Our City as a House

June 14

Our City as a House

What’s your favorite part of our community?

If you think about it, it might resemble your favorite part of your own home.

Fiesta maestro Lalo Natividad once referred to Mesilla as “everybody’s backyard.”

Lalo has been a vital part of teams that revived or established popular and enduring celebrations of Cinco de Mayo, Diez y Seis de Septiembre, Dia de los Muertos and Christmas Eve, all on the Mesilla Plaza. And I think his characterization is apt. After years of down home fiestas with family and friends, most of us do think of Mesilla as a family gathering place, and we do tend to take visitors there sooner or later. With that old-growth shade and a recently restored gazebo, it’s cooler and more fun than most of our personal backyards.

That got me thinking about our city in terms of a house.

If Mesilla is our backyard, I’d say Main Street downtown is our front porch. In recent years, it has become the place where we meet and greet our friends and neighbors, especially Wednesday and Saturday mornings at the Las Cruces Farmers and Crafts Market, at monthly Downtown Rambles and increasingly imaginative Project Mainstreet events.

And the new plaza should only enhance that trend.

If we see our city house as a rambling mansion, I suppose we could have a parlor or den, maybe Branigan Library, the Las Cruces Convention Center and the Double Eagle. And a conservatory, with indoor plantings and exotic birds, and sometimes musical and theatrical events. That would make La Posta a perfect place, with its plants, parrots and piranhas. But let’s make it an indoor/outdoor patio thing and include all of our parks, theaters, the Center for the Arts and Pan American Center.

Since Pan Am also hosts athletic events, let’s also include it in our home gym, along with all the fitness centers, golf courses, hiking trails, school stadiums and athletic facilities. Does the house have a pool, you ask? If we’re thinking of the Rio Grande, yes, but only for a few months each summer. Better add city and university pools to our inventory and the little pond at Young Park as our favorite backyard water feature.

Most of us don’t have basements here in the desert, but we have had a long-term attic: Picacho Avenue, where our old treasures have been stored for decades, waiting to be rediscovered and admired by new generations. Recent additions may alter our attic before long. This month, The Emporium will open on Griggs Avenue, a new collection of old stuff (reportedly specializing in “mid-century” furnishings) that will benefit hospice programs. We might make a case that our communal attic, in very upscale, well-organized form, includes the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum, along with New Mexico State University’s Museum and some of the city museums (especially Las Cruces Railroad, Branigan Cultural Center and parts of the Las Cruces Museum of Nature and Science, which houses everything from fossils older than dinosaurs to Clyde Tombaugh’s homemade telescope).

We are an ever-expanding mansion with many guest bedrooms (hotels, motels, dorms, etc.). Our kitchen has served up everything from giant enchiladas to barbecue and the world’s best salsa festival treats. Our exotic home bar offers house tequila (La Posta) and beer and wine in remarkably diverse and festive settings with pub, vineyard and state fairground themes.

How close up and personal do we want to get with this? Landfills, dumps and sewage treatment plants as bathrooms, for instance? Or should we end on a more artistic note?

Do we have a home arts loggia, a space dedicated to display of our favorite masterpieces? I thought about the University Art Gallery and the Las Cruces Museum of Art. But I think we’re the kind of people who want art in every room of our house, and sculpture gardens outside. So let’s add all the galleries, shops, restaurants and even hospitals, offices and highway bridges that add great art experiences to everyday life at home. Personally, Olin Calk’s giant roadrunner is my favorite in our front yard art collection.

There’s no place like home.

S. Derrickson Moore may be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news.com, at derricksonmoore on Twitter and Tout or call 575-541-5450.