I Got Mine: A Book Review

I Got Mine: Confessions of a Midlist Writer
By John Nichols
University of New Mexico Press
Hardback, 280 pages, 36 halftones
$27.95

A Review by Pete Warzel

John Treadwell Nichols will be 82 years old this year. He has been writing for much more than a majority of those years, having his first publishing deal for A Sterile Cuckoo, at the age of 23. A wunderkind, for sure. The golden boy.

This memoir by Nichols covers that initial success and the years that follow, up to now, focused on the writing aspects of his 23 novels and non-fiction books, myriad essays, political diatribes, screenplays, and all the work that did not get published along the way. Some of his personal life comes through in this book, some of the marriages, the political engagement, and certainly his pure feelings about Hollywood, but it is really a travelogue through a writing life. In that, it is fascinating.

I once had the opportunity to visit John’s storage shed in Taos many years ago, to view the manuscripts, the endless rewrites, that now reside at the University of New Mexico in the John Nichols archives. I believe it is no joke in this memoir when he cites the astounding 35th draft of his book On the Mesa, a non-fiction love story about the natural world around Taos, that finally came in at 193 pages. All his manuscripts filled a shelf that ran around the shed about the size of a two-car garage. Boxes filled the floor. It was a three-dimensional visualization of this memoir.

The title I Got Mine is taken from the epigram to the book, a two verse quote from a traditional song that tells the tale of a gambler losing all his money at a crap game, but when the police broke up the game someone dropped a bet on the floor, immediately swiped by the narrator on his way out the door. That is a witty analogy to John’s success, or not, as a writer. No money, big money, broke again. The Milagro Beanfield War sells very little, lingers, becomes an underground classic, while the third book in The New Mexico Trilogy, Nirvana Blues, becomes a best-seller in major cities and sends Nichols on his first book tour. Milagro percolates and becomes a film project for Robert Redford, and so up and down, paydirt and paucity.

Nichols rings true when he recalls the screenwriting gigs for Hollywood films, capturing the essence of the biz, as only his sense of humor can do. “So we park, take an elevator to the top floor, and sit down with Eddie Lewis and eight tanned moguls wearing Armani suits… Everyone gets comfortable, politely eats a delicate little cucumber and sprouts sandwich, takes a sip of Pellegrino sparkling water and then the head addresses Costa: ‘Well Costa, tell us what you have in mind’” Perfect. Costa is Costa-Gavras the director of Missing, an outstanding film that Nichols wrote the screenplay for… and got pushed out of the film credit by the Screenwriters Guild. Hollywood politics, a cruel outcome since it won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

He also rings so very true when he talks about his adopted home of Taos, New Mexico. “The stands at Friday or Saturday Taos High football games boasted cheering fans. Overhead, doves flew south trailed by noisy sandhill cranes. The Wednesday drive-in movies featured Tony Aguilar – I parked the family there to learn Spanish and enjoy the music. Lightning streak lit up the western sky as we pigged out on butter-drenched popcorn.” Idyllic, small town America, but in the kingdom of New Mexico, Chamisaville, to some. 

There is a sense of endless energy in this book. Nichols writes and writes and rewrites, multiple novels and screenplays at once, while taking time to commit to political protest and engagement, raise a family, remarry and remarry. He describes himself as “…a one man writing factory, working on five novels at once.” My sense is that at 81 he still has a good chunk of that energy left. This book gallops and roars, laughs out loud at the publishing business, the movie business, and at the author himself. John Nichols really never pulled his punches in his writing, or in conversation or protest. This book follows suit. He is ethically consistent in everything he does, like it or not.

