Years ago, long before we ever thought of moving to New Mexico, we got an enchanting glimpse of the state -- and one of its premier politicians -- in an episode of the groundbreaking television series "Route 66."

But the show, which had the revolutionary premise of sending two friends (Tod Stiles and Buz Murdock) out on the road in a classy Corvette, had long been out of circulation until it was released on DVD last October by the Infinity Entertainment Group.

We were disappointed to find that Volume 1 of Season 1 didn't include the New Mexico episode, which originally aired on May 26, 1961.

So we rushed out yesterday when Volume 2 of that first season was released, and sure enough, there was "Trap at Cordova," episode 27, starring veteran character Thomas Gomez and then-state Senate Majority Leader Fabian Chavez ... as himself.

It's a strange and somewhat quirky look back at a New Mexico that hardly exists -- filmed on location in Cordova, N.M. (one of those ancient hill towns between Chimayo and Truchas) in glorious (and gorgeously deep-focus) black and white.

The boys (played by Martin Milner and George Maharis) are hoodwinked -- and hijacked -- by village patrón "Miguel Delgado" played in broad, stereotypical brushstrokes by Gomez, putting a benign twist on that old story of outsiders waylaid by a sheriff deep in the heart of Dixie with predictably sinister results.

But in this case, the little village has become too remote to support a local school, too poor to pay any teachers and doesn't want its kids bused an hour and a half each way to "Las Cruces" (well, that's what it said). So, Miguel and the village kids are out to kidnap anyone who looks like a teacher.

Tod, a Yale graduate, is dragooned into teaching the upper grades and Buz gets to lead the little kids in song, while the authorities (and Delgado's own teacher daughter) put pressure on the village.

The boys are angry at first, but soon come to believe in the village elder's quixotic last stand against the modern world.

The story gets out, and Tod is summoned to Santa Fe by no less a personage than Senate Majority Leader Fabian Chavez and is invited to speak to the Legislature -- which was then still meeting in the old Bataan Memorial Building, a few years before the Roundhouse was dedicated in 1966.

The lawmakers are moved by Tod's impassioned defense of keeping village life the way it had been for centuries -- or at least a little while longer -- before being bulldozed into modern life, and with Chavez's help, get to keep their local school open and hire a teacher, too.

It's a kind of corny stab at what John Nichols would do some years later in "The Milagro Beanfield War" and has a happy ending that doesn't seem to have been borne out in real life.

But for New Mexicans, this episode alone is worth the $25 you'll have to shell out for the new DVD set. It's a marvelous evocation of New Mexico's vanishing village life and its small-scale "just folks" politics.

And it's a nice tribute to a young(er) Fabian Chavez, who plays the same kind of maverick reformer he has played in a half-century of New Mexico's political life.

Former Albuquerque Journal editorial writer Eric McCrossen profiled Chavez more than a decade ago, paying tribute to the man who helped start the University of New Mexico Medical School and fought to reform the state's liquor laws, on the occasion of Chavez's 70th birthday.

Chavez was first elected to the state House of Representatives in 1951, then to the state Senate in 1955, where he served as the Democrats' majority leader from 1961 to 1964.

Since serving in the Legislature, he has run for several offices without success, including one run in 1968 as "damn-near governor" against then-incumbent David Cargo.

But, McCrossen wrote in 1994, he has never been far from public service, serving as director of both the then-separate Department of Economic Development and Department of Tourism, was assistant Secretary of Commerce and director of the U.S. Travel Agency during the Carter Administration, and more recently served as state insurance superintendent.

Chavez, now 83, reminisced recently in the Albuquerque Journal about the time he spent barnstorming in northern New Mexico on behalf of then-Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy back in June 1960.

And while he told the Journal he is fond of Sen. Edward Kennedy -- "I still call him Teddy," he said -- he wasn't going to join the senior senator from Massachusetts, who had just endorsed Barack Obama, on the campaign trail.

He was backing Hillary Clinton for president instead, Chavez told the Journal.

Just as we were looking forward to the latest "Route 66" DVD release, we are also eagerly awaiting a book by longtime political journalist and Journal columnist David Roybal, scheduled for publication this May by the University of New Mexico Press.

It's called "Taking on Giants: Fabian Chavez Jr. and New Mexico Politics."  

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