Max Evans and a Few Friends

Contributors

Introduction & Dedication

This book is the effort of a lot of people who love Max Evans. No, the initial meeting was not in a bar – we had coffee and hot chocolate – but the feelings ran deep and reminiscing started. Unfortunately, a good number of Max’s good friends have gone to the range in the sky but we know they are looking down – laughing and toasting.

These are essays, stories, and just funny things that happened with Max and a whole bunch of friends. Some are authors, politicians, photographers, cowboys and cowgirls. It is the best way we could think to remember Max on his 90th birthday.

The proceeds from this book go to Animal Humane New Mexico in Max’s name. He and Pat have always been big supporters of charity for pets.

Special thanks to: John Byram and UNM Press; Bookworks – Danielle, Wyatt, and Amanda; the Hillsboro Historical Society; Pat Evans, Sheryl, and Charlotte; Ruth Francis for looking over all of this; Ollie Reed and Slim Randles for remembering things; Barbe Awalt for keeping us moving forward; Paul Rhetts for wrapping it all up in a design; Grem Lee and his illustrations; Tim Keller for the cover and many other photos; Jim Harris, Jan Haley, and Jeff Witte for their photos; and all of Max’s friends, whether in this book or not. We all know the love for Max.

This book is for Max and his family on his 90th birthday. May he have a thousand more.

– Ruth E Francis, Ollie Reed Jr., Slim Randles, Barbe Awalt, and Paul Rhetts

*****

MAX OL’ PAL: Congratulations on surviving the first thousand years. No question you will do it again. God doesn’t want you! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! – Morgan Woodward, actor and writer, known for The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955), Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Dallas (1978)

Max and the girls, Charlotte and Sheryl. Photo by Pat Evans.

Beginnings

by Pat Evans

Ol’ Max has been answering to that name for almost as long as I can remember, and now finally, at ninety, he truly is Ol’ Max. Time has gone so fast I can hardly believe we’ve been married for sixty-five, always-something-new, years.

Of the hundreds of articles, bios, and newspaper articles written about Max, not too much has been mentioned about the places we have lived or how we met so this is my chance. We have lived in four houses – two in Taos (one in the country, one in town); one house we rented in Studio City, California, for a year; and the final one we live in here in Albuquerque. If I told about each one in detail it would fill a very large book, so for everyone’s sake I’ll concentrate on the first one.

Max had sold his ranch in Des Moines, New Mexico, got a divorce, and moved to Taos to become a full-time artist. He met my parents in their little grocery store before I came home for the summer from Highlands University. They became really good friends. On their visits to Las Vegas to see me, and our frequent phone calls, I had way too much pre-introduction to him. My mother especially liked him. They talked about me to him and him to me until he couldn’t stand the thought of me coming home and ruining his fun with them. He just knew I was a typical, really spoiled, only child (maybe I was a little!). And I thought- about him – if he likes to be with my folks that much – well, what was I to think? I wasn’t nuts about some of their other friends.

At that time, Max lived in a rental two or three blocks from my folks’ store, so it became a convenient, daily habit for him to come over to visit, listen to my dad’s great stories and drink the really ice cold soda pop my dad proudly, almost famously, kept in the old fashioned, non-electric, ice-filled, Coke box. The iceman showed up every morning in a rusty, old Model-T truck, dripping water, while he also took the time to visit with my dad. They ran a really friendly store.

When I came home for the summer, I started right away helping in the store. Max showed up for his morning treat. Dad introduced us. Our first meeting was very cautious because we really already knew we were not going to like each other. Later we both admitted that we immediately recognized the future possibilities. On the second day, he told me he had a painting hanging in the new art show at the Harwood Foundation. I knew the show and I knew how prestigious it was to be included. He asked me if I would like to go see it.

Well, of course I would. The third day it all began. He was supposed to pick me up at 2 pm but he showed up at 12:30 pm. That was just fine since the gallery didn’t open until 2 pm. It gave us an extra hour or so of getting acquainted. We parked on the plaza and had a very compatible conversation, went to the art show, and we saw each other several times a day from then on.

About three months later, we got married in Raton, had a yellow-meated watermelon on Raton Pass with our best man, Wiley Hittson, and in a day or two went on a meet-his-family-type honeymoon in Texas. It was a great adventure and I loved them all.

When we returned to Taos, he drove me out to our new home on the west side of town near the mesa. It was my first time to see the place I planned to spend many years – maybe forever.

