In the midst of an election campaign about 30 years ago, one of New Mexico’s U.S Senators or Congressmen in search of votes appeared on TV and boldly announced:
“We found the source of the ‘Taos Hum.'”
The problem was that the source had not in fact been discovered and the hum continues today, at least according to about two percent of the population in that northern New Mexico community.
Reports of the “Taos Hum” began circulating as early as the late 1980s. The hum is described as described as a deep, diesel‑engine‑like rumble or throbbing heard from a location far away. It is said to be in the range of 30 to 80 Hz, at the very low end of human hearing. Some described the sound as a low E-flat on the musical scale, while others said it sounded like a noise that emanated from a high powered bass woofer.
But the sound is apparently heard by only about two percent of the 6,500-plus residents of Taos, and mostly by middle aged individuals, usually at night and in closed rooms. And interestingly, ear plugs do not seem to block out the sound.
The famous Taos Inn in downtown Taos
In 1993, as interest in the hum intensified, four research organizations set out to identify the source of the sound. They included the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, the University of New Mexico and the Phillips Air Force Laboratory. After two years of investigation, they all came up blank. Acoustic mapping, seismic monitoring, and electromagnetic field measurements found no consistent source for the noise, although some Taoseños claimed they could still hear something even when in the presence of the delicate instruments that sensed nothing.
According to Wikipedia: “As of 2026, the Taos Hum remains officially unexplained.…(It) continues to be a scientifically documented perception without a confirmed external source.“
Residents who believe the sound is real said it has made them suffer insomnia, headaches, anxiety and chronic fatigue. Some researchers say those who hear the sound suffer from an inner ear abnormality. Other researchers say the sound may emanate from the slow movement of tectonic plates beneath the Sangre de Cristo mountains. And of course there are those conspiracy theorists who suspect aliens may be involved — after all, Roswell, NM, where an alien spacecraft supposedly crashed in 1947, is only about 250 miles away. And if you care to wade through the internet, you’ll find lots of other explanations that claim to be the truth about the Taos Hum.
However, reports of low-frequency hums have shown up other places around the globe. Those locations include Bristol, England; Windsor, Ontario, Canada; Largs, Scotland; Aukland, New Zealand; Kokomo, Indiana, USA; Frankfurt and Darmstadt, Germany; and West Haven, Connecticut, USA. Research at several of these locations discovered that distant industrial machinery was the cause of the sound, while sources in other locations have not been identified.
I’d keep writing about this, but I’ve suddenly started hearing a low frequency sound in my ears. Oh wait, I’ve discovered the source — my hearing aid batteries went dormant, and our dog Chester is now slowly snoring next to me. I can sense a low frequency rumbling that was not previously present.
The current kerfuffle in Alaska about a candidiate for U.S. Senate with a name similar to the state’s current Republican U.S. Senator, Dan S. Sullivan, reminds me of a similar incident in New Mexico politics back in the 1960s.
Republicans are claiming that a candidate with the name of Daniel J. Sullivan was deliberately placed on the Alaska general election ballot in order to dilute the vote for the current office holder and give a win to Democrat Mary Peltola. The current administration has asked the Justice Department to nullify results of the election if the Democrat wins.
My recollection of the case in New Mexico in the 1960s is a bit fuzzy and I couldn’t find anything in various searches, but what I do remember is this.* Montoya was seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate or the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1960s and was considered the front runner. Although it was never proved, some political operatives who didn’t favor Montoya rounded up two or three individuals with names like “Joseph E. Montoya,” “Joseph N. Montoya,” and “Joseph A. Montoya” and convinced them to enter the primary and have those confusing names on the primary ballot. The trickery did not work, and Montoya went on to serve from 1957 to 1964 in the U.S. House of Representatives, then won the U.S. Senate race in 1964 to serve 12 years.
The “real” Sen. Joseph M. Montoya
His election to the Senate came during another bit of New Mexico political maneuvering. Republican Gov. Edwin Mechem had lost his bid for another term as governor on Nov. 6, 1962, when he arranged to have his lieutenant governor — now governor — to appoint him to the remaining term of U.S. Sen. Dennis Chavez. Chavez, a Democrat, had died later that month. Mechem hoped his brief tenure in the Senate would give him an advantage to retain the seat permanently. The maneuver didn’t work and Montoya went on to serve 12 years in the Senate.
Montoya’s political demise came after another notable event in New Mexico politics. In his re-election bid in in 1976, he gave a speech in Spanish denouncing his Republican opponent, former astronaut Harrison “Jack” Schmitt. In his speech, which he apparently assumed no one but Spanish speakers would hear, he called Schmitt a “changito,” a derogatory term for “little monkey.” The remark intended to imply Schmitt was just another monkey that had been sent into space and not qualified to be a member of the U.S. Senate.
A former colleague and friend, Larry Calloway of the Associated Press, was present at that speech and understood Spanish. He wrote a story about Montoya’s remark, and the statewide fallout led to Schmitt being elected by a 57 percent to 42 percent margin.
Calloway’s story has been dubbed “The Monkey Speech.
*If you have a different recollection of this event, specifically the date of that election, please let me know and I will correct the error in a future post.
I wrote last week about the upcoming 50th anniversary of the New Mexico State University rugby team.
The event was last Thursday, Friday and Saturday and I have to say it was a spectacular success. It was put together by a bunch of rugby players (men and women) who I suspect most people would have seen as beer-chugging derelicts who played a rough, oddball sport in their college days and had questionable futures after graduation.
What made all this happen was the unlikely establishment of a rag-tag team in a cowboy college in the Chihuahuan desert by a lifelong friend. He learned to play rugby at a boarding school in Australia while his father worked as a Lutheran missionary in nearby Papua New Guinea and carried a lifelong passion for the sport. I was a tag-along member of his vision, acting as a volunteer coach for the team for about 12 years.
