Slouching Towards Santa Fe
Chronicles of the City in the mid-20th Century
Sunday, July 6, 2014
1943 - Wartime America, Small Town Santa Fe
1943
- America
at War and winning. In the Pacific, in Europe, in northern Africa,
the allies were turning the tide of the war.
At
home, Americans faced rationing of cheese, meat, canned food, shoes
and gasoline. And coffee, sugar and butter. But Americans didn’t
just give up the luxuries, they gave as well, holding drives to
collect scrap metal, rubber and cooking fat. And they invested
millions of dollars in war bonds. Women took the place of men in the
factories and America knuckled down to the job at hand.
Santa
Feans did their part, too. Daily, the newspaper encouraged citizens
to save cooking fat, paper, scrap metal and rubber for the war
effort. And they did.
The
paper even carried a chart of enemy planes, just in case a Japanese
zero was considering strafing the Santa Fe Plaza. The paper reported
who was drafted, who was killed or injured in the war, who got medals
and who came home.
The
War was personal in Santa Fe. When Corregidor fell in
May 1942,
thousands of Americans, hundreds of them
New
Mexicans serving
in the 200th
Coast Artillery,
were taken prisoner. Those
few
who
survived the infamous Bataan
death
march were held in camps deep in the Philippines. New Mexico
Governor John Dempsey immediately began plans to get an information
flow to New Mexicans with sons and brothers held prisoner as well as
efforts to get the prisoners as much aid as the Japanese would allow.
One
prisoner, Sgt. Walter Charles Kiesov, managed to get a postcard to
his mother, Mrs. Charles Kiesov, reporting that he was well. Sgt.
Kiesov was first reported killed at Bataan but then his name appeared
on the prisoner list. Other Santa Fe boys, thought to be lost, turned
up at prison camps in the Phillipines, including Pvt. Francis Bert
Powell, son of M/M C.F. Powell of Garfield Street, Sgt. Francis Van
Buskirk, son of M/M J.A. Laudenslager, Corp. Rubel Gonzales, son of
Mrs. Frank Gonzales, Candelario Street, Corp. Joe T. Lucero, son of
Mrs. Willie Lucero, East Alameda and Corp. Ray Tucker, son of Mrs.
William T. Tucker, Ninita Street. Many more such notices were
received throughout 1943.
And
the local paper also highlighted our war heroes, two. Sgt. Manuel
Duran received a purple heart for injuries he got while saving his
crew members and his bomber, attacked returning from a bombing
mission. A fierce fire broke out and Sgt. Duran assisted the
wounded, jettisoned ammo which was about to blow up and put out the
flames. He is the son of Mrs. Matt Duran, widow of the late Matt
Duran who ran the Torreon Shoe Shop on College Street.
And
Lt. Edwin Lamme also won a purple heart for serious injuries to his
hand when his Flying Fortress was hit by an anti-aircraft shell over
France. Ed, the son of M/M Kenneth Lamme who ran a photography studio
in Santa Fe, was most famous as the youngest ever to graduate from
St. Mikes High School, called St. Michael's College in those days.
Major
Miguel A. Otero wrote home to tell of a chance meeting with another
Santa Fean – Sgt John Stevenson in North Africa. Both were in the
Air corps and ran across each other at the same post exchange. Otero
was a lawyer in town, the son of Governor Miguel Otero and married
to the famous flyer, Katherine Stinson Otero. Stevenson was the
advertising manager for the New Mexican until he was drafted.
Silas
Garcia went off to the Navy in style, courtesy of a party thrown by
the Misses Mary Jane Montano and Eloisa Baca . Guests included
Charlie Thayer, Joe Padilla, Joe Frank Ortiz, Don Rodriguez, Mike
Abeyta, Bennie Gonzales, Pete Alarid, Eddy Apodaca, Walter Stark,
Tilly Baca,
Alice Lucero, Margaret Martinez,
Viola Tapia and Ferbie
Longacre. Games, dancing and refreshments for all.
