By SHERRY ROBINSON
All She Wrote
© 2023 New Mexico News Services
July 4, 1946, was the first Independence Day after the end of World War II. Because a lot of events were canceled during the war years, the nation was just starting to return to normal. In some ways 1946 bears a resemblance to this year, when some activities came back to life post-COVID.
With the war’s end there was jubilation and relief, but the military was still reporting losses. That July 4, the Navy Department published a list of 231 New Mexicans known dead and missing for the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard. First on the list was Jacob David Alire, of Española.
In pre-war New Mexico every community of any size had a Fourth of July rodeo, but in 1946, the number of rodeos around the state was less than half the pre-Pearl Harbor levels, one newspaper reported. A handful of communities held rodeos – Silver City, Magdalena, Capitan, Clovis, Albuquerque, Gallup and Mescalero.
Magdalena, west of Socorro, had a four-day celebration with a parade, rodeo and horse races. “Beauty won’t be the determining factor to the cowhands when they choose their rodeo queen,” wrote a correspondent. “The men of the saddle want their queen to be singled out on horsemanship alone.”
McGaffey, now a ghost town but then a mountain community, revived its rodeo after a three-year shutdown, but the McGaffey Rodeo Association held its event in nearby Gallup because of fire danger in the Zuni Mountains. The Albuquerque Journal reported somewhat breathlessly that Navajos would participate in the rodeo. The Journal also seemed a bit surprised that “at Mescalero the Apaches run everything.” Mescalero that year had a rodeo and baseball games.
Baseball was a centerpiece of several celebrations. In Albuquerque the Dukes were playing a doubleheader against the Lubbock Hubbers at Tingley Field, located in the Barelas neighborhood. And Clovis was hosting a much anticipated game between the Clovis Pioneers and the Amarillo Gold Sox.
Albuquerque also had stock car races and a golf tournament but no fireworks because of dry conditions. And the Conservancy Beach, later called Tingley Beach, was closed because of contaminated water.
In Carlsbad locals looked forward to the fireworks display on hiatus since 1942. The town’s fire department took on the responsibility, but they had to raise $500 (yes, two zeros) to cover the cost. Spectators watched from the beach and park on the west side of the Pecos River, while the fireworks were on the east side.
For many years after the American Revolution, Independence Day was commemorated with patriotic speeches. Long speeches. In time this tradition faded, but not in the town of Bernalillo in 1946. There the local Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4243 staged an old fashioned program with patriotic speeches, a baseball game between the Sandia Air Base team and the VFW team, a dance, and a parade featuring VFW members in uniform, the sawmill workers union 2864, and the Spanish Mutual Protection Society.
Those who wanted to get out of town now had that option because gas rationing and limitations on travel ended. Anglers could return to their favorite fishing streams in distant mountains, but they couldn’t light fireworks because the national forests were too dry.
New Mexicans welcomed a return to normal on July 4, 1946, but they knew they and the nation would never be the same. The Albuquerque Journal editorialized: “With the war over, we have the task of preserving our form of government, and working to secure the peace of the world, and the freedom of other people saved from dictators who sought to conquer them. We should rededicate ourselves to these tasks.”
Post-war, it was a new world. Post-pandemic, we’re also forever changed.