Let me close with an opinion. American Blood, a Nichols novel from 1987, breaks the mold of his work, and it is a masterpiece. Like Cormac McCarthy, but in Nichols own style and vision, he explores the undercurrent, no, the heart and soul of America as violent. I remember when it was first published, I bought it and read it in a night and day. It is a powerful, ugly, beautiful piece of writing, and I could not put it down deep into the night. It scared me, as does our country more and more these days. John has written a lot of very good books with his singular sense of humor and love of land and people. American Blood is a work from deeper inside. It was I thought, on that first reading, truly a great novel. I will go back and read it again and hope I was correct. It is, given the past several weeks of repeated mass killings in our country, a reflection of our society, but written 35 years ago. It is timely again, and might be of interest to you, but with a WARNING. It is violent and disturbing. The reviews Nichols includes in I Got Mine might be worth reading before trying out American Blood. A comment Nichols himself makes in this memoir about being asked to write a screenplay of the novel is to the point. “This time around I chickened out of writing a script because I couldn’t deal with the violence.”

So let’s end with this to put it all in perspective. Nichols is on the set of The Milagro Beanfield War in Truchas, New Mexico, 1986. Robert Redford walks by and says “ Oh, John Nichols, are you slumming in Hollywood again?” Enough said. John Nichols has had a wild ride.

Donaciano Vigil: A Book Review

Review by Pete Warzel

518 Alto Street is an elegant, traditionally adobe plastered home, formerly owned by the Historic Santa Fe Foundation, and recognized as historically significant by the Foundation’s Register of Properties Worthy of Recognition, as well as the National Register of Historic Places. HSFF holds a preservation easement on the property ensuring the façade, footprint, and specific elements be maintained as is, in perpetuity.

The house was brought to prominent public attention in the 1960s when owned and renovated by Charlotte White and companion, the sculptor Boris Gilbertson. It was much earlier owned by the Vigil family, the land purchased and the home built sometime between 1792 and 1800. It is the birthplace of Donaciano Vigil, Territorial Governor of New Mexico following the murder of Governor Charles Bent during the Taos Revolt in 1847. His fascinating life spanned Spanish, Mexican, and United States jurisdiction of the area in the 19th century, and so was at the center of the change to what we are now.

Authors Maurilio E. Vigil (descendant of Donaciano) and Helene Boudreau, both professors at New Mexico Highlands University, have written a thoroughly researched, engaging history of Donaciano Vigil, within the context of New Mexico history, and the long arm of Spanish colonization of New Spain and the northern reaches of what would become our state. The detail in this book is prodigious, the writing well done, the story fascinating. And because of our former ownership of the Alto Street House, Donaciano feels like a cousin we are just learning about.

The authors trace the origination of the Vigil family from Spain, and follow the emigration of the noble class to the new world due to “…the many Spaniards trapped in this archaic social and political system…” that arose under the Austrian Habsburg monarchs of Spain during the sixteenth century. Juan Montes Vigil II was the third named Vigil immigrant to the Americas, and the patriarch of the family in New Mexico. Juan Montes Vigil III had a son out of wedlock, Francisco Montes Vigil, most likely a mestizo, and the first Vigil to move his family to New Mexico, following Don Diego de Vargas’ call for settlers to propagate the newly reconquered land in 1695. (The authors pull no punches in describing the years of Spanish return following the Pueblo Revolt, “Santa Fe was liked an armed camp….Food was scarce, and it was up to Vargas to remedy the situation. He commanded a force to Picuris and Taos to steal food from the natives.”)  Juan Cristobal Montes Vigil II, great grandson of Francisco Montes, purchased the land and built the home on Alto Street sometime around 1800, where Donaciano was born in 1802.

