Interviewed by Bev Krucek and Leila Gillette

Question:  Why did you come to Álamos?

Mr. Nuzum:  We were staying with friends from Tucson in Guaymas.  They told us that there was a pretty city that we should visit, so we drove down.  There was a two-lane highway to Navojoa.  After that the road was a dirt track, through water and brush, full of ruts.  We came in 1953.  The Tesoros was open then, and we would have liked to have stayed overnight--but our friends had to go back to Tucson, so we left.  We came back again as soon as we could.

    Jane McKinney’s house was still a ruin then.  It occupied a whole block.  (Now it contains three houses belonging to the McKinneys, Gerda, and the Michaels.)  There was no roof over the portals.  Paul Robinson bought it.  He ordered a swimming pool to be put in and wanted it six feet deep.  The builders thought he meant meters, so when he came back he found it to be over 18 feet deep.

    Clay Lockett wanted us to buy Marcor’s house.  Miss Marcor was Adolfo Bley’s cousin.  She was Bett’s Spanish teacher, but she preferred to speak English to improve her knowledge of the language.  She was a fine pianist.  She never married because she said all the men were drunks!

Question:  Were there many North Americans in Álamos?

Mr. Nuzum:  There were many people staying at the Tesoros.  Dolly and Bill Walsh were there.  They were from New York and bought the house at Molino #8.  He was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials after the War.  Dolly was very elegant.  Coats and ties were required at the Tesoros at dinner,k and ties were worn about town.

    We came from Tucson for visits.  We lived in Tucson for 25 years.  At one time we wanted to buy a house in Los Arcos in Tucson, but our offer was turned down--so we came and bought this house at Comercio #2.  It was a ruin.  Later we bought the back part of the house.  There was a nurse who lived in it, and we had a lot of trouble getting her to move away.

    Charles Hathaway was here, a complete curmudgeon, a very unpleasant man, very short tempered.  He was a graduate of Princeton University, and he felt that this conveyed a great distinction on him.  Charles showed movies in his house, on the patio.  Bill Walsh came to call on him one time with an invitation and was sent the message that Charles was resting and could not be disturbed.  Bill never spoke to him again.

    In those days everything centered around the Portales Hotel.  We went to the Portales nearly every evening to dance and have food sent in.  There was even a mariachi band!  The Portales had a telephone, Telephone #1.  When a call came in, they sent for the person to come and answer their call.  We would all go over there to the bar to make our telephone calls.

    Bill Alcorn ran the hotel.  They served meals and had all amenities.  Many of the employees had physical handicaps.  After Bill’s wife, Carmen, died, Eleanor Carroll ran the hotel for Bill.  She paid the bills, sat at the front desk, and took care of everything.  Eleanor had her own table at the restaurant, and no one sat there with her and Don McLain unless they were invited.  One time part of the roof fell down on Eleanor’s table.

    Polo was in charge of the hotel restaurant. Every Thursday they had a special dinner, and everyone in town came.  They stopped serving it because the cooks didn’t want to work that hard!

Question:  When did you buy your house?

Mr. Nuzum:  I don’t remember what year it was.  I remember we brought a tutor for our daughter, Cameron, and she stayed all summer.  It was very hot and uncomfortable.  We had no fans, no cooler.  Then Cameron went to the Convent School at the Bours house.  After that she went to the American school in Guadalajara.

    At first we rented the house on the arroyo Escondito, near the Sabino restaurant.  There was a little beggar woman who lived in a pile of rubble there.

    We brought down another tutor, Ann Stewart, from Seattle.  She started a school--she was a biologist and a splendid teacher.  Hugh Kyle taught Addie Bernard’s daughter and another Canadian girl their mathematics there.  They completed the study quickly, then they spent the rest of the year constructing a telescope.  Cameron was in the Eighth Grade.  They studied Shakespeare.  She was disappointed that they didn’t give a play.

    Another special guy was Bruce Heyton.  He lived in Santa Fe.  He was a real rancher, and his wife, Vivien, was born in Paris.  She was a painter, and she studied with Sra. Mary Careta.

    There was Walter Taylor, an anthropologist and archeologist.  He was in the orchid business--he imported orchids from all over.  He also taught at the University of Puebla.

    There was no industry here at that time.  There was always poverty here, but at that time there wasn’t robbery like there is now.

    When we restored the house , the contractor was Don Jacinto Urbulan.  We found a body in the back bedroom and bits of bones in other places.  The property might have been part of the churchyard at one time.  The house hadn’t been lived in for 50 years, and the floors and ceiling were in bad shape. 

   

    There was no electricity and no plumbing, and there was a 1/2” water pipe that was in the back building.  An American had lived there, and there was a horrid bathroom with only a hole in the floor.  There was a drain in the front of the patio where our fountain is now.  We moved it to the side.  In the street in front of the Tesoros the telephone wires were running in the sewer.

    At times we went to El Caracol.  Angel Cota’s sister, Mercy, cooked there.  She was very lovely and all the young men admired her. 

    We were talking about the beggar woman who lived near us when we rented.  One woman was called Nelita.  She probably was retarded.  The Mexicans said she lost her wits from reading too many books.  The children used to throw rocks at her to hear her scold them.  She lived in Tacubaya in a cardboard box.

    The other was a woman who lived in a ruin.  She would come begging for food.  She always asked for the handsome man who lived here!