Napolen "Paul" Garcia, Sr.

Last weekend my wife and I took a leisurely drive through Georgia O’Keefe country between Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico. We enjoy O’Keefe’s art and when we visited the O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe we were told about her homes in Abiquiu and Ghost Ranch. We headed first to Abiquiu, thinking we would find a small, quaint town befitting the reclusive O’Keefe’s nature. What we found was neither small nor quaint. Abiquiu would have to grow to become small, and quaint is pretty much out of the question. But, given O’Keefe’s nature, it may have been a perfect fit nonetheless.

We entered Abiquiu on a narrow dirt road and pulled into a “town” that consists of a church, post office, library and volunteer fire house surrounding an area of about 1500 square yards of dirt. Around this center point there is a dirt road that loops among a few scattered homes, a cemetery and an older adobe morada (church). We wanted to ask someone where O’Keefe’s home is located, but we saw not a single soul sitting, standing or walking outside. We were about to leave when my wife spotted a sign in front of a small home near the “town square”. It said “Private Tourist Information” with another sign that said “Local Tours” on the front gate. I was not interested in stopping, but my wife was, especially when she saw someone emerge from this home and get into a car with people waiting outside. That suggested this place was open for some kind of business.

My wife went in to ask for directions (I, of course, didn’t need any damn directions; I could have found stuff on my own!). After being in the home for almost 10 minutes she came back out to the gate and waived me in. When I approached the yard she said, with a big smile, “I want you to meet this man.” I walked into an enclosed porch area and there sat an elderly gentleman by the name of Señor Napolen “Paul” Garcia, Sr. On the far end of the room, over an old barber chair, there was a wood sign engraved with his name and his title – Poet & Storyteller. He rose with the aid of a cane and introduced himself with a firm handshake and a smile that matched the one on my wife’s face. It was obvious that in his younger days Señor Garcia had been a strong and imposing man. The strength of his personality had not diminished in the least.

In less than a minute, the stories began. The shortest version of what happened is that Señor Garcia not only made our day but probably made our entire trip to New Mexico worthwhile. He told us about “Miss Georgia O’Keefe”, as he called her in every reference to her. He said she was “nice enough”; strong willed but quiet; said what needed to be said and no more; and preferred to be alone much of the time. Señor Garcia had served as her part-time chauffer in her latter years. He pointed out several pictures of her on his wall, a couple of which were with men he identified as boyfriends. Using his cane to point at three successive pictures with men, he said, “Boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend”. One of the men was Andy Warhol. We suspect that’s one instance where Señor Garcia drifted from history into storytelling. Coming back to history, we suppose, he said he had never been her boyfriend.

Señor Garcia then proceeded to act as our tour guide. He produced two homemade maps, one of the local area and one of the surrounding region. He used a nearly dried-out blue felt pen to draw a course for us to follow on each map, with plentiful explanations of what we could see along the way. We didn’t tell him that we were leaving the next morning, or that his detailed guidance was eating up much of the remaining afternoon we had left. We weren’t being polite, however; we were enjoying ourselves listening to everything he had to say.

We were about to leave when Señor Garcia made reference to an organization called the Brothers of Light, a fraternal religious organization that he likened to a group of Catholic deacons. Their purpose is to serve the needs of the community members whatever they may be. Apparently, the Brothers love to chant. He displayed a book of chants, all in Spanish. Señor Garcia told us how much Miss Georgia O’Keefe loved to hear the Brothers chant, and how much they loved to show off for her as they walked past her home on the way from the morada to some place of service in the community. He then sang one of her favorite chants for us, a rather mournful piece intended for use at a funeral.

When the chant was completed we bid Señor Garcia adios. It was a wonderful visit and it called to mind the John Steinbeck classic, Travels with Charlie, in which he recounts traveling around America in a pickup camper with his poodle, Charlie. Steinbeck deliberately stayed on the byways and back roads of the country for the purpose of finding people like Señor Garcia. Last week’s encounter in Abiquiu points out the wisdom of that search. There are undoubtedly countless men and women in small towns and out-of-the-way places that can not only make our day, but can probably make our entire trip to the place of our choice.

As it turned out, we were less than 200 feet from the home of Miss Georgia O’Keefe, which is open to the public but only by appointment. We peered over the surrounding wall at a spot designated by Señor Garcia. From there we went to the morada and the cemetery, and then completed the small loop around Abiquiu.

The trip to Ghost Ranch took us through beautiful country filled with dark red and pale yellow sandstone. O’Keefe’s former home there is in private hands and not accessible to the public. Ghost Ranch itself is now a Presbyterian retreat and conference center but visitors are welcome. It sits at the end of a large box canyon surrounded by beautiful mountains with the open end of the canyon looking out to the Pedernal, a distant and distinctive mountain with an elevated mesa on top of it. This mountain was a favorite of O’Keefe’s. She said that God told her that if she painted it often enough He would give it to her. From Ghost Ranch, it looks like an altar befitting the God of Sinai.

On the way back to Santa Fe we passed through a genuine, 24-karat summer thunderstorm in the desert. Dark, foreboding clouds produced cloud-to-ground lightning strikes and booming claps of rolling thunder. Having been raised in the Texas and Arizona deserts, respectively, my wife and I loved it. When the heavens opened and the deluge began I told my wife that my Grandpa would have said, “It’s raining like a cow pissing on flat rock!” She was unfamiliar with that saying but the word picture arrived in about a second.

Great trip – thank you, Napolen “Paul” Garcia, Sr.