Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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My mind has been brought to the history of Portales this week thanks to Ruth White Burns. No, I haven’t been talking directly with Ruth, just her family. But it started me to remembering her and her love for history and her family’s prominent place in it. Her family is in the midst of preparing for an estate sale and they’ve asked me to help find a home for a couple of items too special to fall to the auctioneer’s gavel. One of those was the double-door safe from the Blanken...
I learned many Easter egg hunts ago from none other than Elmer T. Fudd that wabbits are wascally. I was convinced at a very young age that my Daisy BB gun was going to take down one of the long-legged jackrabbits running everywhere in our part of the country. I put in the hours hunting those long-eared bunnies but I’m pretty sure I never hit one. Mostly because they were usually a long way out and running fast when I got a shot. I did club one with the stock one day while foll...
One of the things I cherish the most are the memories my Grandmother Musette Terry related at the urging of her daughters. One of the chapters in that book of sorts (it’s also on cassette tape in her words) is the description of how they wound up in town during World War II and my Granddad Bob’s work to get back on his feet financially and out on the farm again — his own farm. In 1940 things weren’t going well and Granddad had taken work with a local contractor buildin...
I normally write this column on Thursday night and this Thursday was the 16th anniversary of the tornado that ripped across Roosevelt County and then took a swath out of Clovis. That day I was on a day off from my then full-time job as managing editor at the Portales News-Tribune and in the check-out line at Walmart when the cell phone rang. It was the boss editor from the Clovis office who was on his way back from a conference in Albuquerque, relaying to me that there had...
The skyline in my little hometown underwent a big change in the last week. At the time of this writing the old concrete Worley Mills grain elevator was still in the sky above downtown Portales but it looked more like some of the bombed out sky rise apartment in Ukraine’s large cities. At the rate the demolition is proceeding it may be down completely when you read this story. The skyline for the prairie town of Portales has had its share of character. We had twin “high ris...
When I was growing up, my Granddad Ruby laid across the bed every afternoon and took a nap. It didn’t make sense to me back then, but it does now. Several years ago, I got my sleep apnea under control with a CPAP machine and that kept me from dozing at my desk. But as I’ve aged, I still love a nap in my chair. Give me 20 minutes at lunch and I finish the day refreshed. Of course I’ve found, even with the CPAP, I don’t sleep very long at night as an old fart. But with the CPAP...
Around here folks used to say the sand would blow for three days straight before the wind would lay. I’m just glad we didn’t get three days in a row as bad as last Sunday. I don’t know if that old saying about a three-day blow has any basis in statistical fact or not, but I remember a lot of times in the spring when it would blow several days in a row, sometimes with a cold front accompanying the wind, but always with dirt in the air. But when it broke we always had the prett...
As I write this column I sit at my home office desk — naked and afraid. OK, my only fear is knocking out this column before midnight. And I am not that naked. I’m wearing boxer briefs and dress socks, but that’s more than you wanted to know about my column writing. But I was thinking of another time when I had been naked and afraid. I’ve recently learned that a new episode of the Nat Geo series “Naked and Afraid,” was filmed right here in eastern New Mexico. It took place...
I remember a time in grade school when we marked both the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We did it on their actual birthdays and we didn’t get a day off. We were in school learning about each of them and about how they influenced the growth of our nation and its ideals. One of the things I should have been learning, and maybe I did or maybe it was picked up much later on the History Channel, was that Washington was the only president elected u...
It’s Super Sunday and in answer to Bocephus’ question for years — yes, I am ready for some football. I’m a bit of a throwback in that the most important thing about this year’s Super Bowl is that Tom Brady won’t be playing quarterback in it. No, actually that’s the second-most important thing. The most important thing is the game itself — football. While I’m happy that Brady won’t be making an appearance, I’m sad that neither will my Denver Broncos. I’m also sad that it...
I stumbled onto a great story from the 1977 Portales News-Tribune Progress edition about a 1951 coyote hunt in the Elida and Kenna area. The story was a reprint of one of Editor Gordon Greaves’ “By The Way” columns. He started it out with a comparison to the English version of “riding to the hounds.” He explained the hounds, in this case were hybrid greyhounds. The chase started before daylight on the mesa west of Elida with two vehicles, a Jeep and a pickup, with 10 dogs a...
Lots of folks wonder how in the world little towns on the High Plains ever survived and why people stayed on through the dust, drought and lean economic times. I guess we just did it. My hometown of Portales for instance has motored along over the decades of its existence without a lot of change in its fortunes one way or another. We’ve come through depressions and recessions that brought the country to its knees without noticing much change in our quality of life. Sure w...
