Babbitry and Boosterism
When small towns build airports you can bet on hearing from your local booster, aka Mr. “Babbit,” named after the bestselling novel of same, written by Sinclair Lewis (1922), which literary work helped Lewis win the Nobel Prize in literature. The novel depicts the middle class American culture of conformity. Wherever you hear community leaders discuss the “need” for a fast food franchise, a chain store, or an airport, you will hear from this fellow Mr. Babbit and his clones. He will talk always discuss the “promise” of development and how investment today will solve the community’s problems in the future. He learned his trade from the church fathers, who reassure mourners that the dead will live eternally in a “better place,” i.e. the “future.”
When it comes to “business” and “regional economic development,” Mr. Babbit, a member of the local Chamber of Commerce, thinks much like a town councilor or county commissioner. He speaks in the language of public relations with particular focus on transforming the community and its members into better citizens via jobs and profits in the future. Mr. Babbit masquerades in public as a realtor or developer, an entrepreneur or professional and joins such organizations as the Taos Project, Sirolli, Ten, KCEC, and local government or some variation of the Mainstreet project.
The first genuine expression of Babbitry I witnessed in Taos appeared in the person of Charles B. Brooks, a realtor, who told a town meeting that we could never be a real town unless we approved the Kentucky Fried Chicken stand and let McDonald’s have their golden arches. Whether its McDonalds, Walmart, Walgreens, or airports your local booster, a synonym for Babbit, will tell you that the “future” of the community lies in the golden dreams of magical materialism.
In the mid sixties Town Councilor Johnny Himes proudly reported that he convinced a meeting of the Taos Airport Commission on January 29, 1965, to proceed toward building an airport, due to the kind benediction of the FAA. With Mayor Jesse Vigil’s consent, Himes had checked earlier the area adjacent to Highway 64 for an airport. This was prior to the approval of construction of the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. The bridge opened and was dedicated in September of 1965. So Johnny persuaded the town council to engage in the “legal” art of eminent domain and landowners succumbed to the power of the purse and courts by selling their land. Himes, an early “regionalist,” and two of his fellow travelers were never elected to local office again.
The tales of town bullying, threats, eminent domain, queered appraisals, landlocked landowners in Taos county and “rumors” of expansion continued throughout the decades and into the 21st Century as this or that property owner and town council fought to determine a fair price of “forced sales.” Activists began working more forcefully against the airport in 1988. Thanks, eventually; to Taos Pueblo, tenacious folks from Arroyo Hondo, and a lone ranger from across the gorge, the feds were forced to do an EIS, which further delayed the “expansion” project into the new century.
Once Taos Pueblo was given reassurances about prohibitions against disturbances to the Sacred Airspace, thanks “they say” to Mayor Darren Cordova’s glib tongue, the Tribe allowed the project to proceed. Now comes the loyal opposition, including a famed local author and a cadre of multicultural activists, who have filed appeals, lawsuits, and made their issues against the flyport known to the Boosters’s Club. Mr. Babbit appeared on Wed. March 4 in the person of Town Manager Rick Bellis who flogged the flyway.
A variety of antiwar activists and conservationists have joined homeowners in opposition to the expansion of flight paths, noise, perceived dangers, etc. Whether consciously or unconsciously, whether realtors and sellers offered “disclosure” or not, these home owners have settled into the sage and sand, onetime grazing ground for sheep and hideout for historic varmints amidst the indigenous insects, which are hundreds of thousands of years old out there on mesa west of Blueberry Hill.
Among the activists and boosters at the meeting on March 4, 2015, I counted a number of long time friends, acquaintances, political hostiles and local characters at the Taos County Commission Chambers. Big “Geno” Sanchez presided from the dais over the P&Z appeal doings. “Clean Gene” Sanchez, former Town councilor, whose grandfather, Mayor Filemon Sanchez, opposed the airport back in the mid sixties, sat in the audience and seemed amused. Mayor Dan Barrone nervously watched his manager, the faithful Mr. Bellis, perform his duties as neo-regionalist. Chef Tim Wooldridge of the Sabroso bistro in Arroyo Seco, the most recent operator of a local airline that went belly-up a decade ago, played Mr. Babbit in spades. Tim mentioned that an expanded runway would cure empty storefronts, create jobs, and help increase the stream of cars winding their way up to TSV. His hair is white but his heart is hopeful.
The Taos County P&Z continued the airport program for more public comment until March 11. The first real Mr. Babbit, aka Johnny Himes, the former town councilor and poker player at Fosters Café (Copper Moon Gallery today), thanks to a prodigal son, went belly-up at Plaza de Retiro. Johnny left town and died in Albuquerque ignominiously alone.
Here we are fifty years later, arguing over the legacy of a man from Arkansas, Johnny Himes. (I’m sure Johnny would have liked the Christmas tree lights and the Kongos on the Plaza.) All the activists have white hair or hair that is a mixture of salt and pepper, their faces are lined by age if not unlined by cosmetic surgery, their bodies inch along to their seats. The airport, like the Spring Ditch, los parciantes and the people from the Red Willow Village, the boosters and the babbits, will always be with us. Though one activist last night told me she’s glad she’s 84 because she won’t around to watch the painful decline of the west. Amen, sister, amen.