Not since the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act passed 65 years ago has the country committed such a huge sum of money to upgrade the nation’s infrastructure—its roads, bridges, broadband and utilities. But after what seemed like endless stops and starts and constant wrangling—much of it interparty— President Biden signed into law the $1 trillion measure on November 15th. Colorado’s share of the measure will be approximately $6 billion.

While the majority of the money will go to the state’s most populous centers, southern Colorado’s hub city is looking forward to getting funds to address long overdue infrastructure projects, said Pueblo Mayor Nick Gradisar. “I think it’s fantastic,” said Gradisar. “It’s transformative change for a lot of people.”

Gradisar said the city has been working closely with the state’s two Democratic Senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, as the measure was coming together. “We’ve made them aware of our priorities,” he said. Uncertain of when the funds will reach Pueblo, Gradisar said he’s made known where he’d like the first dollars to be spent.

“The Union Avenue Bridge,” he said, “is nearly a hun- dred years old and doesn’t meet the (structural) standards.” Engineers have indicated that rather than put the money toward refurbishing the structure, “it needs to be replaced.” The cost to replace the aging viaduct could be as high as $25 million.

The ‘to do’ list for Pueblo’s aging infrastructure, said Gradisar, is long. But if the city is to move smoothly into the 21st century, investment needs to be made. “One big thing is the freeway,” he said. Improvements to the routing of Interstate 25 have been called for for years. “We’re hoping this bill will have some funds that will make that happen.” State and city engineers have estimated the costs for reconfiguring the north-south arterial at around $200 million.

When Colorado’s money finally does arrive, more than $688 million will be dedicated to water infrastructure improvements and another $432 million for airports. Mayor Gradisar said he already knows exactly where he wants Pueblo’s share spent.

Pueblo, like scores of cities across the country, is already working on replacing those portions of its system that are outdated and unsafe. While Pueblo’s system is nothing like Flint, Michigan’s, where residents there have been forced to drink bottled water for a number of years because of a dangerous lead pipe delivery system, southern Colorado’s hub city has been proactive in addressing the issue and has made significant progress.

“The board of water works,” Gradisar said, “has been eliminating lead pipes for four or five years.” Gradisar was once a member of the city’s water board and has been a strong advocate for upgrading the city’s water delivery system. Coincidentally, Pueblo’s water was voted the among the five ‘best tasting water in the nation’ in a 2018 American Water Works Association poll.

Gradisar, who is Pueblo’s first Mayor since 1911, also wants money spent on the city’s airport. “We want to do some remodeling,” he said. Upgrading the facility would create a more comfortable passenger experience. “The waiting room,” he added, “doesn’t have restrooms.” People need to use the bathroom before getting on their flight, he said.

Air travelers in southeastern Colorado and the San Luis Valley often begin their trips in Pueblo and connect at the bigger airports in Denver and Colorado Springs. Airport improvements would make flying out of Pueblo more comfortable and, somewhere down the road, perhaps even coax other carriers to consider Pueblo as a market, he said.

The infrastructure bill will certainly pay dividends for people driving, flying or taking trains but it will also include money for things like child tax credits and universal preschool. “It will really make a difference in the lives of Pueblo families,” said Gradisar. The bill, said the President at the signing, also means jobs.

The measure that President Biden signed was radically different than the measure President Eisenhower signed in 1956 making possible the interstate highway system. So, too, was the environment. Back then 95 percent of the House of Representatives signed on to the measure. In the Senate there was only one vote against the new law.

This new law was heavily favored by House Democrats with all but six voting for its passage. Thirteen House Republicans also voted for passage. In the Senate, the vote was 69-30. Among Republicans voting in favor was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Eighteen Republican colleagues joined him but, in the process, earned the scorn of ex-President Trump who spoke long and loud against it. Interestingly, Trump promised infrastructure for four years but never delivered.

