Sunday, April 29, 2007
Saturday, April 28, 2007
1966 - Tillie's Tale
I found an article in a 1966 Santa Fe New Mexican, a sizable article complete with photo, about Tillie Hawkins retiring from teaching in Santa Fe. The article did not divulge Tillie’s age, but it did say she began teaching at age 16. She was Miss Tillie Branch of Roy, New Mexico then. She began teaching in Santa Fe in 1942 at Alvord Elementary School where she spent the rest of her teaching career.
Mrs. Hawkins had degrees, both bachelors and masters, from the University of New Mexico. She was very active in the community as well, serving as president of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary and the Disabled Veterans auxiliary. And she was an active member of the state and national education associations as well as the national Classroom Teachers Association.
The article went on to report that her husband, an accountant, died in 1959 and that Tillie had one daughter, Clara Belle, now Mrs. Timothy Taylor of Albuquerque.
The article gushed over Tillie Hawkins and made particular note of her “ebullient enthusiasm so endearing to primary students.” This gave me great pause because that same Tillie Hawkins was my first grade teacher and I was petrified of her.
In 1953, I entered the first grade at Alvord Elementary School. At the time, our family lived at the Sierra Vista Courts, a group of apartments and small houses grouped around a bare dirt “court” next to the railroad tracks, just about where Alarid Street reaches Cerrillos Road. I lived about two blocks from the school which was, and still is, at the corner of Alarid and Hickox.
First grade was my introduction to Mrs. Hawkins. I was very frightened by her. I have no good explanation for this. Maybe, I have a deep-seated fear of ebullient enthusiasm. I know I don’t find it particularly endearing.
Mrs. Hawkins always seemed to be looming over me, all black hair and gleaming teeth. I was so frightened of Mrs. Hawkins that I could barely talk in her presence. Apparently, I just made these squeaking sounds. So my first report card from Mrs. Hawkins came with a note to my parents, recommending that their son be examined for mental retardation. This was in the days before the rise of politically correct terms like, “developmentally delayed” or “mentally challenged.”
It’s funny, now that I think about it, but my puzzled parents were not laughing at the time. The one thing of which they were certain was that their beamish boy was not mentally retarded. After all, I had learned to read and write well before entering school.
But my parents acceded to Mrs. Hawkins suggestion and I was duly tested. The tests revealed I was not a moron at all, but actually quite advanced for my age. I do not know how Mrs. Hawkins reacted to this news because my parents promptly negotiated my transfer to another school and I never saw her again.
I finished the first grade at Salazar School where I did far better under the kind tutelage of Mrs. Theresa Campora, may God bless her. As it turned out, I managed to successfully finish the first grade, the rest of elementary school, then graduate from St. Michael’s High School, get a college degree, then a law degree. I even managed to carve out a successful career in the law profession, serving as a trial judge for many years.
For a long time, I resented Mrs. Hawkins and her hasty and mistaken diagnosis. I even felt a little sorry for myself as a kid tagged as retarded right out of the box. But, after reading the 1966 article, I realized my complaint against Mrs. Hawkins was rather weak in comparison to another of her victims – her own daughter.
You see, the article disclosed that Tillie Hawkins had named her child Clara Belle. This child went through life, until she married Mr. Tim Taylor of Albuquerque, as Clara Belle Hawkins. The poor kid.
Call me a moron, but she’s the one I feel sorry for.
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Tuesday, April 10, 2007
1957 - Stealing Home
Like almost every 10-year old boy in Santa Fe in the summer of 1957, I was crazy about baseball.
I’d play every day, all day, until the dark sent me home. Each night, I would faithfully oil my fielder’s mitt and bind it tightly with a baseball inside to achieve the perfect pocket. I wore my baseball hat with a slight dent on the crown just like my hero, Mickey Mantle. I followed the Yankees in the papers and I never missed a game on TV. I was so baseball crazy that I actually kept an official score book for each game I saw. I was a true believer.
