron would have to wait to come home with me.  I’ll never know what became of the two in Pierre, but I found mine in Wahpeton, North Dakota and Sisseton, South Dakota.  My mom was willing to buy me an action figure, since she had about five dollars to spare.  There were no Star Wars figures in stock, but there was one action figure of equal size left.  All alone, on the shelf by my mom, was Cobra Commander from the G.I. Joe line, in all his original chrome dome glory.  Anyone who knows me knows that while a big Transformer fan, I’m more a G.I. Joe fan.  I started my G.I. Joe collection about a year or so later, thanks to WGN showing “The Revenge of Cobra” and my luck in finding a Zartan figure.  I decided that I’d rather go home with nothing if I couldn’t get Optimus or Megatron, so Cobra Commander didn’t find a home that day.  I eventually found several Cobra Commanders for my collection, but no original ones until I got a lucky bid in on eBay about six years ago.

Looking back now, it is a bit odd that on my way back home, I had a chance to prematurely embrace the two toy and cartoon lines that I would be a fan of to this day, and that my enjoyment in making up stories for them would allow me to eventually make up stories for role playing games, which led me to making some of my best friends, which led me to come out of my shell more, which led me to take chances…which in a way led me to meeting my wife.  Maybe that’s taking it a bit too far, but for the sake of making that trip to the Red Owl Superstore overly important, I’ll say it isn’t.

The drive from Pierre to Veblen was a total blur.  My mom and I were ready to put an end to this month long experiment.  I wanted to get back to my friends in school, and I’m sure my mom wanted to get back to her boyfriend (and soon my step-dad).  Our house was being looked after by a dear old friend, and I was already dealing with the fact I’d never see my cat again.  We took her out to a farm because she couldn’t go with us, and she’d ran off sometime between us leaving and my mom deciding to come back.  Part of me wondered if anything in Veblen had changed, but nothing in Veblen ever changed back then.  We rolled into our old driveway, keyed into our old house, and decided to unpack the next day.  Just like that, we were back and like we had never left.  It was almost more like a vacation than a move, but it was no vacation.  It was an experience I’ll never forget, but one I didn’t think about much for a long time.

Now that I’ve recounted the journey to and from Farmington, New Mexico, there’s the matter of what to do with this blog.  I’ll work on that for the epilogue, as I hope to do one more blog about going back to school, and how things did change in the following weeks, months and years.  Plus, I’m hoping to find time to reread everything I’ve posted in the last few months, and figure out how to bring this story to a proper close.

Alamosa, Colorado

I’m going to come clean about a story I’ve stretched a bit in my life. My mom and I both like to mention how I “led” her back to Veblen at age eleven, handling all the map duties for our trip back from Farmington. The truth is, I was in charge of signs and knowing when to turn. I did not actually choose the route, and I’ve tried to relay the story in such a way that the actual trip planning part is left vague. What I usually say is something like “at age eleven I navigated us back from New Mexico”. The actual person who plotted the course is…someone who’s name I don’t remember. I only know he lived in the same quad-plex as us, and right behind us. He also owned a pickup, and he looked to be in his forties. His apartment wasn’t very messy, and he was watching some channel I’d never heard of called ESPN. He and my mom talked about the route, which bypassed the same way we came. It turns out my mom hated that route, and he knew a way that wasn’t as bad. They talked it over while I watched some baseball highlights. I don’t remember the score or who was playing, but I remember seeing Chris Berman for the first time.

Here’s where I think my brain has it in for me. I remember all that, but I don’t remember saying goodbye to my brother and sister in law. I’m sure we must have, and I kind of remember seeing them briefly the day before we left. I don’t remember seeing them the day we left, which was a Monday (I think). I remember the “V” miniseries was getting the re-run treatment on NBC, and it was being watched at my brother’s house. I also don’t remember helping load the pickup, but I think the mystery man who plotted the course home helped my mother with that. She packed what she could, and anything she didn’t want or couldn’t fit she left behind for the garbage, or she offered it to the mystery man who lived behind us. I doubt she even remembers his name, so I can’t really try to find him to confirm a lot of this.

