by Bill Graves
Back on Highway 60, the motor home was almost coasting as I lost elevation coming off the Manzano Range. I dropped into neutral. The speedometer didn’t move a notch. I remember doing the same thing months ago coming out of Borrego Springs, California. This time, however, I felt like I was drifting—no, more like being pushed—toward a finish line. It’s always out there somewhere.
Ahead lay the Rio Grande River. In this dead expanse of brown, trees do not grow except along the river. There they flourish. Today they are a rich, gorgeous curtain of brilliant fall colors that extend across the earth, I am sure, from top to bottom.
Mexicans know the Rio Grande as the Rio Bravo, the “Wild River.” Yet it is neither bravo nor grande right now. The riverbed is wide, room for more water than is in it. I can only guess what it was once, and may still be at a different time.
Maybe someday I’ll come back and see for mys elf, God willing.
72
Street of Healing Magic
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico
The residents of San Francisco get upset when their swank city by the bay is called “Frisco.” But down here, folks don’t care if you shorten the name of their town. They all do. Everybody calls it “T or C,” because “Truth or Consequences” is just too much.
“Better than half our incoming mail is addressed to T or C, New Mexico 87901. Some of it is still addressed to Hot Springs. If the zip is right, we get it,” a clerk at the post office told me.
A few here, holdouts from four decades back, stubbornly persist that Hot Springs is their correct address. The school board may be the most die-hard holdouts of them all. The high school, to this day, is still Hot Springs High.
“This name always causes problems when I order things by phone.” says Reyes Tenorio in Ron’s Sporting Goods. “When I give my address, they don’t believe me. They say, ‘That can’t be a town.’ Then I have to go through the whole nine yards.”
Truth or Consequences, the radio quiz show, started in 1940. Hosted by Ralph Edwards, it was a national hit and continued into the 1950s as a network TV show. In 1950, Edwards announced that he would do his tenth-anniversary radio show from any town in the country that would change its name to Truth or Consequences. There were several takers. Edwards’ choice was Hot Springs, New Mexico, a small town of ranchers, merchants, and mineral-water bathers. He liked the idea of the natural hot springs here, which were said to have benefited thousands who suffered from rheumatism and arthritis. Also, there was an orthopedic hospital for children here that interested him.
But the final decision laid with those who lived here. Many here asked, “Why take the silly name of a radio program and give up a name that is descriptive of what nature has given us? And all this for an hour in the national spotlight?” The other side argued, “Why not? The Hot Springs name is too common. Consider all the free publicity the town will get, now and forever.” The vote came in 1,294 for, 295 against. On March 31, 1950, the name changed.
The next day, the first Truth of Consequences Fiesta was staged here. It brought 10,000 people into town. That evening, the Truth or Consequences show originated from its day-old namesake.
T or C still celebrates its fiesta every year, on the first weekend in May. Edwards is always here for it. He brings a celebrity of two to help draw a crowd and rides a horse in the annual parade. His relations hip with this community is still very close. They named a riverside park after him a few years back.
The Geronimo Springs Museum, on Main Street, has a large room devoted to Edwards and his radio show. The photography and memorabilia cover his nearly fifty-year association with this town. Outside is a stone arch covering a pool of warm water bubbling up out of the ground. “Geronimo often stopped here to bathe and relax,” the sign says. It lists nine bathhouses, with an invitation to visit them.
Ann Welborn has lived here all her life and runs the museum. She acknowledges that Edwards has helped the town, but everything considered, the name change has not accomplished what many thought it would. In fact, in 1964 and again in 1967, the question of whether to keep the name went to a vote here. Though obviously controversial, the T or C name still suits the majority.
“Some think we should have actively promoted the health benefits of our natural hot springs and not just relied on fallout from the Truth or Consequences thing. They did that kind of promotion in the forties. People came from all over. We were known as the ‘city of health.’ I don’t suppose many people think of us as that anymore.
“A local lady, she’s dead now, Magnolia Ellis, was a magnetic healer. There was something in her hands,” Ann recalls. “After she rubbed you, whatever was wrong got better. She used to treat 150 to 200 people a day. Can you imagine?”
Apparently, the magnetic healer’s hands may have also rubbed a little cash. Walking down Broadway later, the business street, I noticed the two-story Magnolia Ellis Apartments.
The Indians of the Southwest considered the site of the present town neutral ground. Here they gathered to bathe their wounds and ailments and exchange tribal news. They called it Geronimo Springs, After the Apache chief who was possibly the greatest Indian military leader of the nineteenth century.
Newcomer Shirley Hatfield, owner of the Marshall Miracle Hot Springs, a bathhouse, would like to see this place again be known as Geronimo Springs. “For a spot that has proven powers of pain removal and healing, a name like T or C makes no sense at all. It’s become a joke. Some call the town ‘Torc.’ Hot Springs is a decent but overworked name. Geronimo Springs says it all, without copying anybody.”
