A Sunday Drive

 When I was a kid, we did not have much money with 5 kids in the house so  often times our entertainment needed to be cheap or free. Thus, we often went out for a ride on Sunday. We went to watch airplanes land, visited relatives on Long Island, drove upstate NY, that sort of thing. When Mrsfabp and I hooked up, we kept doing that. We had just moved to Massachusetts and enjoyed our little trips, to the Cape, Newport, Vermont, museums, little quaint towns and when our kids arrived, it was more of the same.

So, it should not be a surprise that Mrsfabp and I have continued this sort of tradition. We have enjoyed our little trips, with friends or on our own. We have gone to see the cranes at Bosque del Apache State Park,to Hatch for Green Chile Cheeseburgers and music, to the Lava flows north of the city, to Santa Fe on the Railrunner express train, as well as the things right around town, like driving around neighborhoods, picnics up at Picacho Peak and trips out to the desert.

So it only seems fitting that Mrsfabp has had a desire to see Deming, NM. It was the first town we researched in the area and she thought it would be fun to see if we are missing anything not being there. So one Sunday, we packed the car with 2 dogs, snacks for them, water for us and headed out to Deming.

We can now sum up Deming in 3 words - out of business. There were more empty stores then working ones. Downtown was just about a ghost town. We stopped at the visitors bureau but that was closed too. At least the dogs enjoyed a few minutes out in the fresh air. We went and visited the place we were looking at to live to see what was there and again were totally underwhelmed. Country club estates was a grid of SW style homes next to what would have appeared to be a golf course, except there was no grass, lots of sand and it was flat as the eye could see. My friend Fred, a golf fiend would probably turned down the opportunity to play there, and he plays everywhere all the time.

Center of Deming
Nothing else to look at there

Then we got our first break. We saw a listing for the Adobe Deli and thought it might be good to get a deli sandwich and maybe a cold beer but the directions seemed unusual. Basically they said travel 15 miles south by south east. I thought Mexico was there but that what the directions said. After 10 minutes of driving there were just the occasional home. After 20 minutes, there was only grazing cows and as we approached the place, there was nothing but desert and barbed wire fence. The place itself looked like an abandoned car repair place, lots of chain linked fence, razor wire and abandoned cars. Out of the back there was a barbed wire fence in the distance that I was sure was in Mexico. But we pulled into the parking lot because there were quite a number of cars there. As we walked in we realized this wasn’t a deli but an old fashion honky tonk bar with plenty of tables for eatin’ and drinkin’ and moving around for dancin’. The decor was pure hunters lodge as you can tell by the picture below. I am sure that the person who coined the phrase "out in the middle of nowhere" was sitting at the bar of the Adobe Deli.

All it is missing is a deer blind!

Outside in the parking lot of the Adobe Deli

Two things to tell about the place. The food was great, including hand cut onion rings and Sam Adams, Lager and Alpine Spring on tap and cold as could be. The other is a story. While we were waiting on our food, a family (yes, apparently it is ok to have families come into a honky tonk DURING DAYLIGHT HOURS. Anyway as they settled into a table, their little girl, maybe 4 years old, wandered over to the pool table, looked and turned to her dad, pulled on his sleeve, and said “Daddy , what is this?” He quickly answered that it was a pool table. She turned and looked at it for a bit longer and turned to her father again, pulled on his sleeve, and said, “well, where is the pool then?” There was a murmur of giggles throughout the bar and the dad quickly got her into a seat at their table.

In my next post, a bit about the second half of our Sunday ride adventures.