Monday we left town, with a bit of juice and snack food, and a jar of water. My mom is notorious, even to this day, for bringing a jar of water along on trips. I’m talking about a rinsed out old pickle jar. Even this past year, when I gave mom a ride to my nephew’s wedding in Pierre, she had her trusty jar of water along. A jar we actually forgot in Pierre, so whoever made up her room at the AmericInn of Fort Pierre was probably a tad confused.

Anyway, we were on our way back to Veblen when we hit a…border stop. I don’t remember the exact reason, but it had something to do with Colorado and New Mexico having some kind of produce problem. We didn’t have any fresh produce along, so it wasn’t a big deal. I’m sure the large truck with a tarp over it did have them curious, but she got us on our way, and I didn’t even give up my small bottle of orange drink. I’m sure it’s not called “orange drink”, but that’s all it is. It came in a small plastic bottle with a foil top, and the contents were orange, and the beverage had an orange flavor, but it was closer to an orange flavor like you’d find in orange flavor-ice.  Looking back, it’s funny to think of myself in a pickup truck hiding a small bottle that was zero percent juice.

Once we crossed the border, it was a non-stop driving adventure.  The views were breathtaking.  The mountain roads twisted and turned, and the view from the road was almost straight down in spots.  My mom liked to joke that my face turned green from the dizzying heights, but I think she’s exaggerating, because I only remember being awestruck by the views, and not being carsick from the view down the mountain.  There were parts of the road where trees rolled downward into drops that seemed to have no end.  I also had to sit on the floor to see the tops of the mountains we were driving through.  My mom and I talked a lot about the scenery during the drive, and we probably kept talking so neither of us would think too much about the steep drops and winding pathways.  Of all the parts of the drive to Farmington and back, this is probably my favorite stretch of road, and probably the one part of the ordeal that my mom remembers with fondness, if only for the part where she thinks I was getting carsick. This was also the first road I can recall seeing signs indicating falling rocks.  I didn’t see a rock fall, but there were plenty that had been neatly shoved onto the shoulder by the Colorado D.O.T.

The mountain trip took most of our day, as my mom was in no hurry to get through it.  Looking at the map, it seemed that we were out of most of the high spots by the time we reached Alamosa.  So, she decided to call it a night there.  The first hotel we went to didn’t meet her standards, mainly because of the natural gas heating system in the room (her fear of natural gas was stronger than ever after the Denver incident).  We went to another hotel, and it was to her liking.  The clerk found us a room, and I remember we had to switch rooms once.  I have no idea why.  It was at this time I have my earliest memory of an actual episode of Star Trek.  I knew about it, and I’d seen a few of the movies on TV, but I had no specific memory of the show.  For ten minutes on some channel I’ll never know, I caught the last fifteen minutes of “Day of the Dove”.  The detail I remember most vividly is Kirk using “intership beaming”, which according to the episode was very dangerous and not recommended.  That night we ate at the hotel restaurant, and my mom said I could get something from the hotel gift shop.  I picked this small, fuzzy dog figurine of a basset hound puppy.  I’m not sure why, and it’s one of the few things from the entire experience I still own.  The hotel also told us it would get very cold at night, and that was as advertised, as our truck had frost on the windows the next morning.

Visitor guidance

I was hoping to write more often.  Wait, that’s what I should be doing here.  Anyway, what I was meaning to say was that I was hoping to stretch blogging about the Farmington Visitor Guide for some time longer, but there isn’t much past page 34 that really gets my mind working.  The guide goes on to talk about the Native American culture of the area, a subject of which I had little use then and in the time since my education on the matter has been lacking.  There’s still much of the local Native American culture of the area I now reside in that I should know better.  After that, the guide talks about Arts and Entertainment, followed by a calendar of events.  The one movie I saw in Farmington was Ghostbusters, which should count for something.  Other than that, my entertainment was watching the Los Angeles newscast and the independent channel that had old Battlestar Galactica reruns on.  I never heard much about events, except for one parade I skipped going to that didn’t appeal to me, as I’ve never really been a big parade fan.  By looking at the calendar of events, I’d guess the parade tied in with the San Juan County Fair (mainly because that was the only parade listed for August).

