I Love New Mexico

Episode 109– You can also listen on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcasts, and Amazon Music

About the Episode

In this episode of the “I Love New Mexico” podcast, host Bunny Terry chats with guests Bridget and Michael about their shared love for photography and history. Over the past eight years, they have explored every freeway in New Mexico, using tools like Google Earth to uncover and document ghost towns and old settlements. Their mission is to reveal the stories of ordinary people who once lived in these lesser-known places. The episode highlights their adventures, the historical significance of the sites they visit, and their interactions with local communities, enriching their understanding of New Mexico’s rich past.

Links
Bridget & Michael on Faccebook
NM Byways Page
Bridget & Michael on Instagram

I Love New Mexico blog page
Bunny’s website
I Love New Mexico Instagram
I Love New Mexico Facebook
Original Music by: Kene Terry

About Bridget Harrington & Michael Moore

Bridget Harrington and Michael Moore are photographers and history enthusiasts who are passionate about the hidden history of the great state of New Mexico. Both are lifelong photographers who don’t make their living from photography. Bridget is a marketing communications and visual arts professional, and Michael is an industrial sales engineer and small engine pilot. For the past eight years, they have roamed across New Mexico and documented their photography expeditions on Facebook at NM Byways and on Instagram at @enchantedbywaysphoto.

Transcript

Bunny 00:00:01  Hi there. I’m Bunny Terry and I’m the host of the I Love New Mexico podcast. We talk about everything here. There are no boundaries. We talk to people who are from all corners of the state, people who are chefs, who are tourists, who are artists, who are Chamber of Commerce executives and who are from ranch families that have been here for hundreds of years. New Mexico is enchanting, and it’s interesting. And I can’t believe I get to do this job. New Mexico is so amazing, and I invite you to come along for the ride on the I Love New Mexico podcast. Thanks for being here. Today on the I Love New Mexico podcast, we have guests that reflect some of what we’ve already heard from recent guests, and I have been really fortunate to meet this entire group of people who are as in love with New Mexico as I am, and who are especially, talented at recording what they’re finding about this state that a lot of you may not know. And my guest today, Bridget Michael, are no, no exception to that rule.

Bunny 00:01:24  If you’ll recall, we’ve spoken with historians who are writing books not knowing if they’re going to get published. We’ve talked to people who are running Facebook pages where, you know, maybe they get new followers every week, maybe they don’t. But but what I’ve found most refreshing is that just like me, our recent guests are doing this out of a love for, and a passion for the state of New Mexico and the surprising things that you find there around every corner. So Bridget and Michael, I’ve taken a long time to just say thank you so much for being on the podcast, and I want you to explain to our listeners who you are and what you’re doing.

Michael 00:02:12  Well, who we are is just two people that have a unique passion for photography and history. we started this venture eight years ago, with a road map and normal Rand McNally road map, with the goal of driving every freeway in the state. Well, that got done pretty quickly. What, in a year?

Bridget 00:02:37  About a year?

Michael 00:02:38  About a year.

Michael 00:02:39  And then, you know, we photographed a lot of cities, known cities. People live in these cities. And we started thinking, there’s more to this than what meets the eye. So as technology evolved, we started using Google Earth to find places. Old ruins, mostly fine ruins. And of course, they’re just ruins. You don’t know what they are. So the quest began to identify what these ruins were using old railroad maps, old Spanish maps. And eventually things started getting named. They started getting town names on them, and the quest began to go see these places. And for me, I do all the Google Earth mapping. So when we actually drive into one of these places and lo and behold, there it is. It’s like, wow, it really exists. I’m not just seeing things on Google Earth. but it has been a very interesting experience. We’ve met a lot of interesting people doing this. a lot of people that live locally to where these ruins are, who can share a lot of the history that you’re not going to find anywhere.

Michael 00:03:57  and I think that’s, you know, kind of the passion behind it. The drive. obviously we both live in New Mexico. We both love it here. I kind of grew up in Los Alamos, and took it for granted as a teenager. you know, I, I think over time, as you age, you start appreciating, you know, the history that’s in the state because it’s very deep. I mean, you can go from dinosaurs at Vista to Clovis, man. You know how far back in history do you want to go in the state all the way up to route 66 and current day? So it’s it’s a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun, I think, for both of us.

