Notes from the road

In Alamosa, the Rio Grande is actually a rio.

Killing time between breakfast and burial last Saturday I drove out State Avenue to River Road and parked at a little pullout across from the Cattails Golf Course, where a couple sat chatting as a kid fished.

Alamosa didn’t seem much changed from 1971, when I was a freshman at Adams State College, the only school in the state that would have me.

The school is called Adams State University now, but that seems a little grandiose. It’s still a small college in a small town, and the dorms — from the outside, anyway — seemed untouched, save by the ravages of time and undergraduates.

Coronado Hall still has that generic Fifties-to-Seventies vibe. Could be anything from a budget apartment building in a Seventies sitcom to a residential treatment facility to a nursing home.

But the McCurry-Savage-Moffat-Houtchens L-block apartments would embarrass an East German, even before the Berlin Wall came down.

I took no pix of this academic detour down memory lane, not eager to be dubbed an elderly perv’, or worse, a narc.

“Do you have any children here, sir?”

“Uh, no, officer, not that I know of. If I did, they’d be in their 50s, and I could see their pictures any old time down at the post office.”

I don’t recall which of these hovels was my last known residence at Adams State — but Savage would seem appropriate, so I’ll take it. My roommates and I broke all the written rules and some of the unwritten ones, too, until I dropped out after two years and discovered the wonderful world of work. This sent me shrieking back to school in a year. Not to Alamosa, though. To Greeley, where I met all these Martinezes.

A half-century later, as I hauled bike and baggage into my motel, a man and a couple of women were discussing in low tones some loved one bound for a stretch in the federal pen. Could’ve been me in ’73. Stay in school, kids. And don’t deal drugs from your dorm room.

In other news, the Safeway has moved across the street. The Campus Cafe, Bank Shot, and Purple Pig are still around, but the Ace Inn is not. The Rialto, where I saw The Firesign Theatre’s “Martian Space Party” — double-billed with “Zachariah,” written by the Firesigns — is no longer a theater.

And everyone still does their serious shopping in Pueblo or Santa Fe. In Alamosa, a Martinez cousin groused, “There’s nothing.”

Well, that’s not entirely true. There was a big gay-pride rally just down the alley from William’s house on Saturday. The youngsters dashed over to buy a rainbow flag and T-shirt to prank their elders.

Speaking of pranks, there’s a largish artillery piece not far from where Jim and Lucy were laid to rest. I can see Jim having some fun with that on Halloween, New Year’s Eve, maybe Super Bowl Sunday if the Broncos ever get there again.

I can hear Lucy telling him to knock it off, too. “Cállate, mijo, people are trying to sleep here.”