Part of my entertainment also involved walking to school.  My mom gave me rides to school most days, even though I lived in town and within ten minutes walking distance from school.  In Farmington, the three days I went to school involved me walking every time.  It was a really weird experience at the Farmington school.  I went from my own desk in a class of thirteen to sitting at a long table, with kids all around me (one of three tables in the room).  I don’t remember my teacher’s name, but he had a beard and seemed like a very nice person.  The only thing he’d planned on assigning that I took some umbrage with was collecting insect specimens.  I’ve never been a fan of getting my hands dirty, much less touching insects.  My awkward moments were at lunch and recess.  Lunch wasn’t bad, but I remember that recess was brief and went by pretty slowly, as I didn’t know anyone, and no one seemed to be in a hurry to get to know me.  Part of it was my overpowering shyness, and part of it was being the new kid, so I hold no ill will towards the school or the students.  My fondest memory of the school was the one day of gym.  I don’t remember what the game was called, nor do I remember the exact rules, but I know I wasn’t horrible at it, and since nobody knew I was not athletically gifted, I didn’t do too bad.  The main thing I remember was throwing a bunch of nerf footballs back and forth, and that the gym teacher was very encouraging.

I’ve written about the gas station and the grocery store, but other than that I don’t remember much about Farmington.  I remember my mom trying to find a good doctor, because I was often sick as a child.  I remember going somewhere to talk to a phone company, and a few other car trips that had a purpose of some kind, but one that is lost to my hazy childhood memories.  I’ve never really thought of what my mom did while I was in school those three days.  She went from tending a house to a one-bedroom apartment, and she hasn’t worked very much in her life.  She came from the stay-at-home mom era, and now she was staying home in a town that she didn’t know, with a lot less to do, with no garden, lawn or real cleaning to do that wouldn’t take a short bit of time.  It makes the set up for this next part make a bit more sense, and leads me to believe that staying would have been a bad idea.

It was a Thursday night, and I walked into the kitchen and saw a glass of apple juice on the ktichen island.  “Apple juice for me?  Thanks mom” I said, but she was doing dishes and didn’t hear me.  I was a thirsty young lad, so I downed the apple juice with a big gulp.  The problem was that it wasn’t apple juice.  It was straight whiskey.  It was all I could do to not gag and throw up everywhere.  The whiskey came right back up and all of it went back into the glass.  I retreated to our bathroom and did my best to not throw up.  I was suddenly very tired and my stomach was all kinds of not right, so I went to bed, a fact that surprised my mom a great deal (I was never one to willingly go to bed on time).  She kept me home from school Friday, and I never saw the next seven days coming.  After leaving my only home, leaving behind my small class, and a state I’d grown to love quite a bit, I had been coming to terms with living in this far away place, and I was starting to like it.

Seven days later I was back in Veblen, not to leave until college.

Googol vs. Google

Before I finish up the Farmington visitor guide, I thought I’d take a little diversion.

In 1984 I knew only of a googol as a very large number once used in a gag in the Peanuts comic strip (I believe Schoeder told Lucy the odds of them getting married are a googol to one).  In 2008 we have the search engine Google, which I decided to utilize to find some blogs about day to day life in the city.  Granted, most bloggers probably don’t talk about their hometowns much, and some do but don’t actually identify what town they’re in, and I understand the need to do that in some cases.

I tried wordpress first, but the results I found for Farmington and New Mexico were rather sparse, and I only found entries and no actual blogs about living in the actual city.  So, off to Google’s blog search.

Early results by relevance weren’t looking good.  The library had some nice info-blogs, but nothing that really caught my notice.  Then came a blog froma job site that was looking for a nurse.  After clicking through a few more pages that just seemed to mention Farmington as a city to drive through, I went to the main Google search and did a search for “Farmington”, “New Mexico” and “blog”.  I found my own blog on page two of the search, so I’m thinking that this will be a lot tougher than I thought.

