Suzie and Harold the Indian - Pinos Altos, NM

Suzie owns a little country store in Pinos Altos, NM - up in the mountains from Silver City. I'd guess 300 people live in the little rural settlement. Suzie used to live in Encinitas, CA and came to the "hills" when her mom and dad got ill.



Harold (a wooden Indian) sits in the end seat at the cafe counter. Suzie says he was carved by a local Indian craftsman. I moved carefully by him at first, thinking he was just a quiet person who needed a little time alone.


Suzie went back to peeling a huge pile of potatoes for the red chili stew she was making - the strong smell totally filled the cafe. She talked with us about the special silence - a different way the air feels and sounds in the NM mountains. She talked about the lack of crime and her amazement with the retired folks moving to the mountains who build 5,000+ sq ft houses in the woods.


Then we talked of "stuff" and how so many of us at this age want to downsize and simplify our lives. When her parents died within months of each other, Suzie took everything - a lifetime of their "stuff" and not being able to deal with it, stored it in her home. It's been 5 yrs now and she's trying hard to understand our need to hang onto things as if they were memories to never forget.

Sunshine & Ian

Dayton, Tennessee:

Jus' passin' on through - First we met Sunshine. She came dashing over to us when she saw we parked near the funky green houseboat she calls home. She's 8 months old and tried to be fierce, barking aggressively at us - but when I told her sharply . . . "Hey! none of that! we're friends!" . . . she immediately melted, wagged her tail, started dancing around us and wanted to play as we leaned over to pet her.

Her owner - Ian, put her in his pickup while we talked. He explained how he found Sunshine in the parking lot, a tiny 5 wk old skinny bundle of puppy, abandoned - a "drop off" he called her. Not wanting a dog - his emotions gave way though, when that first day she sat on the gang way to his boat without moving for 2 hours.

With easy movement and a friendly southern drawl, Ian first answered my questions about what's it like to live on a houseboat on a small Tennessee river - "Great!". Being a boat mechanic, he waved his hands at all the other houseboats and said, "I've worked on and fixed all of'em". He went on to describe how he's rebuilt everything on the junked green boat he found - that it only needs an engine now, all the other systems (water, waste, heat) are in great working order . . . and being divorced, he now has a girl friend who shares his dream of owning a 65 foot barge, loading it with his truck and all their belongings and boating down to Pensacola, Florida to live in the warmth.

Ian said he needs the warmth now because he sounds like a 'bucket of bolts' in the cold Tennessee mornings - all his joints crack and creak, mainly his knees and legs because of a horrendous motorcycle accident - hitting diagonal RR tracks during the first few minutes of a rain - remembering only keeping his legs together as he flew off and slid feet first towards a guard rail.

Waking up in the hospital days later with 2 broken legs and other fractured bones - a cop stood over his hospital bed writing a ticket for riding without a helmet. Weeks later when he could walk, he took the officer into the field where he finally landed. They searched and searched and eventually found his helmet that saved his life, cracked in half like an egg in the back and only held together by a thin piece under the chin.

Lucky to be alive, he got out of that ticket!

Beale St. Memphis, TN

At night he drives a totally lit, twinkling and blinking horse drawn Cinderella coach up and down Beale Street in Memphis. There's a sleeping dog named Gypsy under the blanket by his lap, his "best girl", he said.

When he heard about our 16,000 mile road trip, he told us about driving to Alaska and back (from North Carolina) with his parents when he was younger -an amazing drive with hundreds of memories.

Not at all hustling us to buy a ride, he pulled a old worn piece of paper out of his wallet, handed it to me and said a drunk in a bar once told him if he ever made it to New Zealand, he had to be sure to visit:

*Christchurch
*Queenstown
*Dunedin
*Invercargill
*Milford Sound

Holding his creased, thin paper of dreams, seeing those five places I visited scribbled on paper, sure brought back wonderful memories for me too. Then he talked of trying to get work in New Zealand - maybe driving a truck.