I want to thank you all for the kind words on my Post on Cano. Some of you have asked to share it. Since this is a private blog, I can’t do that. If you want to share it please friend me. That will allow you to share. My Facebook name is Joe F Martinez.

                                  My Friend Cano

I had just returned from my stint in Vietnam and ran into my childhood buddy Cano (Donald Espinoza). He had been back a year or so from his tour, so it was good to run into him. He says to me “hey Papasan, you look good, how was the Nam?” Papasan was a name given to elderly Vietnamese males, and it also became a sort of greeting among soldiers that served in Vietnam. He went on to say how Mary-Jane had changed his life and that he was working to get closer to Jesus. He invited me to his chante (home) . He said “you have to come see my pad and the work I am doing for Jesus.” We arranged a time to get together - at the time he was living in an old adobe home (no longer there) at the intersection of road 13 that runs by Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and County Rd. G-5 right in the corner.

I showed up with a six pack of beer and chips in the early evening, the sun had set and the house was dark with the exception of candles everywhere, the different smells of the candles giving off a interesting odor that was a combination of lavender, cinnamon, and a variety of other fragrances that were interesting yet pleasant. He was wearing his hair longer now, his handsome face had the aura of change, more ruddy looking due to exposure in the sun, his eyes had a distant glare common among soldiers that have seen combat but the Cano I had grown up with was still there. He was a normal, pleasant, and cordial host. We broke open a beer and he started to tell me how he was now working with Jesus. He stood up and said “let me give you a tour of my home.” As he got up, he was wearing running shoes, worn denim jeans, and a cassock-like covering that reminded me of the vestments we used to wear as altar boys. As he started the tour of his small home, he told me that he had bigger plans to build a castle to Jesus, in the middle of his sentence we eased into his bedroom which was dark, lite by one solitary candle inside something that sent me back reeling in initial shock and then questioning how I could address my question.

I was brought full circle to this encounter this week when I saw that his Castle and adjacent home was on fire. This brought back a series of memories and questions that took me back to our childhood of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Growing up in the historical village of Guadalupe we were all descendants of the early settlers that led the colonization of the Valley in the late 1700’s and 1800’s, mostly of Spanish, Native American, and European heritage. The customs of Spain relative to catholicism and other rituals were very prevalent leading to the forming of the oldest church in Colorado. The other was the sense of community and how the Manitos culture was formed where with minor exceptions the village would take care of each other in a form of all for one and one for all. I was born into this community and raised by loving grandparents but with brothers and sisters in California I was left alone with just my grandfather when my grandmother passed away and I was the only child. As a result I became friends with many of the families and became a sort of adopted step child to many of the parents who were wonderful to me and treated me as a member of the family. Such was the case of the large Espinoza family. Abe and Margret became de-facto parents of mine and in due course Cano became like a big brother to me, albeit he was only about a year older. He grew taller than me and had a natural leadership ability. He was also strong and I admired him when he took on an elementary school bully that was harassing me for taking piano lessons with the Nuns on Saturdays. There were some fights between Cano and this bully that became legendary within our closely held Guadalupe and Conejos community of friends. We did many things together from riding horses bareback through the woods with bailing cords for reins tied around the muzzle of the horse so we would not hurt them to corralling a bunch of young steers and playing Stoney Burke Rodeo on them. We built tree houses, dugouts, put out fishing lines overnight to catch fish and hunted rabbits, pheasants and the occasional deer. One fish story that showed his integrity was when we had a 20 inch brown trout on one of our overnight lines. We landed the trout admiring it as it flopped on the grass by the fishing hole its yellow belly shining in the early morning sun. We didn't know which one of us should claim it. We flipped a quarter and I landed up winning the toss, without hesitation he congratulated me and said “as large as this guy is, it wouldn’t feed my family anyway.” So I said, no but you can join my grandpa and I for dinner of calabacitas, green chili, tortillas, and potatoes. It was a deal between two best friends sharing our catch. There are many stories such as these that remain etched in my mind including our efforts at boxing and traveling around the Valley at numerous pugilistic venues. Under the coaching of John Reilly, a teacher during our high school days in Antonito we entered matches at the SPMDTU for the yearly Labor Day celebration. Mr Reilly was somewhat of a celebrity since he coached Elvis Presley during the filming of Kid Gallahad in California. In the movie you can see Mr. Reilly bobbing and weaving at ringside, like the pro that he was.