You know, there’s an Abbott and Costello routine where Lou says he’s a ballplayer but Abbott doesn’t believe it and says so. Lou says, “I eat baseball, I live baseball – all night when I’m asleep I dream about baseball. Abbott asks, “Don’t you ever dream about girls?” Costello is shocked: “What? And miss my turn at bat!” Well, that’s what I felt about baseball.
But it was my fate to be a mediocre player, more enthusiastic than talented, and thus eligible only for the “minors” in Little League. The minor leagues teams were typically sponsored not by well-known Santa Fe businesses like Creamland Dairy or Santa Fe Motor Company but by lesser-known entities like the Eagles Club or St. Ann’s Parish Church.
To be in the minors meant only a hat and T-shirt for uniforms. To be in the minors meant that I rarely played on the beautiful grass fields on what is now Salvador Perez Park, equipped with dugouts and real fences, even stands for the fans. And concession booths and paved parking. To be in the minors meant I played on the dirt fields, with a wire backstop and spotty base lines chalked on the dust. I didn’t really mind. I was happy just to be on the team.
At the time, I lived on Acres Estates, well down Airport Road. The “estates” amounted to a strip of dirt road, thinly lined by homes of miscellaneous architecture but otherwise surrounded by vacant land. Today, it’s a street called Jemez Road, it’s paved and my old house has been turned into a motor scooter sales shop.
Back then the players always included me, my brother Gene, Ray Lovato, Joe Burton and his brother Jimmy, Ronnie Mascarenas, Jimmy and Tommy Poehler, sometimes Ralph Anstey, Johnny Sandoval and Jimmy Hall. We made a baseball field on a good flat spot in the field next to Cosme Lovato’s house. Johnny Sandoval’s older brother used a tractor to scrape out a diamond for us. The bases were potato sacks filled with sand, which, after a while, became just potato sacks. But it worked just fine.
Before I go further, I feel obliged to introduce the history portion of today’s post. Hang on because it somehow ties in. Here’s the history:
In 1883, a prison was built near Santa Fe, intentionally far away from the town. But by the 1950’s, the City had grown and “The Pen” was surrounded by houses and shopping centers. Roughly, it occupied the northeast corner of the intersection of Cordova Road and St. Francis Drive, where the Joseph Montoya Building now stands. Over the years, Santa Feans had been subjected to only occasional scares over escaped prisoners and other trouble at the penitentiary but it all changed in 1952.
In 1952, prison guard named Filemon Ortiz was mysteriously murdered in a cellblock with 78 inmates all locked safely behind bars. Ortiz was the first guard to be killed in the pen’s 69-year history. After a bit of rigorous interrogation by police chief A. B. Martinez, two inmates confessed to killing Ortiz in a failed escape attempt, Homer Lee Gossett, a lifer for murder, and Donald Maynard, in jail for escape.
While the Ortiz murder was still being investigated, an uprising took place at the Pen. A dozen State Penitentiary inmates surprised a guard, held him at knifepoint, and armed themselves with rifles and shotguns from the guard’s office. The inmates took over Cell Block Two and seized eight prison guards as hostages. Within an hour, 150 law enforcement officers surrounded the State Penitentiary and the siege began.
Inmate Claudis “Sonny Boy” Williamson, described by the newspaper as the Negro ringleader, demanded a car and the gates of the penitentiary to be opened. Sounds more like a comedy act than a plan, if you ask me. One car, twelve inmates – it would have been interesting to see that.
After 18 tense hours of negotiation with prison officials, the siege ended in a bargain. The hostages were released, shaken but unhurt. The inmates then surrendered on the promise they wouldn’t be put in the “hole.” The “hole” was a bare concrete cell under the prison next to the boilers. Apparently, inmates found it uncomfortable.
