My wife and I went to our first college baseball game of the year this week. It was an almost perfect game — not in the sense of a pitching gem, but in the overall experience.

The weather was perfect, there was a loud enthusiastic crowd and the home team won. The game was entertaining from the start until the end, with one home run, a great double play and a spectacular outfield catch that ended the game. And as with most college games, there were a few errors to spice up things.

In the end, the New Mexico State Aggies beat archrival University of New Mexico 8-6, handing the Lobos their first loss of the season.

What I’ve always liked about early season baseball games is the memorable smell of the event. It’s an ever changing blend of women’s perfumes, hot buttery popcorn in a bucket nearby, hot dogs cooking in the food truck outside the stands and other olfactory offerings. I never seem to get those same smells at other athletic events.

I think it has to do with the temperature being a little on the chilly side, along with a slight breeze to mix things up and for us in the desert Southwest — maybe a little unexpected spike in the humidity from an intramural sports field being watered nearby.

For me, it’s always made these games more memorable.

The game was pretty good. The Aggies got on the scoreboard first with one run in the second, followed by two more in the fifth, one of them a single home run. And just when you thought we were looking good, the Lobos bombed in three more runs in the top of the sixth to tie it all up.The Aggies got one more run in the bottom half of the sixth to get one run up, but the Lobos came back with three more runs in the next inning. They were ahead 6-5 as we moved into the 7th inning stretch. But the Aggies managed to put together a series of base steals and hits to put three more runs on the board before the last out for the Lobos in the top of the 9th.

It was mostly cheap fun. The tickets were $12 apiece (a $2 premium over regular tickets and another $2 more than I remember paying for them last year), hot dogs were $3 each but water — the essence of life — went for $5 a bottle.

The entire infield AND outfield of the Presley Askew Park is now artificial turf, which as a bit of a purist is not appealing to me. (I mean, for Pete’s sake, we’re an agricultural college — we ought to be able to grow good grass).

And at one point, I spied pitchers in the bullpen tossing around a football — where was the pitching coach???!!!???

But in the end, the game experience was really good. I urge you to try to make it to a college baseball game sometime this spring. Lots of mostly cheap fun (and good smells.)

It was an almost instantly regrettable impulse buy. I stopped by the local Walgreens earlier this week to buy some over the counter medicine. On my way to the cash register, I passed a display of Peeps marshmallow candy.

“Well, how long has it been since I had some of those,” I wondered. “I’ll buy some as a joke for my wife.”

But secretly, I wanted to eat one to see if they were as good or as awful as I had remembered them.

When I got home, my wife predictably was not interested in the “present” I got her.

“They’re so sweet that your teeth will rot,” she observed in her no-nonsense Midwestern way of analyzing the obvious.

So I decided to eat one.

I instantly felt the enamel in my teeth flushing down the back of my throat. But it was good in a nostalgic kind of way. I’ve now eaten three of the five in the pack and I have a dental appointment coming up on Friday. I’m wondering if I will have any teeth left by then.

However, it got me to wondering about this candy that always appears around Easter time. According to Wikipedia, Peeps first appeared in the late 1940s although the date is not certain. They were manufactured by the R.E. Rodda Candy Co. of Lancaster, PA, and were initially called “Rodda Marshmallow Peeps” or “Rodda Easter Peeps.”

The Rodda company was acquired in 1953 by Ukrainian immigrant Bob Born. His company, called “Just Born” still manufactures them today.

Here’s the website:

https://www.peepsbrand.com/

Ingredients for Peeps are pretty simple:”

Gelatin (for the marshmallow part), corn syrup, potassium sorbate (preservative), carnauba wax for the sheen of the Peep’s eyes, various dyes and of course, lots of sugar.

As you might expect with something that’s this legendary, there are Peep’s eating contests and scientific research to prove that they are basically indestructible. I found this tidbit from Wikipedia during my high-level investigative reporting journey:

“Peeps are sometimes jokingly described as “indestructible”. In 1999 scientists at Emory University jokingly performed experiments on batches of Peeps to see how easily they could be dissolved, burned or otherwise disintegrated, using such agents as cigarette smoke, boiling water and liquid nitrogen. In addition to discussing whether Peeps migrate or evolve, they claimed that the eyes of the confectionery “wouldn’t dissolve in anything”. One website claims that Peeps are insoluble in acetone, water, diluted sulfuric acid, and sodium hydroxide (the site also claims that the Peeps experimental subjects sign release forms). Concentrated sulfuric acid seems to have effects similar to the expected effects of sulfuric acid on sugar.“

And yes, I now really regret eating them.