On a lark, I checked YouTube for something, and I found the city’s promotional video that appears on the Farmington web site.  While not reminding me of anything of my time there, it does give a glimpse of some of the things I’ve been writing about recently.  Well, mostly.  If you make it to the end, you’ll see the video is from 2001.

Itineraries, chokecherries, queries?

Time to turn to page 24 of our Farmington Visitor guide, for a section about itineraries. The first itinerary is eight days of recommended sights, spots, and directions. It sounds quite inviting, especially to someone like me, who can barely comprehend taking a week off, much less eight days that far away from home. It isn’t that I get homesick easily. I just don’t like taking time off from work. My job is often more enjoyable than it is insufferable. Also, in spite of being blessed with a low self-esteem, I often feel like my place of employment needs me on a daily basis. I’ve taken time off before, and every time I come back the building is still standing, we’re still profitable, and it takes me a few days to snap back to worker bee mode. I’m not sure if the itinerary is the ideal one, but I must give props to the writer of the visitor guide. They sold me on making Farmington the center of any eight day trip around New Mexico. Now, if only I was making an eight day trip to New Mexico.

For the more reasonable trip around the New Mexico area, they follow the eight day trip with several day trip ideas, and once again each one deftly described with Farmington as the center of all you’d need to see. First up are the visits to American Indian Culture centers of the area. As an eleven year old, much of what I knew about American Indians was a mix of what my less-than politically correct mom said, and my interactions with a few Native Americans in school. I’ve had some years to think things over a bit, along with a read of Vine Deloria’s Custer Died for Your Sins. I think I’d enjoy a tour of several of these areas now, but as a fifth grader it would have been me looking around trying to look interested. While not a worldly fifth-grader, I was a polite one.

The next set of day trips revolved around the Four Corners area, and the looping around to get to it that can involve seeing other sights. I don’t remember knowing about the Four Corners as a kid, which is odd considering how I spent many afternoons. My brother had a complete set of Collier’s Encyclopedias in High School, and he left them behind once he departed for college. They were in decent shape, and there was even a yearbook with new info for 1964. I’m not going to say I read them all of the time, but I did get some use out of them. I often would grab one at random and flip through to the maps, which were on easy to find glossy paper. I didn’t memorize many state capitols that way, but I did learn what countries were where. Along with countries, I also had a pretty good grasp on the states, but I don’t think I realized that only one spot had four states meeting until much later.

My propensity to remain indoors is mostly deserved, but if I get the opportunity to visit Farmington again I’ll spend a great deal of time taking in a lot of what the area has to offer in the outdoors. One of the last really good times I had in an outdoor setting was a few years ago in Pierre while making a rare visit to my brother. After arriving, I was told that the men of the family were going to pick chokecherries. My mom’s lake cabin had a ton of wild chokecherry bushes, and often I’d find myself helping her with them, even though I’d rather be in the cabin playing with whatever toys I brought, reading a book I brought, or watching the one channel that came in on the old black and white TV we had at the cabin. I was never a fan of picking chokecherries. My sister-in-law must have known this, and she reminded me that I didn’t have to go along. For some reason, I did go along. I picked chokecherries with my brother and nephews for maybe an hour in a grove of trees near the Missouri river. Not only did I pick them, I had fun picking them. Just thinking about this now, along with thinking about my mom’s old lake cabin makes me realize how lucky I was, and how much I didn’t appreciate my mom keeping that old lake cabin a lot longer than she probably wanted to, in hopes that I’d get something out of it. I didn’t get as much out of it as I should have, but I treasure what I did get out of it. I should just be happy that I’m not growing up now. Between digital cable, the internet and my iPod I might never have picked chokecherries, gone wandering around the lake alone, rolled and tumbled down hills, thrown rocks in the water, and actually done a bit of fishing, before I decided that fishing was one of the most boring things one could do. I think I could do it now, but only if my iPod was charged and I wasn’t worried about dropping it in the lake.