I’ve been aware of the rise of artificial intelligence, or AI for short, but until I heard a brief story from a tech guru on a television segment that my ears perked up. They were talking about technology called ChatGPT that is able to spit out 500 written words on any subject in a few seconds. Naturally, I immediately began wondering if it could write a small-town newspaper column. Could I put this technology to work for me and land numerous other column gigs across the g...
My favorite poem is Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” This column is about the road not taken, but trust me it isn’t as deep as the poem. I’ve always been a fan of wandering country roads. Since I got wheels it was a favorite thing to do. Over the years I’ve traveled miles and miles with a shotgun, fishing pole or camera. Just longing to see what’s over the hill or around the next bend of the river. I’m surprised I’ve not ended up walking or hitchin’ any more than I hav...
As I came through the door at the groomers, I could see her cute and freshly cropped face looking at me from a kennel. Miss Maggie had her day at the beauty parlor and she was happy to see her daddy. As the owner of the shop handed her over I received rapid-fire puppy kisses and the shop’s help squealed with delight. The shop owner said she got quite a few while she was grooming her. Two things that mystify me were how she was being so good and patient in the kennel and how s...
After 2020 and 2021 turned out to be real stinkers, I had great hopes that 2022 would turn around but it didn’t. After being released from our Covid captivity in the fall, by winter we were locked down again and it continued for the first two months of the year. Hope briefly glimmered in the spring with regular activities but things got tough down the stretch. Multiple situations turned things upside down at work and my wife’s health went downhill requiring more and more of...
Years ago, in a cold, dark pasture, a simple man, a shepherd, settled into his camp with fellow shepherds to keep watch over the flock through the night. These sheep were valuable to those who entrusted him with their care and protection and he took his job seriously even though his masters and most of the rest of the folks in the nearby towns looked down on him and his buddies. They told him he smelled bad, he was uneducated, poor, with thread-bare garments and, worst of...
I was slightly dreading my step back in time to my elementary school. They had just spent a big chunk of change to renovate it and I was afraid I might not recognize it. I was touring the school with our Leadership Portales class and I was relieved that the outside of the building, at least from the original part of the school, looked like the L.L. Brown Elementary that I had attended some 50 years ago. A new annex had been built to the north several years ago but the...
The sounds of Christmas came unexpectedly and caught me by surprise. The choir on the courthouse steps had just finished their first Christmas carol, “Jingle Bells,” when the answer came. Church bells from the First Baptist Church, a block away, opened up in a carol of their own. Ask and ye shall receive I thought. The choir director noticed the bells and held up starting the second song until the song was done. The church bell repertoire was far from complete and so the con...
I think I’m Christmas conflicted. Assaulted all day by music media with Christmas themes and all evening with movie and TV show depictions of the holiday. I’m probably not alone when I say it sinks into your consciousness and maybe begins to get on your nerves a little before it’s all over. On the one hand are the serious traditional offerings such as “Silver Bells,” “White Christmas,” “Holiday Inn” and “Miracle on 45th Street,” on the other hand is “Grandma Got Run Over...
This past week’s rare Thanksgiving storm brought back memories of another storm on that holiday that was a lot more trying. It was way back in 1993 in Colorado. Snow in that part of Colorado is expected by November, even substantial storms, but this one was a little more of a booger for several reasons. It was timed to hit late on Thanksgiving day and bring a foot-and-a-half of powder along with sub-zero temperatures for several days. The arrival of this weather c...
I wonder how many of you guys have ever cooked a full-on gourmet meal for your wife? How many of you were brave enough to do it before you were ever married? Yes, I was that crazy. It’s not like I had a lot of experience cooking way back then, I just wanted to try something different that I was pretty sure she would never fix and had never had. I also wanted to give her a positive experience with wild game since that hadn’t been a regular thing at her house. I was duck hunting...
My eye doctor tells me my cataract surgeries are holding up well 3-4 years later and my prescription is still fine. I wanted to argue with him but didn’t think I would win. I think my reading problems have more to do with sinus issues than they do correction. He did tell me I could use artificial tears to keep things lubricated. He was more interested in how closely I was following diabetes issues. Something he has in common with my primary care doctor. I was due back to s...
I have a little page in the notes app of my phone where I enter column ideas as they come up because the hardest part of this whole deal is having a topic. Last week I knew I had something written in there but I couldn’t recall what it was so I opened it up to find the words “time capsule” as the last entries. Something came up somewhere in an email, a TV show, a story someone was telling or a Facebook post that made me write that down, but a little over a week later I can’t...
Remember when the price for a barrel of oil was actually below zero? Remember when interest rates were real close to zero? It wasn’t really that long ago, but it seems so distant. These fellers that call themselves the Fed are working hard to make me relive my youth. They’re doing a pretty good job. According to a New York Times story on Thursday, mortgage rates had stormed past 7% for the first time since 2002. That meant that the national median mortgage payment had ris...