Joel Diemer, whose roots are in Iowa, had established a team about 10 years earlier at Iowa State University during his college days there. After receiving his PhD and securing a position at NMSU’s College of Agriculture (now the college of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES)), he wanted to establish a rugby team at his new university. Fifty years later, you have to conclude his efforts were wildly successful.
At the opening reception Friday night, on the rugby pitch on campus Saturday and at the banquet that evening at Fulton Center, there were literally hundreds of people who attended. I have to admit I didn’t know a lot of them, especially the younger men’s rugby alumni and the women who participated in an equally successful program.
Members of the 1982 Final Four Team who attended the event. I’m on the left, with John Beasley and Pat Moore the tall guys in the back, with Jon Diemer, Eric Smith, Cary Perkins and Tim Diemer in front from left to right. Bob Halper, Andy Meyers, Wally Gilmore and Mark Teel, other members of that team, attended but were not around when this photo was taken.
The alumni rugby players are held together through a social media platform that didn’t exist in my days of coaching. (All we had were typed or hand-written rosters with no longer useful phone numbers and addresses.) Somehow, all that information got transferred into the social media universe and everyone has remained connected.
When I looked over the large crowds at the rugby pitch Saturday afternoon and at the banquet that evening, I asked Joel how proud he must have been about seeing such success from starting that single team 50 years ago.
His response was that he was more proud of the fact that these men and women had the desire and knowledge of how to keep the program growing long after he and I had retired from his role as founder, faculty advisor and my role as coach.
I have to say that I’m exceptionally proud of the young men (now mostly in their 50s and 60s) who I coached. Most (if not all) have become responsible members of society, with meaningful contributions through work, their families and their communities.
And again, it all started with the planting of a single seed by my great friend Joel 50 years ago. It’s an example of how a little thing can grow into something much bigger.
I know there are more significant things you can start or support — cancer research, saving endangered species, the environment, helping the poor and hungry, etc. But the rugby program was a platform that I honestly believe helped teach young men (and women) responsibility while having a darn good time in college.
So here’s to another 50 years of rugby at New Mexico State University, when I’ll be long gone and won’t be able to cheer them on from the sidelines of the pitch.
The men and women have established an endowment at the New Mexico State University Foundation to help pay for future team needs — like equipment, coaches’ stipends, player financial support, etc. Here’s a link to the alumni website with information about how to financially support the program through the endowment at the NMSU Foundation.
Joel and I were recognized at the event for our contributions to the program. Here’s a photo of me receiving a plaque with a vintage Chiles rugby jersey from two of my most influential players and great friends from my late 1980s squad, Jaye Irwin and Brent Jaquess.
As in “A Christmas Story,” it was a “Major Award”but didn’t include a leg lamp.
This weekend is the 50th anniversary celebration for the New Mexico State University Chiles rugby team, which I am proud to say I coached for many years in the 1980s and 1990s.
My proudest achievement with the team was when we made it to the Final Four in collegiate rugby competition (college rugby is a club sport in the United States, not under the auspices of the NCAA), finishing third in a competition held in Greeley, CO, in 1982. I’d like to say that it was my great coaching that got the team that far, but in truth I inherited a group of very talented young athletes who were never intimidated by the fact that they were always seen as the underdog and never gave up.
The team, which included some unlikely characters, actually lost all three of its matches in the tournament, which also included the University of Michigan (they cheated), Life Chiropractic College (a team of south African ringers), and perennial rugby powerhouse University of California at Berkeley. We ended up getting third because we later discovered that the Michigan team included some ineligible graduate school members on its team and was disqualified.
We won the Western Rugby Union collegiate championship in a match in Denver against Kansas State to advance to the Final Four. I’ll always remember when winger Gary Steele ran in for a last minute try in the corner. The mostly pro Kansas State crowd was in stunned silence, never expecting a rag-tag team from a cowboy college somewhere near the Mexican border to put up much of a contest.
Rugby ball signed by players from the 1982 team which played in the collegiate “Final Four.”
NMSU Rugby was founded in 1976 by my very good friend Joel Diemer, who had played rugby in Australia where he attended boarding school while his Lutheran missionary father worked in Paupau New Guinea. Originally from Iowa, Diemer also started a rugby team at Iowa State University 10 years earlier.
The first team, which Diemer coached, initially had to use hand-me-down jerseys from the NMSU football program. The name Chiles was given to the team by Diemer who also specified the colors of the squad would be dark green and gold, the same colors used by the Australian national rugby team. The team later changed its jerseys to reflect the NMSU crimson and white color scheme.
I had started playing rugby in Santa Fe after first witnessing the sport when my wife and I visited Aspen, CO, during that town’s annual “Ruggerfest” tournament. I also helped start and played for rugby teams in Albuquerque and Cheyenne, WY. I knew Diemer through rugby associations before we moved to Las Cruces in 1981. He asked me if I would consider coaching the team, which I did after the then coach, Ron Tarazoff, retired.
What was most enjoyable about coaching was the enthusiasm and spirit of the young men I coached. Many of them had played football in high school, but had never been exposed to rugby. What I taught them was a completely new sport and they were eager and willing to learn and did not have any pre-conceived notions about how to play it.
They were also many memorable “characters,” participating in an outlier sport that had a bit of an “outlaw” aspect to it. They did things like “borrowing” the green flags from the NMSU golf course one evening, stripping naked in the bed of a pickup truck barreling down Interstate 10, shaving off another player’s eyebrows during a party, and often showing up looking “green” for a match after partying too much the night before. The pranks were largely innocent and didn’t harm anyone, and yes, I did have to lecture them from time to time about being responsible representatives of the University.