This got me to thinking about our granddaughter’s recent science fair project in 5th grade for which she earned a blue ribbon in the regional fair in Austin, TX. Her project was to determine if there was any difference in the taste of different colored Pepperidge Farms “Goldfish” snack crackers. She and her seven-year-old brother conducted taste tests and determined that they could tell a difference.

So why not the same experiment with different colored Peeps?” They now are available in traditional yellow, blue, purple and pink. Do they taste the same? Inquiring minds want to know.

So I’m throwing out this challenge out to our grandchildren to conduct this very important experiment for next year’s school science fair.

In the meantime, I just heard the last two Peeps calling my name. I’m heading back for them before the ossify and turn into rocks.

On our daily walks with Chester, our dog, we often let him off the leash to run along the roads which border the large irrigation ditch which threads through our semi-rural neighborhood. It’s great place to walk with only a few other people and dogs and lots of things for Chester to sniff, explore and an opportunity for him to have occasional bursts of the zoomies.

The downside is that the ditch roads are prime breeding grounds for the dreaded Tribulus terrestris, commonly known as goathead weed. And of course, Chester always seems to find one of those nasty stickers from the weed in his paw. When he does, he immediately stops while he’s yards away from us, pitifully holds up the injured paw and waits for us to walk to where he is to remove it. Then he darts off again, only to find another goathead sticker. The cycle repeats.

There are two really really obnoxious weeds in New Mexico, Russian thistle, known as the common tumbleweed, and goatheads. Russian thistle somehow ended up in North America shortly after the Americas became colonized by Europeans, while the goathead weed apparently originated in South America and probably got here by a thorn being stuck in some migrating animal’s hoof or paw.

Goatheads are more prominent in the Southwest, where poor soil conditions and dry climate seem to make them thrive. However, after unsuspectingly landing my balloon one day years ago in what I believed to be the world’s largest goathead patch, a young woman passenger from North Carolina said they have something similar they call “sand spurs.” I’m not sure the two plants are genetically related, but they both are pretty painful when you or your dog gets one or several stuck in their feet.

(After we landed the balloon, my crew and I spent what seemed like an hour getting rid of goatheads in the balloon fabric, in the leather on the bottom of the basket and of course in the soles of our shoes. Had I been able to see what awaited me from the air, I would have picked another place to land.)

What generated my interest in goatheads was an article in last weekend’s Albuquerque Journal that said a new minor league hockey team in that city has decided to be called the “New Mexico Goatheads.” I thought that was pretty clever marketing — naming a team for an almost unique state plant that sticks it to everyone. The hockey team is apparently the equivalent of a Double A baseball farm team and is aligned with the Colorado Avalanche of the NHL in Denver.

The team mascot is “Billy the Billy Goat,” shown below.

We hope the Goatheads will be sticking it to the competition when the season starts.

And by the way, the “Tarantula Wasps” — the official New Mexico State Insect — would be a great name for a sports team in the state. Talk about “sticking it” to the opposing team.

(Read my earlier post on Tarantula Wasps at: https://aerocordero.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=10099&action=edit )

The TV hit series “Breaking Bad” aired its last episode 13 years ago. Although a cult favorite which my wife and I watched and enjoyed, I always thought it portrayed Albuquerque and New Mexico in a bad light, given it focused on illegal drug activity.

More than a year ago, the Albuquerque home of fictional “Breaking Bad” character Walter White was put on the market for $4 million. The home is a nice enough example of the northeast heights neighborhood in which it is located, but not nice enough to fetch that price. At 1920 square feet, the original asking price came out to about $2,083 per square foot.

Of course the listing agent was hoping that the price was justified because of its fame — or infamy.