Bridget 00:04:41  And I think, you know, you brought up an interesting point, too, about things about New Mexico that people don’t know. When people think of ghost towns, they think of places like chloride. They think of the places that have gotten a lot of publicity through the tourism department.

Bridget 00:04:57  The things that we uncover are things that are old settlements where there wasn’t anybody notable that lived there. They were regular people like you, you know, you and I. And we look through old newspapers to uncover some of the stories. And I think that’s what’s different with what we do. A lot of people out there that are ghost ghost town hunters or writers, they’ll look at the things on the side of the road. A lot of times we’re going 10 to 20 miles off road to be able to look at these settlements, because no one has touched them in, you know, 50, 100 or more years plus.

Michael 00:05:32  Yeah. I mean, some of them are so far out there you literally cannot drive into it.

Bridget 00:05:39  And that’s why we use the the paper maps. I mean, people people have asked, well, you know, you can you can get GPS, you know, in some of the remote places in the state, you cannot get GPS. So you better know how to read a map and you better have a map.

Bunny 00:05:53  So tell me, You know, we, my husband and I are both, New Mexicans as well. And we have been looking for what we feel like is the most remote place. What? What’s the place that you’ve driven to that you’re. When you got there, you’re like, wow. Well, this is the most far flung, remote place we can imagine. And I want and I want to.

Bridget 00:06:21  Oh, yeah.

Michael 00:06:21  I mean, I don’t know that you could actually pick a single one, but there are a few some examples.

Bunny 00:06:27  Yeah.

Bridget 00:06:28  Yeah. One of them is Atencio. I mean a ten co a ten Co is about 20 miles within the boundaries of a large ranch. And the roads are the roads are public. They’re county roads. So we’re not passing any gates or anything. It took us a while to get into a tent Co because no one has traveled that road in a very, very long time. And one of the things that we found was, the, the town cemetery And we found a gravestone with a picture on it.

Bridget 00:06:58  And when we pulled apart the brush, we were looking face to face with a young woman that had lived in that town that had passed away. And when we posted that on Facebook, our followers told us, well, you know, her son lived in Colorado and he would come and take care of her grave every year, but he has since died. So we were the first people to see her face on that stone in about 50 years. Yeah, no one goes there. It’s, you know, that’s one what does it does? San Miguel is another one.

Bunny 00:07:29  What’s a second?

Bridget 00:07:30  Hold on. I’m sorry.

Bunny 00:07:32  What? Where? Give us a quadrant of atencio. I mean, is it northwest? Southeast? Where is the.

Michael 00:07:39  Extreme northeast part of the state? Union. Just south of the Colorado border and just west of the Oklahoma border. Got it. So. Got it.

Bunny 00:07:50  Just wanted to give us a reference for it.

Michael 00:07:52  Yeah, it’s way up there. it to me, it was beautiful.

Michael 00:07:59  I mean, these are old stone Spanish ruins, that still stand, the amount of work that probably went into building these homes, always seems to amaze me because, you know, they actually chipped rocks away to make corner pieces. And if you imagine Home Depot is not down the street, you’re not going to buy a hammer. So you’re doing this with very primitive tools, and these walls still stand. I mean, it’s kind of like, you know, you go to Chaco Canyon and it’s impressive because what the natives did with building Chaco Canyon and how they created those structures thousands of years ago, and they’re still standing, you know, you can’t get mortar at Home Depot that last as long as that does. So to me, it’s kind of I’m an engineer, so it’s kind of impressive to look at from that perspective. but, you know, I think you get an appreciation for the life that these people had. you know, they didn’t just roll up to a house that was done. They rolled up in there on their horse or with their wagon, and they decided, this is where we’re going to live.

Michael 00:09:20  And whatever they had to make, they had to find right there in that area. So it amazes me, you think today how, you know, we can’t live without the internet. We couldn’t live without a cell phone. But these people probably moved to these places and they never saw people again. And so it’s a different appreciation, I think. well.

Bridget 00:09:45  I think, you know, like San Miguel is another one. San Miguel and San Miguel County is, is About 30 miles away from Las Vegas. And it’s in the hills. It’s across the river. It’s in the hills. The work that these people had to do to get the building materials and the stones and everything else up that mesa is incredible. Oh, yeah. And again, that’s another one where the cemetery. A couple of local ranchers will use it because the family, the the families have passed down the land over the years. So you see some recent interments, but for the most part, those graves are 100 or more years old, and they have been untouched in all this time.