I have long pondered the lack of focus on Mexican history in Santa Fe, and why that might be. It is a significant missing piece in the way the city promotes its past, and a hole in our own knowledge of the cultural history of our city. No longer. Donacinao Vigil’s life is at the heart of Mexican rule in New Mexico, and the authors fill in the blanks with great research and detail. In many ways, Donaciano is a cultural bridge between Spain and U.S. ownership of the land here. Born under Spanish rule in Santa Fe, he begins his prodigious career in the military, as many of his forefathers had done for Spain and Mexico. He serves during the rebellion in Santa Cruz in 1837, and again during the attempted Texas invasion of New Mexico in 1841, takes on a political persona as secretary of the assembly in the Department of New Mexico under Mexican regime in Santa Fe, and following General Kearney’s invasion by the Army of the West, and proclamation that New Mexico was now part of the U.S., is appointed Secretary of the first, civil U.S. government. That position was second in political command to the governor, Charles Bent. Upon Bent’s murder in Taos during the Taos uprising, Donaciano Vigil stepped into the position and began to create new government structure and process, following the Kearney Code, and supervised the creation of the Vigil Index, a guide to the document archive of Spain and Mexico for future use by the United States in lawsuits and land claims. His dedication and energy out ran the new national affiliation’s timeframe as he was informed the structure could not stand, since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo had not yet been signed by Mexico and the U.S., so ownership of New Mexico was still under Mexico jurisdiction. Ooops.  

The subtitle of the book cites Donaciano Vigil’s service as soldier, statesman, and territorial governor, but that leaves so much of his life out of the picture. An active life of community and political involvement put him at the center of everything. He retired to land purchased in Pecos, NM, ostensibly as a gentleman farmer, yet continues to be called and serve as a Territorial Representative to the New Mexico legislature. He built a molino, grist mill, on his land beside the Pecos River, and ground corn and threshed wheat for his neighbors, augmenting his income. Upon his death, he received a spectacular send-off by his fellow New Mexicans, the authors quoting historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell, “…by far the largest and most distinguished gathering ever witnessed in New Mexico.”

Professors Vigil and Boudreau have written an important book on a native born New Mexican who straddled three political and cultural worlds, and was instrumental in forming the government of the United States in the Territory that would eventually become the forty-seventh state. In doing so, they highlight Mexican history in Santa Fe, and how governmental transition worked and cultures interacted on way to becoming New Mexico.

Donaciano Vigil: The Life of a Nuevomexicno Soldier, Statesman, and Territorial Governor
By Maurilio E. Vigil and Helene Boudreau
University of New Mexico Press
Hardbound, 318 pages, $39.95

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2020 Virtual Annual Garden Party & Members' Meeting

Go directly to YouTube to watch the presentation here

Click any images on this page to view the 2020 Annual Garden Party & Members’ Meeting video presentation

Mara Saxer speaking about HSFF’s El Zaguán front wall repairs, September 2020.

Historic Santa Fe Foundation is pleased to present this video version of our Annual Garden Party & Members’ Meeting. Each year, HSFF holds this members-only event in the garden on Canyon Road. Usually, members meet, share refreshments, enjoy the company of our community, and attentively listen to our guest speaker. In recent years, we have had the honor of hosting the State of New Mexico’s Historic Preservation Officer Jeff Pappas, City of Santa Fe’s Historic Preservation Division Manager Lisa Roach, and Director at School for Advanced Research Michael Brown as speakers. With the pandemic restrictions and health safety concerns, the staff and board decided to create a video for the 2020 annual meeting. We are delighted to have Lissa Johnson, of the Santa Fe Extension Master Gardeners, provided a tour of the garden and conclude this year’s online gathering as our keynote speaker.

For this video, we are fortunate to have established a relationship with videographer Kyle Maier who is producing a documentary/art film on Canyon Road and digging into Santa Fe’s history after his return to New Mexico after years in Gettysburg, PA. Along with the garden tour that closes our online meeting, Maier filmed and edited this feature that starts with an introduction to the year’s building projects by Mara Saxer, and follows with a discussion and presentations by HSFF staff Pete Warzel and Melanie McWhorter, and HSFF Board Chair Ken Stilwell. We present a well-rounded state of the nonprofit set in the beautiful background the offices and home at HSFF’s El Zaguán in the heart of Santa Fe at 545 Canyon Road. Please enjoy this video and feel free to reach out to HSFF with any questions or comments.

To join HSFF as a member or donation to our general fund or specific programs including the new edition of Old Santa Fe Today, the Mac Watson Fellowship, and the Faith and John Gaw Meem Preservation Trades Internship, visit the Join & Give page.