In general, coaching young people in any sport is always a rewarding experience.
A fuzzy photo of a plaque given to me by the 1987-88 NMSU rugby team. I am on the left in the green shirt, Assistant coach Lon Constantini is on the right in the green shirt and club founder Joel Diemer is in the light-colored shirt next to him.
The photo above is of probably one of the most memorable teams I coached. We had enough players for three full sides of 15 men each and won various tournaments. Two of the young men shown in the photograph, Brent Jaquess and Adam McPherson were named to the collegiate All-American rugby team.
The 50th anniversary celebration this coming weekend will feature receptions, matches (in which the better part of discretion says I should not participate) and a banquet. It was organized by several of the young men who I coached who have shown they have matured beyond “borrowing” golf course flags to being able to put together a big event and establishing a successful social network.
The September 2026 issue of Trout magazine, the official publication of the organization Trout Unlimited, featured a brief story about the 50th anniversary of the Norman Maclean novella A River Runs Through It.
Often considered to be a breakthrough piece of writing about fly fishing for our generation, the 104-page tale is more about two brothers’ relationship and their family rather than about the beauty and intricacies of fly fishing. Yet it and the movie which followed seemed to have propelled fly fishing to a new level of interest in our country. The movie itself launched the then young Brad Pitt into stardom with his first major role as the younger of the two brothers.
Norman Maclean’s son, himself an author, was interviewed in the Trout magazine article about his father’s book.
“I don’t think there is anything like it,” John N. Maclean wrote of the work. “It is singular. In this case, a retired English professor in ill health who had never written a published or finished book … at the age of 73, he wrote a 104-page piece of world class literature.”
If you haven’t read the book, I’d recommend that you do so. As mentioned before, it’s a very quick read at just 104 pages. And If you don’t have time, watch the movie of the same name produced by Robert Redford, who also narrates it. The movie follows the book very closely, including much of the dialog and some very subtle actions by its characters.
I think it was the first book I’d read about fly fishing. (Later on, I became a great fan of John Gierach’s writings about fly fishing, whose books combined a good dose of common sense philosophy with vivid descriptions of the joys of fly fishing. Sadly, Gierach passed away unexpectedly almost two years ago.)
A few days after I read the article about the book’s anniversary in Trout, the online forum for Trout Unlimited (TU) began posting some readers’ comments about it.
The one which surprised me most was from a TU member in Austin who suggested the movie has led to the degradation of the sport. His point, although not fully explained, seems to suggest that the spectacularly filmed movie opened the idea of fly fishing to many people who had never considered the activity before. By doing so, favorite streams became crowded with “newbies,” water that had been accessible for free became privatized and the whole experience likely became more expensive. And if you were a long time purist of the sport, you could conclude that its “purity” had been defiled by commercialism and the entrance of all the newcomers who didn’t follow the rules or traditions.
“I am reminded that the movie is one of the worst things to happen to fly fishing and that in the book fly fishing is a literary device used to help tell a tragic story, fly fishing is not the story,” the Austin TU member wrote.
Others entering the online thread suggested that instead of fly fishing, Maclean could have used baseball, hunting or another activity/sport as the backdrop to the story about the two brothers and their family.
The Austin TU member suggested that fly fishing might have been “saved” if Maclean had written instead about brothers who “fished with a cane pole, worm, and grasshopper…”
I guess I understand the point of the his post. We all like to think we were among the earliest to participate in fly fishing, know the best places to fish, understand and practice the best techniques and use the most appropriate equipment. Basically, I think, we want to believe we invented the activity (Actually it might have been Sir Izaak Walton’s 1653 book The Compleat Angler that first celebrated the art, philosophy and joy of fishing.)
But as with many things in which we participate and love passionately, we don’t want to share it with any newcomers. It’s kind of like wanting to be the last person who ever moves to Santa Fe, Aspen or Jackson Hole.
Another person who chimed in on the post made this humorous analogy:
“A River Runs Through It no more ruined fly fishing than Thelma and Louise ruined driving cross country in a convertible.”
My always perceptive wife also commented that the Covid epidemic likely led to an increased interest in fly fishing, as it did with many other activities involving the great outdoors and not requiring being part of a large group.
But there’s another side to more people becoming interested in fly fishing. If you fly fish, you want the waters where you cast your line to be clean, cold and pure and the surrounding landscape to be undefiled. You don’t want those places to be bulldozed by land developers or mining interests. It’s something that all of us, I hope, can believe in regardless of what political views we have. In my mind, having more people advocating for the retention and recovery of clean, cold watersheds is a win for our environment and future generations.
I think that’s why membership in Trout Unlimited has grown so much over the last few years and why it has become one of many voices advocating for preservation of our public lands.
And while I’ve been contemplating the comments about the anniversary of “A River Runs Through It,” it has made me reflect on my own journey through fly fishing. I’ve concluded that although I’ve had other avocations — skiing, rugby, ballooning, hiking, writing, tinkering with classic cars — fly fishing is the thing I’ve always thought about and enjoyed the most.
I’m glad that I introduced my wife and our two children to fly fishing, and am especially pleased that I’ve exposed our grandchildren to fishing — two of them who actually caught trout on a fly rod last summer.
I’ll probably do some more reminiscing about fly fishing in future posts, since I don’t spend as much time these days doing that actual thing. But as I always do, I’m going to promise myself that I’ll be going on more fly fishing adventures soon.
Consider the cave man. His job was to get up early in the morning, drink a mug of some caffeinated mash from a non-toxic jungle bean, then clock in to hunt down a wooly mammoth to bring home groceries for the waiting family. In the evening, after possibly attempting to impregnate his woman, he would sit around the campfire in his cave and crack lame jokes to try to entertain her.
