Arroyo Seco, NM: Fourth of July

July 4, 2001

An eerie silence surrounds me, here on the dirt road that leads from my house to the tiny post office in Arroyo Seco; all I can hear is the crunch of my shoes on the dried mud and gravel. Then a breeze sighs through the leaves of the cottonwood trees, raising goose bumps on the back of my arms and bringing back long-lost memories of hot summer afternoons of my childhood. This is one of those rare moments when I don't even have to close my eyes to imagine: I could be on the dirt road that led up through the cottonwood groves to the mountains outside Riverside, California in the summer of 1954, or the dirt road that led down through the forest to the Missouri River in the suburbs of South Omaha, Nebraska in the summer of 1955.

Or, considering the circumstances, I could just as easily have been here in this same spot nearly 500 years ago. When Coronado and the Spanish explorers reached Taos in 1540 in their search for gold and the fabled city of Cibola, historical records indicate that they missed Arroyo Seco, some 10 miles to the northeast; nor did Espejo say anything about the area in the reports of his 1582 expedition. But by then, the Tewa tribe had occupied the Taos Pueblo for some 250 years; and there are archeological remains of pit houses built in the area by nomadic Anasazi tribes as early as 800 AD. Whether there was a dirt road here, or even a narrow track, is anyone's guess; but it's not beyond the realm of possibility to imagine someone like me, walking down this same path on the Fourth of July in 1776, or 1676, or even 1576.

Of course, Arroyo Seco wasn't part of the United States on that summer day in July, 1776 -- nor was anything else for a thousand miles in any direction. The "states" weren't even states at that point; they were merely rebellious colonies, and most of what we now call Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, and Colorado were part of old Mexico. The Pueblo uprising of August 10, 1680 had been put down (though not until 1692), and on the day that John Hancock and his colleagues signed their famous document in Philadelphia, the entire southwest was part of the vast Spanish empire. As part of that empire, the village of Arroyo Seco was officially created in 1806.

But that was then; this is now. The moment of silence is broken by the sound of automobiles roaring down Highway 150 from the Taos Ski Valley as I reach the end of my dirt road; cars are parked bumper to bumper in the Post Office parking lot, and knots of people are milling around, chatting with friends and neighbors. Children tug at their parents' sleeves, urging them to stop socializing and begin moving along the roadway toward the center of the village; the parade is scheduled to start in another 15 minutes. More people are clustering by the rectory hall and parish of the Holy Trinity church; cars are parked all along the side of the road, and there decorated cars and trucks ready to join the line of the parade. I follow a steady stream of tourists and villagers to the old Arroyo Seco Elementary School, where most of the parade floats are assembling in the playground. The scene is one of chaos and confusion; it's hard to imagine that within a few short minutes, the rag-tag army of costumed children, parents, animals, cars, trucks, and floats will somehow assemble into a line that will march down the road through the village.

Actually, it's likely to be more than a few minutes; hardly anything takes place when it's supposed to around here. When someone tells you that they'll come by your house "first thing in the morning," that means it might happen sometime before lunch. And then again, it might not. So the official high-noon starting time for the Fourth of July parade is, at best, an approximation; as long as it gets started before the sun goes down, everyone will be satisfied.

While we're all waiting, I stroll down the road, past Abe's Cantina. Abe apparently bought his tavern license from his uncle back in 1945, when he came back from World War II; now the tavern is operated by his children. The parking lot in front of the tavern is usually filled with the pickup trucks of local ranchers, and the glistening SUV's of tourists on their way up to the Taos Ski Village; today it's filled with children and parents waiting for the parade to begin. Across the street, the Arroyo Seco Mercantile Exchange is doing a booming business; tourists are snapping up books, postcards, hand-made candles, small items of clothing, and anything else they can get their hands on.

The parade reviewing stand is located right next to Abe's; the mistress of ceremonies is Lisa, who has worked in the Mercantile Exchange ever since she closed down her own shop, La Vieja Loca, a few years ago. Lisa knows everyone in town, hears everything, sees everyone as they drive past the Mercantile Exchange, and consequently knows most of the gossip worth knowing. It's now five or ten minutes past noon, and she's trying to pass the word up the road, from one person to the next, to let the assembled throng in the school yard know that they should go ahead and begin. I wander across the road and point out to her that if this was New York, the parade would have started precisely on time, to the nearest millisecond. Actually, I don't know if that's true, but it sounds good; and she beams at me, laughs, and says, "That's why we're not in New York!" It's funny enough that she repeats our conversation to the crowd, over her microphone; I can see the tourists laughing, but the locals could care less: they simply want the parade to begin.

A few minutes later, the parade actually does begin; a pair of riders clip-clop around a bend, and down the road past us. One of them wears a sheriff's badge; I never did find out if it was genuine, but I assume not. Shortly thereafter, one of the most colorful floats rolls by: a huge papier-mâché statue of Uncle Sam, riding on the back of a flatbed truck, which carried costumed children on every nook and cranny. More trucks and decorated cars roll by; many of them appear to date back to the 1930s or 40s, and most are painted bright colors of red, blue, or green.

