On Saturday, Nov. 23, the Wheels Museum hosted a talk with author Baker H. Morrow about his most recent anthology, “The Horse on the Sidewalk.”
The anthology discusses Albuquerque’s place as a post-World War II “boomtown.”
“You get the facts and figures, so many miles of roads, so many new houses, so many subdivisions,” Morrow said. “But one thing that struck me, having spent a fair amount of time when I was a kid out there, was what life was like for the kids themselves.”
It follows the coming of age of a middle school boy named Gil, who wants nothing more than to buy his own motorcycle — seemingly the spiritual successor to the Old West cowboy and his wild stallion.
The titular story, “The Horse on the Sidewalk,” opens with a conversation between Gil and Deke — a small child with a cigarette habit and a tendency to lie and say he’s adopted. The front tire of Gil’s new motorcycle is stolen by an older high school kid.
“It may be that loose social organization is natural in a new community that’s just sprung up,” Gil’s friend says about the incident. “Nothing’s settled. The ties that bind people together aren’t knotted yet.”
The story details the difficulty of building community in a developing area, the emerging Albuquerque culture and a reflection on what has changed and what has stayed the same.
Morrow said that while the anthology is not autobiographical, it includes people and stories that run parallel to his childhood.
“They certainly are inspired by a lot of people I knew or had heard of, and they ran through my head for years,” Morrow said. “I was very pleased to be able to get them out on paper in a kind of new form, because one thing I thought was how unusual it was to live in a brand-new place.”
Morrow is a landscape architect by trade, which shows in the deep sense of place and time present in his work. There’s a particular reverence and attention paid to street names such as Lomas Boulevard and Wyoming Boulevard, as well as a story about an early restaurant in Albuquerque, Taco Sal’s, which still sits on the corner of Eubank Boulevard and Menaul Boulevard.
The book was published by Casa Urraca Press, a small, local press near Abiquiú that aims to promote, platform and protect New Mexican literature, according to its website.
Addison Fulton is the culture editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on X @dailylobo
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