When we got to high school we had similar friends and girl friends, not competitive for the girls affections but very aware of the attractiveness of the other sex maturing and becoming aware that our exploits in sports, dances and other activities attracted their attention. By our senior year we started to grow apart - we had divergent goals but always had a mutual respect for each other. I worked nights and weekends at Ramon and Alex Chacon’s gas station and had very little time to socialize. However with the Vietnam War escalating it became inevitable that we would eventually land up participating in that quagmire that engulfed and captivated the minds and the souls of many who served there as well as the nation. On that inevitable day that Cano was drafted, I took him and Ronnie Salazar to the bus station in Antonito that would take them to basic training and eventually Vietnam said goodbye and wished them good luck.When we both returned we carried our own demons, which brings me to the visit to his home. Entering his bedroom during his tour of his home, I saw a fully lit candle inside a human skull perched on the headboard of his bed. I turned around and asked him what this was all about, he said “he is my protector, he watches over me.” For a few minutes I thought of the Montagnards in Vietnam, they are the native inhabitants of the Central Highlands of Vietnam that had similar rituals communing with the dead and would use candles inside skulls of their victims. In essence they were mountain people discriminated against by the Vietnamese and in many cases executed; therefore they aligned themselves initially with the French and then the Americans and were great fighters. We did not discuss the skull or where it came from, there was that unspoken understanding as we looked at each other both knowing that we did not need to go there. After that meeting and a few others that we had, we started to go our separate ways. I had to work on a broken marriage, raise my little girl, go back to work at my old job at Grefco and finish college.Everyday I would travel 22 miles to the mine site in No Agua NM, back home and then 28 miles to college at Adams State. I did this for three years working at night and went to school during the day. After graduation I was accepted at the University of Denver to commence graduate work and my destiny into corporate America followed.

Over the course of the years during my yearly pilgrimage to the Valley, Cano and I would get together and in fact participated in a few 10K races, and would enjoy BBQ when I stayed at Conejos Ranch with my good friend Bill Haberlein. As Cano continued to build his castle and become famous on the internet I was intrigued about what motivated him. When Cathy and I got married he gave us a full tour of his Castle along with his litany on how corrupt the government was and his dealing with Jesus all along with his quest to build the castle for Jesus. Cathy, born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago was impressed with Cano’s charisma, knowledge and his ability to articulate his mission in life.

Nobody can frame what we become based on how we were raised or how our environment affected us. We have many psychological reasons drummed up by stereotypical psychobabble inherent in academia. Here are two young men, myself and Cano raised in a similar environment and best friends that have taken divergent paths on how we handled our war experience. There are no cut and dry answers, both of us saw combat, in my opinion Cano saw something so abhorrent he regressed to a period in his life that was safe and controlled. I handled my challenges by burying myself in work and trying to achieve goals that I did not know even existed. I was at a conference room of a large investment bank in Manhattan NY overlooking Central Park one year sitting at a mahogany table that cost more than the average home in middle America when my insecurity came out. What was a kid from Guadalupe doing here? As always I would ask, what would Cano do? Insecurity can defeat us or it can drive us to do better. I survived the meeting and many more so I went beyond survival and actually accomplished something. I think that both of us in our own way succeeded in making a life that suited us.

The conclusion to my narrative is that we were both affected in some way by what we saw and did. Cano looked inward and created an environment he found comfort in. Some may criticize him and say that he had so much talent, was such a handsome young man with such great leadership abilities, that it was a waste of time for him to build his castle. But no one can judge the actions of a man unless they have walked in his shoes, seen what he has seen and endured the wrath of nightmares. I don’t know nor have I ever looked at what Cano has accomplished as weird as some people have foolishly written in some blogs on the internet after having met him and interviewed him for a span of an hour or so. Some people may criticize me for what I have done or not done, we both tried to handle the actions that were thrown at us in our own way. No amount of PTSD labeling will ever explain how we handled our anger, or how we tried to chart our course in life. I do yearn however for the freedom of tubing down the Conejos River, riding a good horse bareback, waking up in the forest in a makeshift campsite listening to the pleasing flow of the river cascading and creating a path on land that our ancestors settled 200 years ago. Freedom is God sent, how we choose to enjoy it percolates in the heart of individuals like a calming wind across a pine tree laden forest in our beautiful San Luis Valley. Cano will recover from the tragedy of the fire and in the normal resourceful and hard charging way that drives him to build and create he will come out of this stronger. You can already see it with the outpouring of affection he has drawn as a result of the fire. God bless you Cano, my friend and fellow Veteran - help is coming.