ROUTE 66 RAMBLE, PART 6
New Mexico likes to call itself the Land of Enchantment.
And so it is, quite often, for their next-door neighbors the Texans.
After all, their kinship stretches back a good ways—to the era when both were parts of old Mexico, and before that, the domain of nomadic or settled indigenous tribes.
But there truly is, to my way of thinking, something tantalizing and magnetic about the quality of light and color in the New Mexico landscape. I sense it every time I drive west over the line from mesquite to juniper, at the vague western edge of the Llano Estacado plateau.
Along historic Route 66—little of which remains unscathed by I-40 in the eastern part of New Mexico—that change starts to become apparent at the Texas–New Mexico line, in the ghost town of Glenrio.
Glenrio never numbered but about a hundred souls in its long-ago heyday. The stop on the Rock Island Railroad in the early 20th century soon offered fuel on the Texas side for motorists on the Ozark Trail—an unpaved precursor to Route 66—and mail delivery on the New Mexico side (the mail sacks were brought to it for distribution from Texas). By the twenty-first century, the fast lanes of I-40 had long since siphoned off most of Glenrio’s residents. In 2005, according to the Handbook of Texas Online, citizens numbered precisely five.
The motel and gas station on the Texas side, and the café and post office on the New Mexico side, had been left to the considerable extremes of the elements.
But green returned in 2021—as greenback dollars, and as newly legalized cannabis.
On a prominence overlooking the constant river of Interstate traffic, the Glenrio Smoke Stop rises like a white-stucco chapel. A red eagle sign beckons; a handsomely landscaped parking area and patio contrast dramatically with the ruin rampant elsewhere in the erstwhile town.
Turns out the dispensary business blooms here, far from any other population except I-40—which, according to a 2017 count, amounted to some 14,800 vehicles daily. Friendly staff inside the shop’s clean, well-lighted, spa-like space assist customers from near and far with an array of weed products, and with up-to-date information on what can be transported where. It’s a far sight from how this hamlet must have looked a hundred years ago. But maybe things haven’t really changed that much; back in the 1930s, it was alcohol that could be purchased at Glenrio’s New Mexico saloon, while over the line Texas was dry.
A short distance west lies Tucumcari, where the attractions shift from green to blue.
The town’s Blue Swallow Motel has welcomed desert-weary motorists to luxuriate in its “100% refrigerated air” since 1939, and the pastel hues of its L-shaped courtyard still reach out to embrace travelers lucky enough to snag la room in high season. Successive owners have modernized amenities while retaining the historic charm of the Blue Swallow’s cozy bedroom-bathroom combos.
Since 2020, Robert and Dawn Federico have been the owners and hosts.
Kay and I drop in, reservationless, but Robert invites us for a tour anyway. The suites are clean and inviting in their retro cool, with matching mid-century metal lawn chairs arrayed around the courtyard as if in anticipation of the neon light show that will soon switch on.
A couple pulls up in their station wagon, squeezes into the cozy lobby. Robert escorts them to their room and ambles back to offer more of the place’s history. We beg off the tour, reluctantly, as our destination for the night is the capital city of Albuquerque. We’ll be back on another journey, we promise—especially to stay at a place where the owner insists on providing a cup of coffee for two travelers who aren’t even paying guests.
A mean, miles-long snarl of traffic has piled up on the four-lane; fortunately my phone app, plus a visual from the overpass, reveal this information before we become mired in it. The surface-road detour costs us the opportunity to turn off north to Las Vegas (N.M.) and Santa Fe, the scenic but treacherous alignment of the Mother Road in the 1920s.
It's getting on toward dusk by the time we rejoin our westbound course for Albuquerque. We skirt segments of Route 66 pavement that often dead-end, yielding to the high-speed Interstate. To our north and south, beyond the dry, mounded hills adorned with low juniper and pinon lie vast ranches, irrigated fields, lonely two-lanes. Ahead lie the mountains. Over the Sandia range that spills us out of I-40’s high-speed roller-coaster, we’re finally able to rejoin Route 66 in its colorful role as the city’s main drag, Central Avenue.
With its arrow-straight trajectory down into the “bowl” of the Rio Grande, Central limns a captivating picture of Route 66 even if a traveler never ventures off it. From the once-inviting hotels of the International District on the east side (many of which have been converted to shelter for the unhoused population) to the trendy eateries of Nob Hill and the diners and dives of the University of New Mexico neighborhoods, to Old Town and the splendidly restored El Vado motor court near Tingley Beach, it’s impossible to absorb enough of its varied vistas in a single visit. Plan on a week in the Duke City if you want to sample blue-corn tortillas, visit a terrific bookstore, stroll the bosque, ride the aerial tramway, or suss out the car wash from “Breaking Bad.”
We detour a few blocks south to take in a game at the city’s ballpark, home of the minor-league Albuquerque Isotopes. It’s one of the special-promotion nights when the team plays as Los Mariachis de Nuèvo Mexico, and the lowriders on display, the cool turquoise jerseys and bright plastic bobbleheads, and frozen margaritas combine with “Llévame al juego de beisbol” sung during the seventh-inning stretch for a fun evening in the grandstands.
My own son completed his studies in art here at UNM, so perhaps I am already inclined to think of the state in visual-art terms. Moody as a Peter Hurd composition, flat and delineated as a Baumann woodcut, bright and blended as an O’Keeffe, backlit as a Blumenschein, angular and layered as an Abeyta canvas: the hues and textures of this state surround us everywhere we go.
While the galleries and museums of Santa Fe are where many art lovers gravitate, I’ve always found the university’s art museum inspiring and usually uncrowded—and it’s free. It houses the largest collection of art in New Mexico. Plus, it’s only steps away from Route 66, and close enough for a lunch stop at the funky Frontier Restaurant for a carne adovada burrito.
After a couple of days’ layover in the Duke City to edit and upload that week’s newspaper issues, we’re ready to hit the road again for parts unknown. Historic Route 66 weaves through parts of Western New Mexico’s Colorado Plateau that are home to Puebloan cultures—Acoma, Laguna—and the Navajo Nation.
Our black pickup traverses the blacktop wherever we can keep track of it.
That indescribable light is a tractor beam pulling us onward. In the small city of Grants, sunset hues reflected off pastels, neon and space-age angles. But an unexpected delight awaited us in an otherwise unremarkable city park. Fiberglass reflector dishes from the satellite TV era lined the highway—repainted with traditional, geometric Acoma basket designs. A more perfect repurposing of eyesore into art I may never have witnessed.
While much of New Mexico, from its trendy galleries to the Native American markets of Gallup, is known for its exhibits and sales, it doesn’t take a bankroll to appreciate art throughout the length of the state’s Route 66 miles. It’s right there on public display for free, as public murals, mosaics, sculptures, architecture.
As our multi-day trek across the Land of Enchantment began with the subtle pastels of the east, it deepened into brilliant hues of Albuquerque’s Central Avenue nightscape, and has now burnished to gold and turquoise in the sunset over Gallup.
The light-outlined sign at the famous El Rancho Hotel, where the stars once came out to the desert for movie shoots, buzzes on.
While the hotel’s paying guests pull up and park, then roll in their suitcases to gawk at the lobby’s Hollywood memorabilia, we pause a second to snap our photos and then pop the Ford into gear again. We cruise the hillsides of the city, windows down, searching out cameos of golden-hour glimmer.
Sometimes the best show is right there, for free.
PHOTO ALBUMS FOR THIS SEGMENT, NEW MEXICO