The idea of an interstate highway system was the result of Eisenhower seeing a more efficient way of moving traffic and goods when he saw Germany’s Autobahn. In the event of a national emergency, he wanted to make sure that the military would have unimpeded lanes for critical supplies to get to their destination. One side could be shut down for civilian traffic and one side would be for the military.

The interstate highway system is now 65 years old. In 1956 Congress budgeted $25 billion for its construction. In today’s dollars, that would surpass $500 billion. It’s an investment that has paid off many times over.

Pueblo native Rita Baca has been meeting and greeting customers at the restaurant that bears her name for more than forty years. She has seen babies grow into young people, young people into parents and more than a few parents transform into grandparents. And she and her eponymously-named restaurant just keep on keeping on.

As she prepares for the seasonal holiday rush, its big crowds and the more than one thousand tamales she’ll be whipping up, Baca spent a few minutes on the phone to talk about Rita’s. Being a restaurateur was never part of the plan, she said, at least, part of her plan. She was more than happy being a homemaker.

But one day back into 1978, her husband, Ruben, then a maintenance supervisor, came home and blurted out, ‘I want to quit my job.’ “He wasn’t feeling good,” remembered Baca. Quitting his job while raising a young family might also have made her wonder if he also wasn’t thinking clear.

“I’ll look for another job,” she remembered him saying as she was still trying to process what in the world he was even talking about. It made no sense. Plan ‘B’ he told her was “We go on welfare.” That was silly. He was too hard a worker. Then came the shocker or, as she suspected, his plan all along, “We open a restaurant.”

So, in September 1978, Rita’s Restaurant at 302 North Grand, a modest space with a red brick façade and red metal awning, opened and, except for the pandemic, has fired up the grill Monday through Saturday every day ever since. During the pandemic’s darkest days, “we went to strictly carry-out and delivery,” she said.

“The day we opened,” said Baca in a buttery-soft voice that conceals a blue-steel grit, “was the scariest day of my life.” The plan, if things were going to work, would have her running the kitchen with Ruben greeting and seating, hobnobbing and running the register. “He and I worked together, and we made it work.”

Today, 43 years later, seven a.m. to seven p.m. it’s all still working. Now though, it’s her children and grandchildren who supply much of the muscle that keeps the place humming. Her husband passed away fifteen years ago.

Her holiday tamales will require 800 pounds of masa, the dough that will envelop the filling of pork and red chile. “We make a hundred pounds of masa at a time,” Baca said. “That will last us two to three weeks.” When that runs out, they’ll make another batch. It’s no small task, after all, making a thousand-plus tamales.

And while making masa isn’t exactly rocket science, it’s also not just a matter of combining a bunch of ingredients. No batch is ever made without first repeating a family ritual that includes a Sign of the Cross and silent prayer.

Baca’s recipe for tamales was learned by helping her grandmother who did all her cooking on a wood-burning stove, she said. When the work was done, she remembered “We would have 20-25 dozen for the holidays,” she remembered. The twenty-five dozen tamales would feed “aunts, uncles, friends of my grandfather’s and anyone else,” he would invite. The recipe has stood the test of time.

Baca’s masa still calls for lard, an ingredient that’s largely disappeared from a lot of kitchens. Not Baca’s. “They (tamales) don’t come out the same without lard,” she said. “That’s how I’ve always made them.” Tamales are also the only menu item that uses lard.

The only chile she puts in her tamales—without exception—is New Mexican. “They have the best red chile.” It seems to work. “I have one gentleman who lives in Denver, and he’ll usually order about ten dozen. He’s a good customer.”

Baca has no guess on who originally created the tamale recipe, but her customers, four-plus decades worth, seem to think that she’s the one who perfected it. All she knows is that “it’s very, very tasty.”

The restaurant is pretty much as it was when it opened in 1978. It still has fifteen tables, though not the originals. The menu features the same Baca-family Mexican recipes, including the green chile customers have come to expect. “We make about 30-40 pounds of green chile every day,” she said. But her menu has other things, too.

