The guide inside the old roller mill says: gravity fed. The kernels never crushed just tumbled. He points out the holes cut
in ragged circles in the base of the wooden doors through which the resident cat
can move freely, seeking mice that eat the grain in the night.
We track the river outside from its tributary origin through wooden aqueducts. To the big wheel that holds to the east wall. My companion says listen to the under sound. A thrum and a throb. This natural spill, the mother of all movement, propelling
the greasy gears and the fraying belts. Wheat washed and
dried and captured in centrifugal precision. Up from the basement clank and
down again slide into the shimmy boxes. Pulled to its next box and spun.
Silk tunnels and blue muslin stretched over tubes take
their time rolling today as we tour. One single thump from metal phalange on top - like piano hammer, like heavy knife - and the dust moves down and out. Tumble and
sift. White flour stripped of everything. Nutritional husks fed to the hogs.
This was always a
larger room, the guide surveys with his black hat on and telling hands, where script was exchanged for your harvest
of grain. All the stones sorted and loosed. At the mercantile then you could buy whiskey and ammunition; a new hat
for the wife at home, ironing. Fair trade. Outside the mill converted in part now to a four-dollar museum, artisans sell sugar rub and picture postcards, dream pillows and wooden spoons. Under the tent the musicians stain the day with gospel. We sit on a hay bale to listen; eat tamales, and drink soda from sweating cans.
No flour produced any longer here but the families bequeath
their contiguous names to the small tin cups that move upward in
parallel lines. To feed the saint with
flaming heart that knows no geography. Whittling time. One extra dollar for the talking
tour.
Three guitars in the shade knock on heaven’s door and little boys collect sticks and carry them like commodity, following their fathers and their aunts across the pitted ground.
(Cleveland, New Mexico, in the Mora Valley, Labor Day Weekend 2016)
Three guitars in the shade knock on heaven’s door and little boys collect sticks and carry them like commodity, following their fathers and their aunts across the pitted ground.
(Cleveland, New Mexico, in the Mora Valley, Labor Day Weekend 2016)
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