She was probably not in the mood for either of those last two things, having slaved all day over a hot cauldron of boiled mammoth meat, chasing the kids around the cave, washing her man’s loincloths and trying to keep things generally in order around the dwelling.
Still, man’s role today maybe isn’t that much different. We go to work to bring home food for the family, try to entertain our wives and then possibly impregnate them so we can continue the species.
I’ve often commented to others that despite our overly touted self importance in the world, men really are around only to provide food, entertainment and the occasional ritual to perpetuate our species.
But thanks to our official state reptile, the New Mexico whiptail lizard, that last item on a male’s check list may someday make him superfluous. If what happens with this lizard’s reproduction cycle gets transferred to homo sapiens, we males may someday be genetically removed as a necessary gender.
The all female New Mexico whiptail lizard, officially (Aspidoscelis neomexicanus)
This energetic lizard species, which I’m proud to say has taken up residence in our yard in Las Cruces, is comprised completely of females. It has no use of males to reproduce. They reproduce through a process known as parthenogenesis, allowing embryos to develop from unfertilized eggs. This makes them the most common vertebrates with obligate asexual reproduction.
According to AI, here’s how it works:
No Fertilization: The female gamete (egg) triggers development on its own.
Apomixis: Cells divide via mitosis, producing diploid offspring that are exact clones of the mother.
Automixis: Haploid cells restore the diploid number through chromosome duplication or fusion with a polar body, shuffling genes so offspring are similar, but not identical, clones.
The New Mexico whiptail grows from 6.5 to 9.1 in (16.5 to 23 cm) in length, and is typically overall brown or black in color with seven pale yellow stripes from head to tail. Light colored spots often occur between the stripes. They have a white or pale blue underside, with a blue or blue-green colored throat. They are slender bodied, with a long tail that is more commonly blue-green in their infant stage, melding into the same spotted brown and yellow color as they age. As I’ve witnessed myself, the tails of the fast-moving lizards can break off easily if the reptile is temporarily caught or chased by a predator. After the tail breaks off, it starts a wild gyrating motion in an attempt to confuse the predator and throw off its chase. The tail will eventually grow back.
They are useful in gardens like ours, feeding on undesirable insects mostly at night. According to Wikipedia, they are “diurnal and insectivorous” feeding primarily on spiders and insects such as termites, beetles, grasshoppers, ants, caterpillars, moths and butterflies.” And especially important to my wife and me, these lizards will also eat scorpions, which have suddenly started inhabiting our neighborhood.
Knowledge about the lizards among the LGBT community has prompted them to earn the term “leaping lesbian lizard,” although I’ve never actually seen one leap.
And here’s another fact about these lizards. Their poop is easily distinguished from other critters’ poop. It’s usually about an inch long, mostly dark but with a white tip on one end. According to experts, the white tip is a chalky concentration of uric acid.
Lizard poop (and sorry it’s posted on an otherwise family-friendly blog)
So if you see this kind of stuff on the ground around your house, be glad. Maybe you’ll have fewer scorpions or other nasty insects to deal with. And if you’re a male, maybe it will make you think about your declining importance in the scheme of nature.
On April 15, 1931, a man named Plennie Wingo began an attempt to walk across the United States and eventually the entire world backwards. He finished his trek across the United States on October 24, 1932, which earned him a Guinness Book of Records listing as the “greatest extent of reverse pedestrianism.”
The native of Abilene, Texas, fell short of his attempt to circumnavigate the world backwards when he was arrested in Istanbul, Turkey, for being a public nuisance.
Plennie Wingo
His unusual attempt was sparked by the depression, where many people were desperately seeking a way to stand out from the crowd and possibly earn some sponsorship money. Other unsual events at the time included a man who sat on top of a flag pole for 48 hours and a man who took 21 days to push a peanut to the top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado using only his nose.
Wearing a special pair of glasses with rear view mirrors attached to the sides so he could see where he was going, Wingo began his trek in Santa Monica, California. In the map below, you can see that part of Wingo’s backward walk across American included passing through southern New Mexico, likely through the towns of Lordsburg, Deming and Las Cruces.
I checked Newspapers.com for any stories I could find about his stops in southern New Mexico, but found nothing. The closest I got was a wire story service about him in the El Paso Times, but there was no local interview with the man that I could find.
He wore out 12 or 13 pairs of shoes during his backward walk across the United States. His journey was delayed for several weeks when he stepped in a pothole in Robertsville, Ohio, and broke his ankle.
After his debacle in Europe, Wingo apparently gave up the idea of walking backwards all around the world. He sailed back to New York, caught a ride to California and then decided to walk backwards from there to his home state of Texas. His second American journey, however, was also filled with setbacks.
While backwards walking from Los Angeles he followed the Pacific coast road to San Diego, then encountered brutal heat in the Arizona desert. He again ended up in jail, this time in Phoenix for simply walking backwards through the city. Further on in his journey, he was forced to spend a night in a phone booth to escape a pack of coyotes.
He eventually made it to Fort Worth (probably including another passage across New Mexico), and despite worldwide publicity that he thought would bring him fortune, he only had $4 in his pocket when his journey ended.
His later years were spent working as a cook.
But never one to give up, Wingo decided to celebrate the nation’s 200th anniversary in 1976 with another backwards walking excursion. This 404-mile trip took him from San Francisco to Santa Monica and he did it at the age of 81.
He lived out his years in relative obscurity, dying in 1993 in his home state of Texas at the age of 98.
