Sightings: Joe Thirtypack

I first heard about Joe and Mary Sixpack in 1982 when I was taking a political science class from Professor Hal Barger at Trinity University in San Antonio. Since that time, cable news commentators have begun to throw the term around like they invented it. Wikipedia defines Joe Sixpack on its page describing John Q. Public: John Q. Public:

"is a generic name in the United States to denote a hypothetical member of society deemed a "common man." He is presumed to have no strong political or social biases relevant to whatever topic is at hand, and to represent the randomly selected "man on the street."

Further according to the Wikiwikis, Joe Sixpack, is a term of deprecation. It seems to those making the Wikipedia entry, Joe Sixpack does not rise to the level of respect due to John Q. Public, John Doe or John Q. Taxpayer, to name a few. Too bad for the snobs at Wikipedia.

Joe and Mary Sixpack live in Hometown, USA. They have a median income and own their own home of median value. They have the statistically average number of children, cars, pets, and friends. Their very ordinary-ness makes them rather uninteresting to anyone other than demographers. Other ordinary Americans know the Sixpacks. They know them by many names. They are the neighbors that we know just well enough to say "Hi" to when we see them in their driveway. They are the neighbors whose kids are always coming and going from some kind of kid-thing (soccer, baseball). They're OK.

Lost in the all the naming and labelling of our neighbors the Sixpacks, is who they really are. From time to time I will address the perspectives of Joe and Mary Sixpack. With an election year coming up, I believe that their voice will ultimately be drowned out by shape-shifting candidates and their paid parrots. Regardless, we'll keep the Sixpacks centered on our radar screens.

Before we ever get to the politics of Joe and Mary Sixpack, however, I wanted to give you a little background. What we all forget is that the Sixpack's, just like all of us, have an extended family. And that extended family, just like all of ours, is pockmarked with colorful characters of all sorts. Some of us have crazy aunts or uncles, for the Sixpacks, it's their alcoholic cousin who I met last July 4th. Here's the story:

Michael and I were sitting on the front porch of our home near downtown Albuquerque relaxing and enjoying the sunset on our greatest national holiday. It was a warm Tuesday night and the front porch brought a cool breeze. The big beautiful blue sky was beginning to turn sunset colors. Every now and again someone walked by with their dog or rode by on a bicycle. A car hadn't passed by in over an hour.

Around 7 pm a particular bike rider caught our attention. He was moving kind of unsteadily as he approached from the south. In fact, he was pretty much wobbling northward as if he were going to lose control any moment. One hand was on the handle bars of the bike, but it was something else that really caught our eye: in the other hand and perched in between the bicyclist's legs was a 30-pack of beer. That's right -- a 30-pack!

Ever seen a 30-pack? It's bigger than a 12-pack by far. It's bigger than a case by six. It's a giant box of beer meant for the serious volume beer drinkers in this world. When you go to put a 30-pack on the counter at the store, you use two hands. When you put the 30-pack in the car, it's a two-handed affair. It's not something you'd normally see being transported on a bicycle.

But as our intrepid bicyclist rode by he held the 30-pack between his legs. Wobbling. Wobbling by he went, an intense look on his face. He was and became in that instant Joe Thirtypack. Slowly, unsteadily, but most earnestly, Joe disappeared down the street and -- we thought at the time -- out of our lives.

"Did you see that?" Michael said as he turned his head away from the street.

"I think so. Another sighting, I suppose."

"Sighting? What?"

"You know. How many times have we seen something out here that defies explanation? Giant lizards, for God's sake? A bicyclist with a 30-pack of beer between his legs? Sightings. That's what they are. Like aliens, UFOs, and liberal gay Republicans. If you admit to seeing one anywhere else in this country, people think you're crazy. But out here, they're all normal."

"We have seen some seriously crazy stuff out here, haven't we?"

"The problem is there's no context, ya' know. How do you describe that guy? That. . . that was. . . I don't know, I've heard of Joe Sixpack -- you know the average American? -- but this guy was . . ." The name popped into my head. "Joe Thirtypack. Anywhere else in this great nation we would never have seen him. But there he went."

"Weird somewhere else, normal here."

"Exactly. Oh, well, where are we going to watch fireworks?"

We like our front porch. It's a refuge from the phone, the television and the computer. It's western view is great for peaceful sunsets. So, it wasn't that odd that exactly one week later we were out on the porch again watching the sky. It was 7:00 or so -- Tuesday the 14th -- when Joe Thirtypack rode by on his bicycle again.

Just as last time, Joe rode by with only one hand on the handlebars. This time, he didn't have a huge box of beer between his legs. It was a sixpack. But something was still wrong: he had a cast on one arm. The arm he had been holding the 30-pack with the week before was in a cast from the top of his elbow down to the top of his hand.

"Another sighting?"

"A pretty good one, I think. How do you think he broke it?"

"Transporting a 30-pack?"

"Joe Thirtypack!"

It's hard to remember all the sightings out here in the Hinterland. It's a great place to live, believe me.

We remembered Joe Thirtypack and even told our friends about him after the second sighting. Everyone got a chuckle out of the story. None of us really knew Joe, but we let our imaginations run wild and came up with all kinds of scenarios involving Joe, his bicycle and that 30-pack of beer. We weren't trying to be mean. There was just too much irony. Too many hilarious possibilities. As with the first sighting, we never thought we'd see him again.

Tuesday, July 21. 7:00 pm. The front porch. Nice sunset. Calm, quiet neighborhood. A bicyclist approaches from the south.

"You're not going to believe this."

"Don't tell me . . ."

It was Joe. One hand on the handle bars. A sixpack between his legs. But something new: the cast on his arm had changed -- dramatically. It's called an "external fixator." "Scary immobilizer" is a better term. This cast ran from his shoulder down past his bent elbow to his fingers. It had a bar running from his chest to his wrist. Pins were visible running from one side of the cast, through the arm, and out the other side. It was nothing less than an emotional earthquake to see.

