Editor’s Note:  The information below was taken by diaries which Emily has kept daily since her first visit to Álamos.

    Bill and I started looking for a home here on our “honeymoon” on New Year’s Day, of 1987.  We first made an offer on the vacant lot on Obregón, which was subsequently bought by Mary Ayers.  Our next offer was for the home of the Cranes, also on Obregón, now the home of Vicky and Peter Lockwood.  Our offer was declined by them, as well.

    Our criteria for purchase in those days were (1) something affordable--our budget was about $35,000, with $40,000 tops! (2) something close to the centro part of town since we had no transportation when we flew in, and (3) something for occasional use--a quick day or two here and there, as our aviation business would allow.

    We purchased our home at Calle Comercio #19 from Orion Tolton for $40,000 early in 1987.  We put Benny Anaya in charge of finishing some work on the house and major yard/patio work, and we moved in “officially” on Thanksgiving weekend, 1987.  Our total investment with improvements was $70,000.

    During the time work was being done, Veronica Deegan (Obregón #4) gave us a key to her house and allowed us to stay there whenever we were in town.  Veronica was that person who seemed to be in the “thick” of whatever was going on among the American contingent in Álamos at that time.  She would hurry to meet any newcomers or visitors and give them a sincere welcome, often bringing them to her home, Casa del Cisne, and showing them around.  I may still have a video tape somewhere of her during one of our subsequent Fly-Ins.  If I find it, I’ll make sure it gets into the History Association archives.

    We made multiple trips that summer of 1987 by airplane, loaded with items for the house, and stored them in an empty bedroom at Veronica’s home.  She was not there most of that summer, so we had the house to ourselves.  No hot water or AC, but with the ceiling fan above the bed in the back bedroom turning with the velocity of a turbo-prop, we managed to stay cool enough!

    For the first four years or so, we had no phone at the house.  Phone lines were limited, and so only became available if a house sold with a phone line already in place.  Phone calls could be placed from Polo’s restaurant, so one usually combined dinner at Polo’s with a call stateside!

In our particular case, we made our calls to check on our business, and to get much-needed weather information from those in the know up there prior to our flights out.  Weather could be drastically different along the route of the flight.  Most of our flights down here were “charter” flights organized our of our air charter service called Sky Cab.  We had the credentials to fly customers into and our of Mexico, and most of our clients were either hunters, fishermen, or residents of Álamos.

    So we had no phone until sometime in 1990, to my best recollection; shortly after that, maybe in 1991, a friend of ours in Scottsdale (AZ) started a business venture where the day’s satellite weather photo would be sent by FAX to those who subscribed.  This was a quantum leap in technology for us!  The phrase “one picture is worth a thousand words” had no truer meaning than being able to receive that one-page FAX on the morning of a departure flight from here.

    The next technological milestone came when we brought down a satellite antenna (one of the pre-historic eight-foot diameter ones!) in pieces inside the Citation jet in 1993.  That made CNN and the Weather Channel available on days when the reception was good.  Now we thought we were really on top of things!  We brought down our first computer in the 1990s for office work, record-keeping, and word processing capabilities, but we didn’t have internet until it became available just a few years ago.

    Bill and I were able to spend more extended periods of time here once we sold our various aviation businesses in 1994 and 1995 and finished our Airpark development project (in Scottsdale, AZ) in 1997. 

    This is just a brief summary of my recollections from our time here in Álamos.  I have five volumes of notes starting in 1988 up to the present.