Guestward Ho!

by Patrick Dennis

  "Surprise me," he'd say, rolling over for a brief nap.

  He was a great help! But even the impromptu lunches boiled down to a sort of elastic formula. And I still keep thinking of them in terms of gallons. There were two gallons of soup (we mostly made all the soup ourselves, and there was a perpetual stock pot simmering on the back of the stove), one gallon of iced tea, one gallon of coffee and one gallon of milk, plus a heroic salad, dessert, and whatever else happened to pop into my mind.

  One day when the house was filled with a wildly assorted variety of people, I was feeling particularly stumped on the lunch problem when the man of my choice came up with one of his rare brilliant ideas.

  "Listen, Barbara," Bill said, "instead of having to worry about feeding them all here in the dining room this noon, why don't we split the whole party up? Dick or Don can take an all-day ride out, all those eager mountain climbers can go climb a mountain, and I'll take a carload out to see the local color. That way you won't have to plan any lunch at all."

  "That's just wonderful, Bill," I said, planting a wet kiss on his cheek.

  The whole problem was solved. I went straight to the chaise longue with The Girls and looked forward to a blissful sun-kissed nap until the cook routed me out of my fool's paradise with a thud.

  "Hey, Miss Barbara," he-said, "you gotta help me. We got three diffrunt trips goin' outta here today an' the lunches ain't ready. In fact, they ain't even planned. What am I gonna feed all those people?"

  There went my day. Instead of planning one lunch, I ended up planning four—one for the riders, one for the drivers, one for the walkers, and one for the staff left back at the ranch! And on top of having to plan them, they all had to be prepared hours earlier than usual. They had to be meals that weren't perishable and were portable. They all had to be wrapped and packed and accompanied by such essentials as silver and napkins and salt and matches. When the clunk of the last vacuum jug faded off in the distance, I sagged back onto the chaise with just enough strength left to read a magazine article about a new kind of pill, no larger than an aspirin tablet, embodying the equivalent of a turkey dinner. Whenever it comes onto the market, believe me, I'm going to stock up.

  Speaking of luncheons, Bill and I once gave one that was epic.

  I've spoken about our competition around Santa Fe and said how lovely and helpful and non-cutthroaty everyone was, but I don't think I've mentioned that all of the ranch and hotel owners were also organized into a sort of loose-knit brotherhood known as the Northern New Mexico Resort Association. The exact function of this august body eludes me at the moment, except that its members, in addition to socializing and being awfully pleasant and nice, share the common aim of trying to promote New Mexico generally and Santa Fe specifically, as the ideal place to spend a vacation—which, of course, it is. (N.N.M.R.Ass'n please note plug.) Anyhow, the biggest function of the Resort Association is the annual Roundup.

  What it actually amounts to is a long weekend party for travel editors, feature writers, fashion people, travel agents, and so on. The Resort Association is joined by the Chamber of Commerce the New Mexican, a couple of railroads and airlines, the Santa Fe Designers' group, and just about any other organization that wants to do a little low-pressure selling of Santa Fe. The guests are put up at the various member ranches and exposed to a dizzying succession of parties and rides and trips beginning on Thursday and culminating at a bang-up dinner dance at Hotel La Fonda on Sunday. Everybody gets him or her self dolled up as Western as possible, each of the Santa Fe designers changes from one dazzling fiesta dress to a still more dazzling fiesta dress every hour on the hour, and a good time is had by all in the name of sweet publicity. I don't know if it does any good, but it's fun.

  During our first season Rancho del Monte was elected to provide a luncheon for the visiting potentates and Bill and I looked upon it as something of a challenge. Challenge? It was a downright threat.

  "Listen," Bill said, "we've really got to shine at this lunch-party deal. We'll not only have all the rival resort owners looking us over, but there'll be the travel people from all over the country giving us the eye. I know we're new at this, but we can't appear too raw."

  "Well, I'll try," I said, "but when it comes to being raw, I don't care what you say. I feel like a tartar steak and I'm sure I look it."