Joe pedalled by. He disappeared down the block just as he had before. Beer in between his legs, one hand on the handle bars. Arm, permanently immobilized at a right angle to his body, turned at the elbow.

We didn't -- couldn't -- say a word. Nothing came out of our mouths for over half an hour. I looked at Michael and he at me. Have you ever wondered what someone's face looks like when they've been simultaneously -- instantaneously -- horrified, shocked and amused to the point of peeing? It's a queer look, trust me. I can only imagine what my face looked like.

The "real" world melted briefly. It collapsed into a small speck on top of a rock in our yard. A different world came into focus. Momentarily I lived on a different planet. Planet Albuquerque, where giant Iguana's run toward oncoming traffic, goats ride atop open trailers on the freeway, rainbows lie flat upon the horizon, and torrential rain falls but never reaches the ground.

Whooosh. I was back.

We were out of town the following Tuesday and missed Joe. Sadly, we haven't seen him again. It's a shame, really.

It was a sighting. And here's the "so what?" Sightings open us up to questions. They make us briefly step outside our own worlds and into those of others. You can't think about them too much. But you do have to tell other people about them.

Finally, after it's all been said and done, here's what I've been able to definitively figure out about Joe:

I live down the street from Joe Thirtypack. He rides his bicycle in the evenings. He drinks a lot of beer. He broke his arm around July 4. He broke it again about a week later.

I'd like to tell him this: "Hope your arm gets better soon, Joe. Say 'Hello' to your cousins back in Hometown. See ya' next Tuesday?"

House Flipping Files, It's the Bomb, Conclusion

Please read, Parts I and II of this story. You'll enjoy yourself more that way. Also, posting a comment is easy: just click on the link between chapters with the word "comments" in it. You don't have to give your real name -- comment anonymously.

Last year, Oprah made "The Secret" famous when she had several shows about it. If you're not familiar with it, the concept involves something known as the "Law of Attraction." To some, The Secret is a repackaging of "The Power of Positive Thinking." To others, it's hooey.

Regardless, we asked ourselves and our friends, if you only get what you "attract," then how on Earth did we end up becoming responsible for disposing of a home-made bomb? The answer, like the Secret itself, depends upon who you ask. Those who believe in the Secret told us that it was the universe's way of solving a problem. The universe delivered us to the bomb because it knew we were the ones who would figure out the answer before anyone got hurt. Those who don't believe in the Secret simply told us that we were lucky to be alive.

We got home late after faxing the list to "Bill" and Googled "Picric Acid." The results were shown in Part I of this saga below.

What was our reaction to the Google Search findings? How many sayings are there for this type of thing? Our jaws dropped. We nearly peed our pants. We pinched each other to make sure we weren't having a nightmare. My personal favorite: I tasted a little vomit in my mouth.

After "Bill" didn't call back as promised and didn't immediately return my follow-up call, we decided that this was something that couldn't wait. By this time the morning of the next day had passed. Events had already been set in motion involving contractor visits to the house.

We decided to go back to the phone list. This time, Michael made the calls. The first person he spoke to gave him another number to call. This Michael did. Turns out the second number was to the New Mexico State Environment Department. Michael called the number and got through to a gentleman who was very helpful. Let's call him "Ted." Michael briefly explained the history of the problem and what we had found.

Just as had happened with Bill on the phone, when Michael began reading the list to Ted, there were audible gasps. Ted, it turns out, was a state employee who had knowledge of what these things were, but wasn't used to receiving calls from the public asking about how to dispose of them. His gasps quickly turned to cries of shock and alarm. Within seconds, Ted's reaction to what Michael was describing had escalated into an outright panic attack.

Michael had to stop Ted at one point and ask him to calm down. "You're really scaring me," Michael said. "I'm going to cry if you don't stop. Please just tell me who I need to call."

Ted calmed down long enough to give Michael the name of a disposal company and the conversation ended. Michael took a breather trying to calm down before he called that number. Ted also calmed down long enough to tell his boss in Santa Fe about the conversation he had just had with Michael.

Cooler heads prevailed and Ted called back immediately with new instructions: call 911.

Hindsight, baby. 20-20 as they say. Call 911. Of course. 9-1-1. Duh!

Who cares what Bill said? He hadn't done what he said he would do. We looked the stuff up online and saw it was more than simply dangerous. When we found this out, we should have immediately called 9-1-1. Hindsight. 20-20.

Michael hung up from Ted and took a deep breath. The phone rang.

"Hello, this is Michael."

"Michael! This is Lieutenant "Smith" from Albuquerque Police Department. How's it going? You doing alright today?"

"Yes, I'm fine. Thanks for calling. I was about. . ."

"What the hell's going on down there? What are doing with this stuff? Do you know what kind of trouble you're in?"

"Woh, ho,ho. Hold on, sir, we found this stuff in an empty house. No one lives there. We just walked in yesterday and found it. We've been trying to figure out what to do with it. . ."

"No one lives there?"

"No sir. It's been vacant for a long time. Yesterday was our first day there."

"There's no one there?"

"No."

"You're not there right now."

"No, sir."

The conversation calmed down after that. After verifying the address, the conversation ended with an incredulous cop telling Michael that a Bomb Disposal Team had been dispatched to the house and that someone needed to go let them in.

The Remotec Andros 5A

Bomb Disposal Robot

The scene: a quite neighborhood a few miles from downtown Albuquerque. The homes are nice, the yards are well kept. Families are coming home from school and work. It's a perfectly normal beautiful spring day. Birds are chirping. Puffy white clouds form and dissipate overhead. The streets are blocked off with dozens of squad cars. Helicopters are circling overhead. Fire trucks are lined up down the street.

A strange truck arrives and a ramp is lowered. Out of the back and down the ramp comes a robot on wheels. It is followed by another of its kind. The two robots roll down the street and turn up the driveway of a nice little house in the middle of the block.

