{"id":1259,"date":"2005-04-12T00:00:46","date_gmt":"2005-04-12T00:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=1259"},"modified":"2005-04-12T00:00:46","modified_gmt":"2005-04-12T00:00:46","slug":"people_who_make","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=1259","title":{"rendered":"People Who Make Our World Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flying around these days can be a real hassle. Periodically, though, one has the opportunity to choose the road not taken<\/a>. In this case, rather than using a rental car, I chose a 4:15a.m. shuttle from Santa Fe to the Albuquerque Sunport.<\/p>\n

These conversations make up for all the hassles.<\/p>\n

The tale begins in 1881, when a Barcelona native stopped in Santa Fe on his way to settle in Colorado’s San Juan Valley. Locals told him about something called a homestead opportunity. Finding the scenery and people of Santa Fe agreeable, he never completed the journey north to Colorado.<\/p>\n

“Very smart, but not educated<\/i>“, the immigrant settled and built a business in his garden. Growing and selling jalapenos, carrots (“this big!”), corn, peppers and more, he married and raised five sons. The boys carried water to the garden from a nearby river seven (7!) times per day. Buyers quickly snapped up his two annual vegetable crops. <\/p>\n

One of his sons (the shuttle driver) served our country in the marines from 1949 to 1969, starting at Camp Pendleton, moving to El Toro, Korea, Vietnam and Okinawa, becoming a DI (Sargeant). He served in Korea in 1950 and Vietnam from 1960 to 1965. It was “hell”. “I have nine lives”. A traveller asked what was the favorite part of his military service, “there must be one”: “Furlough – getting out of hell, I could see my family”.<\/p>\n

Today, this 75 year old veteran spends his time driving a few shuttles each day from Santa Fe to Albquerque’s Sunport, fly fishing (catch & release) near Taos, making an annual visit to relatives in Spain and checking up on his daughter and grandchildren.<\/p>\n

As I left the early morning shuttle, he proudly mentioned that he starts the day with 100 pushups and shows off to younger guys by doing 25 one arm pullups.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flying around these days can be a real hassle. Periodically, though, one has the opportunity to choose the road not taken. In this case, rather than using a rental car, I chose a 4:15a.m. shuttle from Santa Fe to the Albuquerque Sunport. These conversations make up for all the hassles. The tale begins in 1881, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}