Читать книгу My City Different - Betty E. Bauer - Страница 9

Ilived in a small compound off Galisteo for about a year and worked at the New Mexican. In those days, the paper still published a weekly Spanish Edition, Nuevo Mexicano, as well as the daily New Mexican. It had a staff of two. The younger member of the duo was a cute little fellow barely five feet tall named José Gallegos. José and I became good friends. I think he was attracted by my very blond hair. We’d go out after work for a beer, and one of our favorite hangouts was Frank’s Bar (where the Palace Restaurant is now). Along with Frank, it was presided over by Rosie Moya—a big, jolly gal who did not suffer nonsense or fools easily.

One night we were sitting in a booth in the front part of the bar. I was facing the back part of the place which had an arched hallway that led into a rear room of some sort. I was never in there so don’t know what, if anything, went on back there. I was gazing absently toward this arched opening when suddenly a gigantic woman appeared. She filled the archway. She just stood there and looked at me and said aloud, “Wellll!” Jose’ looked up, saw her and said to me, “I think it’s time for us to go.” I found she was not the giant it seemed she was that night. She was Margaret Williams, known by everyone as Scoop. She surely had given me the once over.

Later I met her through a friend of mine. She lived in an old cluttered adobe house on Camino Don Miguel, and she had a piano which she played beautifully. She was a strange one and reclusive. I never 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.