Beneath the Surface
"The heart of the town has nothing to do with the scenery."
"No, we'd rather not."
"Oh, we're not the people you should be talking to."
"Most of us are pretty reclusive and don't want to talk to people."
These are the responses I received upon approaching a group of locals when I visited Madrid, New Mexico. An hour later I was still talking to them about their town and why they didn't want to talk to outsiders. The experience became one of the most pleasant afternoons I've ever spent.
Madrid (pronounced MA-drid) sits at an elevation of 6,000 feet, northwest of Albuquerque. The former mining camp is located on the Turquoise Trail -- a highway that runs through rolling hills covered with cactus, wildflowers and scrub trees in muted shades of green. Mountains rise on the horizon against the most vivid blue skies you'll find anywhere.
By the time you reach the outskirts of Madrid, you almost have forgotten you were going there in the first place, so beautiful is the drive. But there you are, headed into town on a road suddenly fronted with a row of old buildings -- some are occupied by familes, others are used for business, while more than a few are just frames leaning into the wind or resting precariously on the side of the mountain....
The Tinkertown Museum
"I Did All This While You Were Watching TV"
(a sign just outside the door)
I'd passed the sign hundreds of times in my 32 years of living in and visiting Albuquerque, New Mexico, and had never stopped to explore, figuring it for some cheesy roadside attraction.
Not that I haven't been known to stop at some cheesy places in my travels. I well remember the world's largest ball of string, the ice cave that turned out to be nothing more than a hole in the ground, and the petting zoo where that goat almost ate my shirt. Given this history with roadside attractions, it's no wonder I had never stopped at the Tinkertown Museum -- until that fateful day when I turned into the parking lot.
I learned something that day about assumptions, and about how the most wondrous places can exist just outside our front doors. I learned never to take things for granted - even those things that seem the most stable and secure in our lives. And I learned to take chances - something I think I knew a long time ago and had forgotten....
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