A bunch of cowboys built the first bathhouse in 1882. Later, when the county was formed, it built one. Today private enterprise has taken over the natural hot springs here. Five privately owned bathhouses offer a couple of different ways to soak in the 112-degree mineral water. You can soak in a tub, emptied after each use. Or you can relax in a cement-sided pool where the water percolates up through gravel in the bottom and flows out through an overflow at the top.
Shirley claims her naturally flowing pools change water every thirty minutes, but that’s a tough one to prove. She is a firm believer in the healing powers of the water. To make doubly sure, she had Longstanding Bear Chief come down from Montana to give her place a proper Native American blessing.
“We charge two dollars. That’s for the towels and room. The water is free, as it should be. For many who come here, this is the end of the line, the end of the pain train. They must get something out of it. They keep coming back, even to the same pool every time. To them, it’s theirs. To most, I’m just the sweeper here.”
Off Broadway, in the dirt parking lot serving a row of dilapidated apartments, a sign reads Body Alignment. I half expected it to include breaks, shocks, struts and front-end work.
Across the street, a fancier sign on painted poles reads Better Health—Pressure-Point Relaxation—Special Food Balancing—By Appointment. Obviously, this is the street of healing magic, no questions asked, no guarantees, no license required.
On Marr Street, I joined a group of healthy-looking seniors sitting on the porch of the Artesian Bathhouse and RV Park. I got to talking with a nice couple from Rochester, Minnesota. Every year for the past ten, they have stopped here for a few days to and from their winter hangout in Yuma, Arizona.
“Oh, we love it!” the man said. “We get in the tub, exercise every muscle that works, and hop out feeling great.”
“You’re not here to cure anything?” I asked.
“Cure what? You know something I don’t?” his wife laughed.
The man’s wide grin raised his glasses from his nose. “I know what you are getting at. No, hot water, even in a backyard spa, is a great relaxer and pain dispenser, best taken with a glass of bourbon.”
“Believe me, if the water bubbling out of this ground cures anything, the Mayo Clinic would have a glass-brick building over where we now sit. But look around. What do you see?
I shook my head.
“T
hat’s right,” he said, as he and his wife go in to soak.
73
The True Journey Never Ends
Deming, New Mexico
Jack Nicklaus said it best: “The older you get, the stronger the wind gets, and it’s always in your face.”
These words have real meaning for me today. I am feeling it all, especially as it applies to getting older.
This is Deming, New Mexico. The wind is not only strong, it is ferocious. When I did the hookup ritual, it was in my face no matter what direction I turned. What’s more, I have just been jolted into reality. Eight months have passed since I began this journey, and I have not really thought much about the passage of time. How long can I keep this up? How long should I?
It happened just now when I filled the motor home with gas. I went to record the pertinent numbers in my logbook and found there was no more room. It has taken over two years to do it and about 40,000 miles, but I have used every line on every page. Am I being told that my journey has ended? Well, I am not ready to end it.
Flipping through the dog-eared pages of the log, every entry triggers a memory. People. Events. Places. Times. Memorable days. Sure, some have not been so great. But they have been my best yet—the good and the bad alike—because I have lived every one of them to the hilt. They are all remarkably clear now, as if they happened just yesterday.
You may call them yesterdays. But yesterday has a special meaning out here. Drifters. Adventurers. Explorers. Escapees. We nomads who don’t stay still long. We live our lives in the here and now. What you see is what we are. What we were, or might have been, is of no consequence or interest to anyone. It just doesn’t matter. There are no yesterdays on the road.
The person who hangs onto yesterday, who needs it for his survival today, is not out here with us. He spends his days seeking sameness and uniformity to release him from uncertainty and turmoil. I pity him, the man concealed by his own life, pursuing the status quo, scared to move, perhaps holding himself too closely. I know the feeling. I have been there.
Those of us who are out here searching, for whatever it may be, all have yesterdays that we treasure and some haunting ones we try to forget. But it is not where we live. We take our joy in the present, even revel in it, maybe too much so. But it is every bit the journey and the property of those who make it. It is the great equalizer. No, there are no yesterdays on the road.
Tonight, Rusty and I will stay here, undoubtedly rocked to sleep by the wind. Then we will head into Arizona and visit Tombstone. I have never been to Tombstone. I want to see the OK Corral and walk around town. I am curious about that place. We will do that tomorrow, unless something comes up that’s more interesting.
About the Author
Bill Graves became a travel writer in the late 80s, covering the Western United States in his motorhome. His column, “America’s Outback,” appears monthly in Trailer Life Magazine. He’s also written articles for numerous newspapers, including The Chicago Tribune, The San Diego Union, and Long Beach Press-Telegram. His work has also appeared in Westways, Retired Officer, and Motorhome magazines.
Graves spent ten years working in the Hollywood film and television industry as a military technical advisor on such films as The Winds of War and An Officer and a Gentleman. A retired Navy captain, Graves served twenty-four years as a public affairs officer; his Navy career also included two tours in Vietnam between 1965 and 1969.
A native of Minnesota, Graves is a graduate of the University of Minnesota. Today, when he is not traveling in his motorhome, he makes his home in Palos Verdes, California. Graves has two grown children who also live in Southern California.
The author invites your comments by email at: [email protected]
