State fair, Balloon Fiesta and green chile: It's fall time in New Mexico

Editor’s note: In this monthly column, comedian Zach Abeyta looks at life in New Mexico through a humorous lens.

Fall is my favorite season in New Mexico. The State Fair, Balloon Fiesta, and the smell of green chile roasting throughout the city — that is how you know you are home.

Here, the green chile craze is even bigger than the pumpkin spice hype. That is our pumpkin spice in the 505, only year-round.

I would remember my mom driving to the Fruit Basket on 12th Street to buy so many packs of green chile that they would fill our freezer. At my grandparents’ house, they would have a full assembly line going every year. Grandpa would be peeling the chile, as Grandma would pack up the entire green chile haul to stock up for the following year and to give to family members as they visited, always reminding them, “Be careful it’s hot!”

I had to wear gloves to help and was always reminded not to touch my eyes unless I wanted them to burn through the next day. Grandpa never wore gloves, though; he had decades of peeling experience. I remember him saying that he could feel which chile was the hottest just by the heat coming through his fingers. That was the batch I stayed away from as a kid.

The New Mexico State Fair kicks off right at the start of September, always during the week of my birthday. Try getting kids from school to go to your birthday party when the fair is going on. Not happening.

I spent a lot of time at the fair during my teen years. We’d buy and wear the multiday ride pass band on our wrist, seeing it fade as the days ticked by. Then there were the half-eaten turkey legs, petting the goats at the petting zoo, and way too many rides on the Gravitron UFO ride mixing all the fair snacks around in our bellies. I can’t believe our parents would let us on that ride — no seatbelts, children prone against the angled board, held down only by hopes, dreams and turkey legs as the ride ramped up. Some riders even turned completely upside down, blood rushing to their brains while they hit extreme g-forces.

Some of those memories from the State Fair never change: how amazing the green chile corn dog is every year; wandering around the parking lot trying to remember where you left the car; experiencing “fair love” as boyfriends hold onto their girlfriends, clutching prizes won at the midway, walking together as if in a dance.

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is a solid sign you are deep into fall in New Mexico. The brisk mornings are met with skies filled with hot air balloons — a sight you only get to see in Albuquerque in October. It’s the only event in the state where people wake up at 3 a.m. just to sit in long lines of traffic to get there. But once you are inside, it is always worth the wait. A coffee and burrito never seem as satisfying as on fiesta mornings on the field, as thousands of people from all over the world share in the awe of watching hundreds of balloons take flight.

I remember thinking as I watched them, what if this was your only means of transportation, a hot air balloon? You’d have to go to work early and walk outside to a wicker basket, holding your index finger in the air to check for wind instead of traffic. It takes off, and once you are in the air, you realize you are on the wrong side of the Rio Grande, and it will take a month for the air current to fix your path. No, thank you, I think to myself, as the long walk to the car doesn’t seem too bad all of a sudden.

Freshly roasted green chile, a walk through the fair’s midway, and an evening balloon glow all remind me of New Mexico during the fall.