Crowds gather and are dispersed at the roadblocks down the street. An unknowing resident steps out of his house with his dog on a leash and walks right up to the scene. Before anyone sees him, he is at the foot of the driveway. He stands there while his dog pees on a bush. He is oblivious.

Someone yells at him. "Hey, you! Get out of there."

It takes him a moment to look up. The shout jolts him out of his quiet little world. He first sees a firetruck off to his left. He staggers backward as his head turns to find dozens of cops and firefighters staring at him. Panic strikes. He is frozen. Someone runs up to him and escorts him away.

The garage door to the house is now open and a robot has entered it. The camera mounted on its arm focuses on the wooden box and its contents. The second robot enters and slowly approaches the box. With extreme caution and with the skill only extensive training can give, a police bomb expert manipulates the robot's grappling device until it grabs one side of the box. Slowly, slowly. The box is lifted and the robot is brought out of the garage.

Everyone is motionless. The quiet stillness is broken only by the noise of television helicopters circling, circling overhead. A truck resembling an above-ground bomb shelter has arrived and a door in its rear has been opened. The robot crawls toward it and the box is placed inside. The door is closed and the bomb is driven away. The Dead Hand goes with it.

Reporters are swarming the ends of the block, trying to get around the barricades and down to the scene to interview someone. An unsuspecting passerby suffices as the on-the-scene expert for one television station. "Gosh, a bomb down this street? That's the last thing you would expect around here. I'm really scared. I hope they don't find one on my street."

All four local television news programs air the story that night with aerial and ground footage of the robots at work. Each reporter says essentially the same thing: "The bomb squad was called out to a residence where a bomb / bomb-making materials were found. Streets were blocked off. Residents were alarmed. Fear gripped the community. No information on where the materials came from or how they got there. Stay scared for more news."

By the way, "Bill" called me on the third day after we spoke and told me that his company would come by and get the chemicals out of the house for $3000. The money had to be paid in advance or his team would not even enter the house. They were ready to get to work the next day, but if we didn't immediately engage them, it would be a month before they could come back. What a crock.

I told Bill that time had run out and that the Albuquerque Police and Fire Departments had taken care of the problem two days before. He didn't sound in the least bit embarrassed or apologetic for blowing us off. Why had he told me not to call 911? Why did he not honor his promise to call me back that night and then not return my subsequent call? Why were the terms he offered for his company to remove the materials so onerous? Simple: he thought he had me over a barrel. He knew that if I considered him the expert and if I didn't use my own common sense, he could do whatever he wanted with me. Wrong, Bill. Hope you're not making too much money doing what you do. Thief!

The cost of calling 911 and having the Police and Fire Departments perform this work in a most heroic and professional manner: Zero point zero dollars. That's right, Bill. Zero point zero. No C.O.D. No attempted deception or theft. Nothing but honest to goodness professional services rendered by the best. Heroic services, by the way. The kind you, Bill, probably think that you deliver. Total cost: Zero point zero dollars, Bill! Okay, I got some gray hairs and my bald spot expanded a little, but otherwise, heroes don't charge for their work, it seems.

The house was "cleared" by the Police and Fire Departments and renovations began a few days later. By the end of May we had completed a top-to-bottom facelift on the place with electrical upgrades, new windows, doors, carpet, and refinishing hardwood floors. It was a real gem if I do say so myself.

In the end, love triumphed. Honesty prevailed. We chose to not be deterred by the circumstances and things turned out nicely. The best part of the whole thing, besides not being blown into tiny fleshy fragments: I will always have an incredible story to tell about the day that I encountered the Dead Hand and lived to tell about it.

Next Up: Joe Thirtypack. Come back soon, ya' hear.

House Flipping Files, It's the Bomb, Part II

Note: Please read House Flipping Files, It's the Bomb, Part I before proceeding with this chapter. You'll enjoy the story a lot more that way. Thanks for visiting!

When last you left the intrepid incompetents (that's me and Michael, by the way), we had just stumbled upon some interesting old bottles and one very interesting pretty little blue one. What we did not know at the time was this: the contents of the little blue bottle marked "Picric Acid" was actually what some would call a "trigger." If that trigger had been pulled I would not be telling you this story.

What scares me even today to think about is how close we came to accidentally "pulling that trigger." In the previous post a quotation briefly described that the stuff was "shock sensitive" and that dropping something into it would produce a blast more forceful than TNT. This means, my dear readers, that dropping IT -- that pretty blue bottle -- would produce that same blast.

This explosive, it would seem, was meant as the trigger to ignite or combust all of the other chemicals we found in the house. Here's a brief listing of some of the others: Ammonium Nitrate, Sodium Nitrate, Potassium Hydroxide. . . Sorry, I've got to stop. I'm getting a little woozy.

Crazy, silly, stupid, ignorant, me decided (at first) that all of these things were really little more than a nuisance. They were in our way and would prevent us from getting work underway immediately. Therefore, I made the executive decision that all of the various bottles throughout the house should be brought together in the garage and placed in the nifty little wooden box sitting there with six or eight others inside it. Great idea, right?

Wrong, Brad! Bad Brad. Bad. Very, very bad. Ignorant me had just assembled all of the bomb-making materials into one nifty little package -- one convenient location as they say.

I was still in the land of the innocent and naive thinking that this was nothing. I was still thinking about all those people who had seen these same things and done nothing. I was still unaware that God, or fate, or some higher power had decided that Michael and I were to take care of this. Finally, I was still unaware that sometimes someone has to give a shit and that someone was Michael and me.

In the legal world there is a legal term of art known as the "Dead Hand," or, sometimes, the "Mortmain." Translated, it is the hand reaching from the grave to control various property interests in the present and future. There are Dead Hand Statutes and long old lines of court cases against control by the Dead Hand. But did they stop this Dead Hand? Not for an instant.

