2 weeks Ago
It was a story longtime Santa Fe businessman Charles "Darby" McQuade told many times and in many places: How his short joyride over the U.S.-Mexico border toting hundreds of pounds of marijuana ended as quickly as it began.
"He just said he passed over the border and he said he got 300 yards," said son Brooks Saucedo-McQuade of Albuquerque. "The cops told him ..
. 'You were as inconspicuous as snow in July.' " That Nogales-area border run, on July 4, 1970, cost McQuade — who would later found the iconic mercado-style Jackalope, a home decor and pottery import store — a short period of freedom.
It also cost his mother, a Republican who was what the newspapers at the time called "a woman candidate" for the U.S. House of Representatives in West Virginia, a few negative headlines.
But it did nothing to stem McQuade's desire for a life of travel and adventure — and it served as terrific party conversation fodder for years to come. McQuade died Sept. 6 at age 81.
"I'd walk up to him [at an event] and say, 'So, Darby, what brought you to New Mexico?' " recalled Jon Patten, a longtime friend and the co-founder of Dion's Pizza. "He'd say, 'Oh, that was two federal agents, and I was in the back of a van.' " Born in 1942 into a family of 15 children, McQuade earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from West Virginia University before moving to New York for a short stint on Wall Street.
After his weed-smuggling jaunt landed him in La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution in Texas, McQuade took advantage of the prison's educational release program, going for a second master's degree at the University of Texas at El Paso. That's where he met an undergraduate student named Elida Saucedo, not a fellow inmate but a regular student. "I remember they were at school by 7 in the morning and then they had to stay there until 7 at night," said Saucedo, a now-79-year-old Albuquerque resident who was married to McQuade from 1985 until 2005.
The couple eventually had two children, Brooks Saucedo-McQuade and Karles Saucedo-McQuade. Brooks Saucedo-McQuade said his father and one of his brothers for a short time had a business selling candles out of pottery containers in El Paso, but realized people were far more interested in the pottery. So he sold the business and brought a truckload of pottery to Santa Fe, where the idea for Jackalope was born.
McQuade officially opened the business in 1976 at the same Cerrillos Road property where the Santa Fe store stands today. The store was his life, Saucedo-McQuade said — McQuade bought and lived in a house behind the property, and had a trailer there as well. With several of McQuade's brothers working at the shop at one time or another, the store grew into far more than a home decor business, Saucedo said.
McQuade, who was involved in helping launch the International Folk Art Market, wanted the shopping experience to be fun, she said, and treated the shop more like a venue. There was a merry-go-round at one point, and an al fresco cafe, and he regularly brought in live music and dancing and artists from Mexico to give demonstrations. It even became home to a colony of refugee prairie dogs, rescued from a development site.
"It was just a huge, huge community," Saucedo said of the business, which expanded over the years and at one point included locations in Texas, Colorado and California, as well as in Albuquerque and Bernalillo. McQuade sourced goods at his store from around the globe, sometimes working with brokers, as was the norm in the import world in those days, Saucedo-McQuade said, but often going off the beaten path himself to meet with artisans and craftsmen in small villages and communities. "He went to, like, 50 countries .
.. to buy," Saucedo-McQuade said.
"That was his favorite thing. He liked that better than managing." Saucedo-McQuade said he and his mother went on several trips with McQuade to Australia, the Philippines, China and Indonesia.
McQuade's other journeys took him to Mongolia, Vietnam, Japan, India, Bhutan, Turkey, Morocco and nearly every country in South America. Saucedo-McQuade said he only participated in his father's work during a visit to Mexico, where he got to see his father in action. McQuade had many contacts in Mexico, and would be out visiting with associates and artists in the mountains until 1 a.
m. Saucedo-McQuade said he didn't do much bargaining; he knew the price point he could work with and would usually walk away rather than ask sellers to go lower. He also didn't like to buy items he thought were priced too low.
"I saw him personally raise the prices on himself," Saucedo-McQuade said. "Not very often, but it did happen. .
.. He knew what he could sell it for, and he only needed a certain margin of profit.
So if he could pass that on, he would." Patten said he always considered McQuade a bit of an anomaly in the world of business leaders, in part because he didn't consider maximizing margins as a major incentive. "He was not very business savvy but .
.. he was a really good guy that loved folk art," Patten said.
"...
He would get treasures from around the world, and he sold them for amazing prices, because he didn’t believe in marking them up much.” The housing crisis in 2008 was a "perfect storm" hit Jackalope hard, Saucedo-McQuade said. "Second homes were a real big part of our .
.. business model," he said.
Second home owners in Santa Fe "would come in and furnish their whole home with us." McQuade filed for bankruptcy, and the family no longer owns the company, Saucedo-McQuade said. The loss of the business took a major toll on McQuade, who was eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease more than a decade ago.
Saucedo-McQuade said his father was above all a "genuinely funny" man with a big heart and big personality. "He really he had a Mel Brooks kind of sense of humor," Saucedo-McQuade said. ".
.. He was really creative, especially for just a straight white guy from West Virginia.
”.
