Roma in the old truck, date unknown, image
© 2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
Look at her smile.
I knew her smiles. I saw her dimples and I saw her straight teeth, and I saw the dance in her eyes, but I never saw the smile she’s wearing in that photo.
That is the smile of a woman in love. An adoring smile. Look at it.
That is the smile that tells me Roma was a woman and a lover and a friend before she ever became my grandmother.
My Aunt Sophie, the oldest of my grandmother’s children, wrote an essay about her mother. The following are excerpts taken from that piece.
Roma was my mother. I wonder what my grandparents were thinking when they named her Roma. Her family called her Romey, her friends called her Romana, and close friends and relatives called her Romanita.
Her birthday was February 28, 1904. A very special date to be born. It was the day before Leap Year. I can verify that she was special. She was beautiful, she was romantic and adventuresome…She loved deeply, and others loved her because of her friendliness and her ability to reach out to others. She was born of an era when being poor was fashionable; a time when adults told stories to children about caves, trains, owls, witches and demons; it was one way of keeping the children at home in the evenings. Roma was a wonderful story teller. She loved to make up stories and songs and dance and laugh, all in that order.
I like to think about who Roma was before she became a grandmother. She grew up in the mining camps of northeastern New Mexico. She went to public schools with the children of immigrants from Italy, Romania, and Yugoslavia.
She was 16 when she married, a handsome New Mexican who was killed in one of the state’s worst mining accidents. At the age of 18, Roma became a widow with two children, the youngest not even a month old. Then she met my grandfather.
Mom told us about the songs her mother sang, songs she learned in school. Aunt Sophie remembered them, too:
When we were children, Roma sang us songs using the sounds of her childhood. The words did not make much sense, but the melodies live in us to this day.
Hanti-Nanche tu ti maja, mata tu san ches san a ma way.
Another song, a blend of English and Spanish, went like this: Cuando estaba chiquitita me decía me mamá, Pretty Baby, Pretty Baby.
I always wonder who took that picture of her in the truck. How old was she? It’s hard to tell. I imagine it was my grandfather, her second husband. Everyone called him Sandy, even his kids. He was a cowboy.
They lived on a ranch, seven miles from school and Cimarron, the real Wild West. Where pavement ends and Hell begins.
One last thought from Sophie:
I always enjoyed looking at my mother’s profile when I was working with her at some project. She had an abundance of rich, black hair, and depending on what she wore, her eyes were sometimes green and sometimes blue and she had this mischievous smile. Sometimes I wondered what she was thinking, and I wondered too why a woman of this beauty would be living out here where only the cattle roam.
-related to posts PRACTICE: My Grandmother – 15min and WRITING TOPIC — GRANDMOTHERS
Beautiful tribute to your grandmother, ybonesy. I love the old photographs and the inclusion of the excerpts from your Aunt Sophie’s essay. She talks about your grandmother’s eyes, just the way you do in your Writing Practice about her. Even with the black and white photographs, you can see how striking her eyes are, the kind of eyes you don’t forget.
Roma seems like she was a strong woman, too, growing up in the western United States wasn’t easy back then, especially for women.
You know what else struck me when I opened red Ravine this morning and looked at that first photograph? It looks almost exactly like a photograph I took of you in Taos. It was in the dining room at Mabel’s a few years ago near the end of a writing retreat and you turned around and smiled at the moment I took the photograph. You have Roma’s beautiful smile. 8)
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A lovely, lovely piece………she was a beautiful woman and sounds talented to boot.
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Thanks, Jo and QM.
I’ve spent more time re-reading my Aunt Sophie’s essays. She wrote about her father, “Sandy.” He was Romey’s husband, my grandfather. He revered Billy the Kid, apparently, but also told stories about Kit Carson and Lucien Maxwell and all the people of that Wild West area.
And the whole family played music. The seven kids were their very own band, practicing every day on the porch.
Roma was a strong woman, QM. She was a hard worker and a great mother. Like my own mom, she had her husband cook breakfast for the kids every morning. Both women were unconventional in that they insisted their husbands take on some of the traditional motherly roles. And even a macho man like my grandfather had an equal (for those days) footing to his wife (or, vice versa).
BTW, I noticed on the back of the photo of Roma in the truck that there is a faint stamp. 28, it says. I wonder if the photo was taken in 1928, which would have put her age at 24. Seems about right.