Once the listing agent realized they weren’t getting many inquiries at the original price, the house was then offered for a mere $400,000 — still a bit overpriced in my way of thinking. But apparently the new price was attractive to at least 20 potential buyers who made offers.

The Albuquerque Journal reported last Friday that the buyer was Adin Ross, who the newspaper said was “known for his livestreaming content on Twitch and YouTube.” Sorry, but I’ve never heard of him, but that only shows that I’m way behind the times on social media.

The new buyer says he wants to turn the property into a “one-to-one” replica of how the home appeared in the TV series. I’m not sure what that means either.

I’m wondering how much commercial attraction this “one-to-one” home will get for a TV program that’s been off the air for 13 years. I suspect you can just drive by it and get as much of a thrill as paying to go inside it, but that’s just me.

At any rate, it got me to thinking about how much $4 million can get you elsewhere in New Mexico and what is the most expensive home currently on the market in our state.

As you might expect, Santa Fe leads the list of most expensive homes on the market.

I found about six houses currently on the market in Santa Fe in the range of $3.8 million to $4.2 million, including home below that only has two bedrooms but a fancy duck pond.

I looked up “Most expensive home for sale and New Mexico,” but I’m not sure that as fluid as the real estate market moves that what I found is current.

Two years ago, this home in Santa Fe was said to be the most expensive home listed in the state at $9.95 million.

The most expensive real estate listing I found on Zillow was for $31.5 million near Lindrith, NM. (Yeah, I had to look on a map too to remember where that was — Rio Arriba County.)

The listing is not really just a home — it’s a ranch with more than 20,000 acres of what is described as the “legendary mule deer area of New Mexico.” However, the house on the property isn’t much to look at unless you fancy a deer antler archway to your front door. And if you want a big ranch, I’m sure there are other listings for that kind of property that don’t appear on the Zillow listing.

Given the choice between these listings, I think I’d go with the home with the duck pond in Santa Fe. It’s within walking distance of the plaza and you probably wouldn’t be overwhelmed with wanna be guests during the city’s annual Fiesta or Indian Market since it’s only got two bedrooms.

In last week’s Albuquerque Journal, there was a sad (to me) story that the Gallup Independent newspaper was ceasing operations. The long-time daily newspaper on the far west edge of New Mexico had been struggling financially, like many other print publications around the nation, and finally faced the realization it could no longer continue.

As I’ve mentioned before, I grew up working in the family-owned Ruidoso News, a weekly newspaper that my father helped shape into an independent and valuable source of local news in our mountain community. My father sold the newspaper after almost 20 years of ownership, and it changed hands several times after that, finally to be acquired by a national newspaper group. Under that ownership, with profits becoming more important than keeping the community informed, it eventually ceased operations.

The Independent, under the ownership of the Zollinger family, was almost 100 years old. It served not only the Gallup area, but was a source of information for many on the Navajo Nation.

“I grieve, mainly for Gallup,” publisher Bob Zollinger said when discussing the closure of the newspaper. “It doesn’t feel good. It’s a death.”

But in the same edition of the Albuquerque Journal that announced the closing of the Gallup Independent, there was some hope.

Source New Mexico, which brands itself as “Scrappy independent journalism for you” wrote a story which appeared in the Journal about some shady handling of funds intended for victims of the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire in northeastern New Mexico. Source New Mexico is an independent news organization supported by donations from readers and grants. You can reach it online at:

https://sourcenm.com/

The story said that the federal official who was in charge of a multi-billion dollar fund to compensate victims of the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire personally received a six-figure payment from the fund because of “smoke damage” to his Angel Fire resort home. Angel Fire was far from where the actual fire burned.

Many victims of the fire lost homes directly from the fires from the flooding aftermath and many of those are still struggling to secure compensation for their losses. The federal official in charge of allocating those funds received $266,000 in compensation for smoke damage to his home and his wife, a realtor, received more than $250,000 for business losses.

The story did not mention whether the fund manager and his wife were members of one political party or another. It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that diligent reporting by a free press uncovered this matter and brought it to the attention of citizens and government officials who I hope will be able to correct the situation. It was journalism at its best.

