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History in the Faking

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Here’s a tale of how the development of the upcoming Home Lands: How Women Made the West exhibit is mimicking history–in particular, an archival image taken by Russell Lee that’s become the cornerstone of our advertising for the exhibit.

First up, the historical image:

Spanish American Woman plastering, Chamisal, New Mexico, photograph by Russell Lee, 1940. Courtesy Library of Congress

Next, the modern-day image:

Plasterer Kathy Brennan checks the finish on her mud wall in the exhibit space for “Home Lands”

 

See the connection?

Exhibition designer Caroline Lajoie wanted visitors to Home Lands (opening June 19, btw) to be greeted by something elemental to the Rio Arriba section of the exhibit. At that heart is the role earth played in how women prevailed over often-daunting conditions. Whether they were using it to form cooking vessels and, eventually, fine-art pottery, or mudding the walls of their homes and churches, or wheeling, dealing and preserving the real estate of northern New Mexico, the dirt beneath of our feet has been a constant thread in the story of New Mexico women.

And now that story is on the wall, too, thanks to plasterer Kathy Brennan.

Brennan used American Clay Earth Plaster to mud the exhibit’s title wall in the style of how women have plastered the walls of adobe buildings for centuries. “It’s a type of veneer plaster,” she said, “that you can transfer to sheetrock.”

Although the precise recipe’s a secret, it includes clay, marble dust and natural pigments “straight out of the earth,” Brennan said.

She also added bits of straw and twigs for that old New Mexico look and used the Russell Lee image as an inspiration, though she didn’t don the overalls and straw hat of the photo’s plasterer.

“When Caroline called me, I thought it was really exciting–how to figure out how to come up with the color she was looking for and so on. I liked it, but it was a bit nerve-wracking at the same time. Still, I was really psyched. I love the photograph.”

This is her first experience mudding in a museum. Mostly, she works on home interiors, where people often ask her to include their handprints, their dogs’ pawprints, or their grandchildren’s footprints.

Home Lands focuses on the lives of women across the centuries in three regions–New Mexico’s Rio Arriba, Colorado’s Front Range, and Washington State’s Pugent Sound. Originally organized by the Autry National Center in Los Angeles, it features additional materials from the History Museum’s collections. It joins three smaller exhibitions–Ranch Women of New Mexico, New Mexico’s African American Legacy: Visible, Vital, Valuable, and Heart of the Home to put a spotlight on the unsung heroes of American history.

You can see Brennan’s mud wall in person June 19-Sept. 11, on the second floor of the History Museum, just north of the Santa Fe Plaza. Our grand opening, with refreshments in the Palace Courtyard, will be from 2-4 pm on Sunday, June 19. Admission is free on Sundays to NM residents.

Still Cooking: New Mexico’s Historic Diners, Chile Joints, and Burger Bars

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Wanderlust and the love of a great green chile cheeseburger drive Cheryl Alters Jamison and her husband and cookbook-writing partner, Bill. Literally, drive them. All over the state (and, sometimes, the world).

cherylandbilljamisonOn Feb. 13, Jamison spoke to a packed crowd in the History Museum Auditorium, regaling them with tales of some of New Mexico’s oldest and most beloved family-owned restaurants. Her lecture, “Still Cooking: New Mexico’s Historic Diners, Chile Joints, and Burger Bars,” dovetailed with her work for the state Tourism Department on two fronts: A catalog of the state’s culinary treasures and another of the best green chile cheeseburgers from Lordsburg to Dulce, Portales to Gallup.

We can’t give you a chile joint-by-chile joint account of her lecture (really, you had to be there), but wanted to share a few of her highlights. To borrow Jamison’s words: “Are you ready? We’re going to hit the road.”

It’s All Greek to Us

Trust an ancient culture with a mouth-watering culinary tradition to set up shop in New Mexico. Some of the state’s oldest and most renowned eateries have been brought to us by Greek immigrants. And a few might surprise you.

Those tummy-warming breakfast burritos at Tia Sophia’s in Santa Fe? The full-blown New Mexico chile dream that is Tomasita’s? The luscious steaks at Santa Fe’s Bull Ring and Albuquerque’s Monte Carlo Steakhouse and the Western View Steakhouse and Coffee Shop?

Greek, Greek, Greek.

As she began researching her upcoming book, Tasting New Mexico: 100 Years of New Mexican Cooking (Museum of New Mexico Press, 2012), Jamison said she kept stumbling across names like Mariol and Razatos. “I thought it was interesting,” she said.

