I am going to write about the state of New Mexico and put in some maps and stuff from the encyclopedia. My theme is the Don Juan Onate trail and the Jornada Del Muerto. But I might write some other important things which as it turns out my stepmother got angry about and said she wouldn’t type this until my dad said “Dammit now it is history” and told her maybe there weren’t commas in those days.

All of it was way before we decided to move to Texas and then not move there. It goes like this.

My dad and me moved from Arizona which was in 1963 to a town that’s hardly a town. Hatch. It’s close to nothing but it’s on Highway 185 where one time anyway a lot happened on the Onate trail. Sandia man and Folsom man were around. It was about 15000 years before the highway was made but they were good hunters so they did okay. I had a new friend Daniel who also came from another school somewhere to here.

Daniel’s dad was older but he was my dad’s friend. Neither guy was married. They even both smoked cigarettes. We were nine and we thought that was the neatest thing ever to know that. Man oh man. Almost the same.

My dad was a Small Repairs Man and his dad was a Writer which we thought was also neat because his dad used typewriters and my dad repaired them and other stuff with moving parts that stopped moving right. It was funny sometimes too. Daniel always had a headful of new words.

“Chum. I’m omiscient” Daniel said to me one afternoon around June on our bikes. “I’m plenty omiscient.”

“So?” I said. If you need to know I got that name Chum because my name is Charlemagne which is goofy.

“So I can know about everything” Daniel said.

And when I made him tell me like what he said like he knew that Mrs. Orofolo had a third arm growing out of her back and Bus the Greyhound bus driver was a topsecret double FBIA agent. And he know a lot more like how Awful—Mr. Alvarezo’s dog—had tattoos on his forelegs that said USMC and LSMFT.

It had to be true.

Mrs. Orofolo who I guess had been a Mrs. once but wasn’t anymore had a really big lump on her back like a third shoulder. Bus who called himself Semi was a guy who never said anything not good morning or anything and nobody knew his real name so he was named Bus after the Greyhound superbus he drove like a bat outta hell up and down the Highway. I never saw no tattoos on Awful but I never knew nobody who got close enough to look because the talk was that Awful killed other dogs and fed them to Mr. Alvarezo’s pigs who were supposed to be big and bloated and maybe could have had tattoos you never knew.

The Anasazi had tattoos all over everywhere and they drew all kinds of weird things in the Chaco Canyon. Then the Pueblo Indians were around about 700 years ago. There was a lot of them in those days.

Then this guy from Spain cam and gave them a big long letter they couldn’t read if their life depended on it which it did. The end of it went like this.

Wherefore, as best you can, I entreat and require you to understand this well which I have told you, taking the time for it that is just you should, to comprehend and reflect, and that you recognize the Church as Mistress and Superior of the Universe, and the High Pontiff, called Papa, in its name, the Queen and King, our masters in their place as Lords, Superiors and Sovereigns of these islands and the main by virtue of these gifts, and you consent and give opportunity that these fathers and religious men, declare and preach to you as stated. If you shall do so you will do well in what you are held and obliged; and their Majesties and I, in their royal name, will receive you with love and charity, relinquishing in freedom your women and children, and estates, without service, that with them and yourselves you may do with perfect liberty all you wish and may deem well. You shall not be required to become Christians, except when informed of the truth, you desire to be converted to our Holy Catholic Faith, as nearly all the inhabitants of the other islands have done, and when his Highness will confer upon your numerous privileges and instruction, with many favors.

If you do not do this, and of malice be dilatory, I protest to you, that, with the help of Our Lord, I will enter with force, making war upon you, from all directions, and in every manner that I may be able, when I will subject you to obedience to the Church and the yoke of their Majesties; and I will take the persons of yourselves, your wives and your children, to make slaves, sell and dispose of you, as their Majesties shall think fit, and I will take your goods, doing you all the evil and injury that I may be able, as to vassals who do not obey but reject their master, resist and deny him; and I declare to you that the deaths and damages that arise therefrom, will be your fault and not that of his Majesty, nor mine, nor of these cavaliers who came with me.

“Daniel” I said. “ How do you get omiscient?”

He had a platter eyes and a burr haircut grew real fast over and behind his ears so he was pandafaced all the time which I didn’t much remember until I just now wrote it. I just knew him about seven months. He said his dad said you can’t get certified omiscient. It comes and goes. “It comes and goes” he said and I didn’t like the way he said it because he got a terrible kinda Indian Mask look on his face.

“Daniel?”

“Don’t know. It only happens.”

He was my real buddy and wouldn’t keep it from me if he knew how to make me omiscient so I said “Don’t it beat all get out.”

“Don’t it” he said. It must’ve been about June. We both watched an onion truck come over a hill on the highway and into town. If you ever smelled a fresh scab that’s what an onion truck smells like. It could be a good smell even.

“He’s going to call me home” Daniel said.

And sure as heck he did.

And then Coronado who was Spanish explored around. Pretty soon he found Santa Fe in 1610.

From The Complete History of New Mexico. Copyright 2005 by Kevin McIlvoy. All rights reserved.