Capt
Finlay MacGillivray of Santa Fe demonstrated he was proud of his
Scots ancestry when his named his bomber the “Hoot Mon.” In
1943, McGillivray
was serving in New Guinea piloting A-20 attack bombers. In fact, he
received
the Air Medal and a letter of commendation for his service there.
Mac was a Santa
Fe High School
graduate and a football star at UNM before the war and he wrote often
to his mother, Della MacGillivray,
at 130 W. Houghton Street.
Wondering
about the women in the war effort? Then
consider
Lena Alarid, the first Santa Fe girl to enlist in the WAVES –
that's Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services. She was a
nurse
stationed in Washington D.C. and held the rank of lieutenant. She
was the daughter of Fred Alarid, 206 Chapelle. Eight
other
Santa Fe girls were in WAVES in 1943: Eloisa Eckert, Paulina
Gonzales, Hulda Hobbs, Dollie Ruth Johnson, Jane E. Means, Ernestine
Quintana, Irma Wildering Smith and Mary Francis Sullivan.
And
six Santa Fe girls were on the front page of the monthly newsletter
for the Tulare Air
Base
in California as
the
prettiest aircraft mechanics around or “gal wrench-wrestlers,” as
the newsletter put it. They
were
Ernestine and Teresa Alarid, Santana Gonzales, Anita Bustos, Amy
Norton and Agnes Lucero. According to the newsletter, the six were
trained at the Santa Fe municipal airport where these “belles of
the balpeen hammer” learned their craft.
1943
– Wartime America, Small Town Santa Fe.
Sunday, June 29, 2014
1966 - The Danish Bride
Have
I told the tale of the Danish Bride? It all happened in 1966.
Dorte
Meyer, a young
student
from Copenhagen, was traveling through the United
States
when she wandered through Santa Fe. At the downtown Plaza Bar, she
met 28
year old Santa
Fean Anton Miller and it was love at first sight.
When
Miller proposed marriage, Dorte was agreeable but she wanted to
observe old Danish wedding customs. The first of which, it turned
out, involved the bride's
shoes. The custom in Denmark required the young couple to collect
pennies in a champagne bottle – from friends, family, even
strangers – and use that money to buy the bride's wedding shoes.
Apparently, it was bad luck to obtain the shoes any other way.
So
Anton and Dorte acquired a large champagne bottle and posted it on
the counter at the Plaza Bar, with a little note explaining its
purpose. Soon enough, the jug began to fill with pennies.
Plans
were made for the wedding, the license, flowers, justice of the peace
and about a month later, the wedding day came. Gene Petchesky, owner
of the downtown Guarantee store was contacted and asked if he would
sell the bride her wedding shoes in the Danish Custom. Gene, a smart
businessman, said yes even though he had no idea what the Danish
custom might be.
Anton
Miller arrived to pick up his bride on a bicycle, placed her on the
cross bar and pedaled over to the Plaza Bar. There, they retrieved a
full champagne bottle of pennies and pedaled over to the Guarantee
Store. There, the bride tried on every pair of white shoes in stock,
finally settling on the first pair she had tried on. That, I
believe, is an American custom.
When
it came time to pay, the bride called for the champagne bottle,
pulled a hammer out of her purse and smashed the bottle, spraying
pennies everywhere. All this to the astonishment of Gene Petcheskey
and his staff. But once the custom was explained, Petcheskey took it
in good humor and set his staff to count the pennies – $15.91 –
which he accepted as payment.
Then
the couple pedaled to the Justice of the Peace for the ceremony but
there was a short delay as the best man was sent back home for the
forgotten marriage license. He also made a short detour for flowers
which the groom had also forgotten. The best man didn't say where he
got the flowers, but he did say that it was lucky he lived next door
to a cemetery.
After
the ceremony, the happy couple repaired to the Plaza Bar for the
reception where
the bride was treated to an ice cream sherbet and
the
wedding party
toasted
with
traditional Swedish gloegg,
a hot spiced drink. Apparently pretty potent as well, because the
groom – barely wed 4 hours – was later
arrested
on Lincoln Avenue for public drunkenness and drunk driving on a
bicycle. The complaint was lodged by his parents, Mr.
and Mrs.
