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I was so excited and thrilled by all that was happening that I couldn't sleep on the train. Besides I was afraid they would forget to wake me and would take me right past Las Vegas while I slept. When we finally arrived, I saw a busy thriving city that appeared to be very large to me. All the trains were powered by coal then and Las Vegas was a Division Point on the Santa Fe Railroad which meant that crews were changed, cars were cleaned and new linen was put on board. Today Las Vegas is barely worth a short whistle from passing trains.
Montezuma had a bus to transport students to the campus from Las Vegas since it was five or six miles out. I was the only passenger on the day I arrived so I got the full attention of Charlie Wood the driver. We headed into the foothills west of Las Vegas and gradually climbed into the pine trees. At last I could see an enormous sandstone building on top of a hill beside the Gallinas River. The building had towers and turrets and a beautiful slate roof. We approached it up a winding road and stopped at the main entrance. There Dr Barrick, the President of Montezuma, came out to welcome me to the school which was an elementary, high school and college all combined under one roof. I had just arrived in Paradise and I never got over that feeling.
The original building was constructed in the 1880s by the Santa Fe Railroad and Fred Harvey. It was made of red sandstone and was four or five stories high. It was a very ornate hotel to start with. The lobby was lined with golden oak and the furniture was covered with brown leather. There was a huge fire place in the lobby and very heavy plate glass mirrors were placed in the walls in such way as to reflect the fire light. Guest rooms were large and had wonderful Parquet floors. It was a great setting for a boarding school. Only a complete idiot could fail to appreciate the beauty of Montezuma. After seventy years I am still thrilled by the memories of that place and by the people who ran it.
I am not going to write a blow by blow account of my days at Montezuma because my high school experiences were about like those of all other students. I took History and English and all the other "medicine" with more or less success. I played football, basketball and base ball with some average success. It was a great experience to play football in Plainview, Texas in one of the first night games ever played in this country. This was in 1930. Our team stayed in one of the first Hilton Hotels during the Cotton Carnival celebration in Plainview. As you know the Hilton Hotel chain expanded from its meager start in west Texas.
It was also a great experience to play in the New Mexico State Basketball Tournament in Santa Fe even though we were eliminated after one or two games. Santa Fe was a small Mexican town in those days with narrow winding streets and very colorful residents. The greatest traffic hazard was a donkey loaded with fire wood and there were many of them.
It is my opinion that the success of my school experience at Montezuma was due to my association with the faculty and students there. They were a wonderfully inspiring group of people who took time to give a hand to a very green and ignorant boy.