Michael 00:10:27  And that’s another thing we do as well. If we if we find a cemetery and with everybody doing their ancestral research these days, we can typically give them a reference. Find a grave does a really great job at listing cemeteries. so we, we link that cemetery, find a grave has it listed. So if people, you know have ancestors that were from that area. They can see if any of their ancestors are in that cemetery. so, you know, it’s a little side service, I guess we kind of do for free. Yeah. You know.

Bunny 00:11:05  Well, let me, because you keep talking about how people, you know, you link you where you obviously have a following, where people are sharing their stories with you. I’d love for our guests to know where that is so that they can find, you.

Michael 00:11:20  Know, we’re on Facebook as NM as in New Mexico Byways and Instagram. We’re on there as Enchanted Byways photography.

Bridget 00:11:30  It’s enchanted byways photo is the handles photo.

Michael 00:11:32  Yes. Yeah.

Michael 00:11:33  So,

Bunny 00:11:34  So I, I want people to know that not only I mean the, the, the photos that you share are really beautiful and very indicative of, of, you know, it’s not it’s not the Santa Fe Plaza. It’s not the Albuquerque. It’s not old town. These are photos that are indicative of, I would say, about 75% of what New Mexico looks like. I mean, part of the magic of living in New Mexico is that it’s it’s a lot of different, spaces. We, you know, we have every temperate zone except tropical. And so you’re giving people a look at things they’re never going to see if they’re only visiting the cities. Right.

Michael 00:12:21  Right. Yeah. I mean, and that’s the cool part of it, too. We’ve gone places and you post an old church that, you know, has been there for 150 years. And in a lot of cases, we’re fortunate that New Mexico really has done a great job at keeping the old churches alive. And it’s still in use.

Michael 00:12:43  but you’ll get an 84 year old woman that goes, wow, I haven’t seen that church since I was baptized in it at four years, four years old. Wow. So it’s giving that memory back to somebody that makes it kind of special. and they, of course, don’t live here anymore, so they can’t venture down the road and go look at it. so I think the bigger I mean, we all joke kind of about it doesn’t make any money, but you can’t put a value on something like that. You know that you’re giving somebody a memory or a recollection of an event that they lived through. so.

Bunny 00:13:22  And you’re getting their story in response. I mean, I, I mean, we were joking before we began the podcast, and I was like, here, here we are. You know, doing another thing that is not financially, I hate to use the word rewarding, but there is no there is no recompense, financial recompense for what we’re doing. And in fact, we spend money doing it and we spend time doing it.

Bunny 00:13:48  And yet what we get. I get your stories and you get their stories. And it feels like I’ve always said, and I did it with my last podcast, which was Life Saving Gratitude, where I shared a lot of stories with people and heard theirs. And I’m like, those stories are so enriching in a way that somebody’s writing you a check for doing the job you do every day. Every day is not rewarding. I’m. It’s so cool that you’re doing this.

Bridget 00:14:19  Yeah, I was just going to think about it. Just think about.

Michael 00:14:22  That. That story.

Bunny 00:14:23  Was like.

Michael 00:14:23  Yeah, that was a very intriguing. Yes. Whole adventure.

Bridget 00:14:28  Yes. And you know, one of the things, you know, in the search for some of these remote places, we have to pass through places that people live in and they’re, you know, they’re smaller towns, but people still live there. And we’re very careful not to take pictures of people’s residences. And this is where, like, I’ll tell people, you know, we’re different than a lot of photographers also, in that they’ll sit around all day and wait for the perfect light to get the perfect picture.

Bridget 00:14:57  We don’t have the luxury of doing that. We have to capture the subject where it is, how it is, and we have to frame it in such a way where we protect people’s privacy. So forest being lived in. There were a couple of like there was the old store and things that, you know, I wanted to take a picture of.

Bunny 00:15:14  Hang on just a second. I know forest because my parents went to school at Porter and they played basketball and baseball and volleyball against the forest schools, and I know people who live there now. We know, we know quarter.

