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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 CHANGE COMES TO THE VILLAGES

"Un Alambrito--The Wire

“Dame otro alambrito,” said Lizardito Salazar, while tinkering with the car, “ya con otro alambrito llegamos—Give me another piece of wire. With another piece, we'll get there.”

Wire was an indispensable “item” in the tool box in the 1920-50s. It was as useful as scotch tape is today. It had many practical uses. Baling wire was about the right size for most jobs. It was pliable, and could be bent and twisted easily, and was the most popular size. Baling wire had many uses in San Mateo and other rural villages in New Mexico.

It could hold a fuel line in place. It kept a loose car door shut. It was woven to keep a stirrup in place or kept a broken harness together. It made a pretty good handle on a ten-pound can, un bote de diez. You could mend a fence and tie a gate with it. It could keep a wheel in place on a homemade wagon. It held a spare tire in place and, if you tripled the loops, you could hang a pulley on it and lift more than twice your weight. And the list goes on and on and on.

Most baling wire was rusty. When it was new, it came from the store with a blackish grey color. It came in 10-foot lengths with a small loop on one end and smooth on the other. Most of the hay-baling machines in the 1930s were the stationary type. They were powered by a horse hitched to a tongue that went around a full circle while compacting the hay in the packing compartment and spitting out 80-pound bales. Bales were generally stacked outdoors, and the wire got rusty.

A serious problem working with rusty baling wire were cuts and infection. Most homes kept a bottle of alcohol handy for washing and bathing wounds. However, sometimes one was away from the house, and alcohol was not available and the chances of infection increased.

In those days, there were no antibiotics, and infections were common. La Curandera, Doña Virginia, took trementina, resin or sap from a piñon tree, and made a pack over the cut, bandaged it down with a rag, and tied it with rag strips. Generally there was swelling and fever, but the patch was a marvel. The trementina generally cleaned the wound in 48 hours or less.

After World War I, some schoolchildren were vaccinated, and the threat of serious illness reduced, as doctors and nurses made an appearance in the larger towns of New Mexico. Grants attracted Doctor Cornelius in the 1930s, and was followed by Doctor J. H. Fjord, who passed away in the 1990s
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But, back to wire. Baling wire was abundant. Most families baled or bought alfalfa hay to feed the milk cow and other livestock, and saved the wire when a bale was broken. It was easy to stumble over baling wire in corrals. Most everyone was careful and bundled the wire and hung it on a viga or tied it to a pole.

Barbwire was more difficult to work with, because of sharp barbs. It was thicker and could not be twisted as easily as baling wire. To work with barbwire, a person needed gloves, and gloves were very expensive during the Great Depression of the 1930s. We simply couldn't afford them. New barbwire was usually galvanized, and it seemed not as likely to cause infection if you cut yourself with it.
On farm and ranches, baling wire plays a lesser role today. Nowadays, you can buy galvanized wire in hardware stores that does the job that rusty baling wire used to do. Also, automobiles and trucks and other machines have easy access to auto parts, garages, and repair shops that were not available in the early days.

Wagons and harnesses have nearly disappeared from the rural scene and have been replaced by tractors and hydraulic equipment. Tractors need wire from time to time, but generally they're repaired with new parts and the old parts thrown away. Our society nowadays is usually labeled by sociologists as “the throw-away generation.
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There's less and less use for wire. In these days of high technology and computers, the need for wire is disappearing. Synthetic fibers such as nylon make strong ropes, twine, and string, and have replaced wire in some uses.

The famous “alambrito” that got us there is being relegated to the pages of history. I'm certain you'll agree, it served us well."