Rita’s serves up breakfast, burgers, sandwiches and a customer fave, Rita’s grilled cheese that includes fries. As long as she has a say, it’ll stay that way. The plan is not to get rich, she said. It’s to serve good food. “I’m not a material person,” said Baca. “I’ve always asked the good Lord to just let me just pay my bills and for my health to stay good.” It’s a bargain that, so far, remains unbroken.

And while her customers give Rita’s rave reviews, “I think one person gave it ‘five-stars,” she said, there’s no plan to take it in a different direction despite a few inquiries. Baca subscribes to the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,’ school of thought.

Still, the soft-spoken matriarch has cut back on her workload and mostly lets her children, grandchildren and employees—six full-time, six part-time—run the place. That gives her time to enjoy another pursuit, genealogy.

“We have tried to start going back on the family tree,” she said explaining her need to scratch this new itch. “We haven’t been able to get much information,” except that one branch of her family “came from Spain,” perhaps through New Mexico, a common portal for scores of southern Colorado families. But right now the holidays and tamales take priority.

If holiday tamales are on your menu, from Denver, the drive to Rita’s is just over 90 minutes. No reservations are necessary and, as so often is said in the Steel City, ‘You’re only a stranger once.’

By: Ernest Gurulé

He may not have realized the eternal quality in his words, but General Douglas McArthur, in his farewell address to Congress, just may have uttered an irrefutable truth with just eight timeless words. “Old soldiers never die,” he said. “They just fade away.”

For a generation of ‘old soldiers,’ the last battle is fought daily at Huerfano County’s Spanish Peaks Veterans Community Living Center. “It’s for vets, spouses and Gold Star parents,” said Trapper Collada, Public Information Officer for the facility. Most of the eighty or so residents of the Center are in the throes of dementia or Alzheimer’s Disease. The home is also fully adapted to care for Hospice patients, a number of whom move in and through on an irregular basis. Capacity has declined over the last year and a half as a result of COVID. In normal times, there are nearly 120 full-time residents who come not only from Colorado but also from nearby states. Current occupancy is around 80.

“We are a well kept secret,” said Collada. But a secret, he said, that has been a major benefit to countless long ago veterans with few other options for care. The center’s residents or their families are responsible for payment but the Veterans Administration also pays for a portion of their stay. While many of the residents are living in a fog that has left them with only a biological and not emotional life, there are others who are more than capable and understanding of day to day happenings. “There is a resident council,” said Collada.

One man who is also a resident is a gentleman Collada only identifies as “Bill, who is 98.” Collada said Bill helps organize events and also lends a hand with some of the details that make life a bit easier for his fellow veterans and their families. “He advocates on behalf of the residents.”

While the Walsenburg facility is off the beaten path for many, the pandemic that has ravaged the country had no trouble finding it. “It took a while,” said Collada. “We lost twelve residents,” despite the facility following all the government’s safety guidelines, said Collada. During the darkest days of the pandemic, a lot of the residents and their families were kept apart. Those whose families did visit were separated by now familiar partitions, others simply, for health reasons, had to stay away. N95 masks became normal parts of staff and patient daily wear, said Collada. The virus also took its toll on staff, he said, referring to it as ‘exodus issues.’ “It was the pressures of Covid that exacerbated reasons for (staff) departures.” But the facility was never so short-staffed that it presented an issue for the welfare of the patients. When vac- cines became available early this year, most all of the staff and residents got their shots. “When that went into effect,” said Collada, “we had a 98 or 99 percent compliance.” Still, there were a few staff that, rather than take the shots, simply resigned.

What makes the facility a good option for veterans, some of whom no longer have family, is its access to “facili- ties a lot of senior living facilities do not,” including state of the art hospitals in the county or in nearby Pueblo, a drive of less than an hour to the north, said Collada.

The center does everything it can, he said, to make the stay for veterans and their families as pleasant as possible, including having bilingual members of the staff. “This is a highly Hispanic area,” he said. “This is also reflected in the population of both the staff and the residents.”