  "Now, one thing we can do," Bill went on, "is to have something original to eat. Since ninety buffet tables out of every hundred have a roast beef, a ham, a turkey, potato salad, and stuffed eggs, we won't have any of those things. I think they'll welcome the change."

  Any talk about a party always cheers me up—even if I'm the one who has to give the party. "That's so true, Bill," I said. "There are simply dozens of good dishes people never think of for a buffet party. We can do something really original and knock 'em dead. In fact, we might just reverse everything."

  "How do you mean?" Bill asked suspiciously.

  "Well, nothing like dessert first and soup last," T said. "But we could just switch some of the standard things. For instance, you know how every luncheon begins with cocktails out on the terrace and then the meal indoors. Well, why don't we do it the other way around? Drinks inside and the eating outside so we can show off the new terrace furniture."

  "Hmmm, yes," Bill said. "And instead of a lot of slices of cold meat, maybe a really monumental aspic of some sort . . ."

  "You worry about the food for a change," I said enthusiastically, "and just leave the arrangements to me. We'll give them a luncheon they'll never forget."

  We did.

  The day of the party dawned fair and cloudless arid perfectly beautiful. The refrigerators, the freezer, and every available surface in the kitchen were crammed with the most succulent and original goodies imaginable. The house and grounds were spotless and my real linen trousseau guest towels were on display in the bathrooms. Having the whole morning ahead of me with nothing to do, I decided to set up the luncheon tables bright and early and then take a little sunbath so I'd look my healthy best for the Rounduppers.

  Instead of using the ranch stuff, I'd dug out all of my own linen and china and goblets and my Cartier silver for as far as it would stretch. By ten o'clock the whole terrace was arranged into a dozen stylish tables for four, glinting with crystal and real silver and every one different from the others. I suppose it looked kind of minty, but I was much younger then and I thought it was perfectly beautiful. So, having nothing better to do, the little exterior decorator gathered up The Girls and made for the chaise longue and a two-hour session of sun worshiping.

  By eleven it occurred to me that it was uncomfortably warm in the sunshine—blistering hot as a matter of fact—but I rolled over gamely and gave my back a good toasting. At twelve I was feeling a little giddy from the heat, but by then it was time to bathe and dress for the luncheon. On the way past the terrace I looked rapturously once again at my handiwork—at the ladylike little tables with their cargo of family treasures glittering in the sunshine.

  "Razzamatazz," I said to Bill, "they'll really flip when they see this."

  The Rounduppers began piling in at one. Quite a lot of them said, "Hot enough for you?" and "It sure is a scorcher!" and "June is the only really hot month in New Mexico." But I was too busy being Little Miss Charm herself to pay much attention. The party was going well and the big dim lounge was filled with so much laughter and chatter that I began to relax.

  At two I ordered the food to be put outside on the long buffet table and then I tried to interest the Rounduppers in a little serious eating, but they were all having such a good time indoors that getting them to the buffet table took half an hour. Finally they were ready and we all trooped out toward the terrace.

  Feeling perfectly self-assured, I flung open the door like a mayor unveiling an Epstein statue and gestured grandly toward the buffet. It was a perfect shambles. The mammoth aspic had melted down to the size of a small and rather wizened football. It had broken the dam, so to speak, overflowing the edges
of the platter, carrying in its wake nasty parched bits of watercress as it coursed gooily across the damask tablecloth. The jellied consommé, now the color and consistency of high-grade motor oil, sloshed and splashed around in the soup cups. The lobster salad—made of lobsters specially flown from Maine—was a temperature ideal for Newburg, its accompanying bowl of mayonnaise piping hot and rancid in the midday sun. Oh, it was a scrumptious-looking spread!

  Still, some of the gamer Rounduppers were willing to assault their palates with our original food and then pandemonium broke loose. After four or five hours in the blazing sun, the silver was too hot to touch without welders' gloves and the crash and clatter of knives and forks was deafening. And as for the crystal-stemmed glasses! They were so hot from sitting in the sunshine that five of them burst the minute ice water was poured into them.

