Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Many families have an unofficially designated genealogist, that one person who doggedly slogs through the past, collecting the fragments of information that tell our histories. In my family, it’s my cousin Sherry. I’m not sure how she became the keeper of our story, but she does it well and I am grateful. It was thanks to Sherry — and an unnamed staff member at the Rice County Historical Society in Faribault, Minn., — that I found myself last week standing in a place I’d nev... Full story
A few weather forecasters are predicting our first frost sometime this week. Some say we may barely miss it; others have us dipping enough degrees below that magical line to put an official end to the growing season. For my "garden" (and I use the term loosely), it will be nothing less than a mercy killing. I take some solace in the fact that this last growing season was challenging many in this parched and scorching region. It's true what they say: Misery really does love com...
By my count, there are more than 20 Halloween or fall-themed community events already on the calendar for the next week and a half as we wind down October in eastern New Mexico. The National Retail Foundation estimates that Americans will plunk down a jaw-dropping (and arguably teeth-rotting) $12.2 billion dollars on candy, costumes, and decorations this season. This is all a far cry (or shriek or mournful wail) from the simple celebrations of my youth. I grew up long before...
What do peanuts and greyhounds have in common? Some might argue it’s hard to find commonalities between a humble legume and a willowy canine. We will have plenty of opportunities to look for some this coming week in Portales as Eastern New Mexico University welcomes former Greyhounds back to campus for its 89th Homecoming and the gates are thrown open at the Roosevelt County Fairgrounds for the 50th Peanut Valley Craft and Music Festival. Thanks to technology perfected by a g...
Say what you will about the flat horizons of the High Plains, they offer some of the best skies on earth. I’ve loved our great bowl of sky my whole life, with our unimpeded views of sunrises, sunsets, thunderstorms, rainbows, constellations, and all manner of celestial events. Given all that, one of the wonders that has evaded me is seeing an annular eclipse … that proverbial “ring of fire.” With luck — and some grace from Mother Nature — that will change on Saturday mo...
Oct. 4 On this date ... 1899: News was spreading about the recent murder of a sheep herder outside Portales. Geneologytrails.com provided this account, via the Santa Fe New Mexican: “E. H. Spinks, justice of the peace at Portales, Chaves county, reports the murder of a sheep herder, Perry Eiland, about 18 miles from Portales. “The body was found last Thursday, the murder having been committed at least two days before. “(T)he Sheperd was about 18 years of age and was herdi...
Historians generally agree that our long ago human ancestors engaged in what was known as the hunter-gatherer culture from around 2 million years ago until 11,000 to 12,000 years ago. With the exceptions of small pockets around the world today, most of us are well-settled into agrarian civilizations, depending on complete strangers to keep us fed and clothed. At least that was the case until a few weeks ago, when the hunter-gatherer culture was reborn with new vigor in...
Before there was an Eastern New Mexico University … or an Eastern New Mexico College … or even an Eastern New Mexico Normal School, there was a community that very much wanted an institution of higher learning in its city limits. We are only barely shy of a century after citizens of Portales banded together in “one of the most determined and united drives ever launched in this city,” according to the Feb. 10, 1927, Portales Valley News. That drive had one goal -- “Design...
I suppose if we lived in a place where we regularly had gray, chilly, drizzly days, it would be possible to grow weary of it. But after a summer under the broiler with the temperature gauge turned to “blazing,” the cooler days we had last week were a balm to the soul. When that tenacious high-pressure dome finally released its grip on our world and slid off early in the week, and cool and blessedly damp air moved in on Tuesday, I pivoted right into fall mode. It seemed too...
The temperature was somewhere around 100 degrees the afternoon I met Esther Steinle in a Clovis coffee shop, which had the doors propped open because of a malfunctioning air conditioner. But we had a chillier topic to talk about: upcoming holiday travel. For a group of young men and women who are stationed at Cannon Air Force Base, Steinle is the most visible "angel" in Angel Arms, a ministry overseen by Clovis' Central Baptist Church, which provides tickets for airmen who...
If you are ever fortunate enough to find yourself in possession of an invitation to a 70th high school class reunion, I have one piece of advice: Say yes, and don't miss a minute of it. I speak from experience. On the last Friday in August, I got to be a fly on the wall as most of the remaining members of the Melrose High School class of 1953 met in a Clovis restaurant to celebrate the years they spent together as Buffalos more than seven decades ago. A dozen of the original...
Of all the events that take place each year at the Roosevelt County Fair, there’s something about the Saturday morning pet show that has a special place in my heart. I’m not sure how common pet shows are at county fairs — I did a little internet searching and didn’t come up with a lot of mentions. I didn’t see one on the schedule at Curry County or at Lea County this year. Yet, the Roosevelt County Fair has hosted a pet show as far back as my memory goes, and for most of t...
The Curry County Fair wrapped up this weekend, and the Roosevelt County fairgrounds will soon be all a-bustle with its annual celebration of many of the things that make our counties special. That was all the nudge I needed to head to the archives and take a peek at the Roosevelt County Fair that was on the horizon 100 years ago this month. The Portales Valley News from Aug. 30, 1923, announced the upcoming event with a full-page ad helpfully locating Portales as “three h...
