Deming Done

Michelle and Matt pointed out the highlights of Deming and said there was a new park popping up in the ground.

It’s pretty bleak still but landscaping is on the way. Two and a half million bucks of work. 

The water is supposed to be a reserve supply for the city and they allow fishing but no swimming. Boo hiss. Apparently swimming will be allowed when they know the water is clean enough. It’s a decade long process apparently. 

Yup. Dinosaurs. I have no idea what’s going on but they were cute.  

The day wasn’t half over and Rusty was resting. We took over the gazebo. 

The park is named for a businessman and his wife who became big shots in Deming. Donation central I  guess. 

Michelle told us about the City of Rocks State park and we drove half an hour out of town to see what’s what. We were greeted by a raised middle finger. 

The park has two camping areas, one with all the facilities which looked pretty boring even from a distance. A visitor center, a clump of RVs and so what is the fuss about? 

If you go beyond the rows of RVs hooked to electrical cords you drive through what they called developed campsites, spots with tables and trash cans and fire rings but no hookups. This eccentric collection of scattered sites constitutes one of the most interesting campgrounds I’ve seen. 

The city of rocks is a scattering of lava rocks that are estimated to be 30 million years old. They are found scattered around a hill rising up out of the endless desert floor. 

Dogs are welcome and you get to wander the trails at will. 

There are what they call walk up sites for tent campers. 

Ten bucks a night and you can use the Reserve America to get your site online. 

We made our own pull out in a wide spot off the main dirt road through the state park. 

Lunch time was three o’clock. Layne had remembered Michelle’s recommendation of a dive bar and eatery west of town. Adobe Deli in all its glory:

They are famous for their French onion soup. 

We shared a grilled cheese sandwich with green chilies, New Mexico style. Delicious. 

It was a strange place with a cheerful server who took good care of us and good food.Snd a bunch of odd decorations! 

The staff at a winery we visited were visibly annoyed by our arrival. Weirdly we got some good tips from two locals who were drinking wine at the bar. They recommended the Shiraz and we took a bottle with us. 

We stayed at a nearby rest area off the freeway last year and there it was as we traveled toward Benson and the sun was setting. 

To sleep, perchance to dream…We were tired after a long day but Rusty passed out without touching his dinner. It must have been great for him. 

Michelle and Matt

I get nervous meeting strangers sbd I get even more nervous leaving strangers and worrying if I made an ass of myself. I think this one went okay. 

It started well as Michelle mentioned to Layne, the communication specialist of the GANNET2 expedition, that there is a bypass around El Paso. The President was flying to the city and some traffic confusion was expected but I was glad to learn of Highway 375 for future trips. 

I’ve traveled through the city on the freeway looking over at the slums of Mexico across the river. I much preferred climbing the mountains behind the city, after passing through Fort Bliss. I looked down into the desert and saw the Army’s version of a KOA campground, tanks parked and their crews taking a break lounging beach chairs. The highway climbed to 5,000 feet. 

Michelle says she has been reading this dogs for years and last month she sent us a message wondering if we could take a break from I-10 and stay over at her place. Sure thing especially as we had plenty of lead time to get it organized. 

Funnily enough our hosts are new in town, they moved to allow Matt to take up his new flying job in New Mexico while Michelle works from home at her old job in that new remote style that old fogies like me find so strange and so appealing.  

What I found immediately fascinating was their openness to new experiences. From the Mid West to the desert? No problem, even after friends warned them Deming is a pit. I loved hearing how they found the good in their new town despite the bad press, and they made a series of recommendations of things to see. They were good. Deming is interesting.  

Michelle made lunch after she opened her guest shower and her laundry room to us. Four days on the road and you need to get civilized. Michelle’s lunch was actually quite brilliant. Even Layne said so. As these total strangers opened their home to us Matt grilled chicken, letting Rusty in and out of the terrace as he worked. Meanwhile Michelle made jasmine rice and roasted vegetables and chopped a mango and crushed some peanuts. 

The brilliance behind the lunch came when it was served. We helped ourselves to the food and then faced a long row of varied bottled sauces. There was no stress about spice levels or flavors, each of us made a different lunch from the same ingredients. Layne is going to adopt this tactic when we invite people whose tastes we don’t know for lunch. It was a great meal and very clever. 

Michelle said she had no scotch in the house as she’s never been to Scotland which seemed like the mark of a serious bourbon connoisseur. Bottle after bottle appeared with a brief description. We tasted. We drank. We talked. The desert sun set. It was great. 

How we spent an afternoon and evening drinking, talking, drinking, eating a pizza, talking and playing cards and drinking without getting a hangover I have no idea. We pulled it off and I found myself in the company of travelers. It was one of the best evenings I’ve spent with people I’d never met before. There was more than you see here, but this was plenty for a start. 

They are a long way from scuba diving but they e taken to the desert for hiking and land exploration. They live half am hour from Mexico and they’ve explored La Paloma too. They don’t let rumors direct their lives. I admire them. We played Sevens and I lost hopelessly. Layne won. I don’t know how they made that happen but I blame Michelle and Matt. Next time, and there will be a next time, I’m going to win the card game. 

So let’s see: is  Deming as grody as the haters make out? We took Michelle at her wits and checked out small town New Mexico. You buy groceries at Walmart or at Peppers. 

I like New Mexico for it’s ethnicity, it’s history expressed in architecture and food. I first came across this when my friend Bruce lived in Santa Fe and he explained the Spanish descent of the old New Mexican families. They are descended from Spanish families that conquered Mexico and they got left behind in the US when this country signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo adding Mexican land to the US. The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 added southern land defining the new borders as we know them today. That was fine to connect California by railroad. Through Deming. 

Against the beauty of the landscape and the delicious red and green peppers in the food New Mexico suffers from appalling poverty. It’s a brake on my romantic notions of wandering this state with a camera. I don’t know if I could live here but I sure will travel here. And I’ll come back to Deming. The town where the supermarket advertisers money transfers to Mexico. The border is thirty five miles south. 

Deming I discovered isn’t just connected to Mexico, it also has history in the Philippines. Michelle and Matt both said check out the Luna Mimbres  Museum. So we did. 

Deming has a population of 15,000 and was founded in 1881 as a railroad town, named for the wife of a railroad executive. 

Railroads made the town as happened frequently in the 19th century. If the railroad picked your town you became wealthy. Deming became a hub between competing interests connecting one side of the US to the other without climbing the Rockies. 

But why is there so much about Bataan in this town? Because the local national guard got called up and sent to the Philippines just in time to be captured and tortured in prison for nearly four years. 

The number of locals in the Bataan Corregidor fiasco is impressive and heart breaking. 

It is a terrible story of unbearable brutality and worth knowing about. 

The museum is enormous and has a vast collection of artifacts from Deming’s history. 

Mimbres in Spanish translates to willow and it’s the name the Spaniards gave the locals they discovered living here making their own refined art. 

The square gray machine in the background is the washing machine described. How they kept all these things over the years I can’t imagine. 

The fire chief’s red Model T Ford. All I could think of was Key West’s Bum Farto chief who loved red. 

A gas tanker towed by a horse. Irony?