I want to tell you about the Socorro Fest, which was held last Saturday. Actually it started Friday night, but there was a downpour and I decided to stay in my little adobe house. I gathered up all my wash and headed to Socorro. I started at the Fest, the 9th Annual one.
It reminded me in many ways, like Elkton Days. There is a central plaza in Socorro, with a bandstand. Traffic flows around it, but of course, the streets were blocked off for the day. Vendors of art, jewelry, photographs, pottery, plants, and such were set up around the area, and the food vendors were set up beyond them, most on the curbside around the plaza. The bandstand had constant music and dancing going on during the day. The first group were young girls, perhaps from the college, demonstrating belly dancing - yes, belly dancing! Where was the mariachi band?
I had gone to my bank - there is a Bank of America in Socorro! - and I talked to the teller about the Fest. She said her favorite things there were the Indian Tacos and the Roasted Corn. As I walked around, I looked for a vendor serving Indian Tacos. I found one and ordered it - "green or red" I was asked. That is the question here even if you are getting scrambled eggs for breakfast. Chile sauce is what it is. "I want the least hot." When I got my Indian Taco and opened the container, what I found was Indian fry bread on the bottom, with layers of meat, beans cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, and red chile sauce. And for these taste buds, the chile sauce was hot. My sons would love it! There is no way that you can pick these things up, so I used the knife and fork provided, and cut small pieces of it, trying not to get it all over my shirt. Actually in that respect, I succeeded. But there was no way to eat the entire thing, and truly, that may be the last Indian taco I ever eat!
As a new group started playing, I walked around and talked with various vendors. Here you don't have vendors making bean and ham soup, or barbecued chicken. The food is an assortment of Mexican food, American food, such as hamburgers and hot dogs, and green chile cheese french fries!
One vendor was roasted green chile peppers -
The peppers are rotated in the big basket until they blacken up. The man holding the bag will fill it, and people buy the bags of roasted peppers.
Across the street a vendor set up with produce for sale...
Note the wonderful strings of red peppers. And pumpkins and potatoes and probably huge bags of fresh green chilies. I went to a farm store in San Antonio on Monday, and everything in it was grown on their farm - pumpkins, beautiful cantalopes, tomatoes, onions, squash, and more kinds of chile peppers than I knew every existed! And in the back there was a woman making these beautiful strings of red peppers. Maybe I will break down and buy one. Who knows - when in Rome do as the Romans do!
I went in hunt of the roasted corn. OMG - it was fantastic and something I will definitely get again...
The outer leaves of the corn are shucked and the silk is removed. With the remaining inner leave around each ear of corn, they are placed in the above machine, in rows, and slowly turned for a certain length of time. Then the ear is taken out, the leaves pulled back exposing a steaming ear of golden corn, which is dipped half way into a cylinder of butter, wrapped in a paper towel at the bottom, and you have good eating. The ear is only half dipped into butter, because as you hold the corn on the cob, the butter spreads down to the bottom and into the paper towel. Messy but yummy, and definitely good eating!!!
There was a pavilion on the street for local beer and wine tasting. However, I didn't even go to see what they had.
A young woman, named Sarah, was selling unprocessed honey and was handing out tastes. It was excellent. Many different flavors, depending on which flowers the bees were pollinating and gathering nectar. She was selling honeycomb also, and I bought one, and have been enjoying it on my toast. My mother loved honeycomb, and whenever I would see it, I would also buy it. And it is very good for you. I also bought a jar of honey. Unlike store bought honey, this honey was thick and a little crystallized, more like jam than jelly. And I prefer jam to jelly, so that was just fine for me. Sarah also made jewelry and crystals and I bought a crystal to carry on my keyring.
I had a great conversation with a couple of women who volunteer at the ASPCA in Magdalena. They were selling handmade crocheted mice and also crocheted head bands for keeping your ears and neck warm as it gets colder. I bought a couple of mice and a headband. I was bold enough to ask who was the crocheter and it was one of the two women. I asked her if she could help me with a blanket I am putting together, and she said she would be happy to do so!
I was walking back to my car when I heard a gun go off, and looking to my right, across from The Capitol Bar, in business for over 100 years, and still going strong, were a group of men right out of the wild West!
Was this Gunfight in Socorro? Actually this was a group of men and women who are known as the High Plains Outlaws. The gentleman in the next photo is talking about guns and gun safety. Later on, and I didn't stay, they put on several different skits...
Everywhere I have lived, there has been some kind of re-enactor group. In Sudbury, Massachusetts, we had a Minuteman Militia group, who marched to Concord every April 17th (Patriot's Day in Massachusetts) with their muskets, pitchforks, dressed in period clothing, with their woman following behind, with baskets full of provisions. Most of the men, who all carried pewter mugs, had a belly full of rum, by the time they reached Concord. They fired their muskets along the way, and in the streets of Concord until the Concord town fathers banned any firing of muskets. Bob and I would get the kids up to watch them leave from Sudbury Center, drummers in front making sure everyone knew they were coming!
In Elkton, Virginia, there are Confederate re-enactors, who dress in period clothing, set up encampments, participate with many other groups, both Confederate and Union, in various battles that took place in the Shenandoah Valley. Many of you know that my Civil War uncle, William Henry Hawley, was a Union soldier from the 14th Connecticut Volunteers. The 14th has their own group of re-enactors, and I was able to go to Gettysburg to meet some of them, when they were participating in an encampment there.
So now I am in New Mexico, and we have the High Plains Outlaws!!!
I left and went to the laundromat and did my wash. Such a mundane but necessary thing, isn't it?
A hui hou,
I love you all,
Sally
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