from wacky to weird (New Mexico Highway 14)

Madrid, New Mexico is a far cry from the European city for which it must have been named. Just a cluster of 20 or so storefronts along Highway 14—better known in these parts as the Turquoise Trail Scenic Byway, which connects Albuquerque and Santa Fe via lush (for this state) wooded hillsides rising and dipping to reveal repeated vistas of mountain range beyond mountain range beyond mountain range—the New Mexican town looks, upon first entry from the south, like the ramshackle remains of lives long ago lived. The houses that precede the “downtown” seem strewn across the hillsides, rusted out cars and trucks and other detritus speckling the slopes around them as I am used to seeing only in the Southeast. The shops look a bit thrown together, built from whatever wood or glass was handy at the time, no architect’s or developer’s input considered. Once inside them, however, I sensed a wacky charm that makes this town a blessed respite from the suburban strip mall zone that Albuquerque seems to be. I found beautiful jewelry and a toked out, California- and Southwest-loving hippie silversmith inside one; in most of the others, identical old lady shop-keeps, with gray hair whisping around lined faces; turquoise dripping from necks, fingers, and wrists; and zany voices singing out to welcome us in. We had our best meal yet in New Mexico at the hippie’s neighbor’s restaurant, which is the first place I’ve found in this state with an ambiance just right for writing, so back I plan to come with my computer. We also enjoyed the company of the Mississippi-born waiter, who was so pleased to find that we’re from the South that he three times sat down beside us just to chat—the end revelation of which is that Madrid, NM is a boring town for a 23-year-old from anywhere to live in, even if he’s an artist and it’s a veritable colony of crazy artist types.

We left Madrid delighted, chipperly suspicious that we had found a place for me to source new characters for my writing and no longer set on making it to Santa Fe but instead eager to get to the next town up the Turquoise Trail—Cerrillos, home of the turquoise mine from which the rings my mother and I both bought in Madrid came. We had gotten the impression, from the repeated references that jewelry sellers in Madrid had made to this town, that Cerrillos too would be thronged with shoppers. But the only signs we saw of life in Cerrillos were parked cars and two horses stabled in the interior courtyard of one Main St. home. We saw no people as we drove from First St. to Second St. to Third St. at the backside of town; we felt spooked by the dirt roads, the falling-down storefronts, the faded signs. Cerrillos is a true ghost town—but with people clearly living it, because there were those parked cars, and there were artistic fences around the houses and a sparklingly new-looking Visitor Center. Why they would live there, in a place with literally nothing going on, we could not guess. But we didn’t stick around to find the quirky appeal this time; we left quickly, unnerved, ready to be anywhere in New Mexico other than this not quite deserted shell of a town.