saw her again.
The paper threw a big Christmas party at La Posada for all the employees. Mary Rose Bradford, former wife of Roark Bradford and mother of Richard, was dating Bill Bailey, Sportswriter at the paper. He was a crusty, sarcastic son-of-a-gun but, at a party, all the Irish came through and he was a lot of fun. I think Mary Rose, who was vivacious and full of hell, brought out the best in him.
There was an old upright piano in the dining room, and Mary Rose hammered out tune after tune and sang the words in a gutsy, raucous voice. Most of us sang along.
Jim Hughes, the Advertising Manager and my immediate boss, had promoted brides, babies, beauty, friendship, Fiesta, fireworks, rodeo, ranches, races, saints, sausage and siesta in an effort to build advertising inches for the paper until he hit the really big one—his vacation issue special—also his swan song. After that issue was sold and packaged, he left. Exhausted I should think.
Emory Bahr was the General Manager, and he hired a young man from the Midwest, George Mouchette. George and I became good friends, and he recalled to me his employment interview with McKinney. Robert McKinney was the owner and publisher of the paper. George was invited to the ranch—McKinney’s home—and was shown into the library by their man who was sort of a butler, gentleman’s gentleman, handyman and general factorum.
George sat in an upholstered, but miserably uncomfortable, chair and waited. McKinney finally entered and sat opposite George on a couch which had a long coffee table placed in front of it. There was a rectangular-shaped box on the table. It was silver with McKinney’s monogram intricately inlaid in turquoise on the lid.
McKinney asked George a question and, while George was answering, he casually opened the box which had a hinged lid. George thought he was going to have a cigarette, but instead he looked inside the box for a moment, then closed the lid.
Every time he asked George a question, he went through the same routine. Opened the box, looked inside, then closed the box.
The telephone rang in another room and McKinney’s man came and called him away. George couldn’t stand it—he had to know what was inside that box. He raced to the coffee table and, breathless, he opened the box. There was nothing inside, but the interior of the lid contained a mirror.
One Saturday I was having lunch at the Pink Adobe which was now housed in an old adobe on College Street (which was later changed to the Old Santa Fe Trail) across from what was then St. Michaels High School. It was summer, and I was sitting outside on the patio. At a nearby table sat an older woman with a young girl. They were chatting away, and I was happily eavesdropping. The woman fascinated me. She had an angular face with a straight acqualine nose and she wore a flat-crowned, wide-brimmed hat sort of gaucho style; dark trousers, jacket and a cream-colored blouse completed the ensemble. In a cultured, whiskey-baritone, she was asking the young woman something about her school when another woman walked up to the table and interrupted. The lady in the hat said, “Oh, Susan, I want you to meet my niece from Las Cruces.”
With that tidbit of information, I marched into the office of the Society Editor, Ann Clark on Monday to find out who the woman was. I described the woman to Ann and said she had a young woman with her who was her niece from Las Cruces. “Oh,” Ann said, “of course, that was Eleanor Bedell. She’s one of our better local lessies.”
I was stunned. I was pretty sure I had interpreted her meaning correctly, but I had never heard that term tossed out so casually. I did not know then that Santa Fe was a refuge for homosexuals and all others whose proclivities labeled them a little the other side of center.
Peach Mayer (Katherine), Mrs. Walter, was a very energetic Santa Fean. She devoted much of her life and her able executive abilities to doing good works. She was involved with the Maternal and Child Health Center, New Mexico Heart Association, and the Santa Fe Boys Club. She was forever a regent, was twice the President of the Museum of New Mexico Foundation, and served at least seven terms as President of the Santa Fe Opera Foundation. She was a very active staunch Republican. Peach was not loved by all and had made a few powerful enemies.
While I was still at the New Mexican, Peach Mayer’s husband, Walter, shot a man back east in Iowa. It came in on the wire late at night and Dick Everet, the Managing Editor, had left for the day. The paper had been put to bed and the presses were running. Art Morgan was the only one in the news room, and he didn’t have the authority to stop the presses. Dick was nowhere to be found, so the paper didn’t carry the story in the Sunday edition which was the next day after the shooting. McKinney blew his top. I think he was not fond of Peach and printing that story would have given him great satisfaction. As it was, he had to be content with firing poor Dick Everet, which he did on the spot.
3
Some friends of mine, Bill and Josie, and I decided we’d do a little spying on the I AMs, a mysterious religious cult which had been kicked out of California to resettle in Santa Fe. It was known that their big meeting day was Wednesday and their temple was, we thought, easily accessible, lying as it was just off the road at the foot of the old Taos Highway. There were many stories about Mrs. Ballard, the head hancho, and her cult. They worshipped St. Germaine and were very sensitive to colors—purple was the best, but all pastels were in—red and black were the devil’s colors and to be avoided at all costs. They were vegetarians—absolutely no meat, and spirits were verboten. It was rumored that they could only mate during the month of April but, if some woman was just beside herself during some other month, she could go to the big mucky-muck, Mrs. Ballard’s right hand man, and be serviced. What men with a like problem did is anybody’s guess.
We parked the car up the hill away from the temple and crept down the side of the road, keeping close to the ditch. When we arrived at a good vantage point where we thought we’d be able to see the goings-on through the windows, we lay in the ditch, concealed by some tumbleweeds. Music started and we eagerly awaited action to begin. Just as there was movement inside, there was movement just inches from our hiding place. Oh, my God—it was a uniformed guard patrolling the grounds carrying a very menacing-looking shotgun. “Yipes, let me outta here,” I thought, but didn’t dare say a word. Shortly after, he moved off toward the other end of the grounds and you never saw three people skedaddle any faster than we did—up the hill, in the car and away.
I never had any further interest in the I AMers except one evening to note Mrs. Ballard’s son in La Fonda enjoying a big steak and a bottle of wine.
Another time, Bill and Josie and I went to Taos. One of the famous early Taos painters, Bert Phillips, was Bill’s great uncle, and I was to meet him. Taos was settled at the foot of the mountains which rose straight up perpendicular to the land. I found them harsh and unrelenting, not at all like Santa Fe’s Sangre de Cristos which were comforting and embracing. Some thought the people of Taos felt threatened by those mountains, and that was why they were such a cliquish, churlish bunch. Whatever its cause, it seemed to me there was an undercurrent—an ill wind that permeated the town. It was really not a town at all, more a village—at that time, mid-fifties, there were probably no more than 2500 people who lived there.
Bert Phillips was an elderly gentleman, very gracious with courtly, old-fashioned manners. He was still a fine painter and I was honored to meet him. While there, I also met Lady Dorothy Brett, a titled English woman who was a part of the D. H. Lawrence saga. She was amusing, with light blue twinkling eyes and unruly white hair that was forever escaping its bondage. She, too, was a painter of some renown. I saw her many times thereafter lunching in Santa Fe at La Fonda, regaling her companions with tales of Taos goings-on.
We visited Taos Pueblo which was a sophisticatedly-constructed tri-level apartment complex built by the Indians centuries before. The Taos Indians are