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BTW, QM, that is so cool about your recognizing my grandmother’s smile in me. That really made me happy to read. Thanks. 8)
My aunt included another photo of Grandma in her booklet of essays, in the back. It’s a photo I remember and love and have to see if I can get a copy of. It’s Roma on a white horse. The photo is fairly close up and the horse and Grandma are facing the camera head-on. The horse’s eye has a wild look in it, probably because of the fact that it’s staring into a camera. And Grandma is dressed so cool, a dark wide-brimmed floppy hat, kind of a cross between a cowboy hat and a summer sun hat. She has on a blouse and skirt, and she’s sitting side saddle with lace up boots that appear to go way up her leg. The boots have a high heel on them.
The hat creates a shadow over one of Grandma’s eyes, but you can see her other clearly. She’s smiling and looking directly at the camera.
Really great shot. When I see it, I think, That’s my grandmother?! But then, knowing her, it is her. It gives me insight into her personality, who she was.
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When I saw the pickup photo, I almost expected to see Georgia O’Keeffe zipping by on a scooter. Whenever I land at the Albuquerque airport, I always look for that large photo of Georgia on the back of a motorcycle; do you know the one I’m talking about?
Maybe your grandma is smiling in the picture about something Georgia just yelled at her from the motorbike.
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I know exactly which one you’re talking about. Hey, who is driving the scooter? It must be someone famous, don’t you think? I couldn’t imagine Stieglitz driving it, could you? In some bizarre mix-up that my mind has done with time and place, I always picture Dennis Hopper driving it. Ha!
Yeah, it’s that kind of a photo. The big sky and the mountains in the background. And that old truck. A great old truck. I think it was dark green, but again, that’s just my imagination filling in for what’s I don’t know for sure.
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ybonesy, yes, that age does sound about right. I’ve often noticed inky numbers on the back of old black and white photographs but haven’t quite figured out a reference system for them yet either. I am so grateful when I see an old photograph with the date clearly stamped into the white border on the front. I think that was a 50’s thing and it’s so helpful with the archiving.
Everything you say about your grandmother totally fits the photographs of her. Roma on a white horse — love to see that photograph sometime!
ybonesy, have you told your daughter who loves horses about the photograph of Roma on the white horse?
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Teri, oh my gosh, I can’t believe you mentioned that Georgia O’Keeffe photograph of her on the motorcycle because that’s the exact same thought I had when I first saw this photograph (after ybonesy having her grandmother’s smile).
ybonesy, your Grandmother Roma looks a little like Georgia O’Keeffe, too, in that first photograph. I’ve never been able to figure out who the driver is on the motorcycle with Georgia O’Keeffe. But I’d sure like to know. Wasn’t it taken in the 1940’s? I’m trying to remember.
The first time I saw that photograph of O’Keeffe, it was plastered in the window of a storefront on the walk from the Taos Plaza to the Mabel Dodge Luhan House. I just fell in love with it. O’Keeffe had that unconventional spirit, too. She was a rebel all the way.
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I’m certain the man on the motorcycle was one of the famous dudes from that period–D.H. Lawrence, perhaps?
I love the pickup, dent and all. Grandma Roma certainly thinks it’s the cat’s pajamas.
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QM, No, I haven’t told Dee about the horse photo. I had forgotten about it, but last night I stayed up until past midnight re-reading my aunt’s essays. I had tucked away her book—she put it together a few years after a family reunion we held back in Cimarron in August 2001. I got my copy in 2004. Anyhow, as I said, I’d seen the photo and then forgot all about it. Last night I flipped to the back of Sophie’s booklet and there with several other photos was the one of Romey. It’s a photocopy of probably a photocopy, and the quality is not good. I think I’ve either seen the original or a good print of it; my mom might have the printed copy of the original.
Anyway, I will show Dee. Of course, we’ve always told her that her great-grandfather was a cowboy. Funny, in riding you either ride English or Western. Many young girls, in fact the majority that I’ve ever met in horse shows, opt for English. Not Dee. She’ll have nothing to do with it. She’s Western all the way, and I know that is the influence of her knowing about her grandfather and the fact that he was cowboy who also rode a Quarter Horse. Even Dee’s horse, Dooley, is a former working ranch cattle horse.
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Oh, my goodness, hard to imagine D.H Lawrence having that much fun. I always picture him as such a curmudgeon. Isn’t that a fun old word – curmudgeon?