While I try not to be political in my blog, I make an occasional exception when it comes to freedom of the press and the First Amendment. I think it is important for readers to know that a free and independent press is essential to keep government officials honest, to be at school board and county commission meetings to represent the people who can’t be there and to keep citizens informed about what’s going on in their community. I’m sure most of my readers have had complaints over the years about legitimate news outlets but despite its warts, we’re much better off with a free press than without one. Think of Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, Venezuela and other countries dominated by power-hungry individuals

Our own local newspaper is a shadow of what it once was. It was acquired by the same large media group that purchased my father’s Ruidoso News. The local paper seems to make most of its money on lavish obituaries and mostly publishes outdated wire or syndicated copy. True local interest stories are few and far between.

We need to support good local journalism, particularly in print form.

And remember that Thomas Jefferson was quoted as saying that if he had to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”

Yes, Chester our dog got it right for the second year in a row. He picked Seattle to win the Superbowl and the Seahawks came through.

With his winning streak, I’m wondering if Chester next year can come up with a way to communicate the points spread for betting purposes. Maybe I can paint each of my hands the color of the two competing teams and count the number of times he licks each hand. Of course, if I’ve just handled some freshly cooked bacon, I think the results would be tainted.

Anyway, Chester has a year to contemplate how he’s going to communicate the spread to all his followers. In the meantime, he’s content to watch re-runs of the Bad Bunny halftime show.

Yesterday, I chronicled my faithful readers (all four of you, possibly including me) about our faithful dog Chester’s conflicted pick of Sunday’s Superbowl winner.

In my annual highly scientific “toss out two different colored balls and see which one Chester picks” method of predicting the Superbowl winner, it was kind of a tossup. Chester first ran toward and then scooped up the green ball representing the Seattle Seahawks. But seconds later, he darted toward the blue ball representing the New England Patriots, grabbed it, then managed to stuff both it and the green ball into his slobbering and potentially toxic mouth. A clear tossup.

But later that afternoon, as I was playing his favorite “squeaky ball” toss game, he continued to gravitate toward the green ball. Finally, he would not relinquish that ball, even when I frantically squeaked the blue ball in front of his nose and then tossed it away from him.

Nope, not a smidgen of interest in the blue Patriots squeaky ball.

Below is a picture of him with his prized green Seahawks ball in his slobbery mouth.

You’ll note that the blue “Patriots” ball is forgotten and languishing behind him (circled in blue).

I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to interpret all of this.

I’m sure you’ve been waiting with “baited breath” for our dog Chester’s annual Super Bowl pick. But before we go into that, I looked up “baited breath” on the internet and discovered that the phrase was first used in the Shakespeare play “Merchant of Venice.”

Here’s the line from the bard, although he spelled the word baited as “bated.” And appropriately, a dog is mentioned in the selection:

“What should I say to you? Should I not say
‘Hath a dog money? is it possible
A cur can lend three thousand ducats?’ Or
Shall I bend low and in a bondman’s key,
With bated breath and whispering humbleness, Say this;
‘Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spurn’d me such a day; another time
You call’d me dog; and for these courtesies
I’ll lend you thus much moneys’?”

Well I’m sure you didn’t tune in for a lesson in English literature, so here goes Chester’s pick between Seattle and New England, with the blue ball representing the Patriots and the green one representing the Seahawks.

What you can clearly see from this is — confusion. Chester’s apparent first pick was the green Seahawk ball, mostly because he appears to have spotted it first. He grabbed it with his slobbery moth, but then realizing that he was missing something, darted over to the blue Patriots ball and scooped it up with the green Seahawk orb already in his mouth.

Keep in mind that Chester has only successfully picked one winner through this scientific method in the past five years. That was last year’s surprising win by the Philadelphia Eagles over the Kansas City Chiefs.

So if you’re looking for a solid answer about who will win the Superbowl or are just wanting an answer to the meaning of life, I think I’d keep Chester out of the equation.

I’m not a fan of either team in this year’s contest, but I’ll look forward to the TV commercials, my home-made buffalo wings. and not having to watch endless candid glimpses of Taylor Swift in the VIP box.

This morning on my daily walk with our dog Chester, I spotted the first daffodil in bloom this spring. With all the bad weather that many people have experienced lately and bad news from around the country, I thought this cheery flower might make people feel better about things. Spring is just around the corner.