Because the moment I touched the little blue bottle and gathered all of its exciting, strange-named friends together in the garage, I was under the control of a dead hand. The person who had brought these things to this house was long dead. To be sure, he could never again assemble them as I had just done. But when an ignorant house flipper trying to tidy up came along -- yes, that's me -- the dead hand reached from the grave and a bomb was one step closer to being born.

Evil was afoot. All that dead hand had to do now was to get someone to pull the trigger. Was that going to be me?

Here's the spooky part: the Dead Hand tried its best that day. After picking up the blue bottle once and setting it back into the box, I gathered all of the other bottles together and went about my business. Several times after that -- I mean at least three, if not four times after that -- I went back to that box trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with it. Each time I went back I picked up that little blue bottle and tried to process what it meant. "Explosive When Dry. . . Do Not Touch to Metal" What did this mean. What was I supposed to do with this?

Luckily, I'm not completely ignorant. And, luckily, I care about the environment. You see, if I had thought that these were nothing more than household chemicals or something inert or harmless, I would have gleefully tossed the entire wooden box, bottles and all, into the large blue-green trash can provided by the City of Albuquerque for regular pickup on Wednesday mornings. If it didn't blow up the instant I tossed it into that container, it almost certainly would have gone "Boom" when it was compacted in the back of the City's trash truck. If not then, it would have done so at the landfill where the 20-ton compactor on wheels got to work.

I also believe that all the aforementioned people -- dozens of them -- who had been in that house before us had known that these bottles were dangerous and had simply told themselves it wasn't their job or their responsibility. They knew that they couldn't throw these things in the trash either or they would have done so. They were lazy, or irresponsible, or incompetent, or afraid. They did nothing because they hoped that eventually someone else would. They obviously had no thought or care for the consequences of a simple accident involving these bottles. It's a shame, really. And it's a damned good thing that I'm able to tell you this story today.

So, I found a phone book. I looked up listings in the Yellow Pages for "Hazardous Waste Disposal" and "Environmental Waste." I found a few companies and started calling them on my cell phone. Turns out that none of them are actually based here in Albuquerque. They all have answering services who will only contact someone immediately if it's an emergency. I said it was, and after about a half dozen calls and about an hour of waiting, someone finally called me back.

"Bill" wasn't his name, but it'll work for now. He was on his cell phone, standing at the Albuquerque Sunport waiting for a plane to Denver where his office actually is. "I understand you have an emergency of some sort. Tell me what you've got," he said calmly.

"I don't know for sure what I've got, Bill. All I know is that I probably shouldn't throw this stuff in the trash. I mean, one of them has a funny sounding name -- Picric Acid, I think. . . "

An audible gasp comes through the airwaves. "What? Where are you?"

"I'm at a house. . ."

"A HOUSE?" he practically screams. "What house? Here in Albuquerque?"

"Yes, we're getting ready to start renovations and today's our first day here. We found a little bottle marked Picric Acid and some others like Ammonium Nitrate and stuff I can't remember off the top of my head. Is this something you guys can properly dispose of?"

His words are rushed now. "Well, yeah, but I'm trying to figure out what it's doing in a house. I mean, that's some pretty nasty stuff there, Brad. Have you handled it? I mean, have you touched it? Did you open it? Is there something in that bottle?"

"I don't know if there's anything in it. I can't see through the blue glass. . . "

"Glass, good! Does it have a metal lid?"

"Don't know."

"Look. . ." There was a long pause. "I'm at the airport getting ready to fly home. Why don't you put together a list of all the stuff you got there and fax it to me. Here's my number. . . OK, when I get to Denver, I'll go to my office tonight and look at the list. Can I reach you at this number later tonight?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Fax me that list and I'll call you later."

"I was wondering, is this something your company usually handles? I mean, should I call someone else, and if so, who?"

"No, no. You don't need to call anyone else. We can do this. You haven't called the fire department or the city or anyone like that have you?"

"No, you're the first person I've talked to."

"Good. Don't call the City. You'll have a major mess on your hands if you do."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, Bill. You're the expert. I'll fax you that list right away. Talk to you later."

We hung up. I breathed a sigh of relief. "Whew," I told Michael. "Looks like this guy can take care of this stuff. Although he did ask some funny questions. I wonder why he was worried about whether we had handled it? He also said don't call the City."

So, I went BACK into the garage and picked up each bottle AGAIN and read off the names and spellings of each chemical as Michael wrote them down on a sheet of paper. I set each one back down AGAIN. As I look back now, I realize that The Dead Hand was working furiously now. It was trying it's damnedest to trigger that bomb.

But it didn't happen. Thank God! Not then, at least. Not in my presence.

Unfortunately, "Bill" never called me back that night. Nor did he call me the next day. Three days later, in fact, I finally heard from Bill, but by then it was too late. God, Fate, the Higher Power, intervened. You see, we didn't wait for Bill. When he didn't call back as promised, we didn't sit on our hands. I called his number, got the answering service and got no return call.

I remembered that audible gasp of his. I remembered his strange questions and his "instructions" not to call the fire department. I knew that something BIG was wrong and I knew we couldn't wait. We weren't going to wait. That's not who we are.


Tune in next time for the conclusion.

House Flipping Files, It's the Bomb, Part I

"House Flipping Is Fun," the billboard should read. It's fun, it's hip, it's cool and for the last few years it's been one of the "in" things to do. It's high risk and often high reward. It's an entrepreneurs dream to find that diamond in the rough and polish it to a brilliance that no one can resist. There are lots of TV shows about flipping houses on cable these days. For example, there's Bravo's "Flipping Out", A&E's "Flip This House", Discovery/TLC Channel's "Flip That House, and others.

Until last April, the only risk I ever imagined associated with flipping houses was financial. You know, the house can't be turned around, it stays a dump and you lose money. Or, the market goes south and you can't sell it. It's a huge risk when credit markets are tight and housing sales are flat. But, the major payoffs come when the renovations happen right, the lenders are lending, and the buyers are snapping everything up at higher and higher prices every day.

