Undercurrents: New Mexico Stories Then and Now

By Adela Amador

"Escribe con el corazon en el punto de la pluma" [She writes with her heart on the point of her pen]. Jorge Gabaldo, Palm Springs, CA

"Back to the future. I was taken on a poignant, nostalgic and wonderful voyage, back into the barrio that nurtured me. Thanks, Adela." Jose, Armas, Ph.D., syndicated columnist

"Too many of us rush through life. We never stop to savor the moment, to ponder the lessons of the past or to consider where we're heading as we hurry from one appointment to the next. With disarming simplicity that masks a true depth of perception, Adela Amador reaches beyond the glib and the superficial to tap those deeper veins that give meaning to life. She's a natural-born storyteller, always sharply observant and inherently trustworthy, someone who can laugh at human foibles without demeaning anyone. I'm glad we dragged her out of her beloved kitchen long enough to cast light on New Mexico and all those aspects of our culture and environment that make this such an inspiring place to live. Her 'Southwest Flavor' column consistently draws more fan mail than any other department in New Mexico Magazine. Readers first turned to the column for Adela's recipes, but soon they discovered she could write just as well as she could cook. What perfect ingredients for creative success, magically distilled in these heartfelt essays! " -- Jon Bowman, Editor, New Mexico Magazine

"Nostalgic, modern, sad, happy, funny -- these tales are of memory, remembrance, vitality and change. There are undercurrents, however; not all the memories are glad ones. Life was sometimes hard when Adela was growing up, but she was not one to stay behind and mope; she was far too busy for that. As she says, "We don't need to live in the past, but we need to nourish ourselves with past joys and life's richness." And so it is in this book: family, memories and culture form the background for these stories, yet contemporary life is present too. All in all a look into Adela's kitchen, and her heart." -- Dr. Tey Diana Rebolledo, Professor of Spanish, Dept. of Spanish & Portuguese, University of New Mexico

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amador Publishers, LLC
• Release date: Aug 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9780938513704

Adela Amador

Adela Amador was born in northern New Mexico. She was reared in Placitas and moved to Albuquerque in the 1960s. She graduated from the Edith McCurdy School and, later in life, the University of New Mexico, with a degree in Spanish and philosophy. She traveled widely and was an avid reader. She helped build C-47s during World War II. At different times in her life, she was a postmistress, housewife, mother and business-woman.Adela authored the popular Southwest Flavor column in NEW MEXICO MAGAZINE from 1993 to 2006, and a book by the same name, published by the magazine in 2000. It all started with the little recipe book TWELVE GIFTS. MORE GIFTS followed, and was reprinted in Spring of 2008 by popular demand. Some of Adela's stories that did not find their way into the magazine were compiled in Adela's collection of cuentos, UNDERCURRENTS.

Book preview

Praise for UNDERCURRENTS

by Adela Amador

Back to the future. I was taken on a poignant, nostalgic and wonderful voyage, back into the barrio that nurtured me. Thanks, Adela.

--José Armas, Ph.D., syndicated columnist

Escribe con el corazon en el punto de la pluma.

[She writes with her heart on the point of her pen.]

--Jorge Gabaldo, Palm Springs, CA

I'm glad we dragged her out of her beloved kitchen long enough to cast light on New Mexico and all those aspects of our culture and environment that make this such an inspiring place to live....Readers first turned to the ['Southwest Flavor'] column for Adela's recipes, but soon they discovered she could write just as well as she could cook. What perfect ingredients for creative success, magically distilled in these heartfelt essays! -- Jon Bowman, Editor, New Mexico Magazine

UNDERCURRENTS

New Mexico Stories Then and Now

Adela Amador

Copyright 1999 by Adela Amador

published by

AMADOR PUBLISHERS

SMASHWORDS EDITION

ISBN 978-0-938513-70-4

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Parts of some of these stories appeared in Adela Amador's monthly column,

Southwest Flavor, in The New Mexico Magazine.

UNDERCURRENTS

Contents

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

A Visit Too Long

Clean Kitchen

Fly, Fly Away

Lady Luck

I'll Do It If It Kills Me

Temor

The Test that Failed

Undercurrents

Brujerias

The Convent

Beauty and the Beast

Lazy Mexicans

An Empty Life

Before Columbus

Magic Interlude

Musica

Cavemen

Progress

Chicanas on the Move

More Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Acknowledgments

About the Press

Memories, Dreams, Reflections

I feel that I am floating in water. But that can't be!

I don't like to be in water.

Well, I do like hot water, in a washtub, yes, in the middle of the kitchen. Washtub on the floor. The water is hot, soapy and clean. I'm the first one in!

But I never liked large bodies of water. Not to get into them.

I love the Rio Grande, but I've never set foot in it. And the ocean! It scared me when I first saw it. I exclaimed, Qué riote! -- What a big river! They all laughed. Reluctantly I walked in and felt the sand dissolve under my feet. The waves came in and scared me. Waves have a way of beating you back, sucking you in, pushing you out.

I am a desert rat. The sand is hard and stable here, unless the wind blows. Dig your feet in the sand. Feel the grains fall off your feet, like dreams slide off the corner of your eyes at awakening.

Plants around me here grow spikes and needles to protect themselves. Our skin grows tough, too. The desert defines me.

- # -

I was one of the lucky ones.

Or was it luck?

I had the courage to change direction in mid-stream, in mid-life, and I went to the University.

There I met many important people.

Erich Fromm taught me The Forgotten Language, the one used in myths, fairy tales and dreams.

