Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
On this date ...
1961: The Muleshoe Journal was encouraging its readers to shop at home.
More than two dozen local merchants — including Damron Rexall Drug, Harvey Bass Appliance and Cobb's department store — helped fund the campaign with full-page newspaper ads that ran across multiple weeks.
The Best Way of Life was published on July 27, 1961, followed by The Dollar of the Diary on Aug. 3, 1961.
The diary began with a dollar bill reporting it had enjoyed a busy day.
“Early this morning I was swapped for some medicine … by a young fellow who got me in exchange for farm produce.
“The druggist gave me to the boy who sweeps out for him, and the boy spent me to get his suit cleaned and pressed for the school party tonight,” it continued.
“The cleaner took me and some of my brothers and paid his school taxes. I was in the bank only a few minutes when a school teacher cashed her pay check and I started around town again.
“Before the day ended I had changed hands twenty times, and had put $20 worth of good and services into people's hands … had accounted for $20 worth of trade volume in the community, and had been in one poker game. Not a bad day's work for one little old dollar.”
The diary ended on a sad note — the dollar reporting it had ended up in the hands of a “city-shopper” who planned to distribute it among “city folks.”
The message was “It pays to buy where you live” and local firms were “genuinely interested in the future of our community and your welfare.”
Pages Past is compiled by David Stevens. Contact:
Do you have a question?
A comment you'd like to see published?
Or maybe a story idea for a future edition?
— Please email the publisher: [email protected]