  I was too stunned to do anything but gape at the fiasco of my chi-chi lunch party. Happily, Bill dashed to the kitchen and got sufficient leftovers from the icebox to go around. There were parts of a cold turkey, a cold roast beef, and a cold canned ham—just like every other buffet. Looking dismally at our guests broiling in the sun, mopping their brows, loosening their ties, and covering their heads with newspapers and wet napkins, I began mentally wording a polite letter of resignation from the Resort Association. It seemed politic for Bill and me to resign voluntarily before we were thrown out. But somehow nobody really seemed to mind. The following fall Bill was elected Secretary-Treasurer of the Resort Association—in absentia, needless to say—and the Rounduppers came back the next year, but only for cocktails, not for an original lunch.

  Still and all, even if I do say so myself, the Rancho del Monte food was good. The way you could tell was by toting up the requests for seconds and by eyeing the empty plates as they were being carried out. Quite frankly, I preferred the more exotic diet of the ranch when it was empty or when there were only a few guests who were willing to go along on experiments. But even when the place was thronged and we were serving the pure cuisine Americaine, the food was always good and always noninstitutional. It was, homey food rather than hotel-y food, and that was all to the good. And while the Wine and Food Society has not beaten a path to the door of Rancho del Monte, most of our guests departed a good many pounds heavier, moaning and groaning about the reducing they, were going to do when they got home.

  Although I was cursed with my cooks, I was blessed with my husband. I am honestly not a good cook. I can get around the kitchen and follow recipes and instructions with a certain amount of animal intelligence, but not much more. When Bill married me, I couldn't even do that. He taught me everything I know about cooking, but certainly not everything he knows. Since no important crisis ever occurred at Rancho del Monte without a cook's leaving, Bill and I had to pitch in at the stove a lot of the time. But Bill did most of the pitching. He has the creativity and intuition for food that all good cooks must have. When something perfectly dreadful happens to a dish in mid-cooking, Bill can always improvise and add something or change something so that the finished product, though different, is even better and far more thrilling than what he started with. I can peel potatoes—one per person in residence—till the cows come home. I can give an assist with the salad or the dessert or whip up the salad dressing, and even make jams and jellies, but when it comes to real cookery, Bill is the master. And even if we had had a dozen jolly, cooperative, fun-loving master chefs in the kitchen, Bill would never have allowed one of them to make the gravy. A country boy, Bill had to have his gravy, and he made it beautifully: rich and full-bodied and never a lump. I can and will cook, but I hate a mental bloc about it in the face of such competition, and I'm a nervous wreck by the time the meal is on the table. I am not and never will be the cook my husband is, and that's all there is to it. Full house or empty house, Bill was the mainstay of the kitchen, just as he was the mainstay of the rest of the place.

  I was really too busy that summer ever to stop and ask myself if I was actually happy on the ranch. If I had, the answer would surely have been a big, resounding No. I knew Bill was happy, and that was nice, but never in my wildest dreams had I planned on spending my life as the hostess of a perpetual house party. Bill's idea of paradise and mine were just two different things. His was the ranch. Mine was a large one-room apartment with air conditioning and all the modern conveniences. But I had to admit once in a while that the old boy had a point.

  I felt it especially at dinner, looking down the long Spanish table and seeing everyone attractively dressed for the meal (by "dressed" I mean things like clean jeans and cotton frocks; I've been in evening clothes once since 1953) and watching pretty Nan and Sue serving it with the help of Dick and the cook's wife. Then I'd look out through the casement windows and see a great big splashy sunset, frantic with blues and pinks and reds and violets, and I'd make everybody stop talking for a minute and just look. (Really, how tiresome I used to be about those Southwestern sunsets!) Then I'd dig my fork into a delicious, tender slice of rare beef, surrounded by the pan-browned potatoes I'd probably peeled myself, and look at the corn on the cob and the green vegetables we'd grown ourselves. Then I'd contemplate the pie that was coming, made with our fruit. And then I'd look at the guests again and realize that all those lovely people were not only with us, but paying to be with us. Then I'd close my eyes and simply sigh.

