I sat idly, a warm bowl of chile before me, in a small cafe in Vaughn, New Mexico, in the middle of December, waiting for an epiphany that wasn’t coming.  My brother was across from me, studying the slices of roast beef on his plate, unsure how much trust he should give an unseen cook in this small town.  I stirred my chile with my spoon, looking out the window at the town.  This place meant something to my family.  It was a small part of our family history, disproportionately small for the amount of attention it still received.  I had come to Vaughn to understand the town and the role it played in our lives, but I wasn’t breaking through.  I’d expected some sudden revelation, but all that had come to me so far was, “A good bowl of chile can be eaten with a fork.”

• COUNTY:  Guadalupe
• LOCATION:  In the middle of El Grande Nada
  
• NAME ORIGIN:  Named for railroad engineer Major Vaughn
  

    What my family should remember about moving from cold Vermont to warm New Mexico is this:  Dad telling us we were moving to Truth or Consequences, a small desert town that changed its name from Hot Springs as a publicity stunt for a TV game show; then rolling into T. or C. two months later in our blue Econoline van, just as the Fourth of July fireworks were zoning the town into sections of red, white, and blue; the air smelling of sparklers and sweet desert mesquite, scents that eagerly invited themselves into our virgin East-coast noses.  Or checking in at Travelers Lodge, no apostrophe, Cabin 10; my Dad unpacking, my brother and I standing in the motel driveway and watching the sky changing colors.  Or Mom, no doubt thinking our great cross-country leap of faith was full of more Consequence than Truth, slipping quietly into the bathroom to cry.

    But over time, the memories of that journey have somehow rearranged themselves in our heads. When we look back, it isn’t the fireworks that come first to mind, or the smells, or the missing apostrophe, or our first glimpses of that adobe-brown town with the funny name.  Memories have a pecking order all their own, and those images have been relegated to second place.

    First place, it seems, has been reserved for our breakdown in Vaughn.

    Each member of my family recalls something different from our breakdown.  Mom remembers the rancher who stopped alongside us on the highway, telling us that the town of Vaughn was “just up aways,” and promising to have a tow-truck come pick us up if we waited patiently in the ninety-degree heat.  (Air conditioning was not a standard feature in vans sold in Vermont.)  We sat quietly, not moving or talking, afraid that any disturbance of the air would push the heat around unnecessarily.  My brother remembers the one-armed mechanic who came shortly thereafter, towing the van and us along with it, into town.  I remember bugging my mother for a penny in the garage so I could get a gumball, then realizing with horror that the machine was stocked with only black pieces.  The garage was noisy with metal upon metal sounds, and the air felt oily, and I knew at age nine that it was these things that had turned the gumballs black.  My father remembers the mechanic saying “Your gas needs air” and fixing the van by simply loosening the gas cap.

    Our Vaughn experience lasted an hour at the most, but it was our first interaction with New Mexico.  Unfortunately, the experience was a negative one, and a bad feeling transferred onto the town and stuck.  We survived, of course, and the intervening twenty years have changed our lives significantly for the better.  We look back at our fear and laugh.  If we’d only known then how well things would turn out for us.  But our happy opinion of our home now does not extend to Vaughn.  It only takes a passing mention of Vaughn on the evening news, or an article in the paper, to make us all cringe and ask “Remember the time...?”

     Vaughn has teased us occasionally through the years.  My brother was trapped there in a snowstorm once coming home from college.  My parents, working at a catalog sales store in Truth or Consequences, often had to tell impatient customers that the delivery truck had been delayed en route from Vaughn, the town being somehow a hotspot for vehicle breakdowns.  Later, when my mother became a sheriff’s dispatcher in Las Cruces, she received reports on accidents and road conditions from the State Police dispatch in Vaughn.  I thought of the town whenever I tasted a black gumball.  Vaughn has hovered in our peripheral vision, raising its hand occasionally to remind us of the role it played in our odyssey.

    Why was Vaughn so insistent on sticking in our heads, when it evoked only negative feelings in us?  I wanted to know what made this place so persistent.  I wanted to find Vaughn.