Michael 00:15:29  So quarter is what not many people know. We know it.

Bridget 00:15:32  So we’ll get to it. I’ll get to the story. And in front of the general store there looked like there was a, you know, a regular gravestone, a regular, you know, like a modern granite gravestone. And we that’s not uncommon because you get a lot of people where it’s family land they want to be buried on the land in New Mexico allows that.

Bridget 00:15:53  But of course, me being curious, I reached through the fence and pulled the brush aside and I noticed it said Short Strike. And it had three ranch brands on it. And I’m thinking, what in the world is this? This is not a I don’t think this is a human gravestone and you know it. I did a little bit of research. It was a horse and we posted short. We posted short strike and short strike one back alive. Well, he came back alive, but that he was buried on that land because that land was owned by the person that owned Short Strike. And his daughters rode him. And we got a flurry, probably about two weeks on Facebook of different people in and around forest, people in Texas. Oh, you know, that was an unbeatable horse. And he was wonderful. And he was a legend in this area. So it it explained why this this horse was interred like a person with an actual stone.

Michael 00:16:51  We actually got the photos from the girl that rode him and the rodeos.

Michael 00:16:56  he was a very famous barrel racing horse. He was very good at it. And the girl that wrote him a lot of those rodeos actually shared pictures of her riding him.

Bridget 00:17:08  She’s almost 80 years old now.

Michael 00:17:10  And, I mean, just short story may have passed on, but he now lives because so much history and so much about his life came back to life just through that post.

Bridget 00:17:25  And we had a lot of these old women posting in, oh my God, I haven’t seen you in years. Send me your phone number. So yeah, that’s so.

Bunny 00:17:33  Cool.

Bridget 00:17:34  Too, which was cool.

Michael 00:17:35  And that’s that to me is something that there was no monetary value, you know, you know it to me that that is my reward. I think, you know. Yeah, money would be great. But when you can deliver something like that to somebody and you can reconnect people that haven’t talked in years, to me that that’s just kind of cool because the common interest is that these people all live probably in that area and have since moved to other places, lost track of each other.

Michael 00:18:09  But you bring that back alive, that relationship and and it’s all tied to our, our state. you know, New Mexico, I think not only is it beautiful and we have a lot of unique things here, but I think the people here make it what it is to there’s, you know, we have a lot of diverse cultures. We have a lot of different history from those cultures and somehow all works here. Everybody can, you know, I think I, I call it the land of entrapment like everybody else does. because it gets in you. I left New Mexico after high school. college and I moved to Southern California, and it just kept calling me back, and it was like 2013. I came home for a visit and my mind was made up. I was moving back home, and here I am. but it never leaves you. It. As a teenager, I couldn’t wait to get up. Yeah. And then, you know, and like I say, you don’t appreciate it when you’re young, but I think there is something here that once you’ve experienced it, you want to be here, and I can’t.

Michael 00:19:27  I don’t know what that is. I don’t think any of us can explain it.

Bunny 00:19:30  I think that, I hear this a lot, and I hear it not just on the podcast, but I hear it in the comments on the blog. I, you know, I started writing that. I live in Mexico blog in 2009, and I will still get comments on posts that I wrote 14 years ago, because somebody do an A search somewhere and I’m sure this happens to you too. Will will see something that I posted. And because we’re our population for so long, I mean, we were under a million people. I mean, I, I could go to the state fair and run into, you know, half a dozen of my cousins. And and that’s because New Mexico was so, so small in population. But the other thing is that it just this is this is going to sound trite to people who don’t live here or who haven’t been here, but it just feels like home. Whether you’ve lived here all of your life or you came here as an adult.

Bunny 00:20:41  I sell houses to people who move here from Southern California and from, you know, South Texas or from New York or Montana. I’m going to tell you about 30% of those people don’t find it. They don’t get it. They just don’t get it. And they sometimes don’t stay here. And that’s that’s okay, because we’re not for everybody. But the ones who get it are like, I will never leave here. So. So that feels like what you’re saying, Michael am I, am I hearing that correctly?

Bridget 00:21:12  Well, funny. That happened to me too. I mean, I, I’m not originally from here. Our cat.

Michael 00:21:17  Is trying to.

Bridget 00:21:18  Our cat is trying to come in. So you might see a little black cat. Okay.