Watch the video on YouTube here

Melanie McWhorter, Pete Warzel, and Ken Stilwell on HSFF’s El Zaguán Portal, September 2020

Pueblo Chico: Land and Lives in Galisteo since 1814: A Book Review by Pete Warzel

Pueblo Chico is cultural historian Lucy Lippard’s second book on the history of Galisteo, New Mexico and its surrounding areas. As to be regularly expected, the Museum of New Mexico Press did an excellent job in the design and printing of this book with wonderful historical and current photos of the geography, townscape, homes, and people of this “little town.”

Lippard’s research is extremely deep and her writing is eloquent. 1814 is the start of this volume as the year of the first of two land grants by the Spanish governor of the territory to a group of “citizens of this village”, the origin story of the community that came to be – “the Mexican village of Galisteo.” At the time there were nineteen people in residence there. A second grant in 1816, to the same petitioners, made land ownership confusing, and provided fodder for the legal battles later in the 1800s when American interests and the Santa Fe Ring were acquiring as much New Mexico land as possible, legally or not.

The Galisteo basin had been populated by the Tano/Tewa for hundreds of years with several pueblo ruins in the area around what is now the village of Galisteo. Plains Indian raids made pueblo life difficult. Spanish settlement became a buffer for the more established towns (Santa Fe) and the Spanish, Mexican, and finally American military, had outposts in or near Galisteo. General Kearny sent horses to graze at Galisteo following the Army of the West’s possession of Santa Fe, soon followed by a tax collector in the village to charge a toll on the Santa Fe Trail to the capitol city.

In the 1900s we begin to see a recognizable Galisteo, with the land next to the new church, Iglesia Nuestra Señora de Los Remedios, deeded to the Sociedad de San José who used it to build La Sala de San José, a dance hall added to the Historic Santa Fe Foundation Register of Properties Worthy of Preservation in 2015, and a wonderful space now for art exhibits and events.

The 1950s brought drought, and the village began the final change to what we know visually today, as small ranches and farms were sold, ancestral homes abandoned. Ranches were consolidated in the sales, and the village itself attracted “…Anglos ‘of a special kind,’ who began to buy up inexpensive old adobes, a trend that off in the 1960s and has barely faltered since, though prices have risen exponentially.” Rural electricity and water treatment arrived and the village became a magnet for artists/creatives, slanting as time went on towards an older, more affluent population.

The book is a history of the village, but even more so an examination of a cultural landscape where history, geography, and different cultures shaped a home land. Lippard calls this “the vortex of land and lives….” Acequias, as everywhere in Northern New Mexico, were key in ensuring livability, and there were three functioning in the village in the late 1800s. In 1926, severe flooding destroyed the ditches and in an interesting note, Lippard says that there is very little oral history remaining about the ditches, since they were not there for this oldest group of elders born in the nineteen twenties and thirties, “…so their memories do not include working acequias.”

Lippard has done exhaustive research about her adopted village, and written an engaging book. The photographs are exquisite, giving a whole sense of time and place to the present. It is a weighty work of scholarship that creates a living history of Galisteo, but also places it in the greater context of trends and actions in the greater Southwest.

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Pueblo Chico: Land and Lives in Galisteo (Book)

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Pueblo Chico: Land and Lives in Galisteo since 1814
Lucy R. Lippard
Museum of New Mexico Press
Hardcover
336 pages

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Book Review • The King of Taos - Reviewed by Pete Warzel

The King of Taos • Max Evans

Reviewed by Pete Warzel
(Order the book at bottom of review)

There is something about New Mexican writers who tap the same vein of sensibility in their stories, exceedingly well, and entertainingly so. Stan Crawford, John Nichols, and here, Max Evans, have all gone to the well of character, for which the odd conglomeration of people in our state offers great promise for their rollicking tales. The King of Taos is almost plotless, more a collection of character studies that run the gamut of locals expatriated from the land and doing odd jobs to survive, artist immigrants, would be writers, Pueblo Indians, guys on the make, and strong women, in Taos, New Mexico during the 1950s. No matter about the plot, this book is a hoot.