As I said, that was what I thought until last April. Seems there was something I hadn't really thought about when it comes to flipping houses -- explosives! Yes, that's what I said, explosives!

Before I get too far into this tragi-comedy, I'll have to explain a couple of things. First, houses are easier to flip for a profit when their initial purchase price is below market value for the neighborhood. Let's face it, if a house sells substantially below market value, there's something wrong with it. Almost always, this means that there's something physically wrong, like a leaky roof that caused damage inside the house.

Joe and Mary Sixpack simply don't want to buy a house that they can't move into right away. House flippers do the dirty work -- fix it up into "new" condition -- and sell it to Joe and Mary Sixpack. The flippers deal with all the contractors and pay all the bills while the repairs are being done. Joe and Mary get their new house with no strings so they can happily raise their 1.7 kids and drive their 2.4 cars.

So, almost always the problem with the house -- the reason it's a great house to flip -- is the physical condition. But, sometimes the house may be in OK shape, but something else is wrong: there's no clear title. No one will lend money on them because they're in the no-man's land of legal paperwork. Joe and Mary Sixpack want to move in ASAP, not a day later.

It's this second, title-trouble house that we were "lucky" enough to flip with some friends starting last April. It had been tied up in probate for some time and the court would not release it for sale until all the legal "i's" were dotted and "t's" were crossed. It was finally released, the sale closed and we happily entered sometime after the first of the month.

NOTE: for many months the house was in probate, it was legally in the possession of a Probate Court in Bernalillo County, New Mexico. This means that the Court appointed someone to take care of the house - you know, pay the bills, mow the yard, clean it, make sure it wasn't falling down. I am confident that a court-appointed caretaker was paid to make monthly visits to the property and to report back to the Court about it's condition.

Before we ever stepped foot in this house, I would estimate that dozens of people had been through it not only performing caretaker duties, but inspecting it, appraising it, showing the house, or seeking to buy the house. So why, why, WHY on God's green Earth did I walk into the house after all this time and all these people had passed through it and find bomb-making materials laying around in plain sight?

It's a shame, really. The tragic part of the story is that the previous owners had both died while they were in the midst of a divorce (thus the need for probate). I'll spare you all the gory details, but it is now clear that not only had all the aforementioned people been through the house, but the Albuquerque Police Department, Fire Department and Bernalillo County Coroner had been in the house at least once after one of the owners passed away there.

So, again, I ask you: Why, why, WHY were there explosives in plain sight sitting around on the floors of several rooms and the garage? Had NONE of these people seen what I saw within a few minutes of my arrival? Had NONE of these people wondered why clearly marked bottles of bomb-making materials were in the bedroom, dining room, kitchen and arage? What the. . .? I mean, really, folks.

On a beautiful spring day in April of this year, Michael and I walked into the house and began making a list of repairs and likely contractors to use for those repairs. There were some papers lying around in the bedrooms, a couple of pieces of useless broken furniture here and there, and some bottles of chemicals clearly indicating that something was terribly wrong.

But we didn't really "see" the bottles right away. They were interesting diversions as we walked from room to room making our checklists. We were curious about them, but they didn't attract our undivided attention. They looked "cool" and we figured that the previous owner had been into collecting old bottles. As we gathered junk up to throw away, we found some old paperwork indicating that one of the owners had been a professor in the Pharmacy Department at the University of New Mexico Hospital here in Albuquerque.

"Oh," I said to Michael, "this guy was a pharmacy professor. He must have been into all these old bottles as mementos or something."

Michael nodded, agreeing to point. "Then what are these powders and liquids inside of these bottles? I hope they're not the chemicals listed on the labels."

"Hm, don't know. We probably shouldn't open them or anything just in case. We can just gather them all up, figure out what we got."

"I saw a box of more bottles out in the garage," Michael said.

"Let's check it out."

Life had been a happy, exhilarating, "New Day" kind of thing that day. It had been filled with the promise of a new house flipping project and great profits ahead. The day was perfect.

Perfect, that is, until we got to the garage and found a wooden box with no lid. Inside the box were six large brown bottles and one little translucent blue bottle. It was pretty, this little blue gem. It was the only one with handwriting on it. The letters spelled out: "Picric Acid -- Explosive When Dry" and "Do Not Touch to Metal."

Google this: Picric Acid. In the top five choices you will find the following link: www.tc.gc.ca/canutec/en/articles/documents/picric.htm. In the document behind that link you will find the following statement:

"Picric acid or Trinitrophenol is, by far, one of the more dangerous chemicals being used today. Classified as a flammable solid when wetted with more than 30% water (UN1344, class 4.1) and a class A high explosive with less than 30% water (UN0154, class 1.1D), it has some very interesting properties. It is explosive but also highly shock, heat and friction sensitive. In fact, detonation with a speed and power superior to that of TNTcan occur by a 2 kg weight falling onto solid picric acid from a height of 36 cm. Picric acid is toxic by all routes of entry, it’s also a skin irritant and allergen and will produce toxic pro-ducts on decomposition."

You have the benefit of this knowledge now. At the time we found the pretty blue bottle, we knew nothing about it. I have to admit that at the moment I found the bottle and for a few moments thereafter I was still living in the happy land of ignorant bliss, unable to believe for even an instant that someone would have a dozen bottles of bomb-making materials in their house. It just didn't register in my brain that the handwritten words I was reading was real or that it had any meaning in my world.

I really thought at this point, folks, that the previous homeowner, being a pharmacy professor, had known these things weren't dangerous and had brought them to his house as part of a collection of some sort -- a trophy case, if you will. I had also figured out by this point that many, many people had been in this house as part of their jobs before me and they must have seen the same things that I was seeing. None of them had become alarmed, right?

