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Ever hear the one about the guy from Santo Domingo Pueblo?

He rides his horse right into Budagher's Bar. Then up to the bar.

So, the proprietor, John Budagher Sr., looks up at the rider and his equine visitor and says, "You gotta get that horse out of here." And the fella asks, "Why, John?"

"Because," Budagher replies, "he's not 21."

I'm not saying it happened exactly like that, because horse stories and bar stories and old-time New Mexico stories and John Budagher Sr. stories have an apocryphal whiff to them. By today's, lawyer-on-speed-dial standards, could that really ever occur without several Department of . . . types swooping in to investigate?

Maybe, maybe not. But the New Mexico of John Budagher Sr. was a very different place from the one we know today.

He died last Sunday at the age of 89, felled by pneumonia but buoyed by a life well-lived. In a lot of ways, a big piece of state history passes with him.

For decades, he ran the bar at the dusty turnoff — Budaghers — that bears his family's name. He'd introduce himself as "John Budagher, halfway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe."

Before the coming of the freeway — when getting from Albuquerque to Santa Fe and back was a harrowing, two-lane journey on U.S. 85 — a little hospitality meant everything.

"He was an oasis," says John Budagher Jr. "That's the place you stopped if you needed anything. Or everything."

In a lot of ways, Budagher and his bar were a snapshot of what gave New Mexico its personality for much of the past century: friendly, homey, handshake-filled. John Jr. says there wasn't a soul who walked into Budagher's Bar without getting to know the proprietor — regardless of whether the visitor was a governor, a janitor, a tourist from Omaha or Columbus, a salesman.

"People would come up to Dad, and he'd say, 'You're from the Vigil family in Santa Fe? Were you Moises' side or was it Andres'?' It was, boom, a living history of family."

It was, boom, fated. Budagher Sr. was the son of Lebanese immigrants, another in a long line of proud New Mexico families whose lineage began in the Middle East: the Maloofs, the Hindis, the Fidels, to name just a few. Many became state leaders, if only because they meshed so well with the culture already here.

That's the way it was for Budagher, who was born in the hamlet of Peña Blanca and whose first language was the Pueblo tongue of Keresan. All along, there was that thread of meeting, greeting, getting along.

And it went along like that for decades, at least before the freeway came along. You stopped at Budagher's for a soda or a pop — they're not the same thing — and you'd strike up a conversation with John or his brothers, Robert (ran the gas station/trading post), George (the cafe), Saith (the other gas station).

"I honestly don't believe my dad ever met a person who wasn't his friend," John Jr. says.

But progress, of course, means change, and it was no different for Budagher — or Budaghers. The coming of the interstates made it less likely or necessary for people to stop at the roadside bars that made places like Route 66 so romantic. By the early 1980s, a horse and its rider couldn't mosey up to the bar anymore.

"Plus, Dad was getting older, and he was losing his vision," John Jr. says. "The days of the bar were numbered."

John Jr. says he doesn't get sad so much as he revels in the old stories, the joy of a great life.

Which brings us to the final story. The New Mexico story of John Budagher Sr.

He is near death, and the words Ai, diòs mio are on his lips. His family is certain those will be the last thing they hear from him when they are regaled with a song:

Ai . . . yi, yi, yi

Canta y no llores . . .

That, folks, is the way to go.