Bunny 00:21:21  We don’t care.

Bridget 00:21:23  We got a bunch of them. but, I mean, I’m originally from Connecticut, and I discovered New Mexico because I did trade show work, so I was in my 20s and my early 30s. I was going all around the country, and I tell people I’ve seen 48 of the 50, and I’ve spent I’ve spent enough of time in the 48 of 50 to know the different states.

Bridget 00:21:44  And when my son went away to college, it was my time to decide, okay, I’m going to go where I want to be. And this was the one place where it felt like home to me. Connecticut never felt like home to me. I never I never resonated with the culture. I never resonated with the weather or anything else. And it was always in my mind, someday it’s going to be time for me and I’m going to be able to get out. And immediately I it it just stuck with me and it became a part of me. And a lot of people that know me here professionally, they, they, they’re surprised to find out I wasn’t from here because it’s just become such a part of my life. And, you know, when me, when me, when we met, it was the same thing, you know? Yeah.

Michael 00:22:28  I mean, it’s kind of funny because British Bridget actually speaks better Spanish than I do. And I have lived in a state longer than she has.

Michael 00:22:38  And I still I mean, you know, Being an Anglo person, I still have trouble pronouncing some of the names in this state. And you would think by now I would, you know, be able to roll my tongue correctly to say that word. But, you know, I try, but that’s making effort.

Bunny 00:23:01  That’s funny because one of the I did a I did a quick little short video one time for my real estate clients. This is here’s how you pronounce some of the names in Santa Fe. And it’s one of one of the the videos that people watch the most has the most views because people don’t know how to say cereus or tussock or pork, but and and I’m no master at that. But. So tell me what’s still on your bucket list to see, are there I mean, have you left any stone unturned?

Michael 00:23:35  yes. I don’t think we.

Bridget 00:23:36  Have enough a lifetime.

Michael 00:23:37  No, we don’t have. There’s not enough years left in either one of us to see what we’ve mapped.

Michael 00:23:45  and I still am adding to that map. Or to the Google Earth file every day. I have recently started re categorizing my native runs, by a 25 by 25 mile grid pattern. you know, people I think have this conception that Chaco Canyon, Canyon Deshay, the Aztec ruins, this was pretty much it for how the native life was. And that’s not at all how it is. there was some very remote places. one of the things I did was I got into the archaeological archives and started reading all of the archaeological reports on where these ruins are. Now, they don’t give you an exact location, for obvious reasons, because a lot of the ruins aren’t excavated, so the last thing they need is treasure hunters finding them and going there. Sure, but I was able to locate most of the great houses that they do know where they are. That led to what else is out there. And then you find these settlements of Hogan’s, Hogan’s, Hogan’s dirt houses, pit houses in the middle of nowhere.

Michael 00:25:08  And these are the guys that you’re like, why did they live there? I mean, it’s like, so remote from, like, where Chaco Canyon is. But in mapping all these things, you start realizing that these people had a very intricate trade route, that there was paths that these people traveled from one place to another, carrying goods from one place to another and bringing stuff back. And it amazes me how intense that really was. And then you start thinking like chocolate candy. How did they get the logs there for the house or for the big house?

Bunny 00:25:48  So hey, I want to so so one of the things that’s that I know is happening in this episode, that we’re assuming that people who are listening know exactly what we’re talking about. So explain to our listeners who don’t know what Chaco Canyon is and where it’s located and why it’s so, such an enigma. Still, to all of us.

Michael 00:26:12  Chaco Canyon is what a lot of people consider the center of Navajo Nation. Now, a lot of people would disagree with that.

Michael 00:26:22  There’s a lot of controversy around that subject, but it was a very large settlement that is located in central, western or central northwestern New Mexico.

Bridget 00:26:37  Very close to Four Corners.

Michael 00:26:38  Yeah, it’s it’s between, let’s just say between Grant’s and Farmington, would be my best way of telling you where it is. but it is a fascinating place to visit. If you. You know, you’re not from New Mexico and you want a little bit of, to understand, you know, how the natives lived here thousands of years ago. It gives you a great perspective on that. But I think the takeaway from that is that was just a part of the whole, that, you know, there was great houses in Zia Pueblo. There was some near Santa Fe. These ruins are scattered throughout the state. Bandelier, the Aztec ruins up near Farmington. but they they all worked in a manner there, working together. There was a vast trade network between them all. And I think, you know, for our part of it.

