Day 10 - Truth or Consequences

There once was a town called Hot Springs. The location had been home to people of some sort for nearly a thousand years due to its proximity to the Rio Grande and an abundance of natural hot springs. Then in 1950, in answer to a contest by a highly popular radio show, it offered to change its name to be the same as that show. In return that show would air a special 10th anniversary show from that town and provide national media coverage. That show was called Truth or Consequences, and that little town of Hot Springs has been called the same ever since. In the 60 years since that then audacious publicity stunt the town has had an odd notoriety. It became a regional destination for tourists and those wishing to relax in it's many hot springs, but it remained that small little town stuck in time. Even today the population is less than 10,000, and from talking to many of its residents, that population depends heavily on the season. It seems there aren't a lot of full time T or C'ers in this town.

One of the most interesting things I began to notice about this town is that there are very few people that are actually native to not just T or C, but even the nearby and larger neighbor of Elephant Butte. In fact, I began an informal polling of just about everyone I met and I never ran into a single native. I was discussing this anomaly with the owner of one of several small art galleries here and he jokingly said that there weren't any natives younger than 70. This joke popped up a few times through out the day. Truth or Consequences is sort of the belly button of the southwest - people and things just seem to get stuck here and some never find their way out. The people all seem like leftovers from hippie art communes, former or even current hobos, and flighty vagabonds who came in to town to rest and got too comfortable to leave.

That's not to say that T or C is a bad place. In fact I'd say just the opposite. It's just that it's a hard place to peg, to get a feel for, to pick up on the vibe. It has an unusually high population of artists, though more than a few follow a use the unoriginal southwest cliche of cowboys, bison skulls, and turquoise jewelry. But there's also some very unique and non-traditional artists. Take Danny Springer for example, who took a unique paint solution he devised for doing uniquely swirly-twirly floor coloring and then perfected his technique on large panels of dazzlingly colorful, trippy, and often times celestial colors and shapes. He's also a very generous man who just wants to share art with everyone. In this endeavour he set aside a large portion of his studio for an open to all, hands on playground to take his unique paints and make your own work of art. The interesting part is that you can walk up and play as long and as much as you want and owe nothing. Granted, if you are particularly pleased with your own 8x10 panel and want to take it home it will cost you a measly $10, but if you never came away with anything of value or were just looking to waste some time you lost nothing...except that time you wanted to waste. He also sells his own, far superior works for unbelievably cheap. I spent well over an hour there and got impromptu art lessons from Danny, a fair amount of paint on me, and it cost me nothing. Well..at least until I go back in the morning and pick up my bounty.

Artists aside, there are a lot of people here that there's no way of telling what they do. Xochi's Bookstore, across from the Happy Belly Deli where I had lunch, is a prime example. You would thing they sold books, and I'm sure a few happen to get sold here and there, but after visiting the store and talking to the shop keeper, who isn't the owner, I can't see that being a viable business. It's a hodge-podge of fiction books, with a dedicated western section, and then room after room of seemingly useless books, vintage first editions of books I can't imagine anyone wanting, and "museum quality artifacts." The shop keeper told me, while I was flipping through his portfolio of digital collages and highly imaginative Harvey Pekar-esque cartoons, that the owner wanted to sell the building, but not the business, and rent out the back for storage so that he would have more money to buy books.

There was another guy who had been in town for weeks camping somewhere, who was famous because his dog barked a high-pitched mix between bark and howl the second it got in the back of his truck and didn't stop until he got back out. He was grungy, though not exactly dirty, and came into the deli every day for breakfast but no one knew what he did. Incidentally, I would hear that dog going by, harking or bowling or whatever it was, constantly throughout the day. But I imagine that lots of the transplants were just like this guy at some point. Came in, figured they'd make some money doing odd jobs here and there until they could move on, and then next thing they knew they owned a junk shop that was perpetually having a going out of business sale, which happens to already exist in T or C.

The point of making Truth of Consequences my ultimate destination on this trip was to see whether or not it fit the bill as my Purgatory. After walking around for hours, talking to dozens of people, driving up and down nearly all of its roads, and getting as much of a feel for the town as one can in 2 days I can't think of a better place for Purgatory. It fits almost too well. It's a town that virtually dies every evening at dusk. It's a town where the most recommended restaurant is only open 4 days a week, and not all of them in a row. It's town whose population seems to remain on a very slow up slope, but the people seem to come and go with the wind or the seasons. It's a town that's surrounded by and equally haunting and beautiful landscape of jagged, barren mountains and wrapped by the beautiful Rio Grande and Elephant Butte Lake. It's a town with an abnormally low cost of living and even lower average property value. It's a town whose citizens come and go but has few full time or native residents. It IS Purgatory.

There are two things that could change the town. One is the hot springs. These have been here since long before people, so it's obviously not going to change the town overnight, but they are remarkable. I really wasn't convinced about the hype of mineral baths and hot springs that were touted on various tourist pamphlets and billboards, but I decided to spend my second night in one of the hotels with their own mineral hot baths. I don't know if it's the high salt content, the intensely hot water, or the 1 parts per million of lithium that seeps into the water, but they are quite something. They were hot, almost overwhelmingly so, but they were relaxing. I could barely stand to be completely submerged on one for more than a few minutes at a time, but after 45 minutes of dipping in and out I felt completely relaxed. Almost depleted, but in the best of ways. As word continues to spread about these baths, they will slowly but surely bring in more tourists. It may not permanently change the population, but it could easily change the face of T or C.

The other "threat" to the current way of life is the newly built Spaceport America. While still in the finishing stages this facility, which is located about 30 miles east of T or C, aims to be the epicenter of the burgeoning commercial space industry. It takes large strides in that direction with New Mexico being the headquarters of, and the Spaceport being the launching site of Virgin Galactic's world headquarters - Virgin Galactic being the winner of the Ansari X Prize and front runner of the new industry. This nearby development will bring lots of high tech jobs to the region, and could easily change every facet of the region; from cost of living to population. But that's all hypothetical, and ultimately doesn't have any bearings on my fictional intentions for the town.

This of course is the saddest part of the trip. It's kind of like meeting your idol. Once it's over, you can't do it for the first time again. Although it would have been nice to go all the way to the west coast, I did make it as far as I had initially planned. Considering I had envisioned scenarios where I either got all the way out here in a matter of a few boring days and decided to turn back, or I got bogged down by all the things planned along the way that I never made it all the way out at all, I can't really complain. Unfortunately tomorrow, sometime after lunch, will start the un-fun, un-vacationy part of the trip - the blitzkrieg home. As a result there probably won't be any more updates until after I'm home. So...until then.