Not so long ago and certainly not far away, little Ernie Martinez, the son of Horatio and Mary Lucy Martinez, posed in the middle of the open space between two of his family’s houses.  The photograph was lent to the Corrales Historical Society by Anthony Sanchez, a grandson of Horatio and Mary Lucy. The photo was probably taken in the early 1950s. The Sandias can be faintly seen in the background. 

Corrales in those years was still truly rural with small adobe homes spread thinly among fields and orchards.

The house on the left still stands along Francis Lane just south of west La Entrada near its intersection with Old Church Road. The home was probably made of terrones and was built by Abel Martinez sometime during the 1920s.  Mr. Martinez was unable to pay the taxes on the land, so his brother Felipe, Horatio’s father, bought the land from him.  

The house on the right  was primarily used for storage. Behind Ernie is “the Martinez strip,” land that ran from the river to the escarpment (sandhills) and lay just north of the new straw-bale post office. On the strip, the Martinez family raised a number of crops. In the ’20s, when the land belonged to Antonio Ignacio Martinez (Horacio’s grandfather), the fields supported a vineyard and wheat. The large open space beyond the fence on the right side of the picture belonged to Harvey and Annette Jones. I don’t know who owned the low, white house far in the right background.

Felipe Martinez and his wife Raquel Lucero Martinez were both born and raised in Corrales. Felipe was born in the 1890s and by that decade the Martinez family had lived in Corrales for most of the 19th century.  

Their son Horatio and his wife, Mary Lucy Tafoya Martinez, had eight children: Miguel, Ernest (pictured in the photo), George, Roseann, Michael, Phillip, Hazel and Dorella. Ernest and Miguel died young. Horatio, lived in Corrales all his 79 years until his death in 2005. After military service during World War II, he began work as a freight hauler for the Apex Trucking Company.  He also served as a Corrales constable in the 1950s  and later in that decade he was elected justice of the peace. In 1971, after Corrales was incorporated,  he was elected one of the first  members of the new Corrales Village Council and served until 1978.

An article about his death in the April 2005 Corrales Comment notes that Martinez “ran the justice of the peace from their home.”  His children remembered getting calls in the night from couples who wanted to be married right then and there. The article continues, “One bride showed up barefooted for the ceremony, explaining that she had just run away from her mother to take her wedding vows.” Martinez also often paid some of  the fines levied for minor crimes.  He made the culprit promise to pay him back when he —or she— could. 

Mary Lucy’s sister, Frances, recalled that she learned to drive in the car owned by her brother-in-law when he was constable. In a 2004  interview she remembered:  

“Lucy [her sister] used to sell Avon products and Oracio would go work out of town.  He was a truck driver.  He left his car there….  His car had a big siren thing on one of the fenders and all that stuff. Lucy  wanted me to take her to sell Avon. I didn’t even know how to drive.  I would see that they did down, up and down. That is how I learned how to drive, on my own, on his car.

“I would take her all around Corrales to sell Avon. Then later on we got so brave that we went all the way to Second Street selling Avon to people that she knew there. I don’t know how he found out and he said, ‘Let’s go to Bernalillo, you are going to get a license.  You can’t be driving without a license.’  And he took me to Bernalillo to get a driver’s license, that is how I learned how to drive. Nobody taught.  It was a ’49 Chevy, Fleet Line, that’s what it was.”

Sounds like Horatio was a pretty laid back individual, not reading his sister-in-law the riot act for taking his car, and then taking her to finally get a driver’s license!

The land in the photograph now supports at least 60 homes and two new roads: Mountain Shadows and Alamos Road. I wonder which home —if it’s still standing— is the low, white house  on the right. The sun seems to have been low in the southwest sky when this photo was taken and it has certainly set on the open fields that once covered this part of Corrales.