Читать книгу My City Different - Betty E. Bauer - Страница 13

La Fonda was still a Harvey House when I first knew it, and the waitresses wore the same kind of uniforms that they wore in the Judy Garland movie, albeit slightly modified. A very handsome Taos Indian hung around La Fonda—Old Joe, we called him. He’d let you take his picture for 25 cents, and I doubt there was a tourist that visited Santa Fe that didn’t have a shot of Old Joe tucked away in an album somewhere.

At that time, Shorty, dressed in a crisp white uniform, patrolled the streets around the Plaza with his cart, broom and dust pan. Nary the smallest scrap of paper escaped his broom. No one seemed to know his name or for whom he worked, but he certainly kept the Plaza clean.

La Fonda was so other-worldly that, upon entering, you felt that you had walked into a picture from a history book depicting another era. The floors were gleaming dark red tile. Heavy ceiling beams were incised with simple Indian geometrics which were painted in earth tones of amber, turquoise and red, as was all the wooden trim. Huge canvases painted by Gerald Cassidy hung from the smoothly-sculpted adobe walls. B.B. Dunn (Brian Boru Dunn) presided over all from his chair prominently placed in the lobby with a clear view of the entrance. He was a journalist and interviewed all comers whom he found intriguing, be they princess or pauper.

The furniture in La Fonda was massive, made and hand-carved by native artisans. The guest rooms had little corner beehive fireplaces and, on a chilly evening, they would be laid with piñon boughs to bring cheerful warmth to the rooms and waft their fragrance throughout the downtown.

B.B. Dunn was a slight man, bent a little with age. He had very pale white skin, little beady eyes behind bifocals, and a prominent, very long, skinny nose which reminded me of a proboscis on a hummingbird. In fact, he reminded me of a hummingbird, hurrying along, flittering to and fro whenever he wasn’t holding forth from his chair in La Fonda. He wore a very wide-brimmed hat, as large as a small umbrella, to shield his skin from the sun, and was frequently dressed all in white—a costume reminiscent of the Mexican peon uniform. He lived at the corner of Acequia Madre and Garcia Street in a cassita, part of an old adobe compound. In his house, a narrow archway shaped like a svelte hour glass led from the living room to the bathroom. He had an aversion to big women, did not want them hanging around, and this was his way of discouraging them.

There were a number of remittance men and some women in Santa Fe. Orphaned by their East Coast families in every way except financially, they had come West at the behest of their families because, for one reason or another, they had become a source of embarrassment. A favorite story among Santa Feans was the joke about the New Yorker whose wife had begun to behave peculiarly. The situation had gotten so bad that he was ashamed to take her out in public, yet he loved her dearly just the way she was and didn’t want her to change, so he consulted a psychiatrist. He explained his problem and confessed to the doctor his great love for his wife in spite of her strange behavior and begged the doctor for a solution. The great man thought for a moment, sighed and said, “I’ll tell you what to do. Take your wife to Santa Fe because there nobody will know the difference.”

One of Santa Fe’s remittance men was Horace Aiken who lived in a suite at La Fonda. It was said that, at one time, he had been a history professor. He was a tall, portly gentleman who was easily recognizable among the casually-dressed populace, because he always wore a bowler hat, a morning coat, dove gray vest, matching spats (long after they were passe) and shoes that glistened with polish. He carried a walking stick and he walked for miles every morning. He could be seen as far as the eastern limit of Canyon Road, away west on Alameda, and sometimes north, high on Artists Road that led up the mountain to Hyde Park.

He was very solemn and correct and always tipped his hat to the ladies. He was also a painter—quite a good one it became known when his excellent portrait of B.B. Dunn was hung in La Fonda’s lobby above B.B.’s favorite chair.