Tag Archives: vendors

Oh Death

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And then Weasel was gone too.

Weasel was a short man whose swagger told you he was tough. He said what was on his mind, even when his words made him unpopular. Folks always knew where they stood with Weasel because he said what he thought needed saying.

I met Weasel at the Bridge, the place where I met many of the people I hold dear in my heart. He sold old beads, new drums made by a local Native man who was his friend, and whatever little odds and ends he thought would bring in a few bucks. He’s an old horse-trader, people said of Weasel, although there never seemed to be actual horses involved.

Weasel fathered a child late in life. I heard stories about how that had come to pass too. By the time I knew Weasel, he and his son’s mother had made their peace. Weasel sure loved his boy. He was always proud to talk about the kid’s achievements in the classroom, Boy Scouts, and 4-H. On the rare occasion that Weasel brought the boy to the Bridge, both of them beamed. The love and respect they felt for each other was obvious.

Some of the other vendors told me Weasel had suffered a heart attack a few years before I arrived on the scene. He’d lost a lot of weight, I was told in 2012, and he was more careful about what he ate. He seemed to be doing a lot better, everyone agreed.

I’ll never forget the pep talk Weasel gave me in the early days in my life without my ex. I was homeless—didn’t even have a van back then—and carried everything I owned on my back. I slept in a picnic pavilion at a rest area at night and spent my days selling the hemp jewelry and sage bundles I constructed. I was trying to make my way in the world, just like the other vendors at the Bridge.

I’d gotten a late start on this particular day. I wasn’t able to squeeze in between William and Tommy like I usually did, and I ended up in the slower sales area next to Weasel. I couldn’t afford a table yet, and my sage branch display barely kept my bracelets and necklaces out of the dusty New Mexico dirt. When there was a lull between customers, Weasel came over to talk to me.

He’s been watching me, he said. He saw that I showed up every day to sell the things I made. He saw I worked hard to make my own way. You don’t ask nobody for nothing, he said. He saw that in a community where some folks seemed to enjoy making trouble for others, I minded my own business and didn’t try to cause strife for other vendors. He told me to keep doing what I was doing. He told me that I was going to be ok. Then he bought me a meatloaf sandwich from the woman who made her money selling lunches to the vendors. (Not too many weeks later it was Weasel’s birthday, and I had enough money in my pocket to return to the sandwich favor.)

Five years later when I returned to the Bridge with The Man, he and Weasel hit it off. Weasel may have been a horse trader by profession, but his art was carving. The Man was just starting his journey as a carver when he met Weasel. One morning Weasel stopped at The Man’s table and told him he was doing good work. Weasel wouldn’t say that if he didn’t mean it, I told The Man.

Last summer when he left the mountain, The Man ended up at Weasel’s place. Weasel was starting a retreat for artists on his land. He’d bought a couple small travel trailers and stocked them with beans and rice and coffee. He wanted artists to have a place to work where they didn’t have to worry so much about food and shelter and money.

The Man and I were in southern New Mexico when Weasel passed. We were planning to head up to northern New Mexico as soon as it warmed up. We were going to stay at Weasel’s place in one of the travel trailers.

The Man talked to Weasel on the phone on what turned out to be one of the old horse trader’s last days in this world.

What do you need? Weasel asked after The Man identified himself. Weasel was ready to offer help.

The Man explained our situation, and Weasel said sure, come on out. He said he’d be in the city the next week for a doctor’s appointment and a visit with his son and his son’s mother, but we were welcome to come over whenever we wanted and hang out at his place until he returned. He even made sure The Man remembered the combination to the lock on the gate.

I don’t know what the doctor’s appointment in the city was about or if Weasel made it there. Five days after The Man talked to him, Weasel was dead.

He was at his son’s mother’s house washing dishes when it happened. He mentioned that he couldn’t catch his breath, then collapsed. The EMTs arrived in an ambulance 14 minutes later, but it was too late. His heart had given out on him one last time.

I was sad when I heard the news, and The Man took it really hard. Weasel was his friend. He’d planned to spend more time with Weasel, carve with him, help him make improvements to his homestead. He missed Weasel, but I think he was also sad for the possibilities of the friendship that never came to fruition. It was going to be such a great summer with Weasel, The Man said wistfully.

Maybe it’s the missed possibilities that make us saddest when someone dies. We regret the words we never said and sometimes the words we did say. We regret the things we never did together, the lessons we never learned, the help we never gave.