Fifty years ago right about now, the trees of eastern New Mexico were groaning with a record peach crop. Just reading about it made my mouth water. The Portales News-Tribune from Sunday, Aug. 12, 1973, showed Dora farmer A.W. Stolle cradling a branch loaded with Elberta peaches nearing ripeness. “I just don’t know how the frost missed nipping those buds this year,” Stolle told the paper, “but we sneaked by the late cold spells, and we certainly have a peach crop in the mak...
When James and Stephanie Johnston moved from Wichita Falls, Texas, to Portales in December of 2022, they saw the "Welcome to Portales" billboard announcing our community as "home of 17,000 friendly people (and three or four old grouches)." There's only one problem, the Johnstons said. They insist they've yet to meet a single one of those old grouches. Rather, James Johnston said, "Everyone, to a person, has been so welcoming." This gregarious husband/wife duo made the move to...
I’ve yet to see the new “Barbie” movie that has turned the nation pink this summer, with all manner of merchandise available in that unmistakable hue, from corn tortillas (excuse me?) to lawn furniture. This Barbie-mania has brought back memories of my own less-than-traditional encounters with those iconic 11-inch-tall fashion dolls. Mattel’s Barbie was introduced to the world in 1959, only a couple of years before I made my own appearance, so she’s been around my whole lif...
Any way you measure it — Fahrenheit, Celsius, or scoops of ice cream — it has been a hot summer. It’s a fine time to contemplate how we managed before that best of inventions: air conditioning. Plenty of us grew up in homes without it, passing our summers in sweaty blissful ignorance. At our house, the heat-fighting arsenal included screen doors, open windows, strategically placed fans, outdoor time, and a tank of mossy green swimming water that was ice cold on even the hotte...
Sometimes it takes a pair of fresh eyes to see things hiding in our own backyards. Or maybe two pairs of fresh eyes. Allow me to introduce you to Sajan KC and Anisha Sapkota. It's possible you've already seen this young husband and wife in our area, cameras in hand, on the hunt for some of our smallest and most beautiful neighbors: butterflies. If you don't think of eastern New Mexico as a particularly good place for spotting butterflies, KC and Sapkota can tell you...
I wrangled an invitation several weeks ago from Brendon Asher, director of Blackwater Draw, to visit the summer archaeology field school at Blackwater Locality 1 between Portales and Clovis. Early on the morning of the last Tuesday of June -and long before the temperature climbed to its afternoon high of 110 degrees - I was at the gate to the site to meet Asher and five of the six students who were enrolled in Eastern New Mexico University's summer class, Anthropology 482/583....
Local historians tell us that during the early 1900s, Roosevelt County boasted more than 100 schools in the tiny communities that sprinkled the Plains like cornmeal. By 1957, that number had dwindled to six districts: Causey, Dora, Elida, Floyd, Portales, and Rogers. In May that year, the Rogers community made the painful decision to shutter the doors on its school with only 62 students remaining on the roster following graduation. By fall, many of those students were at...
Fifty-three pieces of art created by 24 area residents are on display at the Runnels Gallery in the Golden Student Success Center at Eastern New Mexico University. Take it from me: It's worth a visit. Dubbed - fittingly - the Community Art Show, this free exhibit opened June 12 and is the first group exhibition at ENMU by local adults in at least 20 years, according to Bryan Hahn, manager of the gallery and curator of the ENMU Art Collection. "We've struggled over the years...
I’m not a regular follower of sports, but 50 years ago this month I became a rabid horse-racing fan for at least a season. Perhaps you did, too. It was the spring of 1973 when a thoroughbred superstar named Secretariat blazed into the headlines. He’d go on to win the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes that year — setting records in all three that still stand — and capturing the first Triple Crown of horse racing in 25 years. My brothers and I grew up in a...
I've been to a lot of funerals and memorial services. It comes with the territory when you live in a small community for a long time. The one for World War II veteran Thomas Vernon "Louie" Long held Thursday on a picture-perfect morning at the Portales Cemetery was one I'll never forget. For one thing, it was performed with full military honors, a moving ritual infused with tradition, beauty, respect, and precision that never fails to bring a lump to my throat. But what...
If you grew up in New Mexico and are my age or older, I would bet money you knew someone who was in the Bataan Death March in World War II. It might have been your dad, your uncle, a neighbor, a friend. Take just two of our counties. Fifty-four service members from Roosevelt County and 87 from Curry County ended up on that horrific march in April of 1942. Nineteen of those from Roosevelt County and 40 from Curry County died then or in the prison camp years that followed in... Full story
You’re probably familiar with the Wright brothers of aviation fame, but Portales had its own Wright brothers, well-known in their time for sadder reasons. Durward Haynes Wright and his younger brother Warren Wright both died during World War II, making their mom, Lillie Mae Wright, a double Gold Star mother, an honor no woman seeks. With Memorial Day on the horizon, it’s a good time to remember this family. You can find the Wright family marker in the Portales Cemetery, a shor...
