The Route 66 Chick

I might have accidentally been almost a Fredhead long before the term was coined. When I was 8 or 9 years old, I made my first trip “out west” with my parents. That trip kicked off a life-long love affair with the mountains, the high desert, native arts, sunsets, buildings (I didn't know enough to call it “architecture”), and pretty much all things western. One of my mother's sisters worked at a Fred Harvey restaurant in the 1960s, one of the five Tollway Oases constructed up over the pavement of the Illinois Tollway in the Chicago area. My mother and I went to eat there a few times, sitting up over the toll road, having a nice meal and seeing my aunt at work. Existing at least in my memory, there was a Fred Harvey over-the-highway restaurant in Oklahoma, too, but I might have dreamed up that one. My parents had put in a decade of traveling together before I was born, and Fred Harvey must have come up in their recollections that they told me. I seemed to grow up hear...

Red and green chile, walks in the sunshine, family time with daughter, son-in-law and co-in-laws, great food, Isotopes baseball, and the dry, sweet, clean air – these are the things I look forward to on each trip to Albuquerque. We scored on almost everything this trip except the weather and the baseball game. Of course, I was looking forward to sunny, warm, dry weather. I seldom even think about the weather when I'm headed to New Mexico, because it's always so dependably wonderful. But this time, I arrived just in time for close to a week of rainy, overcast, chilly weather – and it's not even monsoon season yet. Rainy mountain view outside Santa Fe. We had game tickets for Sunday night and it was a rain-out. Disappointing, but we did go see “Godzilla” instead, with New Mexico's beloved Bryan Cranston in one of the major roles. Good movie, great effects. But back to baseball. One of the hot news stories in Albuquerque was the dugout brawl between Isotopes...