It took a while for it to sink in: I wasn't going to be able to do what dozens and dozens of people before me had done. I wasn't going to be able to ignore these bottles. Shit! I was going to have to take charge and do the right thing, wasn't I? Wasn't I?

The only problem was, I didn't know what the right thing was. What do you do with someone else's bomb-making materials? Who do you call? Where do you start?

We're out of time for today, but tune in next time to discover the answer to these and other burning questions like: "What do robots do for a living, Brad?" and how do you answer a cop who asks you "What the hell is going on down there?" when you honestly don't have a clue what the hell's going on down there?

Dickie Malone, Unofficial Mayor

I'm going to step back away from Taos and New Mexico this entry in order to go even farther away -- back in time to the 1960's and in distance to far, far South Texas.


My grandfather, Dickie Malone, was frequently called the unofficial mayor of Riviera, Texas. It was an unofficial designation because Riviera wasn't an incorporated township. It was a place on the map and a postal designation. It was a place where legend has it that Poncho Villa was reputed to have robbed a bank. It is today, much as it was in my grandfather's day, a rural farm and ranch town near Baffin Bay on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Every morning people came to the coffee shop in Riviera to catch up on the local goings-on and to take care of business. When they had problems, they knew that Dickie, the unofficial mayor, was one of the people who could help them with a solution. He solved problems just like you might expect from a mayor. He knew everybody, just like a mayor. He loved to help people, just like a mayor.

Dickie's roots ran deep in this far-away place. His father had come here with the railroad in the 1920's. As young boy growing up in the newly created Kleberg County, Dickie became best friends with the new sheriff's son. Their lifelong friendship was akin to brotherhood. After the county's first sheriff died, his son took over as sheriff. I remember at Dickie's funeral, his old friend, the sheriff wept as he eulogized my grandfather.  


Years later, in the opening dialog of Oscar Winning Best Picture "No Country for Old Men" Tommy Lee Jones' character narrates a story about that old sheriff -- Jim Scarborough.  Small world.

So, here's the turn of the card: Dickie was no saint. Not by a long stretch. He was really an outsider, or, some would say, an outlaw. He had spent a year or two of hard time in Huntsville, Texas as a young man. He wasn't afraid to bend the rules. At the same memorial service where the county sheriff spoke were dozens of people who spent their lives on the outside looking in. Some of them I knew had been in trouble with the law. Oddly, they wept the loudest and longest that day.

Riviera, Texas is at the northern edge of a wide expanse of hundreds of square miles running across South Texas known as the Wild Horse Desert. It is an unforgiving expanse of mesquite brush and prickly pear cactus. It is home of the King Ranch, the Armstrong Ranch, and the Kenedy Ranch, each in excess of 100,000 acres. It is where Vice President Dick Cheney shot his friend on a hunting trip in February 2006 (See, e.g., CNN's report on the affair.

The Wild Horse Desert is reputed to be the final resting place of untold numbers of those who tried unsuccessfully to cross it on foot. Out in the barren wasteland of scrub are rattlesnakes, roving packs of javelinas (also the mascot of Texas A&M Kingsville, feral hogs, and other predators. Unless you happen upon a water source intended for cattle, there are no creeks or streams running across this land. Only those prepared to cross hell itself would ever attempt this trip on foot.

But walk across it is just what thousands of illegals do each year as they have been doing for many years. And by the time they reach the northern edge of this forbidding expanse, they are frequently starving, severely dehydrated, exhausted, and, often, near death. They have transported and smuggled themselves at great personal risk. If they make it out of the Wild Horse Desert, they have crossed a major hurdle, but they have not found what they are seeking.

In my grandfather's time, ranchers and farmers throughout the Riviera area would find these illegal aliens on their land. In those days, there was only one thing to do: go into town to the coffee shop and talk to Dickie Malone. Without a doubt, talk to Dickie. He was the problem solver of the day. No one trusted the United States Government for anything. You certainly wouldn't invite them onto your property. It was a bad idea.

Dickie would do what was right and no questions had to be asked or answered.

At some point in his life, Dickie had taught himself Spanish. He would talk to the newcomers and find out their story. He knew the real from the phony. Often, it was just a meal, a shower and an overnight place to stay they needed. Many times it was clothes to replace those torn by the thorns and cactus on their passage north. Other times it was a temporary job. Sometimes it was finding a lost family member.

I'm not trying to glorify what Dickie did. It was probably illegal then, and it is definitely illegal now.   And illegal is illegal -- against the law, forbidden at the risk of your freedom.  


But I still can't help but wonder.  Why did he do it?   He did help those most desperately in need when no one else would. What else can you say about someone who fed, clothed, housed, and found jobs for people he had never met and would likely never meet more than once in his life?

If Dickie were alive today, he would no doubt be on some type of government "list" or he would be in federal prison. The application of conspiracy laws as they are today would require no intent to commit a crime. Dickie would be committing a felony simply by stepping forward and extending his hand to help another human being at what might be their most desperate hour.

In our time, the reality of illegal immigration is that it continues unabated.   It remains one of the most hotly emotional issues of our time.  But to men like Dickey who stood on the front lines of the human drama that is illegal immigration, numbers didn't mean much.  


He once told me that there would never be a way to stop the tide of humanity that risked life and limb to get work in the U.S.  If he were alive today, Dickie might have noticed fewer people some months and more in others, but they would have remained the same, each person taken on his own merits, each case different from all the others. If Dickie were alive today, he would have found other ways to do what needed to be done. Quieter and less public ways, but still he would have helped.

Sightings Part II: Lizard Dude to the Rescue

Giant Iguana Amadeus

When last we saw our Giant Street Lizards, Iguana II had made it to the street with Iguana I somewhere behind. Meanwhile, Michael and I were beginning to regain our composure as traffic slowed to a crawl, and ultimately a stop.