For nearly two days, the City had lived in fear and with some cause. A dozen desperate men, armed with rifles and shotguns, in the middle of the city. Interestingly, the inmates never used their weapons at all. One inmate caught some buckshot from a guard’s shotgun early in the action. And a New Mexico state trooper was accidentally shot by a Santa Fe City police officer. The injury was not serious but, damn, that had to be embarrassing.
The ensuing investigation into the uprising turned up corruption among prison officials and guards and credible allegations of sex perversions, wide open gambling and marijuana smoking among the convicts. Heads rolled, among them Warden Joseph Tondre who resigned rather than be fired.
Hardly had Santa Fe calmed down from the siege at the penitentiary when two convicts working at the State Pen’s dairy barn simply walked away from the grounds. Lloyd Wardwell, con artist, and Homer Glass, thief, found their way into Santa Fe where they cashed a worthless check, cheekily giving the prison warden as a reference. They then visited four bars, bought some new clothes and checked into La Fonda Hotel where they were finally apprehended, sitting comfortably in their suite, sipping fine bourbon. It was 23-year old Richard Montoya, a rookie on the city police force who got the tip and he, along with patrolman Felix Lujan and Hotel Detective Earl Fordham, made the arrests. It was not difficult; the two escapees were too drunk to resist or even make any coherent statements. The newspaper reported that Lloyd Wardwell managed to say “I’m a G-d- chump and I feel like one.”
1952 was a tough year for the State Penitentiary: murder, riot, corruption and a suite at La Fonda Hotel. The State Legislature met in 1953 and the decision was made to close down the old prison and build a new, modern prison about 15 miles south of town. This took some time and by 1957, only the outer walls of the old prison still stood, though badly crumbling. The large outer grounds of the Penitentiary had been cleared and the City of Santa was given permission to install badly needed Little League baseball fields.
These “prison” fields were the same dirt fields I played on as a “minor” in 1957. I spent many a summer day in the shadow of the old Penitentiary playing baseball or watching baseball. Idling between games one day, a few of us began exploring the prison walls and spotted a way in. As the smallest boy in the group, I was hoisted onto Joe Burton’s shoulders just high enough for me to scramble to the top of the wall. From my vantage point I could see the razed foundations of several buildings, some piles of lumber or debris and little else.
But directly below me, I recognized the familiar outline of a baseball diamond, long abandoned and shorn of bases and backstop. But there, still in its rightful place, was a home plate, a genuine official baseball home plate. I could almost swear it was glowing in the dusk.
When I reported the find, the same idea leapt into each of our baseball-fevered brains – we had to have that home plate. For the next game, we smuggled a length of rope and some miscellaneous tools into the equipment bag. We gathered at the break in the wall and I was once again hoisted onto the wall and, armed with a handful of tools, I shinnied down the rope to the prison baseball field.
Removing home plate was a bit of a puzzle. After digging around the plate, I found a thick metal pin protruding from the bottom of the plate, a pin which fit into a hollow anchor set into the ground with a bit of concrete. The pin and sleeve were held together with a thoroughly rusted cotter pin. After banging on the cotter pin for a while without success, I discovered the concrete crumbled with just a few hammer blows and within minutes, the plate was free.
I tied the plate to the rope and gave the rope three sharp tugs, the signal to haul away and home plate quickly disappeared over the wall. It seemed a very long while before the rope reappeared and I had a lengthy opportunity to ponder the high surrounding walls. So this is what it was like to be in prison, I remember thinking. When the rope came within reach, I climbed up as quickly as I could and escaped from the old Penitentiary.
The next day, our new home plate was ceremoniously installed in our own neighborhood baseball field and it became a point of pride that our field, shabby as it was, sported an official major league home plate.
Our family moved to Sombrio Street in 1959 and I never went back to our old field and I have no idea whatever happened to our prized home plate. My Little League career was not particularly noteworthy and I ended it where I started it – in the minors. But Ray Lovato, Joe Burton and my brother Gene – made the majors on their first try and were named all-stars three years in a row. I like to think that the penitentiary home plate had something to do with it.
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