Comments on: Roadside Table

By: Deb Howden

Deb Howden — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:29:28 +0000

Yo cuz! Welcome! You got here just before one of the biggest snowfalls of the year – good timing! I can’t believe you didn’t know where the old blinking light or the sleeping boy plaza were. With your attention to detail I thought for sure you would have researched all of the idiosyncracies and local flavors before your big move. You do know that mornings in Taos start at 1pm and that instead of keeping bottles of water in your emergency kit you need to keep hot chocolate and salsa. Love you

By: Debra Darvick

Debra Darvick — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:40:22 +0000

The first time my Brooklyn-born husband asked for a soda at a deli in Michigan, the waitress looked at him and said, “We don’t have those here. You’ll have to go to across the street to Stroh’s.”

OK. So the midwest didn’t really know from a good pastrami sandwich but we were also going to have to do without Dr. Brown’s cream soda? Turns out a “soda” was an ice cream soda, and they did have them at across the street at Stroh’s ice cream parlor.

Had we asked for “pop” and pronounced it “pahp” with that middle vowel vocalize like the “baaahing” of a sheep, we would have been asked, “What kind, Sprite, Seven-Up or Coca-Cola?”

Regional quirks bring out the quaintness and charm when one makes a big move. Comforting, that amidst all the retail cookie-cutter sameness of the big box stores, “Christmas-style enchiladas” actually means something.

I’ve long harbored a dream of moving to New Mexico. Thank you for your posts.

By: mellimel

mellimel — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 03:54:13 +0000

Don’t know about the GPS lady. UPS can’t or won’t even try to find my house. They say they’ve delivered to my address but then I find they delivered to the Bed and Breakfast down the road, or even further down the road at the home of the owners of the B&B. And then Lisa, the owner of the B&B and I talk, and meet at the back fence and she passes the package over.
Like that!

Oh , and to get to my house you turn right (or left) at the little church.

By: Cat

Cat — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:46:32 +0000

So now you’ve got me wondering… how does GPS cope with folky signs, local highways and Byzantine byways? How often would one be steered into a crick or a ditch because Demanda, the annoying GPS lady, doesn’t know about the Sleeping Boy Plaza? Modern times and ancient ways make for strange bedfellows.

By: cfinhollywood

cfinhollywood — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:20:30 +0000

When I first moved from Haiti to New York, I had to figure out that a “regular coffee” was coffee with milk in it (to a native French speaker, that’s cafe-au-lait), which I detest. I also had to come to grips with the idea that coffee in America was some kind of watery brown stuff that vaguely reminded of coffee. Regular coffee in Haiti is what is now commonly referred to as expresso. When I moved from the east coast to Los Angeles, I quickly found out that a highway is not a freeway or vice versa. And neither do people say THE 101 freeway. They leave out the pronouns here when referring to freeways. Oh, the learning curves. You may sound like a hick for awhile, but hell, you’ve got crunchy snow while we’ve got sandpaper dry Santa Anna winds here!

By: Conz

Conz — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:23:50 +0000

Melissa, I know just how you feel. I moved from LA to El Portal (pop. 635) and moved into my husbands miners shack. A few years later, we knocked it down and re-built. We’ve since sold and moved to Midpines. That house, 20 years later, is still the “The Biscovich House” (As in, “you’re gonna veer left at The Biscovich House…”). Whattayagonnado? Meanwhile, breath deeply that clean fresh air. Doesn’t it make you feel so alive? Much love, Connie

By: dearpru

dearpru — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:15:03 +0000

I also recently moved from the big city to a rural landscape. Without the layers of concrete & signage, structures & vehicles, landscaping & endless streets, you can sense the America our forebears saw when they came to this continent. It must have been breathtaking.

Have you ever read the journals of John Muir that tell of his trek from San Francisco Bay to Yosemite? How he came across “herds” of grizzly bears romping in flower-filled meadows southeast of San Francisco? A vanished landscape, yet we can still experience it thanks to his writing.

Keep writing about New Mexico…you’re giving us a mini-vacation to that enchanted land.