Sigmund Freud taught me to look inside, beneath the surface of my life. I learned that what I wanted mattered, after all.

Karl Jung took me deeper into the Subconscious, especially in his Dreams, Memories And Reflections -- a wonderful book!

Joseph Campbell, in his Hero With A Thousand Faces, delivered me from traditional religious and cultural beliefs. He opened my eyes, and gave me a wider vision of life. He connected me to all the myths of all the world.

The exploring of the Subconscious told me who I really was.

- # -

I go back to my earliest memories. The oldest part of me is when I was youngest, very little. Life was hard, but I didn't know it. To me it was simply a wonder.

My mother calls it potato bread.

The fire in the horno is lit with tree trimmings, which we kids have gathered.

The fire is very hot.

When it dies down, my mother sweeps the ashes out with an old broom, until the floor is clean.

She tests the heat with a wisp of wool.

We children all help to bring the many pans of bread, which she places inside the horno.

The openings are all covered with wet burlap, and the bread is cooked for an hour.

Our reward is a roll, just as soon as it comes out of the oven.

The aroma lingers in our minds.

Though she is long gone, my mother's life continues to be touched by memory.

- # -

My mother was milking the cow in the shed at home. She always took one of us with her to the barn to do the toting and carrying. Isn't that the way it works? The helper works harder than the professional!

The tree stump which she used for a stool wasn't in its place, so a bucket turned upside down did the trick. She couldn't find the rope to tie the cow's legs and tail, so she used the next best thing. Off came her flimsy half-apron, which she twirled around a few times and used in place of the rope. She sat down to milk without hesitation.

Being the scaredy-cat that I was and thinking that all big animals such as cows and horses could and maybe would eat me up, I stood at a respectable distance and wondered if all was safe. I questioned the strength of the flimsy apron/rope and Mother said, La vaca sabe que está atada. [The cow knows she is tied.] I still don't know exactly what she meant, but adults are not very patient with children's questions and concerns. However, I've thought about this since then, and have noticed the difference between a domesticated animal, like a cow, and a wild animal, like an antelope or a deer, which would never permit an apron string to restrain them.

- # -

I remember hiding in a flower garden as a child. The magic, beauty and fragrance remain with me to this day. The flowers were standing tall, making a kind of statement. They included cosmos, Chinese sunflowers, delphiniums, dahlias and hollyhocks. They were just the right height for a small child to walk gently under and among those stalks and into a make-believe world of her very own. I remember sitting in the middle of the aromatic blossoms.

We lived miles from the closest town, where my father was a caretaker for his uncle's sheep ranch. My father had built a house and five enormous barns, dug wells and built water tanks for the sheep and for home use. It was a God-forsaken place called El Solo, which means all alone. My young mother had planted the flower garden, simply by scattering seeds all around the house, no doubt trying to beautify a small space. She felt surrounded by the most dismal, barren landscape anyone could imagine.

The workmen had built a fence around the house to keep the animals out and the children in. So the garden was my playground. I watched the seeds sprout and grow; I enjoyed the flowers and anything that moved in that magical world. The beauty of butterfly wings delighted me and I sat in this magic underworld and felt perfectly safe.

The area was rocky and many snakes had been found there, and I had been warned about them. But warnings don't work well with a small and curious child. One day I found a little rattlesnake. I poked it with a stick and it hissed, so I teased it some more. I don't know how long I played with my new friend! When my mother found out who my playmate was, she whisked me away and into the house and killed the poor little snake with a shovel. I felt bad about that.

Even today, I watch the birds go in and out among the flowers in our garden and I'm glad they let me observe them at close range. I can still imagine all kinds of magic activities that grown-up humans aren't aware of, taking place in those special hiding places. What a wonderful world!

- # -

As a child I did not like onions. My mother used too much onion in absolutely every meal she cooked, I thought. So posole was not my dish, the way she made it -- until one day she sent me to take a pitcher of posole to the neighbor. The day was hot, and as I wandered away, barefoot, I looked for a shady spot to while away the time and rest. I stopped beside the Presbyterian Church, under a weeping willow tree and put my feet in the cool ditch water that was gurgling by. I carefully placed the pitcher so it wouldn't spill and removed the top to see what was inside.

It reminded me of popcorn. I took a kernel and ate it, and found it good. I took some more. Soon I found a piece of meat, which was rare in those days, and the eating became more interesting. I must have been hungry, because I ate my fill and found it very good. But I knew I had done the wrong thing. I continued on to the neighbor's and when she uncovered the dish, she scolded me for having stuck my fingers in the food. I handed her the pitcher and took off running, not wanting to hear her, feeling guilty, and knowing the story would get back to my mother anyway. But I learned to like posole!

- # -

Once my older sister tried to get out of the chore of making tortillas for my father's lunch bucket by complaining, I can't get them round. It does take practice!

My father persuaded my sister to try again, telling her, No entran rodando. No ruedan. Tienes que mascarlas. [They don't roll in. They don't turn like a wheel. You have to chew them...]

I remember how as a little girl I used to swipe a whole tortilla while my sister was making them, dunk it in the bucket of fresh clean water that was standing there, scoot to the sack of sugar which was intended for canning, dip the tortilla in and flop it over, plastering both sides with sugar -- and then run out and hide somewhere until I ate it all! I really wanted more sweet than was around.

- # -

I remember as a child a very special meal of corn on the cob, home-made butter and tortillas and milk. When the sweet corn