Interestingly, there are no marching bands — indeed, no bands or musical instruments of any kind. It didn't even occur to me at the time, and nobody else seemed to notice, either ... but what's a Fourth of July parade without a band playing "Stars and Stripes Forever"? Even a high school rock band would have been an interesting diversion; but since this is only the village's sixth annual Fourth of July parade, perhaps the concept is too new.

Aside from the decorated cars and trucks, there are lots of children marching along. Some are alone, like the little girl on the left being escorted by her parasol-wielding mother. But most are members of a group, like this bunch dressed up as members of the animal kingdom. There are school groups and gymnastic groups; the gymnasts bring the entire parade to a halt for a moment, as their members perform a series of cartwheels in front of the judges on the reviewing stand.

Indeed, it should be noted that the decorations, the costumes, the floats, and the gymnastic displays were all quite serious: the judges were evaluating them all for a Grand Prize of $100, with eight other prizes of $25. Such a prize might not go very far in New York City, but I'm sure Lisa's retort would have been, "That's why we're not in New York City!"

There were numerous adults and teenagers in the viewing crowd, including one fat tourist who narrated the entire event into his cell phone at the top of his voice, presumably for the benefit of someone unable to attend. But it became more and more evident that the whole point of the parade was to entertain and amuse the children. The older children watched everything carefully, waved to their friends, and applauded whenever anything interesting went by.

The younger children had a far more limited attention span, and after a while, many of them simply plunked themselves down on the side of the road and waited patiently for the whole thing to end. One pair of enterprising children, perhaps assisted by a doting parent, decided to capitalize on a ritual that I first saw at a Fourth of July parade in Polson, Montana several years ago (see The Polson Parade for details): catching the small pieces of candy hurled into the crowd by the passing paraders. I still haven't figured out where and when this custom began, but with the exception of the children pictured here, most of the children in the crowd were relatively calm about it: if a piece of candy landed on their head, or on the ground immediately in front of them, they would pick it up ... but there were no screaming, hysterical fits of the kind I observed in Montana. Maybe it's a different culture ...

Aside from the young children and the adults, there were also quite a few teenagers and twenty-something folks in the crowd. From what I could see, most of them paid scant attention to the parade; they were cruising and trolling, chatting with their friends, hoping to be seen. Mr. Red, shown here on the left, was one of the more interesting examples ... but there was another one, a young girl of about 16, whom I eventually decided not to photograph. She wore a tight-fitting T-shirt that read "Objects Beneath Are Larger Than They Appear," and she lost no opportunity to ensure that every male in the crowd between the age of 15 and 50 could judge for himself, as she strolled the entire length of the road between Abe's Cantina and the Abominable Snowman hostel at the far end of town. Unfortunately, cameras sometimes distort a 3-dimensional perspective; and since her shirt came perilously close to false advertising even in the best of circumstances, I decided not to take the risk of creating a picture that would spoil the illusion.

The main road through Arroyo Seco goes past Abe's and the Mercantile Exchange; past Annabel's Strictly By Accident curio shop; past a micro-mall cluster of shops that appear to be going out of business, one by one; past the Otro Mundo clothing shop, which shut down last summer; then past the new deli/coffee-shop that has replaced Cafe Fresen, and finally to the intersection with Highway 230 that leads off to Valdez. And in every nook and cranny along the way, there were food vendors selling cotton candy, ice cream, lemonade, and for those who might be in the mood, breakfast burritos.

The trucks, marchers, and floats proceeded on past the Abominable Snowman hostel to the edge of town; it's possible that a few of them stopped at Momentitos de la Vida, where chef/owner Chris Maher had promised he would be handing out free lemonade. And then the procession turned around and came back again; thus, if you arrived late and missed Uncle Sam at the beginning of the parade, there was a second chance to see him again.

Not everyone was sufficiently motivated to make the the trek in both directions; one young man, who marched nobly along the road on his three-foot stilts, happened to spy the young woman whose Objects Are Larger Than They Appear, and decided that he had gone far enough. But the majority of marchers did manage to traverse the entire distance, and ended up in the elementary school yard once again, at which point they disbanded.

The whole thing was over in less than an hour. Everyone had had fun, and the parade demonstrated tremendous community spirit: the marchers all knew one another, the non-tourists in the crowd knew all of the marchers, and Lisa knew absolutely everyone. But at the same time, there was a curious lack of tradition in the parade -- it's paradoxical that a village tracing its roots back to the 17th century is just now celebrating its sixth Fourth of July parade. But perhaps the villagers feel no need to call attention to their history and their traditions by means of a parade; they have other ways of doing so, such as the paintings by artists like Ed Sandoval. For the tourists and visitors who want to know more about these traditions, one of the best sources of information about Arroyo Seco is a little book called Out of Time -- Arroyo Seco: An historic look at a 250 year old northern New Mexico village, by James C. Bull.

As for me, it was time to call it a day. I waved good-bye to Lisa, threaded my way through the knots of children and marchers and dismantled floats, walked past the Post Office, and turned up the dirt road toward my house. Next year, maybe I'll march, too.