I hope that Weasel died with no regrets. I can’t imagine he left this world with words unsaid. I hope he’d at least made a try at all the things he wanted to do.

Weasel was not a perfect man. He was a fighter and maybe not always for a righteous cause. I would have never wanted to be on his bad side. He could he harsh, and I witnessed some of his business dealings where I felt he was being a little slick with the truth. However, at his core, he was a good man. He was a loving father and a true friend.

I feel saddest for his son. At 12, he’s on the cusp of the years when a boy particularly needs a positive role model to teach him how to be a good man. What’s that kid going to do without his father? Yet, he got 12 years more than a lot of kids get. He got 12 years with a father who loved him and enjoyed being with him. He got 12 years with a father who was firm, but fair. He got 12 years with a father who respected him and was his biggest cheerleader. He got 12 years with a man who’d grown up enough to be not just a good father, but a great father.

The Bridge won’t be the same without Weasel. Who will throw lucky pennies in front of vendors’ tables? Who will walk down the row of vendors wishing everyone a good morning? Who will fight the good fight when the powers-that-be tell us we can no longer make a living selling our wares to visitors? We don’t have Weasel anymore, so we’ll have to do those things ourselves. Weasel respected self-sufficiency. He’d be glad to know he taught us something.

Accusations

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The group of vendors I sometimes sell with on the side of the highway is a varied bunch. Some are serious business people with huge selections of merchandise displayed on multiple tables. Others are just passing through, trying to sell a few things in hopes of earning enough gas money or beer money to make it down the road. Some vendors hand-make everything they sell, while others buy mass produced items and sell them at a big markup. Some vendors are honest about their products and others, not so much. Common lies involve saying a stone is turquoise when it isn’t and telling a potential customer an item was made by the vendor (or a member of the vendor’s family) when the item was actually imported from a developing country.

I don’t believe in lying to customers, but I don’t narc out other vendors when I hear them doing it. Do I think lying to customers is wrong? Yes. Do I think it’s my place to police other? No.

Loyalties are ever-changing among vendors. Two people may be friends today and enemies next week. Folks get mad at each other over parking and (real or imagined) lying and taking up too much space.

I try to stay on friendly terms with everyone, although there are certainly some vendors I don’t like much. I have no use for bossy or nosey behavior, and many vendors act in those ways. The most common nosey question is How are you doing?/How did you do today? What people really mean is, Are you making/did you make any money? When I’m asked how I’m doing or how I did, I start rambling about the beautiful weather or seeing my friends or meeting nice people. Only the boldest of people (or those with no capacity to pick up on my social cues) go on to actually verbalize the word money. (The last time another vendor actually asked me if I was making money, customers approached my table in the nick of time, and I was able to ignore Nosey Nelly until she got bored and wandered away.)

Some of the vendor grudges are old. One woman has been despised for years, long before I crawled out of the sage and joined the community. Part of the reason she’s despised is because she makes a lot of money. She’s a good business woman who knows what merchandise is going to sell and how to talk to customers to get them to buy. She also exhibits unpredictable behavior. One day she’ll be someone’s bosom buddy and the next she’ll scream curses at the same person. The only thing she loves more than being the bearer of bad news is getting other vendors all riled up with negativity and too upset to sell.

This woman has gotten a little nicer since her husband died and she’s all alone in the world, but we’ve all seen her turn against a friend with little provocation. Anyone with any sense treads lightly around her.

The funniest altercation I’ve seen her involved in happened a few summers ago. I don’t remember why people were mad at each other or who was taking what side. I do remember the despised woman was pissed at one of the vendors who drives in from out of state.

This guy allegedly sells pain pills along with his glass pipes, chile powder, osha root, and the baskets and purses he says his wife makes (despite the “Made in Mexico” tags still attached to them). I’ve never bought pain pills from him. (For the record, I’ve never bought pain pills from anyone, even a pharmacist.) I’ve never caught him in the middle of a pain pill transaction. I’ve never heard him offer to sell anyone pain pills, but I’ve heard the word on the street, and the word is he sells pain pills.

It was a hot summer day, and there weren’t many customers. Trouble tends to start when there aren’t many customers. Customers keep vendors busy, and when there aren’t enough of them, some vendors get bored and start picking fights.

The despised woman looked over at the out-of-state vendor and out of nowhere started yelling, Drug dealer! Drug dealer!

Without missing a beat, the out-of-state vendor yelled right back at her with his gravely, Spanish accented voice, Weetch! Weetch!

She had no response, just sat back down behind her table and waited for a potential customer to come along.

