Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Conrad Hilton was born on Christmas day in 1887, in San Antonio, New Mexico. His father, Augustus “Gus,” was born in Norway and arrived in New Mexico by way of Fort Dodge, Iowa, in 1882. His mother, Mary Laufersweiler, also from Fort Dodge, married Gus on Lincoln’s birthday in 1885. Conrad was the second of eight children and the oldest boy. It would not be accurate to say that the Conrad Hilton story is one of rags-to-riches. There were never any rags. Gus Hilton was quite a successful businessman in his own right. A merch...
The Revised Gettsbury Address (Author Unknown) (Yes, I said Gettsbury, not Gettsburg.) Three score and five years ago our fathers brought forth upon this nation a new tax, conceived in desperation and dedicated to the proposition that all men are fair game. Now we are engaged in a great mass of calculations testing whether that taxpayer or any taxpayer so confused and so improvished can long endure. We are met on Form 1040. We have come to dedicated a large portion of our income to a final resting place with those men who her...
The Revised Gettsbury Address (Author Unknown) (Yes, I said Gettsbury, not Gettsburg.) Three score and five years ago our fathers brought forth upon this nation a new tax, conceived in desperation and dedicated to the proposition that all men are fair game. Now we are engaged in a great mass of calculations testing whether that taxpayer or any taxpayer so confused and so improvished can long endure. We are met on Form 1040. We have come to dedicated a large portion of our income to a final resting place with those men who her... Full story
I n 1908, Burns Agency was started in back of the old Citizens Bank on Grand Ave. It was an insurance and real estate business, but moved several times. It’s now at 5th and Mitchell streets. It was started by Frank Burns, but ran many years by a son, the late Jim Burns, and now his wife and son own it, I think. Clovis Floral Co., at 5th and Wallace streets, is the oldest business by the same family and at the same location since 1922. The founder was H. C. Gettys. Jim Craven worked there many years, but is now working for Rus...
I n 1908, Burns Agency was started in back of the old Citizens Bank on Grand Ave. It was an insurance and real estate business, but moved several times. It’s now at 5th and Mitchell streets. It was started by Frank Burns, but ran many years by a son, the late Jim Burns, and now his wife and son own it, I think. Clovis Floral Co., at 5th and Wallace streets, is the oldest business by the same family and at the same location since 1922. The founder was H. C. Gettys. Jim Craven worked there many years, but is now working for Rus... Full story
W. H. Duckworth, owner of the Duckworth Drug Company came to New Mexico in the year, 1908 headquartering out of the city while traveling his territory. In 1910 he became manager of the Southwestern Drug Store and remained in that capacity until 1922. Duckworth served his state as lieutenant governor in 1921 and 1922 while M. C. Mecham was governor. Following his term in the service of New Mexico he looked after his varied business interests until 1928 and for the four years following, when he was associated with his brother... Full story
W. H. Duckworth, owner of the Duckworth Drug Company came to New Mexico in the year, 1908 headquartering out of the city while traveling his territory. In 1910 he became manager of the Southwestern Drug Store and remained in that capacity until 1922. Duckworth served his state as lieutenant governor in 1921 and 1922 while M. C. Mecham was governor. Following his term in the service of New Mexico he looked after his varied business interests until 1928 and for the four years following, when he was associated with his brother... Full story
Old-Time music is very much alive. But you won’t hear it on “country” radio. There is another Nashville, with a kind of music so distant from what the city’s commercial center cranks out as to be from a different planet. It thrives in the community’s nooks and crannies like a cluster of quietly smiling mountain wildflowers in the shadow of those cultivated hothouse blooms that flaunt their colors on radio stations from coast to coast. The soundtrack for “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” — indeed the film itself &mdash... Full story
Old-Time music is very much alive. But you won’t hear it on “country” radio. There is another Nashville, with a kind of music so distant from what the city’s commercial center cranks out as to be from a different planet. It thrives in the community’s nooks and crannies like a cluster of quietly smiling mountain wildflowers in the shadow of those cultivated hothouse blooms that flaunt their colors on radio stations from coast to coast. The soundtrack for “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” — indeed the film itself &mdash...
Before Chick Taylor Jr. died he sent me an email. It read: “Dear Don, yes I remember Tommy Thompson and very much enjoyed your column about him and his kids. Thank you Don for all the great work you have done in your columns and all the other historical documentation. “In regards to my boyhood singing stint, here goes. In the first grade our teacher was Miss Pearman at Eugene Field Grade School. Our principal was Mr. Staubus. He and Bob Marshall were married to twin sisters. Mr. Marshall later became Clovis High School pri...
Coming from the country this farm boy had a lot to learn about town life in Clovis. I was enrolled in the 7th grade at Clovis Junior High in Miss McCasland’s home room. The first thing after an hour, a bell rang in the hallway and everyone jumped up and ran out the door. Except me. I just sat there at my desk. The teacher looked up and said, “You’re suppose to go to math now in another room.” That was the first thing I learned in that school: “You change rooms every hour!” Without a father, but with a mother and a big broth... Full story
Some say that it’s a person’s urge to get away from regimentation, that the so-called laws puts a man into too tight a situation. I think there’s too many dern outlaws anyway. Why is it that so many people are fascinated by outlaws? So why do men turn outlaw? Some say it’s because of a woman every time! A poem I wrote a while back tells how one man was forced into becoming an outlaw by a woman. I can’t say a woman is responsible for getting Billy the Kid into his trouble. In my outdoor drama over at the Caprock Amphitheatre I... Full story
Editor’s note: This is second of a two-part series on the history of the Fireballs rock n’ roll group, a frequent guest of the annual Clovis Music Festival. Tomsco reunited the group and set up a recording session at the Petty studio. “We were really excited, we had no idea that there was a recording studio in Clovis where Buddy Holly was actually recording. We were awestricken!” he said. On August 10, 1958, the Fireballs piled into a car along with their life savings and instruments and headed for Clovis. Upon enterin... Full story
Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on The Fireballs, one of the top rock ‘n’ roll acts of the early 1960s with strong roots in Clovis. It’s been 37 years since five young men from Raton made their first record at Norman Petty Studios in Clovis. George Tomsco, founder of the group was already strumming the guitar at the age of 9. An early bloomer, at the age of 12, he began playing professionally on Saturday nights with a local western band. In 1955, while attending Raton High School, Tomsco met his partner...
