OTOWI BRIDGE the Story of Edith Warner and Los Alamos

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OTOWI BRIDGE the Story of Edith Warner and Los Alamos New Mexico Quarterly Volume 28 | Issue 2 Article 1 1958 Full Issue University of New Mexico Press Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq Recommended Citation University of New Mexico Press. "Full Issue." New Mexico Quarterly 28, 2 (1958). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/vol28/iss2/ 1 This Full Issue is brought to you for free and open access by the University of New Mexico Press at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in New Mexico Quarterly by an authorized editor of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. -~-"--~....--------------~~ : Full Issue r- I THE HOUSE AT OTOWI BRIDGE The Story of Edith Warner and Los Alamos r PEGGY POND CHURCH WATER LAW INSTITUTIONS 6 THE COMMUNITY ROBERT "EMMET CLARK STORIES - POEfvlS - BOOK REVIEWS 75 CENTS] Published by UNM Digital Repository, 1958 1 New Mexico Quarterly, Vol. 28 [1958], Iss. 2, Art. 1 N~MEXI<D QUAtt1EltLy PUB-LISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO ROLAND DICKEY, Editor CAROLYN ADAm, Managing Editor RAMONA MAHER MARTINEZ, Book Review Editor CLIFFORD WOOD, Poetry Editor Advisory Committee: GEORGE ARMs, LEZ HAAS, LINCOLN LAPAZ, WILLIAM J. PARISH, PAUL WALTER, JR., DUDLEY WYNN COPYRIGHT, 1959, BY THE UNIVERSITY UNSOLICITED MANUSCRIPTS NOT ACCOM­ OF NEW MEXICO PRESS, ALBUQUERQUE. PANIED BY SELF-ADDRESSED ENVELOPE AND PUBLISHED QUARTERLY: SPRING, SUM­ POSTAGE CANNOT BE RETURNED. MER, AUTUMN, AND WINTER. COMPOSED, U. S. DEALER'S DISTRIBUTOR: SELECTED PRINTED AND BOUND IN THE U.SA. AT THE OUTLETS, 102 BEVERLY ROAD, BLOOM­ UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO PRINTING FIELD, NEW JERSEY. PLANT. ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER SUBSCRIPTIONS: $3.00 A YEAR; $5.50 FEBRUARY 6, 1931, AT THE POST OFFICE FOR TWO YEARS; $7.50 FOR THREE YEARS. AT ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO, UNDER SINGLE COpy 75 .CENTS. BACK ISSUES, $1.00 THE ACT OF MARCH 3, 1879. EACH. FOREIGN SUBSCRIPTIONS, $3.00 PER OPINIONS EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED BY YEAR, POSTPAID. CONTRIBUTORS DO NOT NECESSARILY RE­ ADDRESS: New Mexico Quarterly FLECT THE VIEWS OF THE EDITORS OR OF UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO PRESS THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO. ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO, U.S.A. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/vol28/iss2/1 2 : Full Issue COLOPHON is a Greek word meaning "finishing stroke, or summit," and came to be applied to the signature and date placed by a scribe at the end of a manuscript. Today it de­ To BECOME CURRENT, a long-standing notes the emblem use~ by a publish­ need created by smallness of staff and er as a kind of trademark. Ramona accumulated problems, NMQ in this Maher Martinez, our book review issue combines three numbers of editor has gathered colophons of uni­ Volume XXVIII. This is a purely versity presses, along with the story mathematical move designed to re­ of each, and these are presented in a lease the present issue during the series to be continued in future num­ winter season, and to publish the bers of NMQ. next number, Spring, in springtime. The University of Michigan Press In our subscription records, the pres­ has issued the original Russian text ent issue will count as a single num­ of Doctor Zhiva·go, still withheld ber (not as three), and our subscrib­ in the U.S.S.R., and the first printing ers will receive the full quota of mag­ has sold out in advance of publica­ azines to which they are entitled. tion. The English translation of Pas­ ternak's Nobel Prize novel, pub­ NMQ's FIRST booklength article, lished by Pantheon, has sold half a The House at Otowi Bridge, a re­ million copies. markable document by Peggy Pond Church, begins on page 115. It tells THE NEXT ISSUE will feature an essay a story of Los Alamos, before, dur­ by Erna Fergusson on Our Modern ing and after it became a fierce sym­ Indians, which raises, with support­ bol to the world. But, in this account, ing evidence, the question of whether Los Alamos (which means "cotton­ the Indim-is not more modem than woods" and was once one·of the the white man. The article is based quietest places in a quiet New Mex­ on material she delivered at the ico) is relegated to its proper place U.N.M. "Lectures Under the Stars," as a stage setting for the drama of plus new .data. Few people know human events. Los Alamos as the Southwestern Indians better than atomic city. is background for only a Miss Fergusson, who has been in few small scenes, whereas the mag­ friendly contact with them all her nificent Pajarito Plateau, and the old life, and has written Dancing Gods Pueblo of San Ildefonso, dominate and other books which bring under- _ the stage like a Bel Geddes set. standing of the red man. Published by UNM Digital Repository, 1958 3 New Mexico Quarterly, Vol. 28 [1958], Iss. 2, Art. 1 Content$ ARTICLES 97 Water Law Institutions and the Community. ROBERT EM~IET CLARK. 