The query part of the subject deals with the fact I will soon have my own child, and what opportunities I can offer him/her. I can’t afford a lake cabin, I don’t know how to swim, and I’d be in big trouble if I ever got lost in the woods. I didn’t like my mom forcing outdoor life and exercise on me as a kid, but now I’ll be forced with wondering how to involve my son/daughter in things like this. I’ll accept them whether they’re wilderness scouts or computer programmers, but I want to make sure they have every chance to figure out what they are, and how to make it a integral part of their life. Maybe one of them can teach me how to swim someday, or at the very least can help me pick chokecherries so my wife can try her hand at my mom’s chokecherry jelly.

One final odd note about the Farmington itineraries. One of the points of interest listed in one is the power plant. It seemed a bit odd, until a few pages later. The power company bought a half page add, which makes the power plant destination not seem as far fetched. After all, Farmington is only about 30,000 people, and visitor guides don’t pay for themselves.

things left unsaid, places not visited, and in between a grocery store

Over the weekend Kate and I went to visit my mom in Veblen, and while the thought of asking her about Farmington was in my mind, it wasn’t coming out of my mouth. It was the first visit in months, and before I went home I made my first visit to my father’s grave in at least a year, and my first visit to my grandparent’s grave in at least five years. It left me in a melancholy mood for the majority of the visit (more on that is at the bottom of this post). Asking about Farmington didn’t seem like a major priority, so I decided to skip it on this visit. Mom is a feisty 75 year old, so I’m hoping she makes it a long time yet.

Since I didn’t get any further insight on Farmington from her, I go back to the visitor guide. Page twelve is a throwaway transition page to “local attractions”. I don’t remember seeing many of those in the month I spent in New Mexico. In fact, the only attraction I remember is a grocery store. I don’t remember what it was called, or where it was, but it was very different than what I’d grown up with. Nelson’s Grocery (now Grobe’s Grocery) in Veblen was all of maybe five short isles to walk through. Gordon Nelson was always a friendly face, and all of the cashiers knew everybody by name. On the occasion we bought groceries in Sisseton, Britton or Lidgerwood to visit a Supervalu, Red Owl or Jack and Jill, the store grew by leaps and bounds, mainly in the produce section. This grocery store I remember because it blew my mind. I think every grocery store in Veblen, Britton, Sisseton and Lidgerwood could have fit in it, maybe with some Tetris-style stacking. The shelves were metal, and they sprawled up to a very high ceiling. I could be wrong, but I remember the floors and walls and ceiling either being a dark blue, gray or even black color. They had every kind of cereal I could imagine, and a bunch I’d never heard of. Even the part of the store that had toilet paper had stacks upon stacks of the stuff. I can’t remember the toilet paper section at the Veblen store even having more than two kinds. My sister-in-law took my mom and I to this store, and it was almost too much for my small-town brain to take in. While I was taken in by the size of the store and the heights of its ceiling (and stacks) my mom’s attention diverted to the prices. She couldn’t stop talking about getting four big bags of groceries for twenty-five dollars. I don’t think those four big bags lasted us the rest of our stay, but I don’t remember going to the store any other day during my stay. I found reminders of that store several years later in Wahpeton, North Dakota (and also Aberdeen, South Dakota) and a chain called Econo-foods. Those stores also had the idea of tall ceilings and a lot of stacking (and probably still do, but I’ve not been to one in years). I sometimes would find myself wandering around the Econo-foods in Wahpeton for no reason, other than it reminded me of the day a grocery store blew my mind.

Page thirteen begins to break down all the local attractions, none of which I saw while living in Farmington. If I had my current brain then and had still missed them all, I’d be really cross. Instead, I understand that at the time I probably wasn’t interested and I wouldn’t have appreciated things like the Angel Peak Scenic Area, Aztec Ruins National Monument, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Shiprock Pinnacle, Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, Mesa Verde National Park, Monument Valley, and of course the Four Corners Monument (which takes us through page twenty-three). My brain was content to live in a Lucasfilm world of its own design, along with adjusting to a state that might as well have been a planet that the Millennium Falcon crashed on. If I ever have the means and time to visit Farmington again properly, I think I’ll need at least a week if not two to see everything that was just a hop, skip and a jump outside my doorstep. Maybe I could do a second thirty days in New Mexico?

Lord and lottery willing maybe. I just hope I can find that grocery store, or at least where it used to be.

Location? Climate?

