Collectors Corner! Ed Sandoval's Newsletter (Taos, NM)

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Collectors Corner!

Ed Sandoval Gallery's Newsletter

119 Quesnel Street, Taos, NM 87571

www.edsandovalgallery.com

edsandovalart@gmail.com

(575) 770-6360

The Journey Continues: Elementary & High School Memories

Happy November! The days are flying by and it’s time for another newsletter. Last month, you guys seemed to really enjoy the summary of my early boyhood years. We stopped when I was six years old, had been run over by a car, spent a year in bed with nothing to do but paint and draw and finally went back to school (to repeat 1st grade) with a new love for art (that story HERE). I figured I’d keep going and tell stories from then up into my high school days.

As a reminder, dad worked at the labs at Los Alamos. Tired of commuting back and forth from Nambe, he found us a second home where we lived during the week, returning to Nambe on the weekends to work the farm. Danny (my twin) and I didn’t speak a word of English and had a hard time adjusting to life in this military, mesa-top city.

Los Alamos is on the Pajarito Plateau (7,500 feet) on the Eastern Flank of the Jemez Mountains

Back then, Los Alamos was heavily guarded and secretive. For example, there was a top-secret group of buildings called Tech Area (we lived extremely close to it). To get in, you had to pass through guard towers manned with soldiers bearing guns. No one got in or out without being checked and cleared. When I was 8 or 9 years old, they moved Tech Area to another location, and the guard towers were abandoned. My friends and I thought, "Wow! This looks like a fort and would be a neat clubhouse!"

We helped ourselves and moved in – bringing drawings, comic books, snacks, blankets and such. Score! We thought it was the coolest place ever. The next thing I knew, the FBI was at our house investigating who had infiltrated the guardhouse. It was a big deal. My father was interrogated by the feds, and I got in a LOT of trouble. Eventually, they realized we were just kids having fun, and the possible "threat to national security" went away.

Main Gate

Dad & Vehicles in Los Alamos

Our Vehicles after a Snowstorm

School was confusing. By 4th grade, I had made some friends and understood English, but I wasn't confident at all. Those of you who know me today will find this hard to believe, but I was shy and self-conscious back then. My sentences were choppy, and it was hard to find the right words. Plus, I was always surrounded by the children of famous scientists and mathematicians, PhD stars who had been imported from Europe and across the U.S.

My 4^th grade teacher just didn't care for me at all. Unlike my other teachers, such as Mrs. Hillhouse who was married to the bakery owner and brought us tasty donuts and other treats, she never smiled and was stern ... downright mean. One day, I really had to use the bathroom and raised my little hand. She barked, “What is it?” I stuttered and tried to explain, but she looked away, waved her hand dismissively and said, “No you can’t go.” Well…you can imagine what happened … right there in the classroom, sitting in our reading circle. Nothing could have been more humiliating.

Since we didn’t fit in, Danny and I would escape and explore by ourselves whenever we could, usually going for walks in the canyons. From the Tech Area near our home, waste water flowed down through the canyons. I would lie on my stomach on a rock and gaze at it for hours. It had the most fascinating iridescent colors floating on top of it, like swirling ribbons of rainbows that would ooze along the soft current. Sometimes I took a stick and drew figures in the shining kaleidoscope. Thinking back, I shouldn't have gotten so close to those brilliant, metallic colors that reminded me of candy. I’m fairly sure they were toxic and perhaps radioactive, but as a kid...how I admired those colorful currents.

Grandpa Pedro & Uncle Salomon

Danny Hauling Adobe

Me & Mom

I admit that although I felt like an outsider in elementary school, going back to Nambe on the weekends wasn’t much better. Back then, kids were expected to work hard to help the family, and to say that my dad was a stern taskmaster would be an understatement. That man worked the absolute tar out of me and Danny at our farm/ranch every weekend.

He expected us to get up early and work (without any complaints or pay) all day. We dug ditches, cleared fields, butchered pigs, cut wood, fixed fences, made adobe bricks, helped build, and toiled as laborers on countless other chores. One time, Danny got tired of this non-compensated servitude and played a joke on dad. He put pillows under his blankets, as if he were sleeping, and hid in the closet. Dad was miffed that Danny hadn’t come to breakfast. He stormed in there, took off his belt and beat the mound in the bed. Danny jumped out of the closet and laughed his head off. Dad wasn't amused. We got double duty for that prank. Dad was the warden, and we were his little chain gang of two. LOL.

Once I got to high school, I started having fun. Since dad never paid us for our work, when I turned fifteen, I got a job at Safeway stocking the produce section. Like me, my friends figured out that if you worked for a store (as opposed to a parent) you actually made money, and they asked me to put in a good word for them. Soon, that Safeway was teeming with my buddies. When I was sixteen, the store actually made me the “Produce Manager,” and (better yet) my sister Pita gave me her two door, hard top, turquoise and white 1954 Chevy Bel Air. Finally, I could afford to go skiing and buy clothing. Things were looking up.

Loved Skiing at Los Alamos

Pita's 1954 Chevy Bel Air

Me (Left) in New Clothes

As a junior, 12 of us started a club – not a school sanctioned club like the chess club but a self-appointed group of kids who banded together to form “The Senior League.” The best thing we did was to save our fellow students from boredom. Los Alamos was uniquely isolated – it was hard to come and go without security passes, and there wasn't much to do outside of football and basketball games. In a nutshell, we were restless.

Being enterprising young men, we came up with the idea of renting the town’s recreational hall and throwing dances. We knew we could charge a LOT for admission. For the kids up there, money was no object – their parents were highly paid physicists, nuclear engineers, mathematicians, scientists … a gamut of professional specialists who were handpicked to be there. We charged $20 per person at the door, and that was way back in the 60’s! They gladly paid to jitterbug and dance to some mild-blowing talent that came to play:

Glen Campbell: He was in Albuquerque playing with Dick Bill’s Band. They played rock & roll and western music, but Glenn wasn’t in the limelight yet.

Fats Domino: He wore so much gold jewelry. When he played, he got all sweaty and so did the kids who just danced and danced and danced. He already had many best-selling hits and I can't believe that we - a bunch of kids - hired him. He sang “Blueberry Hill,” “Ain’t That A Shame,” “I’m Walking” and a whole bunch more.

The Platters: I can't believe we booked them either – they had several national hits and played “Only You,” “The Great Pretender” and "I Only Have Eyes For You."

We also got The Ventures, Al Hurricane and other bands by talking to Norman Petty, who lived in Clovis and managed Buddy Holly’s career. We packed in hundreds of kids and squirreled away the proceeds in a bank account, which we divided when we graduated. I don't want to say how much, but it was quite a bit. Cha-Ching!

Graduation: Los Alamos High School Class of 1964 (Source)

Prom Pic with Valerie

It's fun to think back on those days – we were so young and adventurous and had such a zest for life. I still have a healthy zest for life even though I'm much older and maybe wiser.