Emma and the Gauntlet of Fire
Christmas Eve rivals Christmas for my favorite day of the year.
Somebody, presumably the neighborhood association, lined our sidewalks with luminarias this year, as I discovered when I peeked out in late afternoon. I seem to remember they passed around a flyer saying something about it months ago; I spaced it out. They did a fine job, spacing them properly a yard between centers, and with the seams to the rear (why can’t people get that right?) I suspect they didn’t have much clue in advance how labor intensive an undertaking it was going to be.
What with one thing and another I didn’t get out for my traditional early Christmas Eve dinner at Steak & Ale (French onion soup, stuffed mushrooms, the rarest prime rib I can get out of them). Which was okay, especially since last night I got a nice steak at Outback with some of the local crew anyway.
But nothing was going to hold me back from my traditional walk with Joe from his house in the Sawmill District down to Old Town. We must’ve been doing this nigh on twenty years now. His daughter Juana Inez went with us. Joe bought me a hot cocoa at a shop run by a friend of his, we wandered around, gawked at the lights and crowds, visited San Felipe de Neri church and Saints & Martyrs, which is a very cool shop largely featuring old Mexican and Spanish religious relics, the Lady Chapel in its secret little plaza.
Then we walked back and Joe’s family opened presents while we drank some kind of hot fruit punch (non-alcoholic) and Juana Inez’s Chihuahua Tinkerbell generally ran amok. Joe gave me the new Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas CD, Spirit of The Season
Then I bade them Merry Christmas and took my leave. My evening had just begun. I headed home to collect Emma Dog for another Christmas Eve tradition. Only in the past it hasn’t included her. I’m not sure why.
So we hopped in the car and headed back down to the Old Town area, where there’s a little obscure side street with a dog leg on it, at which sits a house. For Christmas the occupants put out hundreds if not thousands of these little glass candle holders in their yard, vast solid ranks of red blue glowing gently. It’s strikingly lovely, somewhat ethereal, with a not-quite-of-this-world feeling.
Then we drove off across the river to what in my time was called South Coors, and now I gather is Old Coors. Down by Bridge there’s a little pocket development on the left, sandwiched between Old Coors and bluffs overlooking the river valley. It traditionally lines the houses and streets with luminarias - thousands of them. By neighborhood agreement, with a bit of arm-twisting, people agree to forgo other Christmas lights and indeed turn off or mask even interior lights. Add that to the fact that many if not all the houses are actual adobe, with a distinctive flat-roofed, rounded-corner Pueblo look and feel to them.
The neighborhood’s called Los Altos, the heights, appropriately given their location. I lived there when I was in high school. I took part in putting out luminarias, lighting them, and helping direct traffic. We lined our house with 350 of the things. Meaning we folded 350 lunch sacks, tossed a one-pound coffee can of sand and stuck a candle in each. Which is how I know how labor intensive putting out luminarias is, and got to be such a stickler about them. (Although not enough of a purist to call them farolitos, which some, though not all, authorities claim they should be called.)
Anyway, for my money it’s the best and purest luminaria display in Albuquerque - the highest form of the art. Other neighborhoods do luminarias, as mine did this year. And they’re all beautiful. The warm glow of candles in brown-paper bags of a winter’s night is really like nothing else in the world - especially in hundreds and thousands (in my day there were about 18,000 total in the few square blocks of Los Altos; it’s probably a similar number now.)
My luminaria jones is also why I don’t usually pray for a white Christmas - although one late Christmas Eve, or really early Christmas morning, sitting in the dark in the corner room of our old house on Rio Vista, facing out on a street corner, when huge fat snowflakes began slowly to fall - that was magic.
Per my usual habit I drove through, not needing the signs to remember to dim my headlights (why can’t people get that right, either?) Then I parked at a closed garage at the edge of the development and walked back through with the Em.
That was what she’d been waiting for of course. She seems to enjoy riding in the car with me, but I suspect that’s largely social. She does sometimes watch things go by, and occasionally even shows interest in the lights - she liked the quasi-secret blue and red candle place. But of course getting out and walking is her big payoff. And sniffing, of course.
