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Excerpts from Abe Peña's  popular publications

All material used with the kind permission of the author, given to me personally.

from VILLAGERS

"Adan Barela—the Sharpshooter

In the 1930s, Adan Barela was the best marble player in the village of San Mateo. He usually wound up with all the marbles.

Adan seemed to make shots from everywhere. In the game of marbles (La Bolita), he was the Tiger Woods of his day.

We grew up during the Depression, when money was scarce. We did not have many marbles. One time, my parents gave me a sack of 24 colorful marbles for Christmas. They were in a drawstring bag, and I recall being so thrilled with the gift that I took them to bed with me.

In our marble playing group were usually Rosalio Baca, Junion Michael, Sifredo Sandoval, and I. The game we preferred was 'La Rueda--the Circle,' drawing about a six-foot circle on the ground and knocking marbles out of the circle by shooting from outside the circle with another marble. A steely if possible. We were pretty good against each other, and held our own most of the time.

Adan heard about my new marbles and showed up at our game one day. After a while, we invited him to join us. Although we knew he could beat us, I think all of us thought, “By gosh, we might beat him.” For a while, it looked like one of us could take him.

In the end, it was like a slot machine in today's casinos. It lets you win a few coins, but finally that cold and noisy machine takes you to the cleaners. Needless to say, before the day was over, Adan wound up with all our marbles, including all my pretty ones. I only had one left, and it was the “steely.” It was a ball bearing taken from a truck bearing, and was very special.

One time, Adan invited me to his house and we climbed the staircase to the attic. In large crates, he had sacks full of marbles. It was a large and impressive collection.

Their house was in the center of the village and had a red gable roof in New Mexico Territorial style. His mother, doña Ciprianita, was a very gracious and beautiful woman. Others in the family were daughters Genoveva, Aniselsa, Espididion, Joséphine, and sons Alfredo and Nestor.

Many years later, I met Adan at a church retreat in the Gallup area and asked him, “Whatever happened to those marbles in the attic?” Smiling, he answered, “When Toby grew up, he found the cache up there and guess what? He lost them all!” Toby Michael was his nephew, the son of Joséphine Barela Michael and Mike Michael. Toby went on to study law, and has had a successful career in business and law, and served several terms in the state legislature.

Adan, besides his marble skills, was also a sharpshooter with a slingshot. In the fall of the year, when colder weather set in and the fleas were gone from rabbits, we hunted them for meat with slingshots. The sling was a forked stick with two bands of inner tube and a leather seat to launch the small rock.

A good place to hunt was down the arroyo that ran through the village. Rabbits had good cover in the brush and plenty of feed in nearby alfalfa fields. After an afternoon's hunt, Adan usually came home with a couple of cottontails tied to his belt. The rest of us came with one at best.

In a telephone conversation recently, I asked him when had he left San Mateo, and he said, “In 1944, during the Second World War, Sacarias Romero, Rosalio Baca, Dimas Garcia, and I volunteered for the Armed Forces and joined the Navy. I was 17 and a minor, and my mother signed for me; and Dimas was 16 and his mother did not want to sign for him because he was too young. However, Dimas was not to be stopped; he got a Navy registration form and told his mother it was a sugar ration form that would increase the lbs. of rationed sugar they got. She signed the form, and Dimas served his country with distinction. The ship he was assigned to was shot out from under them in the Pacific, and he was one of the survivors. Dimas died recently of natural causes in the San Rafael area.”

He continued, “Rosalio Baca and I remained together through basic training and were assigned to the same aircraft carrier in the Pacific, and came home together. We became very close friends. When my wife Rosalia died, he and Rafelita came to visit us.

“After the war, I stayed in Gallup where my sister Espididion and her husband Willie Montaño were living. My brother Nestor was also working and living there.

“I got a job at Fort Wingate Ordinance Depot and I continued dating my childhood sweetheart Rosalia Sandoval, whom many called Rose. She was also raised in San Mateo, and was the daughter of Ramona and Juan Francisco Sandoval, who had moved to Gallup during the war.

“We were married after I felt I had enough money to support a wife. I had a good job at Fort Wingate and retired before the ordinance depot shut down. We raised two girls and two boys, and have seven precious grandchildren.”

Rosalia suffered a severe stroke in 1985, and Adan was at her side all the time from that time until she died. She died on 9/11/02, exactly a year after the terrorist attack on the United States.

“Life has been hard for me since I lost Rosalia. She was the one and only sweetheart I ever had. She was very special.

“I now spend a lot of time with my children and grandchildren, and that helps a lot,” said Adan Barela, the sharpshooter from San Mateo who won all the marbles and came home at dusk with a cottontail or two tied to his belt.”