115 The House at Otowi Bridge, The Story of Edith Warner. PEGGY POND CHURCH. STORIES 85 Europa and the Author. ELIZABETH LANGHORNE. 106 Those That Trespass. GLEN Ross. VERSE 91 The Asterisk. MARVIN SOLOMON. 92 Epitaph. MARVIN SOLOMON. 92 The Hyena. MARVIN SOLOMON. 93 Monte Cristo. JOAN ANGEVINE SWIFT. 94 A Dedication. WILLIAM STAFFORD: 95 Action. WILLIAM STAFFORD. 96 This Much I Know AboutTime. ELIZABETH BARTLETT. 113 A Character. W. D. S~ODGRASS. 165 Many Decembers. CLOYD CRISWELL. DEPARTI"IENTS 82 Editorial. 171 Book Reviews and University Press Colophons. 206 Poets in this Issue. Biographical notes. ILLUSTRATIONS Cover and pages 81, 115, 12 5, 136, 149, 154, 162, drawings from the Otowi area. CONNIE Fox BOYD. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/nmq/vol28/iss2/1 4 : Full Issue 85 parent-child relations in a literary world ELIZABETH LANGHORNE Europa and T~e Author The famous, the distinguished, author wore khaki pants and a faded blue shirt open at the neck. His hair was gray, his eyes black and his face thin and tense; a face usually, but not always, good natured. He was engaged in cutting a lawn that was, if possible, a little more in­ formal than he was. At fifty he carried only the slightest paunch, but on the upgrades he panted a little. On the last upgrade he stopped the mower and stood for a moment regarding his daughter Phyllis, who lolled on the long gallery that ran the length of the old fashioned house. She was dressed in clothes much like his own, but with an in­ definable neatness about her that she certainly didn't get from him: Her hair was blonde, brushed to a lovely clean shine. He thought for a moment of hollering at her. Hump yourself out of that hammock and get the rake. He might even let her use the mower a little and get hot like he was. But he .observed that she was reading. If they have a mind, he thought, you have to let them use it. As a child, he knew, she had had a good one. Quick, impressionable, and thank God, not sensitive. But now she was fifteen and for the last .two or three years she had clammed up. He was able, now, to send her to a very good school. She had been carefully brpught up by her mother. She was dean, good mannered and obedient, and that was about all he knew. For the last two or three years Richard Cunningham himself had lived in a storm of Writing, producing the best of his at long last enormously successful novels. His relations with his daughter had been casual, almost non-existent. Naturally an easy tempered man he had Married, with three children, Elizabeth Langhorne lives on a large dairy farm in Scottsville, Virginia. She has publisljed articles, and was at one time a regular contributor to the Junior League Magazine, "a real boon to amateur writers." The Virginia Churchman publislled the script tor her "Pageant for Epiphany," in verse. Published by UNM Digital Repository, 1958 5 New Mexico Quarterly, Vol. 28 [1958], Iss. 2, Art. 1 86 Elizabeth Langhorne N.M.Q. inherited a conviction, and a tradition, from his own father: children and dogs obeyed you instantly, or they weren't"Worth a damn. On the few occasions of her childhood when Phyllis had disobeyed him to his face he had slapped her, hard enough so that it had not happened often. If he had called her now, for instance, she would have come at once, and with a good grace. But it wouldn't be through fear, he thought, just by habit originally induced through fear, which is the correct distinction. He walked .over and sat down on the broad shallow steps, taking a cigarette from his pocket without removing the pack. "Whatare you reading?" She looked at him from limpid gray eyes. "My homework." It,was a reasonable answer, but she seemed to him oddly conscious of some­ thing outside the reasonableness. "All right. Your homework." He felt for his matches. "What is it?" "Daddy, are young girls bad?" He stopped with a match half o'JIt. "Are young girls bad?" he said. "It doesn't make sense. Young girls are bad, middle-aged men, old women are bad. Everybody's bad. But," he struck his match, "most of them have it under control." ~ "But you say, it says here, tli'at girls are bad with01.~t even knowing it, so of course they don't have it under control." "What is that book?" He sprang up and turned it over; she, almost, holding it out to him: The Col1ected Short Stories of Richard Cunningham.
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