As the crow flies, it was about four miles from the Taos plaza, but we weren’t crows so it was about seven miles from town over a bumpy, very narrow road that got really muddy when it rained (which it did almost every afternoon back then).We arrived to see four structures. In this order from the back of the lot: a three-room adobe house with two front doors and a small porch – no plumbing, but the water well with a bucket on a hand-cranked pulley was conveniently located near the front porch; then another nice-sized adobe building that was later used as a guest house (nothing fancy); nearer to the road was a chicken house (no chickens); and finally, an outhouse (facing away from the road but real close to it) was a deluxe three-holer with an unobstructed view of Taos Mountain when the door was open, and there really wasn’t much need to shut it for privacy because traffic was a rarity. The nearest neighbors (two of them) were at least a mile away. One of them drove a wagon to town. He could be heard coming long before he got there. The other went to work early and came home late. Perfect.

Although he didn’t need to be, Max may have been a little worried about what I was thinking, so he quickly said, Come spring we’ll fix all this. And we did.

The winter came early, but we were snug in our three rooms. We both painted half the night and listened to Oklahoma radio stations. We didn’t have many material things and we didn’t need them. Life was beautifully uncomplicated. It was a terrific winter.

Spring came. We bought enough adobes and other supplies to build what we had planned all winter. Then we made a trip to Des Moines (New Mexico), to pick up Max’s old friend, Luz Martinez, to help us. Luz was a struggling artist who welcomed the opportunity to come to Taos. He later became very well known for his handmade furniture and wood carvings. He was a wonderful addition to our family. He lived in the guest house and cooked the best chile in the state and he taught me how to make it, eventually. We’re all forever grateful.

Max hired two expert adobe layers and the place was up and plastered in short order. We had a new bathroom, bedroom and a really nice-sized living room. Although my cooking skills were non-existent, I got a modern, all-electric kitchen in one of the older rooms. The outside and the new inside part was cement stucco, but we left the smooth mud plaster in the old part as it was, which proved to be a problem later on.

The next problem was no furniture for our new house and money was very short, but Max took care of it. One of the neighbors, Tony, and his wife, owned a gorgeous Thoroughbred horse. Tony really wanted a portrait of that horse but couldn’t afford it. Lucky us. He loved to build furniture and Max loved to paint horses. A trade was made. Our living room soon had a beautiful, big sofa, a coffee table, an armchair with matching footstool and Tony had a fine portrait of his beloved horse. We all became the closest of friends. We would pool our empty pop bottles, collect the deposit on them and the four of us would go to the movies. We were that kind of friends. It all stopped when they were going to have a baby and sadly moved to Texas.

Woody Crumbo, the Pottawatomie Indian painter, filled our lives from the beginning. He became an almost daily visitor. He and Max rode their horses up on the mesa, he helped us with our art work, Max read his tea leaves, and we had a bundle of adventures together. Then Max and Woody accidentally got into the mining business. What a different world for all of us. It was both good and bad. Mostly good, I guess, Always fascinating, but a big change in all our lives.

Soon another big change happened just after our fifth year of marriage in October. We had twin girls, Charlotte and Sheryl. Babies need a lot of things. A million diapers for one thing. There were no disposable diapers. I did have a washing machine, but the freezing weather meant drying most of those clean diapers on lines across the living room. We hated it. But Max took care of it. A new washer and dryer were installed, but now our faithful water well wouldn’t supply enough water. A new one was drilled and it happened to be an artesian well. Two pumps were needed – a regular one and a sump pump to get rid of the overflow in the pump house. Would it never end? This attempt to be modern in the country was very complicated.

The mining business had taken on major advancements. Max slowly began bringing home special rock samples from everywhere. He started putting them in a far corner of the living room. It seemed harmless enough at first, but soon, the piles spread toward the middle of the rather large room. I couldn’t keep the girls, who were crawling now, away from the rocks. Something had to be done. I said, The rocks have to go! Max took care of it. The samples vanished almost as quickly as the first ones had begun.

The babies started walking. This meant they would need a safe place to play outside. There was a main irrigation ditch that was always full of water along the west side of our property that was a major danger and the horses and cattle were right there. The livestock couldn’t get out of the pasture but the girls could get into it. Max took care of it. He and a couple of guys built a six-foot cyclone fence around the back and side of the house that would have held a stampeding buffalo herd. They dug it all up and planted the healthiest grass lawn in Taos. Everyone was safe,