First off, I want to apologize for the 404 links in my last post. It seems I saw the top URL and thought that by changing the number in the URL, it would go to different pages in the guide. It turns out the number is the year, not the page number. So, I fixed that, but I won’t be able to link directly to pages in the visitor guide. I’ll just keep linking to the actual PDF (leaving anyone curious to actually find the right page), so I hope all your Adobe Acrobats are up to date.

Page ten talks about Farmington’s location and climate, and while location wasn’t a big deal when we moved, the climate was. Before I can talk more about August of 1984, the December of 1983 deserves a mention, because it is what led us to our new home. The years may have caused me to embellish a bit, but my mom will back me up to this day that the high never rose above the -20 to -30 degrees Fahrenheit for almost three weeks solid. It was probably the coldest winter I can remember, but I don’t remember much of the cold. School was called off a lot during that stretch, and part of the stretch was during Christmas vacation. Another reason I don’t remember much of the cold is that I was a rather sickly kid who was prone to a lot of colds and flu bugs. In fact, during that run of bitter cold I barely remember going outside. My mom made all the trips to Nelson’s Grocery solo at that time. She had talked about moving to Farmington before the cold snap, partly because she was sick of winter and partly because she wanted to reconnect with my brother. I had lived in Veblen all my life, and naturally I was resisting the proposed move away from the only town I’d ever known.

I still remember the night I stopped fighting. It was one of the last few sub-zero nights. I was playing with something, maybe Matchbox cars, maybe Bristle Blocks, maybe my collection of Star Wars figures. I thought I heard something in the bedroom. I knew my mom had gone into the bedroom a while ago, but this sounded…different. I walked over and slowly opened the door. There was my mother, lying on the bed face down, with her head in her folded arms. She was softly crying, and hearing her cry was something I wasn’t accustomed to. She’d had plenty of reasons to cry before then. She’d lost her husband in 1979, her father in 1981, and her mother in the fall of that year. I’d only heard her cry a bit once before, and that was when my dad died. She did all of her crying before she told me what had happened. She somehow managed to do all of her crying for grandma and grandpa when I wasn’t looking. I never thought of her as cold or unfeeling, far from it. I just thought of her as a very strong woman who was doing the best she could, and seeing her crying really shook me. I walked over and asked what was wrong, and she lifted her head. I can still hear her half-cry, half-scream to this day. “I WANT TO GO SOMEPLACE WHERE IT’S WARM!” She went back to crying and I walked out of the room in a daze. I remember just sitting in front of my toys, not knowing what to do or say. Eventually it warmed back to the zero degree mark, and while I never actually said I was willing to move, that night seemed to be when my mom had decided that next winter we’d be elsewhere, whether I liked it or not.  It was also the night I stopped fighting her on that, and other things, namely her future plans with my future step-father, but that’s a blog for later.

Page ten also lists the distances to other major cities, but once we were settled in there wasn’t much need to travel to Vegas, Albuquerque, or Phoenix.  Page ten also shows a bridge surrounded by a lot of greenery, which runs counter to my brother’s statement earlier in the trip of “saying goodbye to green”.

Page eleven goes on to list the various highs and lows, on average, for each month.  My month in New Mexico was in August, so that put me right around the mark of 88 for highs and 59 for lows.  Those temperatures seem to fit, since I remember the days being quite warm and the nights providing many a cool breeze to sleep in.  That also put me in New Mexico in the second wettest month, where monthly rain averaged just over an inch of their yearly eight and and a quarter inches.  I only remember it raining once, but I’m sure it rained a bit more than that.  One other thing that page eleven mentions is how the elevation affects the sunlight.  One thing my mom mentioned during our departure was that she couldn’t handle the sun in New Mexico.  I have reason to believe there were other factors in us moving back to Veblen, so I never gave her thoughts on “the sun being too bright” a second thought.  I am talking about a woman who still refuses to buy a microwave because of “the radiation”.

Next weekend I plan on visiting my mother in Veblen.  Perhaps I’ll bring up the trip back and inquire more about why we left so soon.  I don’t expect to hear anything but the official story, but she is full of surprises.