I guess it could be him though. I remember the man on the motorcycle has kind of a mischievous smile, too. They are having a good time. 8)
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It’s so cool, QM and Teri, to think that Romey invoked the image of Georgia on the motorcycle. That’s just the coolest!
Hey, I just called the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe and asked about the photo of Georgia on the back of the motorcycle. It was taken in 1944, and the driver of the motorcycle was an artist named Maurice Grosser. He was visiting Ghost Ranch at that time. I forgot to ask who took the photo. I did find out that the motorcycle was a 1938 Harley Davidson Knucklehead. I should have asked who it belonged to. I’ll see what I can find about Maurice Grosser.
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This is so fun! OK, photographer and writer Maria Chabot took the photo of O’Keeffe on the motorcycle, which belonged to Grosser. There was an exhibit of Chabot’s photos of O’Keeffe in 2004 at the O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe: Moments in Time: Photographs by Maria Chabot [LINK]. Here is an excerpt about Chabot’s photos, including that one:
…
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ybonesy, I’m completely overjoyed to have that information about writer and photographer Maria Chabot, painter Maurice Grossner, and Georgia O’Keeffe. I had not known about Chabot. I just read the link you provided and am drooling over that exhibit at the OKeeffe Musuem in 2004. I wish I would have seen it! And Maria Chabot and Georgia wrote over 700 letters back and forth to each other. Isn’t that amazing? It reminds me of Flannery O’Connor and her friend A. or Betty Hester.
I love this blurb about Maria Chabot:
When Maria Chabot met Georgia O’Keeffe in Northern New Mexico in 1940, Chabot was an unknown but aspiring writer, and O’Keeffe was one of America’s best-known artists. For four summers, beginning in 1941, Chabot lived with and assisted O’Keeffe at the artist’s Ghost Ranch house. By 1945, Chabot had begun living from late spring to fall at Los Luceros, the ranch near Alcalde that was owned by her friend, Mary Wheelwright, which she would oversee for many years. But between 1946 and 1949 she also took on the restoration of the ruined adobe house and garden that O’Keeffe purchased in the village of Abiquiu in 1945.
They also went on camping/painting trips together which were documented along with the restoration. I’m so happy to know about this photographer. I now want to buy the book from the exhibition — Maria Chabot/Georgia O’Keeffe: Correspondence, 1941-1949. According to your link, it includes 680 letters and is illustrated with 60 photographs that were made by Chabot and well-known photographers, including Ansel Adams, John Candelario, and Laura Gilpin. I’m adding it to my Christmas list. 8)
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Good idea, QM. It would make a great gift. I’m going to do the same.
Isn’t that amazing: 680 letters!
Yeah, this also piqued my interest about Maria Chabot. Can you imagine?
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ybonesy, I had to do a little research on Maria Chabot. Interesting woman, a humanitarian, too. I guess in the 1930’s she helped to start the Indian markets on the Plaza in Santa Fe so these artists could be fairly compensated. She was also an advocate. I really want to read the book of letters now and see the photographs. The tie to O’Keeffe seems to hold a little intrigue, too. Perhaps a one-sided one. But I’m not convinced until I read the letters. Sigh. A project that may have to come at another time. 8)
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Wow!
This post has become a wealth of information about that famous photo now. It makes me want to buy a print.
QM, I think it’s funny you called D.H. a curmudgeon. Why so many swooning women for him, then? They liked the tortured, dark, unavailable type? Georgia probably couldn’t be bothered. She had skulls to collect and motorcycles to ride.
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YB – Your grandma looks so lovely and hip and ahead of her time. I think my grandma was ahead of her time too. I think it is so funny and so cool that you and Jim still say pe-o-ple. I say it too and think of my grandma and smile when I say it. Spanish was her first language and when she was learning English, as a young girl, she thought that the word “people” was pronounced pe-o-ple (where the ‘e’s are short vowels.) She had a great sense of humor and her house and the light in it was so magnificent. I could not get enough of it. I miss it so very much to this day. The house was like a family member that belonged to not only my grandmother but my Aunts, Uncles and all of my cousins. We all belonged there equally. What a house! What grandmothers we had que no?
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Thanks, Neece. Do you have any old photos of your grandma. What was her name?
