Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Random thoughts: I’ve been in Dallas recently helping extended family stretched a bit thin. After escorting a great-nephew to kindergarten and back several days, I am convinced teachers deserve huge raises. Simply lining the kids up was infinitely more difficult than herding cats. However, the kids could teach us about interacting. About 50 percent were black, 30 percent Hispanic and 20 percent white — but they seemed oblivious to who they playfully pushed. After school, I t...
Since exotic trips to Dallas, Albuquerque and Galveston are usually beyond my means, small trips become mini-vacations. Over Labor Day weekend, I traveled to Levelland in West Texas to visit Chance, my former black wiener/Lab foster dog. Leaving Portales at 6 a.m. to arrive by 9 a.m. to greet a cable guy scheduled between then and 1 p.m., Chance’s barking woke me up when the dude arrived at 4:30 p.m. Between Dora and Morton, Texas, I read a sign about Buffalo Soldiers (...
If President Trump promises to stick with the teleprompter, I give him permission to use this speech: My fellow Americans, green-carders and undercover residents keeping food prices and lawn grass low, Hurricane Harvey has opened my eyes blinded by the eclipse. And, believe me, nobody knows more about total disasters than me. We will build that wall — but only to keep coastal waters out. I appreciate Mexico’s offer to help, and apologize big-time for bashing them. Who kne...
My book-of-the-month summary for August is “Non Campus Mentis,” a collection of college students’ answers on exams and term papers about world history. The 145-page book, published in 2001 by Workman Publishing, was compiled by professor Anders Henriksson. Excerpts: • History, a record of things left behind by past generations, started in 1815. Thus we should try to view historical times as the behind of the present. This gives incite into the anals of the past. • History,...
Although not directly related to recent rumbles, this might be a good time for a universal invocation for gatherings on public property. Since mine does not beseech any specific deity, it should not offend anyone too much (who doesn’t deserve it). This is simply a framework, so feel free to tweak it to fit your own values (or prejudices): Dear sir or madame up there somewhere (if you are): Thank you for allowing us Americans to gather today at (insert event) in such p...
Following last week’s column about my 12-word memoirs, readers submitted theirs: • One thing I like is a good show — lightning struck; sound/flash. — Sheila Schelling • Norman Rockwell childhood; tragedies struck midlife; wonderful son, outdoors, and archaeology redeem. — David Kilby • Similar background, time and place, who we are was laid in place. — Mike Harper • We have come too far now to be stopped by a technicality. — Jason W. Brooks • Raised by grandparents as own ...
A collection of brief life summaries, “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs,” by the famous and obscure was published in 2008 by Harper/Perennial. Examples: • “Followed rules, not dreams. Never again.”— Margaret Hellerstein # “Occasionally wrong but never in doubt.” — Layne Butler • “Afraid of everything. Did it anyway.” — Ayse Erginer # “Was father, boys died, still sad.” — Ronald Zalewski Being wordy, I’m doubling the count to 12 for my attempts: • Born after twin...
My book-of-the-month summary for July is “The Great Thoughts” (Balentine Books, 1996, 543 pages). The quotes, ranging from B.C. to the 1990s, were compiled by George Seldes, who died at 104 in 1995 before publication. Selections: • “Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.” — James Stephens • “The great artist is the simplifier.” — Henri Amiel • “God is not adverse to deceit in a holy cause.” — Aeschylus • “Children’s talent to endure...
Former Clovis resident Ian Cooke’s experiences as a 19-year-old “tunnel rat” in Vietnam reminded me of my distant brush with the war. When the North overran the South , I was a Navy electronic spy on Guam—2,500 miles away. Eventually, more than 111,000 Vietnamese refugees were transported to Guam and housed in tent cities while being processed for resettlement—mostly in the U.S. I volunteered in some insignificant capacity, and in my job intercepted desperate messages...
For the fifth year, I spent the first Friday in July at a scholarship fundraising golf tournament on the Santa Ana Pueblo in Bernalillo, north of Albuquerque. Originally, I only participated because a New Jersey businessman pays my way — and to be a team player for my employer — but now the businessman and I have bonded over surprisingly harmonious views. Pressed for time to write this because of my 25th surgery on Tuesday (relatively minor, but I love sympathy), and TV-...
While recently going through a treasure/trash trove of my youthful musings, I ran across an essay written as an 18-year-old lonely freshman in a four-person dorm suite at East Texas State University. My hometown roommate and I played high school football, and got stuck rooming with two players from a town that had beaten us, 36-0, in bi-district. They were well-off and rubbed salt in the wound by wearing letter jackets as they pulled up in new sports cars with name-brand...
Here are a few behaviors that make me yawn: Humble-bragging If you’ve got something to brag about, say it loud and proud. On the rare occasions I hit the winning three-pointer in noon-time basketball, I peacock it on Facebook with embroidery about swishing nothing but net after arching the shot over the outreached fingertips of a 6-10 former NBA player. Of course, I don’t mention missing my previous 15 shots while guarded by the shortest and meanest woman on the court. Whe...
Since I hauled hay for the parents of legendary Cowboys’ quarterback Don Meredith in my east Texas hometown of Mt. Vernon, choosing “Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty” seemed like a logical choice for my June book-of-the-month summary. The only obstacle preventing me from following in the footsteps of “Dandy Don” was being 5-foot-8 and 145 pounds. (I sometimes get up to 150 during watermelon season, but am always back to 145 af...
