The Other Santa Fe

Talking with various friends in Abq this week, I was surprised, in turn, by their frequent surprise at my mention of The Other Santa Fe. The one whose citizens work for a living. The one I work in, and in which I spend at least half my time.

South Santa Fe really is not the same town, quantifiable in a number of ways, as the City Different with its reputation for world-class culture and world-class snobbishness. It doesn't have any internationally famed cuisine, movie-star sightings, designer clothing stores, or opera venues. It has the mall, the Wal-mart, the airport, a new supersized movie theater. It seems to have some housing within the reach of working families and single people. It has about half a dozen trailer parks that are each home to a hundred families or more, and unknown numbers (probably even to city offices) of smaller trailer courts and cheap-to-very-cheap apartment buildings. It seems to have some of the area's best urban open space, thanks perhaps to a progressive shift in leadership (or maybe to the construction, over the last decade, of "affordable" housing on such a grand scale, to such a profit, as to give developers a little openness of heart with all that land that they had to work with?)

And it has - one of my favorite aspects - a Spanish-speaking population almost comparable in numbers to its English speakers. I won't attempt to get into the socio-economic implications of linguistic or cultural enclaves, because -- well, because I'm no expert, and I got no grounds to speak on that subject. Or need to. I'm only going to say I thoroughly enjoy the other-ness of this other city. Who, as far as I can tell, doesn't give a damn what the uppercrust and the enlightened of Santa Fe society are doing, only minutes up Cerrillos Road from them. I also much enjoy the consistent opportunity to practice my Spanish on the job. Because I dearly hope to be fluent, one of these years. And because the Flow changes, when I get to move even for a moment in a realm of communication that seems to use both brain hemispheres equally: knowledge, and imagination; grammar, and the very necessary good humor and humility of a learner.

Santa Fe Domino's Pizza inside joke: about 2-3 times a night the phone rings, and the person who answers can't take the call, because they only speak English. They put it on hold and call out, "SPANISH!", to which any of half a dozen of us who speak it will come a-running. The other night the phone rang, and there was a quiet minute after it was answered, where it seemed nobody was doing anything. Tommy, one of the long-timers, one of the bilingual drivers, looks around and grins. "ENGLISH!" he calls out. It's not that far off, really, from how it is there.

Today might've been a record: I think half or more of the phone orders I took were Spanish calls. Maybe that amazing statistic I heard, about the language demographic of Santa Fe County, could be true after all. At any rate it got more fun (and easier to get past the blocks of the brain and of phone communications in general) as the day went on. The high point was when a woman came in with her young daughter, who she was clearly rehearsing their order with so the daughter could be translator. It comes up again and again, in reading, in ESL training, in observation: the fragile (and not always helpful) power dynamic created when parents have to let their kids do the talking for them. So I stepped up and said, "Puedo ayudarle: cual es su numero de telefono?" And was delighted to see both mother and daughter at once say "ha!" and brighten with bemused but pleased smiles.