After the turn of the last century, the first Greek restaurant appeared in Albuquerque, Mecca. By 1917, the city could count seven Greek cafes, including the Court Cafe and Liberty Cafe.

StoreFrontPlazaCafeIn 1929, Jim and Spiros Ipiotis turned the Eagle Cafe (estd. 1918) on the Santa Fe Plaza into the Plaza Cafe. Dionysis (Danny) Razatos bought it in 1947, but it took until the 1980s for his sons to convince him to add Greek food to the menu. (The restaurant suffered a serious fire recently and is closed for renovations, but the Razatos brothers run the Cowden Cafe sandwich shop in the History Museum, and a relative runs the Plaza Cafe Southside in Santa Fe.)

In the 1930s, Jim Pappas, an immigrant who raised sheep and made cheese and possibly moonshine, opened Pappas Sweet Shop in Raton. Still there, its rooms boast a museum’s worth of collectibles and the intoxicating aroma of fresh-baked bread.

A veritable network of Santa Fe’s favorite dining places actually began in Albuquerque’s Atrisco neighborhood, when a young Greek widow, Sophia Mariol, opened the Central Café to support her four children – each of whom eventually opened restaurants in Santa Fe. They had Mariol’s Cafe on the site that now boasts Cafe Pasqual’s. Son Jim opened Tia Sophia’s. One day, daughter Georgia Mariol stumbled onto a little-visited restaurant called Tomasita’s, then on Hickox. (The site later became Dave’s and, still later, Dave’s Not Here, because, well, Dave left.)

Tomasita’s chile was so good that it reminded Georgia of eating in her neighbors’ kitchens in Atrisco. She bought the café by assuming the debt and, it turns out, by assuming Tomasita Leyba, the cook. She moved it to a bigger location in a then-rundown part of Santa Fe known as the railyard. These days, expect to wait up to an hour for a table, but the crowd will keep you entertained.

A Few Hidden Gems

Sometimes the best food is where you least expect it. A few of Jamison’s discoveries:

Johnnie’s Cash Store in Santa Fe. On Camino Don Miguel off of Canyon Road, Johnnie’s expects you to pay for your sundries by cash or check – and to pick up one of the self-service tamales and enjoy it at a picnic table outside. How good is it? Good enough to win accolades from the Washington Post, which wrote:

Johnnie’s mixes soup, cereal, detergent, pet food — and a few baseball trophies from his sons’ youthful triumphs — in a few aisles of low, unglamorous shelves. The main draw sits near an old-time cash register, in the spot most convenience stores reserve for endlessly spinning wieners. “TAMALES,” the hand-drawn sign on a well-worn aluminum warmer shouts out, tempting customers who have dropped by for water or gum to reconsider their restaurant reservations.

They should. Even in New Mexico, where tamales are ubiquitous — and the bar for them is as high as the elevation above sea level (7,000 feet, for anyone who’s counting) — the husk-wrapped packets of pleasure at Johnnie’s stand out as ideals.

“It’s the last of a dying breed,” Jamison said of Johnnie’s Cash Store. “If you haven’t been there, get there while Johnnie’s is still with us.”

El Paragua in Española. Started in 1958 as little more than a drive-up taco stand, El Paragua now serves fine Mexican food in an impressive and rustic stone building – once the tack rooms of a family home. (Ask to see the photo of a young Dustin Hoffman, fresh off of filming The Graduate, when he ate there.)

Leona’s Restaurante in Chimayo. All Leona Medina-Tiede intended to do was offer food to Easter pilgrims to El Santuario de Chimayo. Thirty-four years later, her restaurant is still on the small side (think outdoor picnic tables and don’t bother with a reservation) but beloved by those who appreciate succulent carne adovada, hand-held burritos, posole, chile stew, frito pies, nachos and biscochitos.

Hit the Road

Besides sharing some of the more delicious portions of New Mexico’s history, Jamison’s lecture had an ulterior motive: To entice the audience (and, by extention, you, dear reader) to begin your own culinary wanderings. The Tourism Department’s web sites, linked above, are a great place to start.

Take the scenic drive to the historic Dust Bowl community of Pie Town and sample the Kathy Knapp’s pecan-oat pie at the Pie-O-Neer Cafe. (“A little slice of heaven,” Jamison said.)

