Albuquerque entered my world 41 years ago this spring. It was 1983 and I was a directionless student at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia.
I don’t know how much you know about Athens, but it was hip in 1983.
A few years before, UGA’s football team had won a national championship behind a broad-shouldered, hard-hitting running back named Herschel Walker. And in 1983, a little-known quartet named R.E.M. had just released its first proper album, “Murmur,” which Rolling Stone magazine christened one of the best records of the year. In a few years R.E.M. would take over the world, playing stadiums around the globe.
But on this particular day in 1983, my mind was fixated on basketball. I woke up that morning to a screamer of a headline in University of Georgia’s student newspaper: Albuquerque! Albuquerque!
The newspaper was quoting Terry Fair, a key player on UGA’s basketball squad who memorialized the city of Albuquerque in UGA sports lore. The day before the UGA basketball team had done the improbable, beating a loaded University of North Carolina team, including a young Michael Jordan, to win a spot in the 1983 Final Four, hosted by Albuquerque and the University of New Mexico.
No one expected a deep run from UGA that year. Future NBA hall of famer Dominique Wilkins, dubbed the “Human Highlight Reel,” had departed the Georgia basketball team a year before for fat checks and a bigger platform for his gravity-defying dunks. He left behind talented but mostly journeymen players to carry UGA’s mantle into the NCAA tournament.
In Albuquerque, the dream of a UGA national basketball championship crashed and burned at the hands of that year’s team of destiny — the N.C. State Wolfpack. Coached by the excitable, charismatic Jim Valvano, the Wolfpack went on to pull off its own miracle: defeating the much-heralded, supremely talented University of Houston squad. Nicknamed Phi Slamma Jamma, Houston included two of the greatest NBA players ever to put on a uniform — Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler.
They had serious game, but their skills were no match for destiny.
I recount all of this because I have to remind myself occasionally that New Mexico has been a part of my life for much longer than the 18 years my family has lived here.
I remember in 1983 after UGA’s run at the NCAAs researching Albuquerque and Santa Fe and learning the cities sat at 5,000 feet and 7,000 feet elevation, respectively, much higher than Athens, which sits at around 650 feet elevation. (Fun fact: Santa Fe, at 7,000 feet elevation, is higher than any place east of the Mississippi. Mount Mitchell in North Carolina claims that top spot, at just under 6,700 feet.)
It was in Albuquerque in 1992 that I ate my first “real” taco on a cross-country drive to a job in California; by “real,” I mean a taco not bought at Taco Bell.
It was in Santa Fe in 1994, where I met my wife’s family for the first time. And in 1995, where we were married by my mom — she was a Presbyterian minister — as our families, some of whom had traveled from as far away as Georgia and Florida, looked on.
These days, after living in Albuquerque nearly two decades, New Mexico feels like home.
Of course I miss where I grew up, especially during springtime when the azaleas are abloom and the grayness of winter has receded to reveal blue skies and calm breezes render the humidity manageable.
Recently, I’ve begun to test my brother’s interest in New Mexico. He lives in Athens, and is partial to springtime there. But he’s a hunter. And elk are a major selling point for him. Georgia isn’t known for elk (because it doesn’t have any).
The last time my brother visited, I asked, do you ever think of moving out West. Yep, but he’d have to persuade my sister-in-law, he said.
It’ll take a few years, I figure. Maybe he’ll come around. New Mexico could always use another Georgia boy.
Trip Jennings started his career in Georgia at his hometown newspaper, The Augusta Chronicle, before working at newspapers in California, Florida and Connecticut where he reported on many stories, including the resignation and incarceration of Connecticut’s then-governor, John Rowland, and gang warfare in California. Since 2005, Trip has covered politics and state government for the Albuquerque Journal, The New Mexico Independent and the Santa Fe New Mexican. He holds a Master’s of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga. In 2012, he co-founded New Mexico In Depth, a nonpartisan, nonprofit media outlet that produces investigative, data-rich stories with an eye on solutions that can be a catalyst for change.