There are several links on the Internet to Plennie Wingo if you’re curious to learn more about him. The one below seemed to have the most detail, especially about his adventures and misadventures through Europe:
The post I wrote last week about the unusual use of a railroad car near Mastodon, NM, to launch a primitive plane in a cross-country flight had a couple of errors that my wife pointed out and I have since corrected.
In describing the takeoff from a modified hand rail car, I inadvertently swapped the name “Rodgers” a couple of times for “Fowler.” “Rodgers” was Cal Rodgers, the competing pilot who actually won the cross-country race by flying from east to west. “Fowler” was Robert Grant Fowler, the pilot who flew west to east and had a forced landing in the desert in southern New Mexico. I had notes about both pilots scattered on my desk when I wrote the blog and apparently had a two-amp brain fuse blow when I was hacking on my keyboard.
And I’ll blame auto correct for this one. I wrote that William Randolph “Heart” sponsored the contest. It should have been William Randolph “Hearst.”
I apologize for confusing my readers, especially my wife, who always seems to spot these errors when I’m basking in the glory of thinking what a clever writer I am. It’s always good to be reeled in when you start thinking like that.
And I’m sure she will find some error in this post. “:^)
__________________
And on another note, you’ve no doubt read the headlines that President Trump posted in one of his social media sites that he might be considering renaming New Mexico as “New America.” As we’re all aware, he seems to be keen on renaming things.
Without commenting on that proposal, I’ll direct you to a blog I wrote earlier this year about our state’s name and whether I think that name might have affected our course through history. It was entitled “Lincoln, Lincoln, a Town So Nice They Named It Twice” — referring to a quip years ago by David Letterman about New York, New York.
My wife and I are fortunate to have a great long time friend in Cheryl, who has a nose for research, an academic background in library science and a love for oddities in New Mexico. Cheryl, who had a long career at the New Mexico State University Branson Library, has helped me with several of my posts over the years, offering suggestions, corrections or new sources for information about a topic I’ve written.
She recently turned over a file she had assembled about a truly unique incident in southern New Mexico that I’d never heard about and that I suspect many others who love our state’s colorful past never knew happened. Cheryl told me she had been thinking about writing an historical article about this, but just never got around to doing it. So she offered her research to me. I hope I’m worthy of writing about it and hope my blog finds an audience beyond my limited and loyal readers.
Thanks, Cheryl.
Here goes:
In 1911, Hearst newspapers and owner William Randolph Hearst were apparently enthralled about the new age of flight that had been introduced by the Wright Brothers eight years earlier with their demonstration at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. A prize of $50,000 was offered to the first aviator who could fly across the United States, with the newspaper mogul and his publications likely getting exclusive access to a story of derring-do in the air. Hearst’s contest said the flight could be conducted from east to west or west to east, but had to be completed in 30 days.
After the contest was announced, four pilots — all trained by the Wright brothers — came forward in to participate in the race to claim the prize. One of those was Robert G. Fowler. Fowler, however, did not claim the prize.
A determined looking Robert G. Fowler, in full pilot regalia, at the controls of his Wright-Cole Flyer
The first person to complete the cross-country flight was Cal Rodgers, who left on Sept. 17, 1911, from Sheepshead Bay, NY, and landed in Pasadena, CA, on Nov. 5, that same year. Unfortunately, he missed the 30-day deadline by 19 days. Not only was his luck lacking in winning the prize, he was also unlucky in the air, dying in a plane crash less than six months later.
Apparently figuring that prevailing west to east winds might make his journey faster, Fowler chose to fly from Los Angeles to Jacksonville, FL, along a more southern route with fewer mountains and bad weather to contend with along the way. He left Los Angeles on Oct. 19, 1911, in his Wright-Cole Flyer while Rodgers was already far ahead in the transcontinental race.
On his first day of flying, Fowler managed to get only as far as Pasadena, but on the second day managed to reach Riverside. He zipped across Arizona in just eight days and reached New Mexico territory on Nov. 4, when he learned that Rodgers had just crossed into the state of California. Undaunted, Fowler pressed on.
Fowler’s Wright-Cole Flyer
At this point of his flight, Fowler’s journey became truly daring. He had a forced landing near the Southern Pacific railroad stop named Mastodon in what is now southern Dona Ana County west of El Paso and not far from another rail stop named Lizard. (Although some ancient bones were found near Mastodon, an Ice Age creature for which the rail stop was named, scientists later confirmed they were from a similar elephant-like animal called a “Gomphothere.” Lizard, as you might guess, was apparently named for the large population of lizards in that desert area, likely the state reptile, the New Mexico whiptail. That reminds me to write sometime soon about that unique species, all of which are female and who thankfully populate the yard of our home and help eradicate unwanted insects.)
But back to Fowler and his adventure. A blown valve in his aircraft engine forced him to land in a sandy patch along the Southern Pacific railroad tracks near Mastodon and damaged the landing gear in the aircraft. Once he and his crew (apparently following his flight by car) had managed to repair the landing gear, he attempted to return to the air. The deep sand, however, made it impossible for the crude aircraft to gain sufficient airspeed to become airborne.
Then inspiration struck Fowler and his crew. On a spur next to the main railroad track, a simple handcar had been left unattended. Because its movement along the rails offered very little resistance compared to the aircraft landing gear in deep sand, the Fowler crew concluded they could temporarily attach the light aircraft to the top of the hand car. The large levers used to motivate the device were removed to accommodate the aircraft. The modified hand car would provide a moving platform for the aircraft to gain sufficient airspeed from its twin propellers to become airborne.
Although I could find no photographs of the unusual hand car/aircraft contraption, I’m sure it was quite something to behold visually, with the large aircraft teetering on top of the relatively small platform.