Harry
Miller of Garcia Street, who weren't able to convince their
intoxicated son to come home.
Oh,
carrying
a
bride on a bicycle is also a Danish
custom but not in this case. Between them, Anton Miller and Dorte
Meyer owned six cars and one airplane but none of them worked. And
they owned
two bicycles, but one of them had been stolen earlier in the week.
So, as
it happened, the
one bicycle was all the transportation they had.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
1954 - Old and New
For
all the emphasis on history and tradition, the City is always ready
to try something new.
Take
the Plaza in 1954, for example.
That
year the
Kiwanis Club asked the City to build a bandstand, reviewing stand and
a public comfort station on the plaza. It would cost about $12,000
and the Kiwanis offered
to
pitch in on the funds. As well, the Club asked for a better display
space for the ship's bell from the USS New Mexico with some
informative bronze plaques. At
the time, the ship's bell was installed on the northwest quadrant of
the Plaza, mounted on a concrete platform perfect for sitting and
people watching. While the City Councilors were interested in the
ideas, nothing ultimately came of them.
The
City had already begun to beautify the Plaza by installing an iron
fence and gates around the Soldier's Monument. That was Henry
Dendahl's idea. He got the fence from the old Manderfield estate and
the gates from the Staab house, plus donations of labor and materials
from Plaza merchants. Dendahl
planned an annual painting of the fence with a free lunch at the
Canton Cafe for all the volunteers.
The
big news on the Plaza was the work on the ancient
Palace of the Governors. Workmen put up scaffolding right on Palace
Avenue and, to howls of protest from Santa Feans, began removing the
ends of the vigas which protruded from the portal. Turns out the
vigas had rotted at the ends and were leaking rain water under the
roof. New dummy viga ends would be installed so the Palace would
look the same. Around the corner on the Lincoln Avenue side, the old
adobe
bricks over the gate – the
one with the blue door –
to the patio were giving way so they were replaced – with pumice
block. Fake vigas and pumice block . . . I don't think I'll ever look
at the Palace of the Governors the same way again.
1954
is the year that the First National Bank – originally located on
the east side of the Plaza, picked up and moved to the west side of
the Plaza, taking over the space that used to be – well, pretty
much everything – the New Mexican printing plant, a movie theater,
a Buick
dealership and, coming
full circle,
the original site of the First National Bank when it first opened in
1871 – right on the corner of Lincoln and Palace where it stands
today. That was quite an undertaking but the Plaza was only roped
off for one day – the day the money and safe deposit boxes were
moved. Levine's moved into the Bank's old space – a
beautiful example of Greek Revival archictecture first built in 1912.
In
1957, under the guidance of John Gaw Meem, Levines remodeled
the building
to conform to the prevailing Santa Fe style, trading gothic colums
for classic wooden posts.
Around
the corner from the Plaza, in Cathedral Park, the Archbishop's old
house was torn down, condemned as a firetrap. It
was an elegant old
territorial structure with a full portal and balcony running the
length of the
house
facing Cathedral Park. At one time, it served as the City's first
St. Vincent Hospital, beginning
in
1865, and
later as
an old folks home.
In
1954, La Fonda removed thefountain
and pool in the patio, replacing it with flagstone to accommodate the
Indian dances it featured every summer. Santa
Feans were sad
to see that fountain go. Across the street, the Camera Shop
installed a drinking fountain, but it just wasn't the same.
Still
on San Francisco Street, Evan Wilson opened a new cafeteria and soda
fountain, called El Refresco, on the northeast
corner of Burro Alley. It was right across the alley
from Wilson's old popcorn stand in the Lensic Theater Building.
That's where he got the nickname, Popcorn Wilson. Oddly, the new
place served
only
ice cream and malts
–
no popcorn.
And
1954 is the year the St. Francis Cathedral rectory was remodeled. Old
timers remember the old peaked roof and huge concrete steps leading
up to
the high front door. The remodeling removed the roof, created a new
lower street side entrance and made the building more Santa Fe style.