Max Evans, again like Nichols and Crawford, pulls no punches when it comes to presenting his cast whole, all warts and foibles in macro vision. It is an equal opportunity comic barrage, and oh so Northern New Mexican. Not much has changed since the 1950s.

The Sagebrush Inn is there for the drinking, as is the Taos Inn. Writers are working as bartenders and the only painters making money in town are commercial artists. Did I say that incessant drinking is the tie that binds this story? I am not sure that is social commentary as much as a trope to allow for outrageous action and pitch perfect dialogue.

Zacharias Chacon is the leader of a group of misfits who haunt the drinking establishments of the town and commiserate about their toils and troubles. The running thread of the novel is Zacharias’s daily wait for the government check to come for his injuries during World War II, now five years delinquent after filing for compensation. His daughter Rosita goes to the post office, dutifully every day, to retrieve the check and finds her father in whatever bar the crew is settled in for the day. “It did not come Papa. Maybe tomorrow.” And optimism springs eternal as the rest of the drinking crew affirm that tomorrow will be the day.

Shaw Spencer, a newly arrived wannabe artist, becomes part of the gang, along with Indian Tony from the Pueblo, The Lover, The Undertaker, The Woodhauler, and interestingly, two real people plugged in as fictional characters – Patrocino Barela and Dal Holcomb. Shaw struggles with his art while the others just seem to go with the flow. He blows his money stake quickly and becomes partners with Zacharias in a wishful business venture where they will buy a D6 tractor and utilize Zacharias’ skills as a bulldozer operator. Shaw succeeds at his painting, then fails, makes money, then fails, broke again. His best-selling paintings are “portraits” of his model Anna, a sometimes lady of the night, whose backend is the focal point of the paintings.

And so, the days go. Funny yes, and sad. The eternal monotony of a small town with no opportunities is the rhythm of the novel. But, as Gene Atkins, the writer/bartender of the Sagebrush Inn says, “Well, I venture to say that you’ll find this a very different small town here.” And as we know Taos, so it is. The miracle happens.

A check for $36,000 is delivered by a delirious Rosita to her father and the crowd goes wild. The whacky string of promises that Zacharias made over the years to his friends for when he would be paid and rich are met, one by one, debts fulfilled, including a truck load of presents for his wife “Mama” who has been long neglected but never, ever, unloved. This band of drunken misfits, this gang of slap dash friends, are each ethical, caring people, watching out for one and all, covering each other’s backs no matter the situation. The boastful promises of drink come true, and nobody blinks at the fulfillment. Zacharias Chacon is the King of Taos.

Northern New Mexico lends itself to complex relationships, neighbors watching out for each other, as well as to descriptions of the beautiful land that unfolds everywhere before your eyes. Max Evans gets the land, the rhythms of the dialogue, the absurdity of the dreams, just right. This is a young man’s book, full of optimism and irony, and indeed the Author’s Note at the beginning of the book explains that he began this novel in the late nineteen fifties, and put it away. He was much younger then. It took an old man of almost ninety-five to finish it, to add the knowledge of sympathy, empathy, and the serenity of camaraderie that makes the world go round. 

The King of Taos: A Novel • Max Evans

$24.95

The King of TaosMax Evans
UNM Press
Hardcover, 176 pages
$24.95

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BOOK REVIEW — Stanley Crawford's The Garlic Papers: A Small Garlic Farm in the Age of Global Vampires

Cover of The Garlic Papers

Stanley Crawford’s The Garlic Papers
A Book Review by HSFF’s Executive Director Pete Warzel.

“After planting and harvesting crops for over forty years, you would think a being might finally comprehend the ephemeral nature of all things. Not, alas, this one.” — Stanley Crawford, The Garlic Papers: A Small Garlic Farm in the Age of Global Vampires

The classic A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm was first published in 1998 and has been in print ever since. It is an elegant and eloquent rumination on life through the annual cycle of a small farm in Northern New Mexico. It is a quiet testament.