"What do we do? Who do we call?" I pulled out my cell phone and looked at it as if it would answer me by immediately calling someone. Less than a block away was the 254-bed Lovelace Medical Center. It had an ER, I knew. "No, dummy. There's no veterinarian there. They can't help, " I told myself. I looked at my phone again. "911? Is this a real emergency? I don't think so. Animal control? Hell if I know the number," I said aloud.

Michael got around in front of Iguana II and it stopped before crossing the street. Our three-legged Iguana, still struggling to catch up was trying to get over a fallen fence post.

Suddenly, a voice came from behind me. "There you are! Time to come home, boys."

I turned around and saw a young, respectable-looking fellow walking slowly towards us. "These are yours, I guess," Michael said. "Do you want to get this one before he gets run over?"

"Oh, he's alright. That's Amadeus. He likes to pretend to get away every now and then."

"These are really yours?" I asked. "Where do they live?"

"Over here under the stairs," he pointed to the house next door. "They usually don't get this far."

Michael and I looked at one another and then back at the newcomer as he leaned over and picked up the three-legged iguana. It immediately began to struggle. It's claws grasping at the air as he was lifted by his mid-section. At this point I named him "Lizard Dude." The man placed the giant lizard on his left shoulder and headed toward Amadeus, who was having none of being captured. With amazing agility, the four-legged creature was off down the sidewalk. Michael briefly lunged for it, but was too late.

Lizard Dude dropped Iguana I and ran after Amadeus. Within seconds, they were down the street and around the corner where screeching tires could be heard. We waited, along with Iguana I, while Dude slowly returned with an out-of-breath four-foot lizard clinging and scratching on his right shoulder. He said nothing, but leaned over and picked up Iguana I and started toward next door.

Again, Michael and I looked at one another. "What the . . ." was all that came out of our mouths. Slowly, uncomfortably, we went back inside and back to work. For the rest of the day all we could think or talk about was that we had just visited the Twilight Zone and somehow made it back. That night when we told our friends and family, they laughed. Some of them wondered if we weren't having some type of group hallucination. I even wondered a little.

Wondered, that is, until the next day when I saw Lizard Dude outside walking around our job site with a ladder. "Wonder what he's up to?" I said to Michael. "The lizard guy is out there with a ladder." Just as a I said it, we heard the ladder hit the side of our house. We made our way outside in time to find the neighbor halfway up the ladder.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Have you seen my boys?" he asked.

"You mean the lizards?" Michael responded.

"Yea."

"No, not since yesterday."

"Well, I think their up on your roof here. Mind if I check?"

"Guess not. How would they get up there? It's at least 20 feet straight up the walls."

"Oh, they've been up here before," he said as he disappeared over the roof line.

We waited a few minutes and Lizard Dude finally came back to the ladder and crawled down. "Not there. Oh, well. I guess I'll just leave some lettuce down here in case they show up."

"You mean they're loose again?" Michael asked.

"Yea, but they'll show up eventually," he said as he took himself and his ladder back to the house next door.

"Need any help?" I asked.

"Nope," he said as he disappeared around the corner.

That was it. He was gone. We never saw Lizard Dude or the lizards again. Although we hoped for the best and wanted to help, he didn't seem to want any. Besides, there are times you have to seriously ask yourself: does that person need the type of help that I can offer? For us, the answer was an emphatic, "No." We hoped Lizard Dude found Amadeus and Iguana I. But we knew that our time in this particular Twilight Zone was over. We hope they all found the help they needed that day.

Sightings Part I: Giant Street Lizards

As I Panic: Iguana II

I mentioned in my Introduction that Albuquerque is the most remote city of its size in the United States. We're hundreds of miles from any other metro area in the country. It means that things can get pretty weird here. Of course, anywhere with half a million people is going to have its share of strangeness, but out here the strangeness has been kicked up a few notches beyond anywhere I've ever been.

No one can accuse me of having a boring life. Adventure sports, like white water rafting or back country hiking are a couple of things that come to mind. Lots of people do those things, though.

Oddly, one type of activity has brought its fair share of excitement to my life of late: flipping houses. That's right, flipping houses. You know, fixing up a fixer-upper and selling it for a profit. You're no doubt asking yourself what this has to do with the title of the piece. Here goes:

My partner, Michael and I have been working all morning scraping and painting inside an old house at the corner of two major streets in downtown Albuquerque: Edith and Martin Luther King. The day is starting to warm up and the A/C isn't working in the house yet. We step out the back door to stand in the shade for a quick break.

As always, I first look up to the sky. It's truly awesome out here. White puffy clouds float in the azure blue background. Can't get enough of it.

Then my eye is attracted to movement on the ground just in front of us. They're large, they're grey, they're scaly and they have huge "skin-beard" things.

"Oh, look at the lizards," I say nonchalantly.

For a moment, I'm somewhere else. The zoo, perhaps. Or maybe I'm lost in the middle of the Mojave desert. Bizarre subconscious thoughts of Darwin on the Galapagos Islands flash and disappear. I lose my breath.

"Oh, my God, look at the freaking lizards!" I scream. "Look at . . ."

"No, way!" Michael shouts.

I recoil. I gasp. My eyes are the size of golf balls. I'm stunned for a moment.

There they were: two four-foot long IGUANAS trundling along from left to right in my field of vision. It takes a few seconds for my mind to process what it sees. I mean, our entire ability to understand anything is based upon what we've seen, heard, experienced before, right? So what does the mind do when it sees two huge lizards walking across the backyard toward a major street in the middle of the city?

"Let's get closer!" I hear Michael say. We make our first move towards them.

The lizards see us. They seem to glance at one another for a moment. Then, without a word, they quicken their pace. They're making a break for it across the yard. The street and sidewalk are only 20 feet away now. They're trying to get away from someone or something. Is it us? Are they escaping from somewhere? That must be it, I think.

