Corrales Home

When Marcial Valdez, my father, passed away last year, we had French's Mortuary in Albuquerque assemble a DVD from pictures we had of his life. I don't possess the original photos, but I do have the DVD, from which I can take screenshots.


This series of photos were taken in about 1960 by a photographer with the Sandia (and Livermore) Labs weekly newspaper, and were featured on its front page. The pictures show Marcial Valdez's pride, the adobe home where I grew up, under construction, in Corrales, NM.


A few years later (about 1963), a loose bull came through these French Doors into the living room on a hot summer's day, to rest for a spell in the shade.

Coming into the living room, I noticed the bull. Having heard on the school bus that making faces at bulls would make them charge, I made faces at the bull, but the peaceable bull did nothing. Disappointed, I finally alerted my mother, who shooed the bull back outside with a broom.

Living room, looking east.

Living room, looking southwest.

Hand-pump well (used before electricity became available at this location), plus the back door (featuring many small windows, in the French style).

That back door brings back memories.

When I was a preschooler, nothing frightened me like the road grader, a big, yellow, dirty monstrous machine that Sandoval County employed to keep Corrales' dirt roads' washboard surfaces passable in dry weather, and to fill in muddy low spots during wet weather.

As became her custom during one endless and bucolic summer, my mother locked me and my sister outside every noontime so she could take an hour's nap in peace.

One dreadful day, when locked outside the house, the road grader came down the road. I quailed in fear of this noxious engine from hell. Then, the worst thing imaginable happened: the road grader turned into our driveway (in order to turn around, but I didn't know that). Utterly exposed, fearing for my life, and in an absolute panic, I shattered one of the small windows in the back door and swiftly squeezed through the tight and jagged space so I could find shelter inside the house.

After that, my mother decided that locking us outside probably wasn't the smartest thing, and started letting us stay inside during noontime.

View of the Sandia Mountains (circa 1960), with a loose horse grazing the alfalfa.