Visitor guide? It would have been a handy resident guide.

After reading the visitor guide in PDF format and in printout format, I’m left with one thought.

How did I miss so much?

Seriously, Farmington looks pretty amazing in the visitor guide. Granted, they wouldn’t have pictures in a visitor guide that made one think “Yeah, maybe we’ll go to Arizona instead” or something similar. If you click the links, you’ll be able to match up the pages (if anything I type makes your curious) to some of the things I type about.

Pages six and seven feature a lot of hot air balloons. Other than the Goodyear Blimp flying over Marshall once many years ago, I’ve never seen an airship in real life. I can only infer that Farmington must be a ballooning hot spot.

Page eight is the welcome to San Juan county. Already, I’ve learned what county I was living in. All these years I thought my list was complete with Marshall County, Cass County and Lyon County. I can honestly say I never thought about what county Farmington was in. Perhaps I think too much about where I’ve been. At certain times in my life, I have been called nostalgic. The other way people have put it is that I think about the past too much at times. I don’t remember exactly why I started thinking about Farmington again, but looking at this book tells me I don’ t think about the past as much as I worry that I sometimes do (yes, my brain somehow functions operating this way-it is not recommended). My wife gives me some grief now and then for being a “borderline hoarder” but that seems a bit harsh. Looking at this book reveals how little I remember of the town. I think I was able to hold onto the trip back a lot more because of the postcards I bought at various stops along the way, or talked my mom into buying at about a quarter a pop. I have memories of looking at them now and then up through high school. Plus, if I want a rise out of my mom I mention the drive back, of which her memories aren’t quite as fond (though she will smile when calling it an “experience” after a bit of prodding). Of all the junk I’ve held onto, of all the postcards and toys and whatever else I have lying around, I have few things from Farmington that I’ve held onto. Thinking about what I have in our house, the only thing is Marvel’s Star Wars #88 that I was lucky enough to find the next time my mom and I were in that gas station.

The other thing about page eight (and nine, at least the part that doesn’t have the sidebar) that strikes me is how beautiful the area looks. The first eighteen years of my life I resided in a town with big sky and miles and miles of miles and miles in every direction. A bike ride that was never longer than five minutes on any road out of town revealed farm fields with no visible end or the steep (compared to the flat directions) rise of the Couteau des Prairies just to the west and south of Veblen. Moving to a town of 12,000 in the middle of flatness and staying there (minus a few months in a town of 100,000) has made me an admirer of hilly, varied terrain. Just a week or so ago we were watching No Country for Old Men and Kate had to listen to me say things like “wow, look at that beautiful country” at least several times. I don’t want to say that I live in blandsville these days, but it has been a long time since I saw anything new under the Southwest Minnesota sun on a regular basis. At eleven my brain wasn’t thinking about looking around and seeing the natural beauty that I had a chance to see while spending that month in the Four Corners region.

Writing this blog has caused me to do two things. The first thing is some more perspective about not being so frustrated with myself (also to no longer be frustrated with others) for not seeing more of what Farmington had to offer. At eleven, I don’t think I was ready, willing or mentally able to really appreciate all that was around me. The second thing is a new feeling of being old. I’m about to say one of those things that is in the old lexicon’s top ten, with things like “when I was your age” or “get off my lawn”. That thing I must say, that I now understand is:

youth is wasted on the young.

A visitor guide…sort of

So, I haven’t gotten my visitor guide from the Farmington Convention and Visitor’s Bureau yet.  After about a week of hearing it suggested, I went on-line to request another.  Lo and behold, they offer it as a PDF download.  They require you fill in some fields to get it, which I did.  I also requested a copy be mailed to me, but I’m thinking if you click the download bar, they don’t consider mailing you one a priority.  In case anyone out there wants a copy and has Acrobat installed, you could just click here.

After a quick read through of my shrunken, duplexed black and white printer version, I’m not getting any memories.  I think my mom found a way to live somewhere that beautiful and miss it all.  I could probably find our old apartment and maybe the school, but they didn’t make the visitor guide. 

I’ll actually read it this week, and we’ll see what I come up with.