The last few days I have been on the move. After nearly three weeks around Silver City, I set out for Hatch, NM, and what I remembered as the best green chile burger I’ve ever had in my life. That was six years ago and a coronavirus sounded like something you’d pick up from accidentally drinking somebody else’s beer. The last time I had been through Hatch, NM, I had to stop at the Pepper Pot because Sparky’s was closed except for on the weekends. That’s okay, I’m out here to have new experiences and try new places. A cardinal sin of life on the road is getting into a rut, not only literally (because these roads can really suck sometimes) but figuratively as well.
The food was just okay. I’ve been running into that a lot. I used to love Santa Fe because it introduced me to a whole other level of flavor. You almost couldn’t go wrong, whether it was New Mexican food, Indian curries, or even a regular old hamburger at Blake’s Lotaburger. But since the pandemic, food just hasn’t tasted right. Everything in the US seems so bland and slapped together. Mom and pop restaurants have closed up, giving way to the rise of franchises that just don’t care.
As I headed to Hatch last week, I was hopeful. I checked the hours of operation at Sparky’s site. I was going to be there on a Friday. I left Silver City and the familiar mountains of the Black Range, out into the plains and then the Rio Grande river valley. In Deming, I met up with an old friend, I-25, and continued to drive on into the afternoon, looking forward to a juicy cheeseburger topped with chopped hatch green chiles and their signature BBQ sauce made from green chile, and this time I would embrace the spirit of adventure with a lemonade. You guessed it, it’s also made from green chiles.
I pulled into Sparky’s and noticed that the flotsam and jetsam of the nostalgic Americana had moved around. Vintage relics of plastic Ronald McDonalds (Ronalds McDonald?), Big Boy, and several other stand-ins for mid-century kitsch had been moved around. Gone was the pickup and order window, and to start your order, you had to tell the checker what you wanted. Swipe your card, apply gratuity, and then pick a table. When your food was ready, rather than bring it out to the table, they hollered your name over a PA system.
After hearing them page “Clarence” for ten minutes, I realized that must have been me. I picked up my tray along with my lemonade, which was just a regular lemonade with a big glob of green chile floating among the ice cubes. Dipping my chunky fries into green chile BBQ sauce, taking bites of green chile burger, and washing it down with basically spicy lemonade was a strange experience in incrementally rising scoville units.
Though it was good, really nothing was as great as that first time I had eaten there in 2019. In spite of the capsaicin infiltrating every bite of my food and drink, it was just okay. Spicy, but not very flavourful. It lacked depth. And after I ate, I bussed my own table and left. I’m not sure why I left a tip, since they hadn’t really done anything in the name of hospitality. Clarence would have given the experience three stars.
I topped off my half-drunk lemonade with iced tea (and grabbed a lethal amount of pickle slices for the road), thus creating an absolutely disgusting Arnold Palmer out of a $4 lemonade with no refills. Anyway, I continued up the road to Truth or Consequences, NM. We got parked and situated amid hundreds of acres of some kind of thorn bush that grew near the Rio Grande. In the murky shallow waters some kind of big fish swam back and forth, drawing wakes along the surface, snapping at flotillas of mayflies. While we were camped here, in the middle of the night, I heard the telltale sound of mice chewing on the inside of the walls. Our new stowaways also wanted to escape the thorns and monster fish.
We continued on, this time heading towards places I needed to check out for an article I am working on. Dropping down from the mountains reminded me of one of the main characteristics of New Mexico, once you get past green chile on everything or the number of hostile plants with thorns that would love nothing more than to drink your blood. The Dust.
New Mexico has a unique soil system. This ancient dirt is known as loess and is carried and deposited by the wind, especially during haboobs. A recent haboob that crossed just south of Lordsburg while I was camper there went into west Texas and wrecked mobile homes and semi-trucks on I-10. These are hurricane level winds sometimes, and when they blow through an area, you can’t see but a few feet in front of your face. They drift across highways, they clog up fresh air intakes, they overheat radiators. Most of all, they cover everything in a thin layer of fine ochre dust.
After leaving Silver City, my bus had become a dust collection system. Each time I stopped after a long ride on a bumpy dirt road, the interior of my bus was covered in particulate sedimentary rock, airborne and drifting on every flat surface. My desk, my trunk, and even my bed. I can smell the dust everywhere.
Arizona didn’t have dust like this. Neither did Utah, California, Idaho, or anywhere else I have been. Just New Mexico and probably anywhere downwind. After wiping everything down over and over again, especially after I could see the telltale signs of mice tracks on my dashboard, I am reminded of why Arizona was so pleasant during the winter. Out there, it’s all rock, but in New Mexico, it’s all dust. This quintessence of dust.
The second mouse was trapped this morning. The first a couple nights ago. The bus is getting back to normal. My recent jag on dirt roads resulted in so much dust that I just sprayed everything down with Murphy’s Oil Soap and tried to wipe it away. Most of all, it left a crusty haze. I hung my bedding out in the wind as a rainstorm passed overhead. No rain fell on the ground, but you could taste the humidity in the air. Ironically, I am closer to the Arizona border now.
Moments like this I wonder what any of it means. How does it all matter? They say we started off as dust, and to the dust returned, we shall be once again. The mice are food for ravens. The places that were so enjoyable and full of flavor and color are now drab and cheap. All things bloom and fade and become dust again. That’s why we keep searching. That’s why we keep driving.
I did find a gleam of hope in all of this, however. I stopped in Pie Town and had breakfast/lunch (and dinner) at the Pie-O-Neer Cafe. Pie Town is infamous for their pie places and this cafe was incredible. I ordered a chicken pot pie and coffee. The pie came with a salad and a muffin. I have never had a pot pie that good in my life. After ordering it, I waited at least half an hour, and when it arrived, I realized it was because they had made it from scratch. The crust was perfect, flaky, and savory. Inside the pie, huge chunks of what seemed like braised white and dark chicken meat with celery, carrots, and a rich gravy sent me diving into the pie with fork and spoon. I dinosaur chomped the salad, and my body seemed to revel at the first real greens that had been ingested for weeks. At the end, I examined the tiny brown muffin and took a bite. A sweetness like fresh honey, nuts. I asked what the muffin was and Camile, the waitress said it was pecan pie. In a muffin! Incredible.
My original plan had been to have a pot pie and then a slice of dessert pie to go with my coffee, but I had no room left for another bite. I’ll have to go back some other time for pie and coffee. Twin Peaks style. For dinner, I popped up some popcorn in the bus, still full from the only other thing I ate today.
So, there is hope left in this world after all. No gimmicks. No shortcuts. Just food made with love and a dedication to making sure customers left happy and full. 10/10.