But she’d never encountered live luminarias before. She stopped and peered into one. Then she looked at me: Dad? You knew these things have fire in them, right?
Well, yes. I encouraged her to go on. She soldiered up and did.
The streets wind and are narrow. The people don’t always heed the signs to drive 5 mph, either. And of course, if they’re considerate, or literate, they dimmed their dang lights. So a guy in a long black trenchcoat with a big black dog is not high visibility. Therefore as soon as possible I sought a sidewalk.
Which confronted Emma with a new menace: the Gauntlet of Fire! Luminarias to the left of her, luminarias to the right, and the sidewalk not the widest.
But being Emma and generally intrepid (these were hot-air balloons, after all) she persevered. On we went. It was as always beautiful and serene (as always when you wait till late, after all the giant fume-belching tour buses have gone, that is.) Given that we got there around 11 there were a lot of people going through, afoot and in cars. But I got my fix, and we had a good time.
The photographer with his tripod did give her a turn. Later as we were heading back to the car I saw him also packing it in. I thought he might have parked near us and thought to ask him if he’d liked the shots he got. But he didn’t and it was just as well, because I probably would’ve wound up trying to explain to him that Emma saw him as a human-hybrid monster with extra insectile stiltlike legs. And that’s not, I don’t think, something a person wants to hear about themselves on Christmas Eve…
Then we drove off across Old Coors into a more conventional suburban development where as usual they had some lovely electric Christmas light displays. Then we did the Country Club district south of Old Town, briefly - beautiful, and still pretty crowded.
Emma was a trouper, as always. She did seem to be getting a little tired of sitting and lay down a couple times. Nevertheless we weren’t done. Because of illness or just being worn out I’ve missed some of my regular Christmas Eve light-tour favorites the last few years, and was having none this year.
We proceeded north on RGB to Tinnin, another pocket development with lovely (and for the most part, anyway, exceedingly well-built), as well as muy expensive, houses, which usually does a bang-up job with lights and really kicks out the jams Christmas Eve. It disappointed me a tad. They lined the streets with luminarias (in all of this of course I mean real ones, folded lunch bags with candles in them, not close-topped plastic envelopes with electric lights. Although I’ve grown tolerant of those, and even acknowledge they have their virtues.) But everybody’s doing that now. They didn’t have as many electric displays up tonight, or at least lit up late when we went through, as they have in the past.
But the people who do decorate tend to go all out. With the big houses and lots that makes for some extravagant displays. Sorry, I don’t have a digital camera yet, or I’d show you. (And it’s late and I’m extremely tired or I’d try describing some the high points.) So it had its rewards. And midway through I was struck with an idea: it wasn’t terribly cold, so I rolled down Emma’s window so she could hang her big black face out in the breeze. Which she happily did all the rest of the way.
Wasn’t much more. There’s yet another vest-pocket development across RGB from Tinnin called Leesure Acres, if I recall correctly (yes, that’s the spelling.) It’s nice but fairly conventional ranch-style houses. They do some pretty lovely lights too. But this year they went to a neighborhood-pact thing like Los Altos, with only luminarias. Which is nice and all; but it’s hard to really line a house with lights when everything’s street level (a lot of the houses in Los Altos stand above street level, with yards held in by retaining walls) and almost all the roofs are pitched. And also because you’re not driving between six or eight foot walls as you are in so much of Los Altos there’s not the effect of seeming to be sealed away from the modern world in a bubble of peace and beauty.
Yeah. I’m prejudiced. Still, it was nice but not that big a deal. There is a house that always hangs a ball - I think it’s a tumbleweed - of colored lights from a tree branch that protrudes out over the street, which is nifty, and that was lit to my delight. But overall it didn’t quite do it for me.
No big deal. It’d been a lovely evening. Emma and I headed home. She ate a late dinner and collapsed on the couch. And I rambled endlessly on this post.
Enough. Tomorrow’s a big day too.
Merry Christmas to all.
And to all, a good night.