The street where we live is kind of like a red-headed stepchild. We live within the corporate limits of the Town of Mesilla, but really have little in common with the historic community to the west of us. We seldom see the town marshal’s vehicles patrolling our streets or any maintenance crews showing an interest in our streets or other infrastructure.

A couple of weeks ago, a pothole just east of our house seemed to have appeared overnight. Although not large enough to swallow a vintage Volkswagen beetle, it might have caused serious damage to the front suspension of a Ford F250 Super Duty if driven fast enough. After wandering through the Mesilla Town website I was finally able to find a phone number to speak to a human. (Seriously, go on the website and see how long it takes you to find a good phone number https://www.mesillanm.gov/). Luckily I finally reached a nice young man, told him about the pothole and a couple of others nearby and he promised to fill out a work order to fix the problem.

The next day, someone — I assume from the city — had spray painted white lines around the offending potholes in hopes that a feral Chihuahua dog might avoid getting lost in them. Then came the rains. It rained for four solid days and soaked us with about 1.66 inches of the wet stuff — more than I remember experiencing in all my years here. That was followed by several nights of below freezing temperatures. That was the perfect combination to make the potholes grow even bigger.

When it finally seemed that the water had drained out of the potholes, I called the Town of Mesilla again and asked them if they could address the problem. Much to my appreciation, they appeared the next day and the potholes were filled. I made the point to thank them in person as they were dumping globs of hot mix on the offending street chasms.

This made me think of a story told by a good friend of mine in Santa Fe a few years ago. He said that a recent article in the Santa Fe New Mexican announced that the city was “declaring war” on potholes along the city’s ancient streets. As an example, the newspaper showed a picture of a nasty pothole near the downtown plaza.

He was a collector of old newspapers and proceeded to pull out a copy of the New Mexican from about 20 years earlier showing a photo of the same pothole in about the same condition it was in the most recent photo. The photo accompanied an article saying the city was “going to get tough” on potholes.

So looking at the illustration above, it appears we only have two choices to stop potholes on city streets:

1. Control the weather so we don’t get rain followed by freezing temperatures
2. Eliminate vehicles from roads

I’m not sure when the first oxcart or wagon rolled into New Mexico, but I have learned that the first automobile that came to our state showed up on a drive from Denver over Raton Pass to Albuquerque in 1897. That vehicle was a steam-powered “Locomobile” that was purchased by Albuquerque bicycle dealer R.L. Dodson.

The first gasoline powered vehicle in the state was owned by Taos physician Dr. Thomas Paul Martin, known locally as “Doc Martin.” His home is now the famous Taos Inn on the town’s main drag and includes a restaurant known as “Doc Martin’s.”

Martin is said to have brought the vehicle to Taos in 1900. There are no know photographs of that vehicle but below is a picture from a few years later with a newer car, loaded with members of the Taos Pueblo.

We really don’t know for sure when the first potholes arrived in New Mexico, but it may have started with what you see below.

I suspect potholes will be around to annoy drivers even after the whole transportation thing is fully automated and cars and trucks just float above the surface of a roadway. I think I’ll take a photo of the next pothole I see on our street and ask that it be compared to that same location 100 years from now.

The professional golf season has started, even though as I write this, large swaths of the United States are under severe winter storm warnings. In Las Cruces, we’ve been getting rain since last Friday and have now received more than one and two-thirds inches — a rare event for our high desert climate. The Organ Mountains were frosted with a thin covering of snow this morning, which was gone as soon as the clouds cleared out and the sun burnished the mountains.

Staying indoors is pretty much a given under these conditions, and watching sports on TV, reading a book or cooking something that takes most of the day are some of the best entertainment options to avoid cabin fever. I decided to watch sports and found the American Express golf tournament in La Quinta, CA. It was my best option since I don’t follow a lot of basketball and the two NFL playoff games weren’t until the day after I was writing this.

Watching golf got me to thinking about golf in New Mexico. I decided to see what the oldest golf course was in New Mexico and was surprised by the answer. It is the nine-hole course adjacent to historic The Lodge in Cloudcroft, which opened in 1899.