  That, ladies and gentlemen, East or West, town or country, is known as contentment.

  12. A slight difference of opinion

  Somehow we got through that first summer alive. Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, the Fiesta, and the Rodeo had all come and gone. As a matter of fact, we even rode in the Rodeo Parade that first summer. Bill painted our elderly buckboard a spanking black and yellow and drove it in the parade with me sitting at his side—feeling like a fool—and seven guests riding behind us. We won second prize, and although I still accuse Bill of fixing the judges, he swears up and down that he didn't.

  The Rodeo de Santa Fe is great fun, much more fun than the Fiesta, I think—a good deal more exciting and a whole lot less alcoholic. One of its prime movers is our dear friend, Slim Green. We were lucky to find Slim so soon after our arrival at Rancho del Monte because he is the authority on all things pertaining to horses, the countryside, pack trips, roping, riding—anything Western. Slim is a saddle-maker by trade, a transplanted Texan and a former member of that gone-but-not-forgotten glamour branch of the Army, the Cavalry. Today he has a modern combination house and shop in the Tesuque Valley, where, surrounded by cats and children and stray visitors, he does perfectly beautiful leatherwork—saddles, bridles, riding skirts, belts, chaps, and almost any other leather item you care to mention. A great raconteur, Slim often finds his workrooms so crowded with men who drop in simply to listen that no customers can be wedged into the place. We just love him, and it suddenly occurs to me that maybe it was Slim who fixed it so that the Rancho del Monte contingent won second prize in the Rodeo Parade.

  But as Labor Day dwindled away, so did a lot of our staff and a lot of our guests. Nan and Sue and Dick, each weighing ten pounds more than at the beginning of tie summer and each a little surprised and distressed at the discovery, headed back to school, as did Don Campbell. That left us with the cook and his wife and children and the part-time services of the excellent Joe Vigil—and they were enough.

  The house was only half full after Labor Day, which was more guests than I'd actually expected, but surprising in still another way because, to me, autumn is New Mexico's nicest season. It is spectacularly beautiful time of year, with the aspen and the chamiso turning a vivid gold, followed by the reddening of the scrub oaks, so that soon the whole mountainside is a solid tapestry of green and gold splashed with scarlet. Wild flowers bloom everywhere; and while the days are warm and sunny, nights are cool, with fragrant piñon fires burning on all the hearths. Blood-red strings of drying chili pods festoon every house. Riding is wonderful then. Invigorating. The horses seem to sense the coming of winter and they're
far friskier. It's a lovely time to ride out on picnics and just gaze silently at the splendor that is everywhere. But try to convince the average American tourist or the usual travel agent of this.

  I don't know what there is about the term Labor Day that, like "Off Limits," "Verboten," and "Tabu," seems to denote the end of the world to the American public. Like those overly fashionable women I used to see sweltering on Fifth Avenue in furs and velvets and tweeds just after the first Monday in September (when anyone with any sense would have been at the beach), Labor Day seems to denote fall, work, and the coming Ice Age—even if it's ninety in the shade for the rest of the month. Only the brave and the unconventional will break the tradition by venturing out into the balmy blasts of our Septembers and Octobers, and that is indeed a pity because they are New Mexico's loveliest months, rivaling even the spring for exhilaration and beauty.

  That first fall was also the first time I can recall feeling consistently happy about living in New Mexico. By then Bill and I had become fairly accustomed to the routine of running the ranch. With only half a houseful, the work was easier, and all the guests were getting along beautifully.

  In fact, the guests were getting along so very beautifully that I should have sensed trouble. And it came, too, when politics slithered like a viper into our paradise.

  Two women from Chicago were visiting us, both of them cultivated and charming and terrifyingly intelligent. They had been guests at the ranch in Bess Huntinghouse's day, but they seemed to like us just as well and they were enormously popular with the other guests. After some of the prize packages I've described, it was really a pleasure to come into the dining room and see all the guests laughing and joking and calling one another by pet names—not a bad egg in the whole crate. I should have known that it was too good to last, but I was more innocent in those days.