Coyote at the Bridge

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I’d been away from the Bridge for a while. When I left in late October, I planned to be back in time for Spring Break, but plans change. By December, I’d decided I wanted to spend the summer working as a camp host. By January I’d applied for several camp host positions. By April, I was on my way to California.

I decided to head back to New Mexico when my work season ended. If nothing else, I needed to say good-bye to friends who thought I would only be gone a few months when I left. Of course, once I was back, I couldn’t resist the siren’s song of making a few bucks at the Bridge. Soon I was unfolding my tables and setting out my wares.

Many aspects of life at the Bridge were unchanged. A dozen or more vendors vied for the tourist dollars. Vendors still fought among themselves but showed each other kindness as well. I continued to arrive early to get a good spot where I could attract the attentions of shoppers. Of course, the scenery was still beautiful; the rugged high desert landscape surrounded by snow-peaked mountains always makes me stop and take notice.

There were differences too. Although still officially fall when I arrived, days were cold. I soon wore a comical number of colorful layers in an attempt to stay warm. Days were shorter too. While in the summer we had until seven o’clock or later to catch the sunset visitors, in October and November, daylight was gone by 5pm. Also, the number of visitors must have been less than half of what we saw in the summer.

This photo shows the wild coyote in the vending area at the Bridge.

My favorite addition to the Bridge community was the coyote.

During the many nights and early mornings I’d spent at the Bridge, first while sleeping in a picnic pavilion and later in my van, I’d heard plenty of coyotes. Sometimes there’d be simple, predictable howling, but often I heard the yipping and yapping I anthropomorphized as “partying”–as in the coyotes are really partying tonight. While I knew the coyotes were relatively close because I could hear them, I never saw one. For all the noise they make, coyotes know how to be visibly discreet, so I was surprised to see one skulking around in the sage on the highway side of the fence, pretty close to where the vendors set up.

I was excited to see the coyote, but other vendors were blasé . They knew this coyote; it had been coming around for a while.

Some of the vendors left food our for it. Early in the morning, when there weren’t many people around and food was available, the coyote would come right into the vending area. That’s when I realized the coyote walked with a limp, which is probably why it hung around close to humans who were willing to leave it food.

By talking to other vendors, I pieced together the coyote’s story.

Sometime after I had left the previous fall, the coyote’s foot had been injured. I don’t remember anyone saying what exactly had happened, but whether by trap or by gun (or some other way entirely), the coyote’s foot had been seriously hurt, and it could barely walk, much less run. The vendors saw it limping around and one of them (a great friend to animals although often causing strife for humans) started leaving meat out for the coyote. Her offerings probably got it through the winter when it couldn’t hunt.

The vendor who told me the coyote’s story repeatedly referred to it as “she.” I wasn’t sure if he could tell the animal’s sex by its size or markings or if he’d been close enough to check out its genitals. While I certainly never saw testicles or a penis, I can’t say I got a definitive look. Maybe because of the months the coyote had been around, the vendor felt confident in what he had and hadn’t seen.

While the coyote certainly wasn’t fat, it was by no means skeletal. I’d expect a coyote that was only living on human handouts to be bony and weak. This coyote was lean, but seemed healthy. I think the coyote was hunting again and only supplementing its diet with what the vendors shared.

Although the coyote obviously limped, it moved around well. It was still quick. It wasn’t difficult to imagine it hunting, especially if it used cunning to get the job done.

I had mixed feeling about the coyote hanging out so close to the vendors. I typically think wild animals should stay wild and humans should stay uninvolved in the lives of wild animals. I worried about how close to the

I worried about the coyote crossing the road, as it is doing in this photo.

road the coyote came when it skulked around the vending area looking for food. I got really nervous when I saw it actually cross the highway. I worried about what might happen to the coyote if it did a perfectly normal coyote thing like snatch a little dog for a snack. Now that the coyote could take care of itself, it was better off leaving humans behind.

On the other hand, I was glad the vendor had fed it when it was injured and couldn’t hunt. I’m glad she saved the coyote’s life. I was grateful for the opportunity to see the animal up close too. Not everyone gets to see the beautiful independence of wild creatures. Even though the coyote was eating scraps left by humans, it wasn’t begging. One look at the coyote and I knew it belonged only to itself.

I haven’t been to the Bridge in over a year, so I don’t know if the coyote still visits with the vendors early in the mornings, but I think of it whenever I hear a coyote howl.

I took all of the photos in this post.