Locking your keys in the car can be a positive experience

Greg Allen

An occasional memory lapse can be a good thing.

That “occasional memory lapse” happened to my wife Suzanne last week, but it reinforced the good feelings she and I both have about living here.

Suzanne had gone to the library downtown to return some books and discovered she had locked her keys in the car. She knew that I might be at the Clovis News Journal that day, putting the final touches on the Mach Meter. She called and asked that I be paged. I wasn’t there, but a couple of people at the Journal heard the call and showed up to unlock her car. She said it took all of about 15 minutes from the time she realized the keys were locked inside to getting back into her car heading home.

When she told me the story later that evening, I remarked, “You know, it would have cost you fifty bucks and taken an hour at a lot of other places we’ve lived.”

That incident reinforced our positive thoughts about moving here. You see, we weren’t assigned to come here, we wanted to move here. We had grown tired of the Alaskan cold which seemed to permeate into its populace as well. It was frigid there in more ways than one. I rarely received a response to my “hi” that was extended to a stranger while crossing a street.

To be sure, we were both taken aback by the stunning flatness of eastern New Mexico when we arrived. And the wind can definitely give your hair a new look. But as time has gone by, the land seems be be less flat, because the sky seems to be so large. And the wind keeps the skies blue, rather than the smog brown of so many large cities.

When I cross the street now, my “hi” is met with a smile and a, “How ya’ doin?” response. It may not seem like much to some, but to me it makes me mentally respond, “It’s good to be here.”