Hey, Jim and I also say “sa-le” (two syllables, second syllable pronounced like lay)…we’re silly pe-o-ple. 8)
Oh, I hated when that house went on the market. Wasn’t it sold for like $1M!? Santa Fe. It’s so expensive there, and all the old families have been priced out. Do you ever go by there? I haven’t. I should next time I’m in town, but that would probably be sad. Better to remember it how it was.
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My grandma’s name was Suzanna Trujillo-Lucero. But everyone called her Susie (the second ‘s’ has an s-sound not a z-sound.) I have one picture of here when she earned her nursing license back in the 40s.
The house went on the market again and was selling for about $900,000. A friend of mine and I went to check the house out last October and the people who manage the house were there cleaning. They let us go in! It was soooo cool! But you would not recognize the house. They changed the interior completely. My grandmother’s kitchen is now a bedroom. It is a beautiful house but completely changed. Except, the Vigas are the same and the hardwood floors are the same. These took me back to the good ole’ days. My friend is a professional photographer and he took many pictures of it for me. I’m going to ask him if it’s ok to send some of them to you. N
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I *love* the name Suzanna. A good artist friend of mine has that name. Especially when you pronounce it in Spanish, it just rolls off the tongue.
Oh, Neece, please do see if you can send me those photos. I would love to see the interior of the house. I still remember, you walked into the living room, right?, and the kitchen beyond it.
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Starting another comment with ‘I love’. I love, i love, i love your family stories. What wonderful pictures, evocative… both of them. It was a privilege to know this Roma a little with words- (you set a good precedent in that regard).
Also, was listening to the Bell X1 song called ‘Amelia’ while I read this, and it was a perfect backdrop. The song is about Amelia Earhart, and speculates about what she was thinking as she turned to Fred Noonan before the plane crashed down. Went almost magically with the writers speculation on regarding her mother’s profile… wondering what she was thinking about.
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p.s., Neecy, about Suzie (pronounced with an “s” sound, not a “z” sound)…reminds me of how you say “Jee-ssuss.” 8)
Thanks, amuirin. Hey, btw, speaking of Amelia, QM’s mother’s name is Amelia. That’s a wonderful name. It’s pretty in Spanish, too. The e is softer, like eh. And the ia is like “yah”. So, A-mel-yah.
I want to hear that song. I wonder, too, what she was thinking and what she might have said to Fred or vice versa.
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yb, I love the last picture almost like a publicity shot for a silent movie star. She was a beautiful woman.
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Thanks, Bob. Yes, there is something silent movie-like about it.
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[…] I picked this one because a) a friend told me it was a great event with loads of people coming through it, and b) it sounded like something I’d want to attend on a Sunday in the beautiful Albuquerque fall. It’s downtown in a narrow strip of a park, walking distance to Java Joe’s and the old Fedways where Mom used to shop when I was a kid, the old Paris Shoes, and a dress shop that made what we called Fiesta dresses. (I have two vintage dresses, one from my grandmother.) […]
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I am very curious about Maria Chabot. Chabot isn’t a common name, but it isn’t as rare as I thought it was, when I was a child. My ex-husband lives in a small town in Arizona, that has a museum and Sarah Burt, was coming to town. He sent me an article about it because of Maria Chabot:
“Sarah Burt, the curator of American Western Art at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha. She’ll be taking a look at Georgia O’Keeffe’s home and studio in Abiquiu, N.M., Saturday (March 27) at 1 p.m. in the Sonoran Room at Rancho de los Caballeros. Abiquiu is a tiny Hispanic village located about 45 miles north of Santa Fe — certainly not the place where you’d expect to find the home of one of the icons of 20th century American art and one of the most sophisticated proponents of American modernism.”
Rancho de los Caballeros, is a dude ranch in Wickenburg, Arizona. It is where my exhusband and I met when we were in high school. His father was the landscape gardener and my father was the chef.
I was so curious about Maria Chabot, that I sent for her book—the correspondence book. Today, I decided to google her, again, and see if I could find out more about her.
She does look a lot like Georgia O’Keeffe. When looking at photos, I have a hard time telling them apart. Is Roma, the woman in the pickup truck, Maria? I have a hard time figuring that out…..following that.
I assume if Roma is Maria, then Maria is from New Mexico. Am I right? I was trying to figure out if I am related to her in any way. She was about the same age as my father—Hubert Chabot. He was from Monteral. We have Native herititage—Canadian Indian—Abneque (I always spell that wrong)…..from the southeastern part of Canada and northeastern US.