Wander over to Clovis and Portales, where the Taco Box restaurants have served as the “Hometown Tacotorium” since 1969. While in Clovis, check out the Foxy Drive In and imagine the days when Buddy Holly and the Crickets took a break there.

In La Mesa, you simply must eat at Chope’s, which has, Jamison said, “the best chile rellenos in the state.”

And then there’s the hippies-meet-bikers Ancient Way Cafe in Ramah; the Laguna Superete, where your 20- minute wait will be rewarded with an extraordinary green chile cheeseburger (or a Kool-Aid Pickle. Don’t ask.); and Lucky Boy Chinese Food and Hamburgers in Albuquerque.

“Yes, you have to see it to believe it,” Jamison said of Lucky Boy. “It’s the only place in New Mexico, and I would wager anywhere, that you can get a green chile cheeseburger with an egg foo yung patty on top of it.

“My husband says it’s pretty good.”

A Walk Through Time

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Plaza merchants shook their stores from slumber as city workers swept the square, their conversation a melodic Spanish carried by the spring breeze. Huddled in the morning chill, we were walkers from St. Louis, New Jersey, Maine, Florida, New York and Michigan, led by a woman from California who was about to bring aboard a few folks like Napoleon, Willa Cather and a Native American saint.

pat“The Italians did not have tomato sauce,” declared Pat Kuhlhoff. “The Swiss did not make chocolate. And there was never a potato famine in Ireland until Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas.”

With that, Kuhlhoff began one of the downtown Santa Fe historic walking tours she has conducted on behalf of the Palace of the Governors for 17 years. She and other volunteers rotate responsibility for the tours every Monday-through-Saturday from mid-April through mid-October.

It’s an informal start: Gather at what we museum folks know as “The Blue Gate” – a wooden gate on the east side of Lincoln Avenue that divides the Palace of the Governors from the New Mexico History Museum.

Tours cost $10, last up to two hours (depending on how many questions you ask), don’t require reservations, rarely achieve a pace more strenuous than an amble, and provide a stop for drinking fountains and restrooms. (The museum guides, by the way, do not accept tips.)

Kuhlhoff begins her tour by drawing connections between visitors’ home states and the American Southwest. “All of King George’s Red Coats got their red from Mexico,” she tells an East Coaster. In a way, she’s subverting the standard U.S. educational view of American history, as something that started back East and eventually pioneered its way to a desolate West.

In fact, Kuhlhoff tells her dozen walkers, Santa Fe’s history began some 14,000 years ago with Native peoples who farmed, tamed turkeys and dogs, fought with one another, and then fought with European settlers, before reaching accommodations that led to today’s Southwestern melting pot and its still-distinct ethnic ingredients.

Civil War monumentStanding in the Plaza, Kuhlhoff points to the obelisk commemorating those who died in the so-called Indian wars. She tells of how the word “savage” was chiseled out of its inscription – an oft-told story – but drops in something new: Napoleon saw obelisks used as memorials in Egypt and brought the idea back to France, where it took root and spread.

(We can also thank Napoleon for Southwestern punched-tin decorative arts, Kuhlhoff says. The general decided tin cans were the best way to move goods across long distances. Once goods made it all the way to Santa Fe, throwing away the cans they came in was deemed wasteful, so they were recycled into objects that now typify Santa Fe style.)

Kuhlhoff makes me see, for the first time, the gargoyle heads atop the Catron Block building at Washington and Palace.

She leads us into the Rainbow Man Courtyard on East Palace and points to the office where scientists for the Manhattan Project once learned of their top-secret orders.

palace ave architectureOn the corner of Cathedral and Palace, she compares and contrasts Territorial, Pueblo, Mission and Romanesque architectural styles.

Near the river, she stops at a bed of native plants and deftly IDs yarrow, poppies, aspens – before noting that, just upstream, nuclear secrets were exchanged, a crime that led to the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

On the steps of St. Francis Cathedral, she introduces visitors to the statue of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the first female Native American to attain beatification, and tells a bit of the history of Bishop Lamy, noting drily that Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop is “not historically accurate, but popular.”

The walk includes information on the railroad era (with a timely restroom break at La Fonda) and on the use of acequias to move the desert’s most precious natural resource: water.

“You’re with these people such a short time and you don’t get to know them, so I try to make it really broad,” Kuhlhoff said afterward. “If you go into too much detail, people don’t have a basic framework.”

Getting that basic framework to them is easier said than done: “With the docent training we get,” Kuhlhoff said, “I could have these people out there for four days.”