Closing of Santo Tomas is the community’s loss
Every visit to Santo Tomas includes my jumping, hopping and diving into a mountain of blankets and pillows, searching for frayed and colorful stories in cloth, minute stiches and hours of forgotten conversations — that is, quilts, asking to be saved.
For 33 years, Santo Tomas has been a constant in my life. Our home is filled with its treasures. There are quilts on the wall in the family room and in the bedrooms; a writing table in the vegetable garden, firmly attached to what used to be an unsightly mesquite stump; the 1968 Mexico Olympics poster; the Beatitudes in the dining room (when I picked it up off the ground it was wrapped in an 1888 copy of a “Demlandet,” a Chicago newspaper, written in Swedish); the large hand-blown vase more than one person has mistaken for a Chihuly; the green and gold-flaked Murano glass ducks and birds in the living room; and my favorite plate (English Titian Ware, hand painted in Florence). There are abacus lamps, grandchildren’s toys and the amazing Italian Di Carlini Christmas ornaments all from Santo Tomas.
Out of town guests visiting the Imperial Valley for the first time are invited to play the pulga game. Everyone is given $5 or $10 — depending on the size of the group and inflation — and we head to Santo Tomas. Whomever buys the best item (by consensus vote of the participants), wins. Players have come from as far away as Oregon, New Mexico, Texas and New York. Much of what I love about the Imperial Valley can be found at the pulga; the oxymorons, blended communities, value in the discarded, beauty in the deserted.
Visitors who play the pulga game sometimes find the same is true of the Imperial Valley — Chinese food in Mexicali, Cuchi’s 100 grados raspados and a cool game of dominos on a hot night at the ranch. It takes a certain openness to see past the ordinary and obvious, to be delighted by the hidden and unexpected.
Santo Tomas is people. Maria, who lives by the Salton Sea brought treasures from Palm Springs storage units. Always a mountain of disarray, you needed to pick through the stall’s clutter to find the surprises. Over and over they magically emerged. One day my Aunt June stood in the middle of Maria’s and exclaimed in disbelief, “People spend their lives collecting these things and they end up here!” The pulga was a wakeup call. When the pickings were slim and it was time to clean up, Maria would have a free day. (I got my favorite wall clock on a free day, a wooden Bulova with Westminster, Ave-Maria. Whittington and Bim-Bam chimes). For years, when my husband tired of walking around with me, he would go and sit in Marta’s puesto. Marta would give Mario a cup of coffee, or a glass of cold water. She gave me a small wooden Buddha for inspiration. It still sits next to the reading chair in my office. And there is Pancho, with all his doors and windows and discarded renovation relics. Things are big at Pancho’s place, stacked on top of each other and hidden in the back. Like at Maria’s, you have to root. Pancho’s treasures usually need some work, but they’re worth it.
Next to Pancho’s stall is the family from Guadalajara. With the personality of their home town, they provide an orderly, calm and cordial oasis along with cold Agua de Pina amid Mexico City like energy and chaos. Half a pulga away are the brothers and father (and sometimes sons and nephews), with the eclectic corner that includes the mountain of blankets and pillows where I find my quilts. Finally, there is La Señora, who sells linens and hands out calendars at Christmas time. I go to the stall just to greet her. Sometimes I buy a kitchen towel or two. Her grandchildren sell Nerf guns and games in the neighboring stand. They are always reading. Sitting in her chair, week after week, greeting the familiar faces that pass by, La Señora is Santo Tomas.
The fire in December took Santo Tomas’s breath away, and then its life. In the aftermath, the catching up to code, the proposed elimination of onsite storage (which made it possible for so many of my treasures to come from afar), became too much to bear. The 45-year-old flea market that brought people together across borders and languages; bargain hunters and treasure seekers; buyers and sellers; snowbirds and locals, the pulga that created community, closed.
My free clock from Maria just stopped working after 10 years. I’m going to see if it can be fixed. I wish I could do the same for Santo Tomas.