Pierre, Rosalea, and The Pink Adobe

When I was about five years old, (in the late-fifties) we went to Santa Fe to visit my grandfather, the artist Pierre Ménager. As well as being a wonderful painter and sculptor, he was also a fabulous cook...well he was French. But he cooked a mixture of Southwest and Creole -- especially as a portion of the Ménager family had migrated to New Orleans. Pierre took us to a lovely small restaurant, the Pink Adobe, where we had lunch. It was before the opening of the lunch hour (or maybe it was in between the end of lunch and the start of the dinner hour), so the restaurant was quiet and empty except for Pierre, my family, and the owner of the restaurant Rosalea Murphy. Even at five years old, I was smart enough to realize that Rosalea was someone very special to Pierre. I have fond memories of that day, sitting in a bright sunlit room of the restaurant, bellied up to the bar as plates of fabulous food appeared. Rosalea spoke directly to me in that way that certain adults who are genuinely charmed by small, precocious children do -- with interest and kindness. At the end of the meal, she presented me with a gift of a few cat figurines that were part of a large collection of other cat figures. I still have them and treasure them as a memory of that day.

I didn't know until later, of course, that Pierre actually worked with Rosalea, co-managing the restaurant -- sharing his own cooking ideas with hers, designing and painting menus. His art was scattered throughout the restaurant, along with hers and the works of other artist friends. I didn't know until later -- much later-- how fashionable the Pink Adobe became as a restaurant (and still is!) -- which makes that quiet afternoon spent just in the company of my family and Rosalea an even more special event.

But I didn't learn until just today that Pierre and Rosalea were actually married. Even my mother didn't know. It was assumed in my family (and even cousin Earl who is the family historian and knows the most intimate details of generations of Menagers) that it was more of a "union libre." However, Earl found two articles -- one from the Amarillo Daily News, April 3, 1947, stating: "Mr. and Mrs. Pierre Menager, operators of the Pink Adobe, and daughter Priscilla, arrived here today after being shaken up in a forced landing of the plane, 4 miles from Lubbock, Texas yesterday.  The Menagers were flying a chartered plane from Santa Fe to San Antonio and made a forced landing in a field near Lubbock. They continued by bus to San Antonio, where they were called because of an illness of Mrs. Menager's mother." (Ok, that little paragraph by itself is worth a chapter in a novel.) A second article in the Albuquerque Journal, May 18, 1952, mentions an art show of Southwest art at Ramage Book Center in Albuquerque that included "an imaginative study of Santa Fe's Oldest Church" by Rosalea Menager." (Hats off here to Earl who finds all these tiny gems tucked away in archives.)

So I took a chance and emailed Priscilla, Rosalea's daughter and a terrific artist working in native clays and minerals, and inks on handmade paper, and I asked her if they were indeed married. Yes! she wrote back, they were married. We will be getting together over the phone in the near future to talk a lot more about those days. I am especially curious to know what she remembers about Pierre. It really is like seeing a light turn on in all sorts of corners of a dark house. I keep having to readjust the narrative of my grandfather's life every time I encounter someone who knew him (and everyone seems to have favorite Pierre stories!).