Five O'Clock Somewhere

Welcome to Five O'Clock Somewhere, where it doesn't matter what time zone you're in; it's five o'clock somewhere. We'll look at rural life, especially as it happens in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, cats, sailing (particularly Etchells racing yachts), and bits of grammar and Victorian poetry.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Two Bulls

A truly unique character

I mentioned in an earlier post that, while it’s fairly easy to find people who support my goal of writing, it’s harder to find people who understand. Two Bulls, perhaps, comes close.

He’s the patriarch of the Big Food Express, and he’s an artist who creates sculptures and paintings. The rest of what he says about himself, it’s hard to evaluate, because he’s also a storyteller, and it could well be that all of what he says is metaphorically true even if not factually so.

His ancestry is Lakota, or Inuit, or a mix of the two. He has a 25-foot sailboat, Sea Hawk, that he lived on in the Pacific Northwest for a decade or two and sailed from Hawaii to Seattle, but the boat has been sitting on a trailer in New Mexico for many years now. He was active in the AIM and participated in the 1970s Wounded Knee incident. Once a year, he invites drummers from all tribes to come together for a peace ceremony (this one, I know to be true in the objective sense, because we went to the Big Food Express one time and all the drummers were there).

He’s a scrawny little guy, not much over five feet, with a weather-beaten face and long salt-and-pepper hair, and he’s missing a tooth here and there. In age, I’d put him, oh, say, somewhere between 60 and 100.

Even more enigmatic is the Big Food Express itself, also known as Club Bossa Mundo on weekend nights when the music is playing. The menu is Asian-seafood-deli-American-Mexican. It carries the best selection of imported and microbrew beers in Sierra County, at bargain prices. The music is blues and jazz, live most weekends. And even if there isn’t live music, Two Bulls himself will tell a story that is at least as entertaining.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think he spells it Tu Bulls

Mon Jan 23, 01:52:00 AM MST  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I haven't been in Truth or Consequences, or the surrounding area in about 10 years... sounds like a great place to drop by for dinner. :D I'll have to try it next time I'm out there.

Mon Jan 23, 07:01:00 AM MST  
Blogger Carol Anne said...

Because storytelling is oral, I learned his name as "Two Bulls," although I have seen it in the local media spelled both that way, and as "tubulls" without any capital letters.

Tue Jan 24, 03:32:00 AM MST  

Post a Comment

<< Home