In the beginning of the 20th Century the mere idea of an American Music Canon did not exist. The American scholars and music people looked to Europe where classical music thrived and folk music was standardized. One hundred years later, American roots music and what came of it — pop music — made its sounds and styles the envy of the world. What we lacked in a sophisticated, respectful classical music canon was more than made up for the sounds of banjo picking, gospel shouts, gut-bucket boogie, twang, swing, the... Full story
Let’s call the new year Twenty-Ten. Not Two Thousand Ten. Down here in Florida, the Perspective Editor at the St. Petersburg Times, Jim Verhulst, has the right idea: “Until the turn of the millennium got us all confused, we had an easy familiarity with each year: “When did William the Conqueror invade England? Ten Sixty-Six. “When did Christopher Columbus cross the Atlantic? Fourteen Ninety-Two. “When was the Declaration of Independence signed? Seventeen Seventy-Six. “And that Tchaikovsky piece? The Eighteen Twelve Over...
I always thought they were started so lonely mothers could have other women come to give them some company! And that meant us kids would have a lot of stuff to eat. (And they could make a quilt if they had time!) Now that is what I always thought. The reason my mother’s club, the Claud Rainy Day Club was started was spelled out by Edna H. Durand, our Curry County Home Demonstration Agent in 1925. The purpose of the club is to teach women how to make housekeeping and homemaking easier. What! Easier? It wasn’t having company an...
Having a mother and father living in Texico, I was about to be born, but my father objected to having me be born in Clovis as my father was busy being a blacksmith at Texico. My mother knew an older woman next door who would take her to Clovis to a doctor. Actually the neighbor woman told my mother she was about to give birth, so the neighbor who had an empty shack on the alley near 10th and Axtell phoned for Dr. William M. Lancaster to come and deliver me. That was on Dec. 30, 1931. Lancaster passed his state medical board e...
Frontiersman Kit Carson told an audience more than 100 years ago: “When you get to Onava ... you will be on the edge of tomorrowland, also called the land of manana by the Spanish speaking people there.” His audience, the members of a wagon train, was encamped for the night on the Old Santa Fe Trail at La Junta, the meeting place, the junction of the Mora and Sapello Rivers. It was also the junction of the wagon trail that lead through Cimmaron and the one that cut across past Wagon Mound to Fort Union. Colonel Carson was...
I am a native of New Mexico, having been born in 1930 in Clovis, reared on a small farm in Claud, some 35 miles south of the Caprock Amphitheater. I was overseas in the U.S. Army for two years and attended a year of college in the humanities in California and art classes at Eastern New Mexico University, while pursuing the trade of a printer. Semi-retired, yet still very active in printing, I completed 43 years, nearly all at City Printing, Inc. in Clovis. I had volunteered as general manager up until 1994, limiting my work...
The historical drama of New Mexico’s most notorious outlaw opened to a large crowd at the Caprock Amphitheater back in the 1980s. Clovis playwright Don McAlavy created a colorful drama in “Billy the Kid,” which he created using known facts with a little imagination, about a dark period in the history of New Mexico. The Lincoln County War formed the crux of this production, which successfully breaches the gap between history and entertainment. McAlavy not only wrote the play, but he came close to totally stealing the show.... Full story
Welcome to Freedom New Mexico's morning briefing: Video of the daylink Clovis Community College cosmetology student Danielle Landers shows how to do a side-swept bang cut in this week's installment on How to do ... Gobble up a deal Grab your bird. It’s the final day for the Curves of Clovis Give a Gobble event. Curves waives its initial service fee for any new member who brings in either a turkey or a $30 contribution — all to be donated to Food Bank of Eastern New Mexico. Curves owner Viki Crawford says the goal is t...
While working to help establish the outdoor drama theatre near San Jon, I first met Eula Mae Edwards at her Southwestern Artifacts Museum in San Jon. Eula Mae (Smith) Edwards was the only child of Robert and Estella Smith who lived in Quay County for almost 40 years. Her father was a section foreman for the railroad in Logan for many years and her mother ran the Central Hotel. The hotel burned to the ground in the 1920s. Eula, being an only child, was by her own admission “just a little bit spoiled!” She began hunting Ind...
Don McAlavy: County historian Back in the old days when Joe Fahnert left the CNJ he went to the “Clovis Printing, Inc.” and dropped the word “Lithography” which no one understood. Never use names in your business title that confuse the public. Joe slowly got rid of all the extra help and built a new wooden sink in the darkroom, which has lasted to this very day. That was Joe Fahnert’s legacy. A good wooden sink built to last. He also bought Davidson offset presses. Later the old model 14 linotype was sold. He introduce...
Don McAlavy has written poetry since he was a farm boy at his family’s home 16 miles north of Clovis. He fell off the first horse he rode, herding “woolies” with his father. As a gangling long-legged youth he worked on the Joe Bailey ranch in the Frio Draw and learned the truth about cowboys. They didn’t all sing and play the guitar and chase outlaws. Most of them could be found building corrals and fences, and least here in Curry County. For the past 44 years he has earned a living as a printer in Clovis and spent his ext... Full story