The last time I saw my father was on Father’s Day in 1990 — 13 days before his last breath. Slowly dying for four years from asbestos at an east Texas steel mill, he had no interest in gifts. All he cared about was breathing and spending time with his large, extended, diverse family. Guy Sloan loved the outdoors and it seemed cruel, after years of back-breaking labor, he was only able to enjoy retirement for a few months before developing asbestosis from the job that all...
On Friday morning I boarded an eight-seat Boutique Air prop plane out of Clovis for DFW for Saturday night’s ZZ Top/Jimmy Buffett concert in Frisco, Texas. Although I wrote this before the concert, through my crystal ball I knew all but two of ZZ’s songs and everyone of Buffett’s. The only disappointment was he no longer performs “It’s My Job.” Unfortunately, he still performs “Margaritaville.” Even he sings, “I wish the radio would learn another song.” The laid-back hippi...
Confederate flags do flutter in Portales. At least two stores — appealing to Johnny Rebels Without a Cause for Self-Esteem — display them. On Memorial Day, several waved at the Confederate monument in the Portales Cemetery. Some say the flag symbolizes Southern heritage — even though that heritage encompasses the ugliest era in American history. Try convincing the ancestors of concentration camp victims the swastika is merely an ancient religious symbol adapted to refle... Full story
I found my book-of-the-month for May — “29” by Adena Halpern (2010, Simon & Schuster, 267 pages) — last weekend in Lubbock on a $4.95 discount table at the South Plains Mall. Ellie, a 75-year-old widow in Philadelphia, still feels young-at-heart and identifies more with her 25-year-old granddaughter, Lucy, than her 55-year-old daughter, Barbara. Ellie married her high-powered-lawyer husband, Howard, when he was 29 and she was 19. Although he was a good provider and she nev...
In “The Benefits of Being Ugly,” Joe Carter wrote: “Ugly people are the majority … appreciated for their personality … and funnier. Ugly is inevitable. If we live long enough we all eventually get ugly. Some of us fortunate ones just get there first and have time to get used to it.” I am one of the fortunate ones. In junior high school choir we sang: “I know how ugly I are, “I know how ugly I are, “But my face I don’t mind it “‘Cause I’m the one behind it; “It’s the one in the...
Driving into Portales for the first time during a dusk dust storm in 1982, I almost made a U-turn. This wasn’t the New Mexico I’d imagined. But I wanted to work at a university, so the next day I went through the eight-hour gauntlet of interviews — including those with Winston Cox, Dallan Sanders and B.B. Lees. After returning to Dallas, where I was The Salvation Army’s state media representative, I was offered the job. Recently, I ran across the manuscript of a feature...
Although I prefer writing humorous columns, often rooted in injustice, they are the most difficult. Despite their melancholy nature, it is easier to write about people overcoming obstacles and tragedies to claw a bit of salvation out of life’s drama. The easiest columns are fact-based ones, although that doesn’t preclude upsetting people who prefer alternative facts. People are the most defensive about examinations of religion — so I tread on that subject sparingly (but hones...
Although my book-of-the-month summary for April is “Unusually Stupid Americans” by Kathryn and Ross Petras (Villard, 288 pages), since it was copyrighted in 2003, it is unrelated to current politics. Excerpts: • National surveys: 50 percent of high school students thought Italy, Germany or Japan was a U.S. ally in World War II; 33 percent placed the Civil War between 1850-1900; 98 percent could identify “Snoop Doggy Dog.” • “Facts” in various textbooks: Columbus set sail in 19...
According to The Washington Post, President Trump is asking for a $54 billion increase in military spending in 2018, raising the total to $639 billion — while slashing $54 billion from non-defense programs. According to the Department of Defense, there are: 460,000 active-duty Army soldiers, 335,000 National Guardsmen and 195,000 reservists; 182,000 active-duty Marines and 38,500 reservists; 380,900 active-duty sailors and reservists; and 491,700 active-duty, National Guardsme...
Had it not been for commercials, Easter might have sneaked by me. The reason for the season seems to be big bunnies bearing brightly colored chocolate, marshmallow, peanut butter and plastic eggs. It’s also the season for small-screen kids and adults to model new fashions as they prance across beautifully manicured lawns while cherubically caroling clearance hymns to omnipresent music sound-tracking a rainbow of perfect skin tones. Although my east Texas Easters included t...
Everyone has a story. I met Bobby, 69, last weekend at my niece’s house in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite. He had recently started spending time with another family member, whom he met at a nearby dollar store. Bobby lived in Lubbock as a child and graduated at 19 from all-black Dunbar High School in 1967. During school the slender kid delivered newspapers at night and “only heard racist comments in certain parts of town.” From 1967-76 he worked in maintenance at Texas Tech. In...
In my east Texas hometown of Mount Vernon, I hauled hay for a famous football player’s parents (who appeared with him in a Lipton Tea commercial). Hauling hay was child’s play compared to being a 123-pound tailback forced to emulate star running backs from upcoming opponents during two-hour-plus blast-furnace practices, without water, commanded by drill-sergeant coaches. Running behind terrified second-string linemen who — out of self-preservation — flopped to the ground...