It's only then that I realize that one of them is injured. It's limping, I think. Is that what a four-legged creature does? Daredevil me quickly approaches them. Wild animals that they are, they start moving faster. The injured one (Iguana I) trails behind the other (Iguana II), who by this time has made it to the broken-down fence at the edge of the yard. A few feet away is a busy four-lane city street.

As I get within a few feet of Iguana I, it's problem becomes clear. It's only got three legs! It's right front leg is gone. An old wound, though. Not new at all. Sanity begins to return. These lizards belong to someone. "An iguana in the wild would not be in such great shape as this one if it were missing a front leg," I think.

Iguana II is out to the street now. Traffic is beginning to slow. Cars are creeping by. It's hard to decide what to do. I look at the cars. Inside them I see people with expressions that must mirror my own. Amazement. Amusement. Astonishment. We're all spectators to an event from the Twilight Zone.

Headlines flash in my mind's eye: "Giant Lizards Escape, Tie Up City Traffic for Hours," "Iguanas Make a Break For It, Die Trying," and "2 Dead, Scores Injured in Worst Iguana Incident in City's History."

I fear the worst. The melodramatic scenes ignite in my imagination: Will Iguana II stop before he gets hit or causes an accident? Will Iguana I catch up in time? Can tragedy be averted?

Tune in next time as the tale of the Giant Street Lizards of Albuquerque concludes. . .

Introduction to "Notes from the Hinterland"

Portrait of the Blogger

The Hinterland I presently hail from is Taos, New Mexico, USA. A strange place with big beautiful mountains and painterly blue skies unlike anywhere in the world. It is and has been the home to many of the world's most famous artists. It is the "secret" destination of many of our nation's elites. 


New Mexico is "The Land of Enchantment" and the birthplace of "The Bomb." Over on the other side of the Central Mountains and just a short time after the first atomic bomb was tested south of here, the Roswell Incident occurred.  Los Alamos is down the road from Taos. But don't worry, I'm not going to write about space aliens here. I mean, really, they're much more likely to be where you are than where I am.  The Taos Hum might deserve an explanation, but so far as we can tell, an alien origin to the Hum would be a great Science Fiction story.


Far and remote from the coasts are we. No airline hub here. Nope.  California has 5 counties with populations larger than the entire State of New Mexico.  Texas has 2, New York 2 as well.


Since you'd have to drive about two and a half hours to get to Taos from an airport that has more than one airline, you're probably wondering why 2 million visitors make the effort every year.  Put another way:  You have to really understand why Taos is important in order to make the effort to get here. 


La Posada de Taos was the first B&B in Taos and remains one of the oldest continuously operating in the state.  It's a great business and it's an even more wonderful opportunity to live and be present in such an amazingly beautiful home where our doors are open for visitors to enjoy as their home away from home in this incredible place.  If you want to catch a glimpse of what I'm talking about, check out some of my photos on Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/r.brad.malone?sk=photos.


In 2007, before I became an Innkeeper in Taos, I began this blog as a forum for both storytelling and social commentary.  Although I'd love to have a political discussion with you, it's inappropriate for an Innkeeper to be harsh or opinionated when his guests are more interested in learning about Taos Pueblo than in discussing the federal deficit.  Washington, D.C.?  Where's that?


My days begin sitting down at breakfast with our guests at La Posada de Taos.  Each day our Chef, my partner Michael, prepares something entirely from scratch.  And each day I set plates of gourmet breakfasts down and then join our guests for a shared meal around the dining room table.  It's a magical time for me.  Meeting folks from all over the world and facilitating their interaction with one another as well as with Taos is a gift.


As I've been honing my storytelling skills at the breakfast table, I've been asked to also share some of them on the blogosphere.


Thus, a blog begins anew.  I've retained a few blog posts about interesting things that happened here in New Mexico in the years or months leading up to our arrival in Taos.  It is my intention, however, not to keep the focus on personal stories and to ultimately relay to you some of the quintessential Taos history that will amaze and, hopefully, entertain you.


The English hadn't even come to the East Coast by the time the American Indian and Spanish Colonials had already settled their boundary disputes in New Mexico.  The history of this region can be traced through tales dating back to pre-history and moving forward through the Spanish era that began over 400 years ago to the immigration of Anglos in the mid-1800's, artists at the turn of the 20th Century and then the Hippies of the late 1960's.


Why Taos, New Mexico? It's a fair question. A lot of Americans don't even know where it is. Some folks out here like it that way. New Mexicans revel in being mistaken as being from somewhere else. It's true that some Americans believe that a passport is required to enter or leave the state. Each month New Mexico Magazine prints a column entitled "One of Our 50 is Missing" featuring stories from citizens who have been, for example, denied insurance coverage ("We don't insure persons or property outside the US.") or unable to pass through TSA Security without first giving passport information.


Albuquerque, with over a million people in its metro area, is the most remote large city in America.  Thus, Taos is even more remote.  It's a town of 5000 people that was described in 2009 by culture critic Dave Hickey in this way: 

In the twentieth century, it has probably produced more serious art and literature than any other non-metropolitan area in the United States, and, throughout this century, Taos' virtues have remained more amenable to producers of art than to it's consumers. It has resisted gentrification. . . 

I'll be getting back to Mr. Hickey's observations in a future post, but suffice it to say that there is no other town of 5000 people like Taos.  It is geographically isolated -- surrounded on three sides by the Sangre de Christo Range of the Southern Rockies.  Trains never came to Taos.  The closest Interstate Highway is over 60 miles away.  There is a old-guard of isolationists who fight hard to keep Taos' unique identity and to prevent it from becoming what many perceive as the horror:  an adobe-themed tourist park similar to Santa Fe.


All the photos included on this site are my own.  You can visit me on Facebook both as an individual and through posts on our B&B's website at laposadadetaos.com.


If you want to know more, or if you're going to be visiting Taos, it is my hope that you can use me as a resource.  It's time to get on with it.  See you back soon, I hope.