Santa Fe must be the right elevation to encourage man to spend his money. Adobe brick houses the Spanish once built for a handful of reales, using mud and Indian slaves, cost several hundred thousand dollars today and use a plaster nowhere near as durable. The owners of the inn where we stayed spent a million dollars years ago, razing their grandfather's small store to make room on the property for 15 units and a new kitchen and dining room.

As I reported once, each sibling takes a day each week to cook breakfast for the guests and supervises the cleaning of the hostelry. Concha, the mother, spends her mornings talking to the customers in the breakfast room. As a young girl in the 20s, she worked as an elevator operator at La Fonda Hotel, then one of the most popular hotels in New Mexico, if not the Southwest. The experience broadened her education, being removed from a strict Spanish home and church regimen to meeting celebrities ranging from Hollywood actors to state officials.

Please allow me to relate a sequence Concha and I had on one of those mornings. I had read the results of a poll in the morning paper showing that 60 percent of the Hispanic people and 40 percent of the Angelos didn't think they were doing enough to care for aging parents. My dilemma was not the percentages, but to find the answer as to what was enough to look after aging parents. Concha explained, holding the palm of her hand on her heart, "The Spanish people have carino, meaning love and affection toward the old. But where families once only had to buy Grandma one pair of shoes a year and a little flour and beans, today she takes off on a cruise in the Caribbean, hunting for a boyfriend." (Concha had just returned from California, using a wheelchair like a rick-shaw to change planes.)

She continued, "Once the sons stayed home and turned their salary over to Mom and Dad. The only time they left was to fight a war. Nowadays, men go everywhere."

She wasn't indicting her son at that moment; he was cooking my breakfast in the kitchen. I had already completed my business with one of her daughters the morning before. Last year when I was passing through town, she crawled under my pickup and wired a thick rubber shield off a rear wheel. She used twice too much wire. At the first mud hole, clods hung up against the bed, making a scratchy racket so loud I couldn't hear my cell phone.

However, I caught her at a bad time for a scolding. Lupe, the maid, had given notice that she had to start staying home to look after her mother, leaving Concha's daughter Heniretta, my mechanic, to not only juggle the pots and pans in the kitchen, but clean the rooms and do the laundry. Lupe came by telling all of us goodbye. (I'd met her before. She held the rubber shield in place while Heniretta tied the wire.) From the second floor, I watched Lupe hurl her cap and apron in the closet of the utility room. Saw her park the vacuum cleaner in a final thrust of locking the handle with the same determination ranch wives used to stomp cup towels and kick the cat out the kitchen door.

I prevailed upon Lupe to stay until my visit ended to make up my bed as my hands were too stiff and frail to smooth the covers, my back too weak to sweep or vacuum, or haul wood for the fireplace. "And with no fire in the fireplace, Lupe, you of all people know how dangerous it is for us viejos to be chilled in the mountain air."

Tears formed in her dark, beautiful eyes. The poll showed a 60 to 40 chance in my favor of gaining her sympathy. But the polls must have been too narrow. Lupe was determined to knock off for Fiesta Weekend to start home care. She answered in such rapid Spanish that I only caught the part to go soak my hands in warm Epsom salts to make my fingers limber enough to make my bed.

The rest of the day was awful. Walking across the capital grounds, a big pinecone used my shoulder to deflect the velocity of 35 feet of free fall. The crisp outdoor restaurant off the square was closed. The substitute selection at a hotel dining room was as dull as a hospital stay. Further provocation came from a sign in the lobby: "Join us for Afternoon Tea and Sherry." I was so downcast over Lupe's defection, I left a note on my business card declining not only this afternoon's tea, but all future invitations. I wasn't about to have tea in a franchise hotel lobby, trimmed in plastic doodads and fake flowers.

By evening, the crisp mountain air revived my spirits. Things look better. The bed was made up. Concha and her clan had overcome the disaster.

October 18, 2001