Michael 00:27:39  We tend to. Yes, we’ll photograph them and we’ll do the basic history. But there are so much documentation out there already for us to try to tell that story. There’s there’s so much out there.

Bunny 00:27:54  And I would say to our listeners, I’m sorry, Michael, I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but, if you go to, if you do a search for Chaco culture, there’s the the Park Service, then it is a national park. And the Park Service has done a really great job of talking about how Chaco Canyon is sort of considered the center of the ancient world, at least in the Americas. you can check out the Chaco Culture National Historical Park and we’ll put a link in there. But it’s, you know, the fact that you’re doing this not just for those large, recognized places like Aztec, like Chaco, it’s I want I want folks to know that you are you’re getting off the path. I mean, you’re going to places that have, ancient historical significance, but then you’re going, I just I can’t, I can’t I can’t end the podcast without talking about how you’re going to places that have historical significance for me.

Bunny 00:28:58  You went to Porter, New Mexico.

Michael 00:29:01  Yeah. That that’s where.

Bunny 00:29:03  That’s where my family both both my parents and my, my, my dad’s and my mom’s family’s stopped in the teens. And in the words of, James McMurtry, you know, they either broke a wagon wheel or they lacked ambition. One, they stopped right there and homesteaded. And that’s where my parents were born. And that’s the county that they died in last year. So tell me quickly about going to Porter.

Michael 00:29:31  You want to hit that one? I mean, it was Porter was was we have a ton of old homesteading towns out in that area, and we try to tackle if we’re going to drive, you know, that far out from Albuquerque. We try to hit as many of those places as we can in a given day. And like Bridget was kind of touching on, we don’t have the time to wait on, you know, the perfect lighting or the weather’s raining. We’ve got to deal with that. so Porter was, you know, one of these places that was on our map and we’re like, hey, that’s just down the road a couple of miles.

Michael 00:30:12  Let’s go. So you know it. For us, it’s like, how do you determine the boundaries of, say, like Porter? Because it was like you said, it’s homesteading. so there isn’t, in some cases, a central part of the town.

Bridget 00:30:29  And a lot of those towns started where people started with dugouts they didn’t have. Right? They didn’t have homes they were doing doing it in dugouts. And of course the dugouts know a lot of them no longer survived.

Bunny 00:30:41  My, my, one of my uncles, my dad was the youngest of ten children. And, I think the sixth.

Speaker 4 00:30:51  Seventh. Yeah.

Bunny 00:30:52  The sixth child was born in a half dugout, along the Radnor Creek. So, and I don’t want to I don’t want people to get stuck on that. I just think it’s so cool that you you are not just when you talk, Bridget, about taking, you know, you’ve got a record. First of all, you both still have full time jobs. So you’re doing this out of love and passion for, history and photography.

Bunny 00:31:22  But you also are. This is real. You’re not staging these photos. You’re capturing them at the moment you find them. Because really, this is, Well, it’s a labor of love. It’s also a labor born out of, short time. So I think it’s really cool that you’re doing it that way. This is this is real.

Bridget 00:31:44  Well, and I mean, what you know, what’s really and like I keep I keep saying, you know, it’s different. It’s different because there are a lot of people who are they consider themselves ghost town experts, but they’re not doing the research. They’re not sitting there in the Library of Congress archives for three hours looking for minute details on who owned this house, who is a settler who owned this land. I go into the old land plats, which, you know, I and I used to work for a real estate developer in college. So I know a little bit about how how deeds and plots were done. But that’s very intricate, deep research.

Bridget 00:32:23  And I think a lot of people don’t. They either don’t want to do it or they just, they don’t know how or. But it’s a lot of work to come up with some of these granular details for people that they weren’t Billy the Kid. They weren’t, you know, they weren’t famous people.

Michael 00:32:38  So there are everyday people like us.

