Sine Die

"The past is never dead.  It isn't even past."  William Faulkner

In twitter time the Roundhouse legislative session is ancient history.  At the risk of sounding melancholic, I miss the time when last Saturday wasn't ages ago. If this was the nineteenth century, the legislators (all men) would still be drunk.

At the gavel banging Sine Die they would have emerged from the old capitol building into similar spring sunshine.  The capitol in those days was an ornate domed affair* with broad steps descending northward toward the Santa Fe River and the town.  From the steps speeches were delivered to assembled crowds and the Governor at the time may have spoken.  Legislators may have stopped to listen or snubbed the Guv and continued on to waiting carriages.

There'd be more hats and facial hair and less bathing. The scent of pomade, horse poop, cigar smoke and body odor would be on the wind and in the hotel bar.  La Fonda was precursor to the Rio Chama as primary legislative watering hole - a designation that endured well into the twentieth century. 

Fabian Chavez, in the book, Taking On Giants by David Roybal, describes a 1963 confrontation in La Fonda with a liquor industry lobbyist.  The powerful liquor lobby was like the oil and gas industry of the day. Chavez had attempted reform legislation that angered some.  (No telling if they stormed out of committee hearings en masse.)  The lobbyist got drunk and grabbed the Senator by the lapels saying, "I elected U.S. Senator Dennis Chavez.  I elected Senator Clinton P. Anderson, and I own the legislature.  I bought you a thousand times."

Fabian later said, "they thought that if they contributed to us, they owned us."

Ah, tradition!

*The capitol was later stripped of these embellishments and renamed for an unhappy war event.

Comments

[Michelle Meaders]

"The capitol was later stripped of these embellishments and renamed for an unhappy war event."

Please explain.

[Coco la Boca]

The 1900 silver-domed capitol was remodeled by Kruger and Associates  in 1950 into Territorial style.  It was named for the 1942 Bataan Death March in 1966 when the Roundhouse was completed.