First Cones

Into Albuquerque, N. M., last week rolled a bus with an unusual group of children. None of them had ever eaten an ice-cream cone or seen a cinema, although they lived only 40 miles away in the little Spanish-American mountain village of Juan Tomas. Juan Tomas, on the eastern slope of the Manzanos, has seven houses, a church and a school. It has no store, no telephones, no radios, since none of Juan Tomas' families owns a motor car, the only glimpse its children have of modern civilization is of the puffs of smoke rising from railroad trains in the Rio Grande Valley.

To the Albuquerque Tribune, which arranged it, the trip was a fine journalistic stunt. For the children, although they did not know it, it was an extraordinary dose of education. All Juan Tomas' 40 schoolboys and girls (aged 5 to 13), except three who were ill, arrived sober and silent, drinking in everything with their eyes. They were marched first into a park for a picnic lunch and ice cream. Five little girls found they did not like ice cream, gave their cones away. The rest nibbled tentatively, then gulped.

After lunch they looked at Albuquerque's buildings, rode on Albuquerque policemen's motorcycles, squealed as they rode up the elevator to the top of Albuquerque's eight-story First National Bank Building. Although their hosts had not planned it, they were educated in pain as well as pleasure: as they watched Albuquerque's firemen climb a building, a rope broke. Firemen Frank Parenti and George Tafoya fell 40 feet, were seriously injured. The children agreed to spend part of the money they had been saving for playground equipment to send flowers to the firemen.

At the cinema the youngsters perched on the backs of the folded seats until their teacher explained they could be let down. They saw Tom Sawyer, wept when Tom and Becky were lost in the cave, failed to laugh at any part of it.

Biggest thrill to the Juan Tomas children, however, was not Albuquerque's civilization but the wonders of nature. They insisted on seeing the zoo twice, were most awed by the monkeys and lions. Said a sparkling-eyed 5-year-old, looking at the ostrich: "Oh, what a big chicken!"

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