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Hi Helene, No, Roma is not Maria. Our comments took a turn as we were talking about how Roma (my grandmother) reminded a couple of friends of that photo of Georgia O’Keeffe where she’s on the back of a motorcycle. And that led us to look up who took the photo of Georgia, which led us to Maria Chabot.
So, looks like this Sarah Burt was just in Abiquiu this past weekend. Wow. That would have been interesting to go see when she was there.
I’m not sure where Maria is from, where she lived and where she was born. I haven’t read completely through our comment thread to see if anyone found that out. You might want to call the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe; they might have more information. It would be great to find out if you are related. Also cool that you grew up on a dude ranch. Curious if you plan to write about that experience some day?
Thanks for stopping by.
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Thank you for your quick reply. It had been so long since anyone wrote in this “thread”, I was afraid it was no longer open.
I had never thought about writing about my experiences living on dude ranches. But that is a great idea. We lived on three different ranches between the time I was 8 and 15. Summer ranches and Los Cab, which was a winter resort. The dude ranches we lived on were the expensive, fancy kind. Not working dude ranches.
Actully Sarah Burt was in Wickenburg, at the dude ranch this past weekend. I couldn’t figure out how she was visiting O’Keeffe’s home and studio while she was in Wickenburg. I thought it might be a mistake—I think she was actually there to talk about/lecture on the home and studio and talk about O’Keeffe and Chabot. I know Burt was in Wickenburg, not in Abiquiu. My ex-husband drove her to Phoenix to the airport on Sunday the 28th. The other thing I wondered is if that should have been two different sentences. That she was going to be in Wickenburg on the 27th at Los Cab and at Abiquiu on some other date. I found it extremely confusing.
I will contact the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, thanks for the idea. I thought I could find something out about her in Wikipedia, but they don’t seem to have anything. Maybe we need to send them something. Maybe you do—I don’t know enough, yet.
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My blog partner and I were just commenting the other day about how much we enjoy when a relatively old post gets a new comment and reopens our eyes to that post.
The dude ranches, even being the fancy type, sound so unusual as far as childhood experiences go. And one would imagine that the parents who choose to work in the dude ranch are likely unconventional, for their time especially.
My grandfather was a rancher, and he took wealthy Texans (usually) out for big game hunts on horse. He rode a horse every day, and he chopped off a few of his fingers by accident while slaughtering cattle. An amazing man.
Do you still go back to the dude ranch ever? I recall driving by Wickenburg or hearing about it (is it off I-40 on the road to CA?) but I’m not sure. I might be confusing it with Walsenburg.
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[…] the Dead was celebrated last week on November 2nd. I hope my lovely couple—fashioned after my grandmother and grandfather, although if he really were Grandpa, he’d be wearing jeans and a cowboy hat, […]
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I would love to talk more to Helene Chabot. I read the book of correspondence between Chabot and O’Keeffe and became intrigued with knowing more about the life of Maria Chabot. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of information about her. I emailed the O’Keeffe museum to see if they knew and was told that Chabot was an extremely private woman. She married once, briefly, very late in life and then divorced. Her father had been a diplomat or ambassador and she spent part of her youth in Mexico. I know she worked for a while in Europe. She inherited a large ranch from Mary Wheelwright or Wainwright there in New Mexico and the huge Indian artifact collection Mary owned. This was the basis for a native American museum in Santa Fe. And she was also very instrumental in working for the welfare of the Indians in that part of New Mexico.
I think she was a fascinating woman and would love to know more. Someone really should dig and dig and do a biography of her. I think she was important. She was known as the “Treasure of Santa Fe” at one time.
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Dee Dee, I’m so glad you stopped by and commented on this post. I reread all the comments and it’s so rich with information about Maria Chabot. I had not remembered that ybonesy called the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe to find out more about her. And then Helene Chabot stopped in with her comment. I was thrilled to learn more about this photographer. I agree, if someone has not already written it, the mystery of her life, even aside from how it touched that of O’Keeffe, would make a great biography. Thanks for adding the additional information on Chabot. It’s always fun when readers revive old posts and the conversations that spring from them!
Looks like you are doing well with your art in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. It’s a beautiful part of the country. I love your tiles! Hope you will stop by again.
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