1983: the Unknown Season

It was June of 1982. Our apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan was converting to co-op apartments. Our fifth-floor walk-up was suddenly the perfect pied-a-terre, with its wooden floors, exposed brick walls and exclusive roof rights. But what to do with our windfall once we flipped the apartment? We were eating breakfast when Coo passed me a copy of Smithsonian Magazine. "Look, Doc, isn't Santa Fe beautiful?" That was it.

The decision to move there was made over bagels and cream cheese. Four months later, on Halloween, we drove out of Manhattan at 2 a.m., our twelve-foot rental truck stuffed to the brim with all of our earthly possessions, heading due west for Santa Fe, New Mexico. Giddy with more hope and excitement than should have been legal, we couldn't have imagined what lay ahead for us in 1983.