It was used, in
1954,
as office space for the Archbishop and pastor and included a vault
where parish valuables were kept.
Up
Washington Avenue, a
row of 7 large elm trees in front of the Scottish Rite Temple was
removed
leaving
the street
pretty bare. Those trees had been planted in 1912 but elm disease was
killing them and they'd been breaking up the sidewalks for years.
The Temple reported
plans to
replant using
blue
spruces.
Around
this same time,
Washington Street was closed off for several days in the summer of
1954 so the phone company could lay underground cables.
The
biggest building
project
in 1954 was
the city's first municipal swimming pool. Most of the city's civic
organizations, chiefly the Optimists, organized a drive for the pool,
raising enough money to buy a large piece of the Penitentiary land –
part
of the old dairy farm --
which they promptly donated to the City which planned
to build
the pool facility with a cigarette tax revenues.
While
the formal name of the pool facility was the Santa Fe Municipal
Swimming pool, Santa Fe kids invariably called
it the “munici-pool.” These days the
pool bears
a new name in honor of legendary coach Salvador Perez.
Another
piece of Santa Fe history disappeared in 1954. The Gross Kelly
Company – a Santa Fe institution since 1879 – was sold to a Texas
company. Dan Kelly, Jr., in his first year as president and chairman
of the board – just like his father and grandfather were –
confirmed the sale. The business continued the
distribution
of New Mexico products as before with most of the Gross Kelly staff
still in place, but the name --- Gross Kelly & Company –
was
retired.
In
1954, the second
oldest
Spanish fort in the nation was discovered in Santa Fe. Or better
said, re-discovered. Old
timers in the city still remembered the fortification known as La
Garita – Spanish for bastion or jail – located on a small rise
north of Santa Fe, more or less midway between Fort Marcy Hill and
the Scottish Rite Temple.
Historians
say that it once was used by the Spaniards to hold political
prisoners, a few of which were executed by firing squad against a
nearby wall. But it had fallen into disuse by the time the Yankees
arrived and, over time, began to deteriorate. By 1900, it had lost
its roof. Kids played on it, treasure hunters dug around in it and,
in the early 50's, it was actually used as a dump site. There exists
an
old faded
photo, taken
in 1912, which
still shows one wall standing, perhaps the very wall used for
executions.
But
in
1954, Bruce
Ellis, an archaeologist who lived just 50 feet from the site on
Washington Avenue,
became interested in the site and, with funding from the NM
Historical Society, began to poke explore
the ruins.
By
the end of the summer, Ellis and his crew had uncovered the
foundations, revealing
the ancient
floor
plan. It was roughly in the shape of a diamond with 2 bastion towers
at the long
ends, with a center hall and rooms and jail cells on either side, all
enclosed
within
3 foot thick adobe walls. La Garita, Ellis
said
was probably built shortly after completion of the Palace of the
Governors and that was built sometime before 1680.
That's
typical
Santa Fe, history right in your own back yard.
Saturday, June 14, 2014
1942 – The Lucky Lady
The US Navy's newest Light Cruiser launched in June 1942, named after our little City, The USS Santa Fe. The honor of christening came to Caroline Chavez, the daughter of District Judge David Chavez and, therefore, the niece of US Senator Dennis Chavez. She was 14 at the time and a big hit at the launching, with a pretty pink dress and carrying a bouquet of red roses.
For the launching, the traditional champagne bottle contained no champagne at all but water taken directly from the Santa Fe River, right off Alameda street, and blessed by the Archbishop.
The USS Santa Fe served with distinction during the war. She was called the Lucky Lady, for fighting in several battles and always escaping unharmed. 13 Battle Stars, she earned, the USS Santa Fe. She's gone now, scrapped at the end of the war. But the ship's bell, all 900 lbs of brass, is on permanent display at City Hall. I always like to give it a little tap as I leave the building, just to hear it ring.
Friday, February 24, 2012
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