The Lodge in Cloudcroft was bult by the Alamogordo & Sacramento Mountain Railway, which had built the rail route primarily to haul timber harvested in the Sacramento Mountains to lumber mills in Alamogordo. Timber shipped by train from mountains was used to construct many homes and other buildings in El Paso and southern New Mexico at the turn of the century. The Lodge was apparently an afterthought to the railroad and was constructed as a traditional log cabin building further down the hill from the current building. The golf course was constructed further up the hill at 9,000 feet in the spruce, fir and aspen forest and along two narrow valleys where it still is today. At one time, it was considered to be the highest golf course in the United States. That honor now goes to the Copper Creek Golf Club near Copper Mountain, CO, at 9,800 feet.

The Lodge and railroad were later acquired by the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad, owned by the Phelps Dodge Corporation. But when a fire in 1909 destroyed the original lodge, the railroad initially decided not to rebuild it. A group of investors, including some doctors who saw the cool high and dry mountaintop location as a health benefit for ailing children, urged the railroad to rebuild the lodge. The railroad agreed and offered those interested to buy shares in the rebuilt hotel.

The golf course is unique and challenging. Although not very long, it features significant elevation changes, lots of trees and underbrush off every fairway and includes one hole where you can’t see the green when you tee off.

I’ve played it several times and have lost many a ball in the forests, usually on the right side of the fairway where my terminal slice comes into play. The first hole is pretty dramatic, a par four that you think should be a par three, with the pin a hundred or more feet below the tee box. Even so, the course is fun to play and hard to take seriously, so I just enjoy the unique experience.

Although originally built as a par 9, it becomes a par 18 because two different tee boxes are used for some holes and two different flagged cups are located on other holes.

I looked online about other states’ oldest golf courses. Many of them were started about the same era that the course at The Lodge was built. Wyoming and Nevada were the latest states to open golf course — both in 1917. The oldest course in the United States is Shinnecock Hills in Southampton, New York, where major PGA tournaments are still played.

And after the course at Cloudcroft was built, the next golf course in New Mexico wasn’t constructed until 1914 at the Albuquerque Country Club. I’ve played that course too and it’s flat and pretty boring compared to Cloudcroft. But instead of losing my ball in the forest, I can usually find it on the next fairway to my right, thanks to my predictable slice.

Last weekend was pretty gloomy in Las Cruces. We got more rain in a three day period than I have ever experienced in our 40 plus years of living here.

We decided to get pizza for the evening and as I was driving down a street right at dusk, I passed a brightly colored display on the side of the street in front of an abandoned franchise shoe store.

When I pulled up next to the display to investigate, a man quickly came out of his nice SUV pulling a trailer and was of course excited that I might buy what he had for sale.

The items he displayed were colorful plastic orbs of various shapes which he had made, including some that looked like hot air balloons, and all were electrified. Had it been 20 years ago, I might have considered buying one of these things, just to reward him for his persistence. But my wife and I have so much stuff collected over the years that I’m currently in the “let’s get rid of this” mode.

I spoke with the vendor briefly. He said he was from Las Vegas, NV, and had gone through Phoenix for a stop, then was heading to El Paso when he decided to give Las Cruces a try. Had he been here a week earlier, I think he could have sold several hot air balloon shaped electric orbs because of the local balloon rally that weekend. But sadly, he picked probably the worst weekend for an outdoor vendor to be selling things.

I asked him how successful he had been.

“Yeah, I sold a few,” he said, probably wildly overstating his success.

He said his ultimate goal was to end up in San Antonio, TX, where I suspect that if he found the right spot, he might actually do pretty well.

I concluded the conversation saying I might stop by tomorrow and take another look. But of course, I didn’t and I feel bad about that.

You have to admire street vendors — whatever they’re selling. I suspect they have an always optimistic outlook on how well their sales will go. And I believe part of what they enjoy is just meeting new people and enjoying new places.

And of all the street vendors I’ve encountered over the years, I’ll always remember the one roadside stand that I saw between Farmington and Shiprock. Its handwritten sign promised to sell you “Avon products and live goats.”

I didn’t stop to learn more about the sales offerings, and I’ve always regretted that. Who knows, I might have come home with a goat with fancy lipstick on its face.