Egg

This is an organic brown Egg from the Flying E Egg farm at Estancia, pretty much due south of here, south of I-40 and Moriarty- and when I looked up Estancia on line I find it features flying in another form, too: it's home to an annual pumpkin flinging contest. Originally a pueblo village stood where the small town now exists: most probably the name estancia comes from the original Spanish meaning of a resting place, rather than signifying some big estate. Before that - way before that, during the Ice Age, when it was very wet and cool in these parts, there was a huge, 700 square mile freshwater lake there. More recently, there was a big C19th land grant here - the Sandoval grant - and sheep and cows were raised on what turned out to be contested land - bloody struggles with the shepherds who thought that they had the equivalent of squatters' rights were recounted in its deliberately inflammatory named newspaper of the 1880s, The Gringo and Greaser. It seems to be very much a ranching town these days (with a number of small cafes: I should head down there in the summer and explore, so long as I can avoid the pumpkin chuckin, and navigate the fact that for every 100 women over 18, there are 217.7 men). It seems to have plenty going for it - the first (and only?) African American sheriff in the state, a famous green chile cheeseburger - and I suspect that it was a good thing that the bet made at the turn of the C19th between the Mayors of Estancia and Albuquerque that it would grow into the bigger city was lost.

I have an uncertain relationship with eggs, having been allergic to them until I hit puberty (not, apparently, as odd and unusual as it sounds), and having failed to convince my mother of this for a long while - I think she thought egg regurgitation was a sign of bloody mindedness or of greed. So I find it hard to admit I actually like them - for decades I would only approach them when they were under heavy disguise - in a spinach souffle, say. A big box from the Flying E offers a choice of brown or white - the brown being decidedly smaller, as though from pullets, and not from Big Hens. As you can see, the two are arranged in rows, one very much towering over the other. There is quite possibly an allegory to be developed, given the peculiarly skin-like appearance of this egg, for the sexual ratio in the town, but I really don't think I'll explore it.