Pages past — April 22

On this date ...

1969: Eastern New Mexico University’s Speech and Drama students were preparing to present “Othello,” Shakespeare’s 1603 play about racism, love, betrayal and repentance.

Cast members included Bob Lockwood of Clovis and Duane Ryan, an assistant professor in speech and drama at ENMU.

1965: A prisoner allowed to drive his car from Fort Sumner to Clovis escaped custody of Curry County Sheriff Ernest Garcia ... on foot.

Jerry Perea, 20, was arrested in Fort Sumner and charged with burglarizing a Clovis service station and dry cleaner. Garcia allowed him to drive his car back to Clovis, and Perea parked it on the north side of the Clovis police station.

Garcia parked his vehicle on the east side of the building. “It only took me a minute to get around the building, but when I got there the car was there but Perea was gone,” Garcia told the Clovis News-Journal.

Perea was recaptured a couple of weeks later.

1945: The senior, junior and sophomore classes at Clovis High School were competing to see who could sell the most war bonds. The Clovis News-Journal carried daily “War at a glance” reports on its front page.

It’s his business ...

1960: “Crazy Sam” Sanders — a nickname he gave himself — estimated he had pumped gravel and sand from 40 acres over the past six years, creating three sunken lakes “in the middle of the dry, desolate, sagebrush country,” The Portales News-Tribune reported.

The gravel pit north of Portales was believed to be the largest of its kind in the state and maybe in the U.S., the newspaper reported.

Sanders had moved operations away from where mammoth bones and tusks had been discovered, attracting the Southwest’s foremost archaeologists.

Sanders employed 15 to 25 men at times and said his annual payroll was about $68,000. The newspaper described his business as “one of the biggest industries in the Portales area.”

Pages Past is compiled by Editor David Stevens. For more regional history, check out his weblog at: http://www.highplainsyesterdays.com