A Southern Pacific handcar and soon to be makeshift aircraft launch platform
Once on top of the hand car, Fowler fired up the engine of his twin-propeller Cole Flier and set it on the course of a gentle downhill slope. Slowly, the contraption gained speed and was able to move fast enough for Fowler to outdistance his panting and gasping crew running alongside.
But then in the distance coming toward him, Fowler spotted a plume of black smoke and a single glowing headlight. It was a powerful Southern Pacific steam locomotive running at full speed toward him and the unusual launch contraption.
“I was going to be the first pilot to crash into a locomotive,” Fowler later said of his thoughts in that moment that were captured in his memoirs.
But at the last minute Rodgers tugged hard at the yoke and the Wright-Cole flyer managed to gain just enough airspeed to separate itself from the hand car platform and soared into the air a scant 10 feet above the belching smokestack of the locomotive.
The handcar was no match for the multi-ton locomotive and was obliterated when it collided with the train.
The files I received from Cheryl gave me provided no information about what happened in the aftermath of the incident, and I couldn’t find anything more in other historical archives. I wish there was a record of an interview with the engineer when he first spotted the unusual thing hurtling toward him, then saw it separate and part of it flew above him. I suspect he had never seen an aircraft before that moment and was likely assuming it was some premonition of the coming end of the planet. We’ll never know.
At any rate, Fowler managed to continue his voyage. It took him an entire month to cross the massive state of Texas. His trip continued through the end of 1911 and after crossing Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, he finally landed in Jacksonville on Feb. 8. The entire journey took him 45 days to fly about 2,800 miles. During the flight, he had 65 forced landings and had to change spark plugs in his aircraft’s simple engine 45 times.
Fowler went on to have a distinguished aviation career. He was the first person to fly from the Pacific to the Atlantic along the route of the then under construction Panama Canal. The aircraft which flew that route is now part of the collection of the National Air and Space Museum’s collection.
He founded his own aircraft company, manufacturing trainers for the U.S. Army Signal Corps.
He died in 1966 in San Francisco at the age of 82.
And I’m sure if Cheryl had written this story, she would have done it more justice than I did.
Many years ago in Santa Fe, I was summoned to serve on a jury panel which decided one criminal case and one civil case.
The criminal case involved a woman accused of first degree murder for fatally shooting her abusive husband. She had acquired a handgun shortly prior to the fatal shooting, which was a key element in determining whether there had been pre-meditation and a key element required for a first-degree charge. However, the guy she killed was truly a bad human being and probably would have been convicted of physically abusing his meek spouse and her children had she not jumped the gun and taken the matter into her own hands (literally). After a day of deliberation, the jury settled on a voluntary manslaughter conviction. As I recall, the thinking of the jury was that she was a good person who did not really intend to do anything more than threaten the husband with a gun, but was provoked to the point of firing it when she confronted him and he in turn threatened her.
The judge in the case later told me in private that he thought a first degree verdict would have been warranted. However, it was later determined that during the woman’s sentencing, an error was made in applying the state’s new “firearm enhancement” provision. That provision required a longer sentence if a firearm was used in various crimes. I think she was freed on that technicality and probably lived a remorse-filled life that at least I hope was at least better than the one she had endured with her late husband.
The civil case was truly laughable. An ego-centric self-proclaimed author said he was severely injured when his giant Cadillac sedan was gently tapped on the back bumper by a young woman driving a tiny Ford Pinto that was probably 2,000 pounds lighter than the vehicle she struck. Photos of the cars showed the tiniest of scratches on the solid steel Cadillac bumper and a slightly bent thin metal bumper on the Pinto. The author claimed the impact was so great that his teeth became immobile. He found a money-hungry young dentist who verified that assertion as an expert witness. The jury, of which I was foreman, deliberated no more than about 20 minutes before tossing the case. The author claimed that the verdict should be thrown out because the deliberation was so short but the judge ruled against him on that point as well. Anyone who also heard the case would have clearly sided with the jury and ruling against a charlatan who was just out for money. The guy’s book, “Big Jim,” never made it into print as far I could determine.
Instead of Ford Vs. Ferrari, it was Ford vs. Cadillac
For the next 50 or so years, I managed to avoid additional jury duty until I got a summons last month to serve on a grand jury that reviewed cases brought to us by the Dona Ana County District Attorney.
As in the “bumper tap” case, many of the crimes were truly laughable.
One memorable case involved possession of a stolen vehicle. The vehicle in question was a van stolen in El Paso that ended up in the suspect’s hands. When police found the vehicle, it had clearly just been repainted black with a crude paint job. During questioning, the police noticed that the suspect’s hands were smeared with black paint. When the vehicle was served, police found a variety of suspect items, including some illegal drugs in the console.
The suspect claimed all of the items in the van were there when he acquired the vehicle from a “shady” guy who had sold the van to him but still had not released its title to him. And as far as the drugs were concerned, the suspect told police:
“If I had known they were in there, I would have taken them.”
Another interesting case involved a woman getting so mad at her boyfriend that she struck him in the head with a medium sized bottle of Cholula hot sauce, then grabbed a three-foot-long TV sound bar and gave him another serious whack. The woman, as I recall from the investigating officer’s report, was rather tiny. Her wielding the heavy soundbar as a dangerous weapon must have been something to witness.
Then there was the case of the clever burglars who struck a group of storage units. They figured no one would initially notice burglaries of about half a dozen storage units if they would just cut the padlock with bolt cutters, steal the contents inside, then replace the damaged padlocks with similar new ones so it looked no one had been there. Their first mistake was that they had forgotten about security cameras on the property. Their second occurred when police stopped them and found a pile of mangled padlocks and bolt cutters inside the getaway vehicle. They also found a cache of items that obviously had been stored and had been clearly gathering dust for some time.