Bridget 00:32:41  And I mean, I enjoy I, I’m not complaining by any means. I love doing the research. But it’s interesting when you can read months of newspapers and then actually put together strings like one of the things we laugh about because of course, you know, current news, I personally don’t have time for it anymore. It just it it hurts my brain. I think you know what I’m talking about. Yeah, I do, and I will sit there and read newspapers from 150 years ago. And it’s funny because what was front page news 150 years ago wouldn’t even.

Michael 00:33:16  Make it in the paper today.

Bridget 00:33:17  It wouldn’t make it the paper today. There are a couple of like the small towns in K County where there would be like a, you know, a homesteader from Missouri or Kansas bought a big piece of land and the town ladies noticed, hey, he’s a good looking single guy.

Bridget 00:33:33  Let’s find him a wife.

Bunny 00:33:34  And they would talk about that.

Bridget 00:33:36  They would say, you know, Fal, you know, farmers such and such has a great crop. And by the way, ladies, he’s still available.

Michael 00:33:43  Yes. This is on the front page of a newspaper. Exactly.

Bridget 00:33:47  There was another one, and I’m forgetting the name. No, I’m forgetting the name of the town. But there was one where the farmer, the farmer’s wife, the farmer had nine sons, and he finally had a daughter. And it was just such a an exciting thing to him. And then a couple of days later, it said the town doctor tried to save his finger, but couldn’t. I guess his finger got caught in the thresher and he lost his finger. And it said, it must be that. It must be that fine daughter he just had. That’s on his mind. This was front page news. Yes.

Michael 00:34:19  That’s that’s humorous. You know, you read that and we can laugh about it today because you’re, you think how unsophisticated wife was back then.

Bridget 00:34:30  That was their life.

Michael 00:34:31  For the people. That was the beauty of it was that there was no complexity. these people survived in the community and it was truly all about your neighbor. people helped one another. I mean it, you depended on your neighbor. Because if you got hurt, that was your next source of help, was your neighbor. Well, that wasn’t a hospital 911 or anybody like that. Your neighbor had to come over and bandage your finger or pick you up and get you somewhere for help. and so folks didn’t exist.

Bunny 00:35:09  So it feels to me like this is a book.

Bridget 00:35:13  we’re starting where we’ve been starting one. I’ve got notes for a book that I’ve, you know, been working on for like, two and a half years.

Michael 00:35:22  Yeah. Well, that’s.

Bunny 00:35:24  That’s good to hear because, we’ll we’re going to want to hear about that when it’s done, and I, we, we have to stop at some point. And you and I always find this when I start talking to my guests.

Bunny 00:35:36  I’m like, we have so many stories to tell. But this I want people to find you. So say one more time where they can find you on social media and in the show notes. We will also have a link to that.

Bridget 00:35:51  Okay, we’re on Facebook under NM byways and then on Instagram under Enchanted Byways photo.

Bunny 00:36:00  And if so, that’s the best way for somebody to message you and share their family stories and give you their insights.

Bridget 00:36:09  And I mean, we you know, we’ve got our Gmail to, you know, enchanted byways of photography at gmail.com.

Bunny 00:36:16  Good, good. Because I want people to find you. And then I want to hear about the book when it’s done.

Michael 00:36:20  Well, we’d love to have them there. I mean, the more the merrier. The more people, the more stories that come out. that’s what to me it’s all about. It’s a place for people. Oh, I know where that is, or I know something about it and add to it. because, you know, we’re all not going to be here 100 years from now.

Michael 00:36:41  Well, you know, somebody else is going to be doing some research, and they’re going to go, oh, I know this place existed. They do a type in on a Google search and bang, they got something. so I think that’s, you know, the value of what we’re doing is, you know, finding these places, keeping them alive, bringing them back to life in some cases. but that’s important. Our past is very important.

Bunny 00:37:09  It’s really important. And. Yes, thank you for doing this.

Michael 00:37:13  Thank you very much for having us.

Bunny 00:37:17  Thanks to all of you for taking the time to listen to the I Love New Mexico podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please feel free to share it with your friends on social media or by texting or messaging or emailing them a copy of the podcast. If you have a New Mexico story that you’d like to share with us, don’t hesitate to reach out. Our email address is I Love New Mexico blog at gmail.com and we are always, always looking for interesting stories about New Mexico.

Bunny 00:37:50  Subscribe, share and write a review so that we can continue to bring you these stories about the Land of Enchantment. Thank you so much.