Today two busloads of convention attendees rode to Santa Fe to soak up some of the history in and around that city. It's a lot different from Albuquerque which is sprawling out for miles. Santa Fe is smaller, more compact, and more touristy. The high desert really shows up between the two places. It's brown except for the scrubby bush growing much like weeds.
Commuter trains connect the two, double decker cars. We passed two of them and from what we gathered the service is well used. We passed a sign indicating a turn-off to Las Vegas, NM and the man with a microphone explained that at one time that was really a tough town. He spoke of the guy who was practicing his fast draw and an errant bullet killed a bystander. He said, "Oops, that was an accident." Some time later, he was drawing and shooting again, this time killing another person. "Oops, doggone, that was an accident." The sheriff arrested him and a lynch mob came for him at night and hung him from a windmill, there being no trees around. The next morning his body still swung there and had a sign attached: This was no accident.
I've visited with a couple of interesting foreigners attending the convention, one, a Scotchman living in England. His interest is with the history of Apache Indians and as we talked I asked him if he knew what Manifest Destiny meant in this country. Oh, yes, he teaches Western American history in a university. He seemed to know more about it than I.
The other fellow was Japanese. I don't think he speaks English well, but I asked him the Japanese were interested in our west, too. He nodded that they did. I said I'm interested in your Samurai. The man he was sitting with seemed to be able to converse with him well in the Japanese language and told me that he can trace his lineage back two thousand years as he is a member of one of the historic Samurai families.
The altitude takes some getting used to. For a flatland North Dakotan to come here takes some getting used to. Albuquerque is about a mile high and Santa Fe was around 7,500 feet high. Thursday we get down to attending speakers and meetings.