And finally, there was the case of a woman who stole an electric scooter on the campus of New Mexico State University, set fire to three palm trees and then torched the scooter. She explained to campus police that she became enraged when some students laughed at her because she couldn’t initially get the scooter to move, so she vented her anger on the innocent palm trees, then tossed the scooter into the inferno for good measure.
Several weeks ago, I wrote about a childhood memory of the surprising visual discovery of a gleaming silver Atlas missile poised above its underground launch pad on a trip to Roswell from my home town in Ruidoso.
At that time in the mid 1960s, the then Walker Air Force Base controlled a number of Atlas missile silos around that southeastern New Mexico city. Eventually, the Atlas missile program was discontinued and the underground silos were shuttered. Some of the silos were later acquired by private investors, one of whom turned the abandoned property into an underground Airbnb rental unit, which I found rather creepy.
Airbnb diagram of Atlas missile silo rental opportunity.
But there’s been a new development for use of at least one of the Roswell area silos and I’m taking credit that my blog alone stimulated interest that led to this unusual opportunity.
It’s an event called Atomika Fest and promises attendees — wait for it — “a classified interstellar mission from the desert.”
“We’re energizing space science, immersive art, electronic music and speculative dialogue at a retrofitted Cold War missile silo,” said organizer Nik Halik, described as an Australian born venture capitalist.
He was quoted in an article in the Albuquerque Journal as saying he wants the event to help the world “move past Cold War-era political divisions, offering amore harmonious vision for humanity’s future.”
“All I really want to do is provide a wide canvas for a complex that was built for weapons of mass destruction, converting it to a calibrated constellation for forward-thinking creators, scientists, artists and musicians,” Halik said.
While you ponder that quote, be aware that the exact location of the “calibrated constellation” has not yet been disclosed. There were 12 of Atlas silos ringing Walker Air Force Base and Roswell in the 1960s, including one east of the city that became the Airbnb. I’m not sure if the location I’m most familiar with on U.S. 70 between Ruidoso and Roswell has been selected for the event. I’d recommend it for its spectacular location because of views of the nearby Capitan Mountains, Sierra Blanca, and the high plains surrounding it. I think it would be a great location for “speculative dialogue.”
The event is scheduled Nov. 6-8. The fee to just get into the gate (or silo) is $545. If you want to camp at the site and enjoy other elements, you’ll have to cough up $9,545. But you’ve got to act soon — the event is limited to 1,000 attendees. I think I’ll miss Atomika Fest unless I can get a free media pass, which I think I deserve since my intrepid reporting revealed the opportunity to Mr. Halik.
In most Americans’ minds, the town of Roswell likely triggers thoughts of an alien spaceship crash landing near the town in the late 1940s. I recently wrote about that because of the dramatic headline and story in the July 8, 1947, Roswell Daily Record announcing that an alien spacecraft had crashed on a ranch northwest of the city. My post lamented the announcement that the more than 100-year-old newspaper would cease operations.
The loss of the newspaper was a sad story for Roswell. The UFO crash was an exciting story for the southeastern New Mexico town. And now there’s a really good news story reminiscing about the 70th anniversary of the town’s Little League baseball national championship in 1956.
I’d become aware of the story several years ago and did some preliminary research about it. The more I dug into it, the more I realized what a great tale it was. It had the elements that I thought could even turn into a feel-good movie.
Consider that it’s about a rag-tag team from a town that most of the United States had never heard of and from a state that most Americans couldn’t pinpoint on a map. The Roswell Lions Hondo team worked its way up successfully through regional playoffs against teams in Texas that were likely better funded and more talented. When they traveled hundreds of miles by train to the final round in Williamsport, PA, they faced teams with a decidedly East Coast home field advantage. And they won the championship game in spectacular fashion with a home run slugged by the team’s hero, Tommy Jordan, who was the son of a former professional baseball player.
Jordan’s father, Tom Jordan senior, played briefly in the major leagues and for several years in minor leagues. At one point, in his career, he had a batting average of more than 400. He ultimately concluded that farming in his home town with his family was more appealing than spending months on the road as a major league baseball star, where he was only earning about $6,000 per year.
And it turns out I have a couple of connections to the story. In college, one of my fraternity brothers, Dick Storey, actually played on that 1956 Roswell team. He was a great guy to know but humble in that he never talked about that accomplishment with me. And my late brother-in-law, Buzz Murrell, who lived in Roswell at the time, knew some of the team members and recalled much of the excitement in Roswell when it won the championship.
My late brother in law, Buzz Murrell, holding souvenir baseball from 1956 Little League World Series championship, won by the Roswell team. Team signatures are on the ball.
There was a great story about the team and its run to the championship in the Thursday, Aug. 13, edition of the Albuquerque Journal. Here’s a link:
Close-up of souvenir baseball from 1956 Roswell Little League championship team. Some autographs are partially visible on the side of the ball.
There is now a book and an upcoming documentary about the 1956 team. I should have jumped on the opportunity to write about this memorable New Mexico event years ago. At one point, I even wrote an outline for a possible movie script. I love to write, especially for my short posts on Aero-Cordero. However, I’m not sure I had the discipline to tackle the research that would have been required to flesh out a good story about the 1956 Roswell Little League champions.
Maybe the next time I get a thought about writing something bigger, I’ll have an infusion of discipline to make it happen.
In the meantime, you’ll just have to live with my short posts.
I think I may written earlier about Hollywood’s inside joke. It’s called the “Willhelm scream.” But I’ve found a little more information about how it’s linked to New Mexico.
The “Wilhelm scream” is believed to have been first recordedby actor Sheb Wooly as a sound effect in the 1951 Western “Distant Drums.” It has been plugged in as a sound effect for more than 400 films and TV series, including several shot in New Mexico.
