EPILOGUE

This record been posted in reverse order. This post is the last one. Please select "The Beginning" on the right and start from there. Thank you.


You may wonder why we left, after having spent eight years building what some would consider a fantastic home. We were working on our storage shed facility which was 25% completed and had opened up a Saw-Sharpening shop that employed three-part time workers. The shop was full of Foley and Belsaw equipment, which made the work easy and professional.



I had maintained my Dad's Sewing Machine Repair business by handling repair calls from the Santa Fe/Los Alamos area, and had a good job with great retirement possibilities at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.

No doubt I had a full plate, but being in my 30's and having the ability to handle all the varied chores, there was nothing in our private or business lives that was causing any grief or discontent. True, I had to hire and train three people to handle the saw business, but I chose two guys and one gal who already had good 8-to-5 jobs but wanted some extra cash for evening or weekend work. They did good work and were quite reliable.

Who would willingly walk away from that?

You may recall my mentioning of the Brown Berets and the La Raza radicals earlier. Most people not close to the activities of the radicals in these groups have no concept whatever of the threats they posed... And still pose.

I was in Santa Fe when they raided the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse and jail, breaking out some of their buddies and shooting up the place, including gunning down a a deputy. They then took over the Kit Carson National Forest, erected barricades at all entrances and exits, and declared the area to be a part of the glorious nation of Mexico. It took the U.S. Army to root them out.

U.S. Army? Isn't that not allowed? Not when you don't hear about it.

I was in Santa Fe when they took over the Nun's house in Agua Fria. I happened into the fray by going along with a good friend who was a photographer for the local newspaper and the local police and had received a "shots fired" radio message.

A large group of obviously Mexican radicals had barricaded themselves(who knows why) in the Nun's house and started shooting up the area. The seriousness of the incident became obvious when they gut shot(with a shotgun) A city police officer.

The Nuns house was about three miles from our place, so building a strong basement was my physical answer to their practice of shooting at things they did not like.

My wife and son were assaulted by a carload of Mexicans in broad daylight on Cerrillos Road, Santa Fe's busiest thoroughfare. We had our food thrown at us by a Mexican waitress in the local Denny's. Our instigation for her vitriol and hatred? We were gringos.

We believed this sort of racial insanity would eventually cease, as these lunatics were slowly - ever so slowly - confined or reformed.

The last straw was not another incident of physical violence generated by racial hatred. It came out of left field and was totally unexpected.

As our son reached schoolage, The Principal of his elementary school called us into his office and told us Tom would have to learn to speak Spanish before he could come to school.

Now, learning a second language - such as Spanish - is fine and dandy. I had learned it. But to require it as a prerequisite for school in the United States was mind-boggling.

I asked this man why. His explanation? Since twenty-two of the twenty-three children in his class were Spanish, and of those, eleven of them were children of our "friends from across the border" and spoke no English at all, it had been decided to teach the class in Spanish. He claimed the state bi-lingual education program authorized him to do this.

Legal? No. But he was backed in this decision by a plurality of Mexicans in city and state government.

It was then that we decided to put everything up for sale and leave.

And we did exactly that.

Note:
This blog was created primarily for Desert Cat, so he could see that one guy can accomplish what many may think impossible.

But a word of warning to whoever comes across this: Pick your neighbors and neighborhood carefully.

In a nation where "Diversity" is becoming the norm, it may be vital to choose where you settle with great caution. Your potential neighbors may not like you.

I will be removing it shortly.