2019 brings a continuation, not quite a sequel – The Garlic Papers: A Small Garlic Farm in the Age of Global Vampires. If Stan had ever previously intended to write a follow-up on his classic, he most likely would not have predicted the chain of events that are delineated in this one.

Circumstances distill to this: In 2014 Ted Hume, an international trade attorney, asked Stan and Rosemary Crawford to act as an affected party, a garlic grower, to request a review of Harmoni International Spice regarding their import/pricing policies. Harmoni is a major importer of garlic in the U.S. and is owned by the Chinese company, Zhengzhou Harmoni Spice. The “dumping” in the anti-dumping laws is the import of foreign goods, in this case garlic, at a price that undercuts American growers (dumps on the market). The review by the U.S. Department of Commerce went smoothly until Harmoni decided that millions of potential fines would enfeeble their position in gaming the trade system in the U.S. market, and decided to play hardball. Some seven legal jurisdictions, four sets of attorneys (plus Chinese law firms) opposing, seven legal firms (representing Stan and associates), plus advising firms, are all locked into the mess. Ted Hume and Stan are not budging in what has become a real time David and Goliath story, and a look at best, into the inefficient, incompetent bureaucracy of U.S. governed international trade, at worst, the corrupt nature of the system.

The beautifully clear, Crawford writing style re-emerges in this work, as does a very lucid reporting of circumstances around the Harmoni-Spice international intrigue and legal imbroglio. Stan has multiple lives – farmer, novelist, writer of clear and beautiful non-fiction, man who cares deeply about the world. This book is truly a hybrid, and well done. He tells the economic/political story, yet combines it with elegant ruminations on the work of farming, and then, as in the chapter “Apocalypse Shortly”, let’s rip with a hilarious recap of a dinner among fellow Dixonistas, “…discussing our favorite topic, the End of the World.”

Was all, is all, this worth it? And by all I mean not simply the complex legal harassment of a small, Northern New Mexico owner/farmer by a powerhouse of an international exporter of garlic, but his hard, forty years of farming also. To the farming question: “Above all, it is quiet on the farm. I take the quiet for granted. After a day in the city, I crave the quiet.” And, to the legal trade question: ‘I have been asked a number of times whether I regret becoming involved in this labyrinth. No, because it has been a fascinating peephole into how the world works….”

Stan gave a reading and book signing at the Historic Santa Fe Foundation several weeks ago, and his demeanor is calming, his patience in responding to the facts of the Harmoni-Spice scrum inspiring. He looks the same, at 82 years of age, as in the photographs of him when A Garlic Testament was published almost 22 years ago. He is fit, wiry, intellectually curious, and still a fine, fine writer. In an interview from 2008 with PowellsBooks.Blog, the iconic bookstore in Portland, Oregon, Stan said, “Writing is what I do to make sense of life.”

I will tell you a story from many years ago when I called Stan for advice from my Denver home. A late spring snowstorm had split an apple tree in my courtyard and somehow over the next months I saved the good half. However, a year later the good, living half, was leaning into the house. What to do? I asked the guy who would know. On the phone he said, “Well, do you want the Santa Fe answer or the real one?” I bit. Ok, give me the Santa Fe answer. He paused, and said, “Move the house.” I took the real answer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
STANLEY CRAWFORD is co-owner with his wife, RoseMary Crawford, of El Bosque Garlic Farm in Dixon, New Mexico, where they have lived since 1969. Crawford was born in 1937 and was educated at the University of Chicago and at the Sorbonne. He is the author of nine novels, including Village, Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine, Travel Notes, GASCOYNE, and Some Instructions, a classic satire on all the sanctimonious marriage manuals ever produced. He is also the author of two memoirs: A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small Farm in New Mexico, and Mayordomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico. He has written numerous articles in various publications such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Double Take, and Country Living. For more information, please visit stanleycrawford.net.

The Garlic Papers: A Small Garlic Farm in the Age of Global Vampires
Stanley Crawford
Leaf Storm Press
$16.95, Paperback
186 Pages