You’ve no doubt heard it many times during dramatic movie scenes where someone is shot, blown up, attacked by an alien, eaten by an alligator or crashes in a car or an airplane.
It was a favorite of many producers including George Lucas, who placed it in most of the Star Wars movies. It also appeared in the Lord of the Rings series and in the Indiana Jones movies, one of which (“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of of the Crystal Skull”) was partially filmed in New Mexico in Deming, near Las Cruces and Ghost Ranch. Opening scenes of the movie are in an old hangar at the Deming airport, once a military base during World Wai II.
Although Wooly was not a main character in the “Distant Drums” movie, he was around when the film went through the editing phase and reportedly offered his voice for the distinct scream. Ironically, Wooly the actor was best known for his 1958 recording of the song “Purple People Eaters.” (“It was a one eyed, one-horned flying purple people eater…”)
The scream was first chronicled in a 1953 movie “The Charge at Feather River” in which a character named Wilhelm is shot in the leg with an arrow.
Here it is for your listening pleasure:
If you Google “Wilhelm scream,” you’ll find multiple entries about its fascinating history.
And with my limited research capabilities, I’ve determined that the following films shot partially or almost exclusively in New Mexico used that sound clip. If you’re bored and have time to do more research to find more, let me know and I’ll do an update:
“The Lone Ranger” with Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer
“
“Them” with James Arness, James Whitmore and Fess Parker
“Chisum” featuring John Wayne
“Transformers” with Shia LaBououf and Mark Wahlberg
“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” with Harrison Ford
And going forward, I fear I’ve infected your brain so you’ll always be listening for that scream in action movies.
Although I could not relocate the article, I recall reading an item from northern New Mexico recently in which local police said that an online post had incorrectly identified a woman who had been killed during a crime. The local authorities urged citizens to avoid getting information from unknown sources and rely directly on the police.
But in this situation, there was no local daily newspaper to report the incident, so residents who read that incorrect post might not have ever seen the police warning and continued to believe that the wrong person had died. And many of them likely spread that false report to others.
Two weeks ago, officials in Gallup said an Artificial Intelligence powered news outlet had published false and misleading information about a local flooding crisis. That source, with no apparent in-person staffing, has apparently become a place to find local news after the closure of the western New Mexico city’s long trusted local newspaper, The Gallup Independent.
In earlier posts, I lamented the closure of that newspaper as well as the more than 100-year-old Roswell Daily Record. Both Gallup and Roswell are large enough communities that could support thriving and essential daily newspapers. Both were independently owned and had served their communities for years.
Their demise was not because of a corporate buyout, which has happened to many local news outlets (like ours in Las Cruces), but a decline in readership coupled with rising production costs. In my opinion, the decline in readership is the most hurtful reason of all. Many younger people simply don’t subscribe to local newspapers anymore and get their information from often sketchy online sources.
And yes, newspaper subscriptions just keep getting more expensive. But not having a reliable source of local news could become expensive as well if you’re not alerted about developments that could directly affect you and your family.
As I said, the Gallup misinformation came from a company which was described as an Israeli-based AI powered online “news service” startup. An article in the Albuquerque Journal (a publication which I trust and once worked for as a reporter/photographer) says that company claims to operate six sites in New Mexico. Three of those have their own social media sites, including Gallup which it claims has about 7,400 followers.
Here’s what the AI generated news source says about itself:
“Mainstream media left a gap. Local newsrooms shut down. Niche communities went uncovered. Entire industries lost their beat reporters.
… (we) fill that gap. We publish daily news for the people and places that big media forgot: county governments, hobby communities, frontline workplaces, and sports that don’t get prime-time coverage.”
And here’s what their website says about their publishing technique:
“…(we use) AI (artificial intelligence) to research, write, and publish at a scale no traditional newsroom could match.“
Substitute for a real reporter?)
In the case of the Gallup miscommunication that alerted local officials, the supposed news source reported that a woman had died in the recent flooding. Upon further checking, that drowning occurred last year and there were no deaths recorded with the most recent flooding.
Matt Robinson, tourism and marketing manager for Gallup was quoted as saying:
“They’re taking things that happened years ago that are negative, bringing them to light, scaring people and sharing false information. It’s really not a good thing.”
The Albuquerque Journal reported that Alex Mahadevan of the Poynter Institute’s digital media project, says the AI news outlet “appears to be basing its articles largely on Facebook posts.”
“This is an interesting case where it does seem like it must be an actual news desert, and so they don’t have good reporting to go off of,” Mahadevan is quoted in the Journal article. “So they are stuck with siphoning news from Facebook, which any of us who’ve been on Facebook in the past 10 years knows is probably a bad idea.”
And no, I don’t personally have a Facebook account and I am inclined to be skeptical of anything posted there.
If you can’t bring yourself to subscribe to a local daily news source, there are still largely reliable sources. My go to source is the Associated Press (which some readers may think is controversial because they refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.) The Associated Press was a worthy competitor for me during my many years as a journalist, bureau manager and state editor for United Press International. We directly competed against eachother and both strived to produce accurate and timely information to our newspaper and electronic media customers. Accuracy was our paramount goal. Sadly, UPI has all but folded into a features-only news service owned by another foreign entity. Reuters news service is another good source.
My advice is to stay informed with a trusted media source. You can look up bias rankings online, but be aware some of those may be tainted. The ones I trust and have relied on consistently list the AP and Reuters as best sources for unbiased news. And don’t just read sources that are favorable to your point of view. I make it a point to occasionally listen to or read media sources that are clearly exposing their bias regularly. I read and see things that I may not initially agree with, but are important to learning why some people think so differently about the same subject.
