It’s more than a little astonishing to look at a fresh new calendar in a fresh new year and realize that I’m staring down 40 years since one of the most memorable summers of my life.
I spent that summer, 1984, in Moriarty, New Mexico, which sits about forty miles east of Albuquerque. I was living with my dad and his then-wife, with whom he was at the tail end of a second go-round at marriage. (Marital follies, more for the record than for making fun: They’d originally wed in 1975, when I was five years old, then divorced four years later. The precipitating event was an argument after she had asked me to clean something up and he’d told her to do it herself, so ask me sometime how long it took me to get over the idea that I’d been the reason for the bust-up. They remarried a year or two after that, but by 1984 they were all too well acquainted with just how profoundly ill-suited they were.)
The arrangement—leaving my home in suburban Fort Worth, Texas, and spending the entire summer with them—was the resumption of an every-year appointment set by the terms of my folks’ 1973 divorce. It had been put on hiatus by Dad’s bankruptcy and money struggles the year before, when he just couldn’t dig deep for a plane ticket and two months’ worth of sustenance for a growing boy. Two years later, I’d sever that appointment myself by deciding that, at age sixteen, I didn’t want to leave my hometown for entire summers anymore. Too many friends, too many girls to chase, too much dough to make bagging groceries and slinging hamburgers and such.
But 1984? In 1984, I was eager to see my father again.
Dad made a lot of money in the drilling business when times were good—made a lot and burned through a lot, a la the nouveau riche—but was barely hanging on that summer. The oil economy had tanked the year before, and he was trying to make his monthly nut by digging water wells, an untenable ambition. He would lose the drilling rig to repossession the following year, along with his marriage and most of what meager amount of money he’d been able to stash away. If anything remained, his two-time ex-wife would clean him out for good, showing up one day in 1985 with her hand out. Dad would fill it, then collapse into tears at the kitchen table, talking to a friend, lamenting, “When it’s over, it’s supposed to be over.”
But 1984? In 1984, he still had hope.
More than that, he had me—a big kid, 14 years old, plenty strong, and well acquainted with the operation of a drilling rig. I could handle the dirty end of that work and at an hourly rate—zero dollars—that suited his upside-down financial situation. As a pimply faced teenager, I was conscripted into the drilling business.
***
We dug a lot of water wells that summer, most of them forgettable one-day affairs. But one of them persists in memory the way few things from back then do. The persistence lies in the place, the people, and the circumstances of the dig, all of which lay bare why Dad was such a spectacularly failed businessman and yet so wildly successful at building the kind of hard-bonded lifetime friendships that I struggle to match.
A Californian named Merv Gemmer had recently bought a piece of property about 10 miles east of Moriarty. He’d inherited a whale of a problem in the bargain: He had New Mexico history—an abandoned roadside attraction called Longhorn Ranch that was shouldered right off old Route 66—and a thriving little truck stop café and a line of tidy motel rooms. What he didn’t have, though, was significant: He had no on-site water source, having been forced to haul it in several times a week. That just wasn’t going to work much longer, by his reckoning. He asked Dad to drill him a well.
I can remember that our initial effort resulted in at least two dry holes, enough to compel any driller interested in remaining in business to cut his losses and say, “Hey, sorry, but I did my best.” Not Dad. He’d given his word, and he understood Merv’s plight, and he swore he’d hang in there until Merv had a well, all at the original quoted price. Torrance County, New Mexico, isn’t a place that parts with its water easily, and Dad was given to grumble about being abandoned by the only method of finding it he trusted (hire yourself a good witcher). Still, we pressed on, again and again.
I know for a fact that Merv felt bad about the fiasco, but Dad wouldn’t hear of amending their deal, so he at least made sure we were well fed. His homemade enchiladas from the El Vaquero restaurant were some of the best I’ve ever had, and for as long as Merv owned the place, you could see trucks filling his little parking lot. (Life hack: Pay attention to where the truckers eat when you’re on a road trip. They know.)
In the end, at long last, Merv got his water. Dad lost money on the deal, a lot of it, and he was in no position to take on that kind of financial burden. He ended up with a deep friendship, though. I suspect he’d say that the nearly four decades of friendship since have paid off in bigger ways. He’s probably right.
***
It’s been years since I, or Dad, have been back to that part of New Mexico. A Google maps search suggests that the El Vaquero and the tidy little motel are no more, much like the tourist trap Longhorn Ranch before them.
In 1984, the Longhorn Ranch remains were at least tactile—empty storefronts, broken windows, and the like. Merv eventually bulldozed the rest of it down. Is water still pumping? Hard to know. The place looks pretty desolate, from above, from a Google search a thousand miles away. We dug Merv a good well in the end, one that pumped mightily, but nothing lasts forever, right?
Which brings me back to Merv Gemmer. Toward the end of 2023, he died. Dad told me the news matter-of-factly, the same way he has relayed the passings of several other friends he made along the way. That’s the bargain. You either go before them and let them miss you, or you live long enough to mourn them. He said he’d called Merv a few days earlier, that his old friend spoke wearily and said he had to go lie down, with a promise to call back later. That one will go unfulfilled.
It’s not Dad’s way to betray much of how he feels about things like this, but he doesn’t have to. He hears his own clock ticking down. He’ll be 85 this year, the age he has sort of circled as a milestone he’d like to reach. There’s been Covid, which knocked him down hard, and trouble with his blood pressure, and his kidneys are rebelling, and … well, something’s going to give, sooner rather than later given the hour.
After relaying the news, he thumbed through his phone and showed me pictures he’s received of other friends, the ones still living. He told me Charley Allen looks old, and I said, “Well, he should, he’s two years older than you.” He told me the two women who lived next door to him twenty years ago, twins, look old, too. I suppose they do, juxtaposed against his memories, but they’re younger than he is, anyway, and I wonder if he has looked in a mirror lately. Or looked at his son, who isn’t any better at fending off advancing age than anyone else.
But I didn’t say anything. It’s needless, so I just said, well, you’ve always been lucky with friends, Pop. That counts for something.
Craig Lancaster’s latest novel, Northward Dreams, is published by Missouri Breaks Press and available here.
Learn more about Craig on our Contributors’ Page.
(Photo: Casey Page/ CC BY 2.0)
- The Will for Water by Craig Lancaster - April 25, 2024