    Most of the flat and featureless land around Vaughn -- a section of New Mexico my brother calls El Grande Nada -- is ranch or railroad land.  Vaughn began as a nameless stop on the Stinson cattle trail from Texas to the Estancia Valley in New Mexico in the 1880s.  Later, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad came to town, and with it a civil engineer named Major G.W. Vaughn, who left his legacy as a placename.  A post office opened in 1907.  Cattle and sheep ranching started early in the history of the town and continued today, the blue grama and buffalo grasses of the area making this ideal country for such work.

    About 1000 people lived in Vaughn.  Yet, I couldn't help feel that the arc-like curve of the road running through Vaughn felt like a comma in the highway, a place you come to, pause at briefly, then leave.  It didn’t make sense.  This was not the Vaughn that had worked its way into family legend.  I was missing something.  The real Vaughn was out there somewhere, maybe around the corner or past the feed lot, or left at the hardware store and down a block or two.  I looked out the cafe window, through the strands of green and silver garland and the sprayed-on snow misspelling  “FELIX NAVIDAD.”

    Or maybe, I thought, it’s closer.

    A dirt lot across the street reflected in the cafe window.  The foundations of an old building snaked around the inside edge of the lot, a few walls and rooms still intact.  From its hard-cornered U shape, it looked like it might once have been a motel.  An old sign marked the entrance to the lot, but I couldn’t angle myself well enough in my seat to read what it said.  We paid and left, and I steered the car out of the cafe parking lot and across the street. 

    From the front, the sign was even more intriguing.  Two metal posts rose about fifteen feet from a weed-covered cement base.  The left post canted at a slight angle.  At its top, it turned and crossed to the other post, the intersection forming an arrow that pointed the way to the building.  Soldered between the posts were two square metal frames which had once formed the face of the sign, the top frame a faded green and the bottom a mixture of pink paint and grey metal underneath.  Rusted sockets that had once held neon tubing spelled a word in each frame.

    IDEAL MOTEL. 

    I stepped out of the car to get some photographs.  The December air was chilly, a sharp contrast to the last time we had been here. I could see that the Ideal Motel’s come-on-in arsenal had once included a gas station in the courtyard, a nice way for the motel to tell its customers “I know this is just a one-night stand.  No hard feelings.”  The motel had probably done well in its early years, back when motels were little more than roadside campgrounds and life on the road was truly roughing-it.  The sign proved photogenic.  Its paint had decayed, but not its spirit -- still flagging down motorists with its now irrelevant boast.

    Looking at the sign was like looking at a previous year’s calendar -- both full of reminders significant only in the past-tense.  You could look at this sign and see only the past, just a rusted reminder of what used to be.  Or, I thought, you could see hope.  The sign was persistent, continuing to fulfill its mission long after the motel it advertised had vanished.  Posts now rusting, its arrow now pointing to an empty lot, the sign still managed to convey optimism, not irony. 

    In that faded optimism I suddenly found Vaughn.

    Vaughn was persistent in sticking to our memories because we had done it a disservice.  We were looking at it, unfairly, in the negative, seeing only the rusted reminder of what it meant to us and not the hope that existed here. To us, Vaughn was “the place we broke down.”  The truth is, Vaughn was “the place that helped us when we broke down.”  What if Vaughn hadn’t come to our rescue back then?  What would have happened to us in that heat?

    Vaughn was not the terrible place where my brother was stranded for three days in a snow storm.  It was the place he was lucky enough to drive into, that offered him food and drinks and comfortable warm sheets, so that he could weather the winter storm.  It wasn’t a hotspot for truck breakdowns, it was the friendly spot in the road where motorists in trouble could find their salvation.  This little town “just up aways” was the Clara Barton of Highway 60.

    We had misjudged Vaughn.  To even the score, it had decided to stick with us until we realized our mistake.  The proof of that was staring at me now, in faded green and pink and rusted metal.

    “Took you long enough,” the IDEAL MOTEL seemed to say.

    I nodded my respect to the sign.  It was unable to give up its past, but I could give up mine, and I vowed I would.  Vaughn and I were going to be good friends.