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 Heart 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.

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.

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.

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 Rodgers to outdistance his panting and gasping crew running alongside.

But then in the distance coming toward him, Rodgers 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.

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.

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.

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:

https://www.abqjournal.com/sports/roswell-to-celebrate-70th-anniversary-of-new-mexicos-only-little-league-world-series-title/3100752

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.“

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.

This blog has featured several humorous signs that I’ve either heard about or spotted in my years of traveling throughout the Land of Enchantment.

One that I’ll never forget was a roadside sign on U.S. 64 between Farmington and Shiprock. The crudely painted sign outside a booth made from juniper and pinon branches on the Navajo Nation attempted to lure passing cars to to stop and buy:

“Avon Products and Live Goats”

Another set of signs just outside of Farmington included one advertising an adult video store, with a larger billboard just behind it saying “Jesus is Watching.”

In Albuquerque several years ago, I spotted a directional sign for a cottage industry in the back of a North Valley residence and immediately sensed a false pain in my posterior. It read:

“Taxidermy in Rear”

Espanola for years featured a billboard for a local dentist who claimed:

“We can fix anything but pottymouth”

Then there were these two signs posted in the Gila National Forest last year:

And of course, many people have searched for a business in Las Vegas, NM, named “Dick’s Liquors.” (My late brother insisted that the establishment was originally named “Dick Liquors.”)

So when driving down our residential street this week, I spotted this van parked on the side of the road and thought its message was worth of a mention:

I’m sure the “Organs” is a reference to our picturesque Organ Mountains, but maybe the owner also cleans church organs or cleans… well, I won’t go there. But at least the business claims it’s bonded and insured in case things go wrong and you can’t afford or are too embarrassed to see a medical specialist.

A good friend recently sent me an article from a veterans group publication called “Together We Served” regarding use of camels by the U.S. Army in the Southwest in the mid 1800s.

Given that camels and deserts go together like peanut butter and jelly, it wasn’t surprising to find out that many of these creatures ended up in New Mexico’s arid landscape during the U.S. Army’s Camel Corps experiment.

From information I gleaned from various online sources, Congress approved $30,000 (more than $1 million in today’s economy) in 1855 to purchase a herd of camels to determine whether they would be useful to the U.S. Army in transporting supplies around the arid parts of the rapidly expanding West. The camel purchase was encouraged in Congress by then Mississippi Sen. Jefferson Davis, who had learned about previous successful experiments by Army Maj. Henry C. Wayne in using the animals for transporting supplies.

Wayne was dispatched to the Mediterranean to acquire a herd of the animals. According to Wikipedia, 33 camels were purchased in Tunisia, Malta, Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. Along with the purchase of the camels, saddles and other accoutrements, Wayne’s expedition also recruited five camel drivers from Arabia and Turkey. The animals, camel drivers and associated gear were brought to a military installation in San Antonio, TX. Later expeditions to buy more camels and natural births resulted in the Army having up to 70 of them at one point.

The first major use of the beasts was to support a survey for construction of a planned wagon road through the west roughly along the 35th parallel. The party started in San Antonio, went though Fort Davis, El Paso and Albuquerque before heading further west to the Colorado River in Arizona. The camels appeared to be well suited to the journey. None of them died, including one that was bitten on the leg by a rattlesnake. Ironically, five mules died on the same arduous journey.

Another experiment to have the animals haul mail from Fort Mojave, New Mexico Territory, to points west was unsuccessful

The program ended as a result of the Civil War, likely in some part due to the fact that Jefferson Davis, who became president of the Confederate States of America, had pushed forward the camel experiment when he was a member of the U.S. Senate. Another more amusing story is that the industry that supplied mules to the military saw the camels as encroaching on their monopoly and urged Congress to stop the program. An article that I ran across when researching this story called the group “the mule lobby.”

Many of the animals escaped and wandered through the desert Southwest during the time the Camel Corps was operating. There was the legend of the “Red Ghost” in Arizona in which a red-haired beast with a skeleton on its back terrorized communities on the eastern side of the state from the 1880s to the early 1890s. The animal turned out to be a reddish-colored dromedary camel with a human skeleton that had somehow become permanently attached to the animals back when it was being ridden.

Here’s a link about the “Red Ghost” if you want more information:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Red+terror+cam

Famous World War II Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who as a boy lived with his family at Fort Selden north of Las Cruces, said he once spotted a sole wandering camel in the New Mexico desert. And just a few years ago, New Mexico State University hosted several camels at its experimental range northeast of the Dona Ana Mountains. According to a good friend who retired from the NMSU College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, those animals were not part of an organized program.

Although the camels were well suited as beasts of burden in arid climates, they could also be very cantankerous. An article in the Army Historical Foundation’s website noted that camels in the corps could “demonstrate a violent, aggressive temper when abused or mistreated, literally kicking, biting or stomping an antagonist to death.  Camels, like cows, chew a type of cud and when annoyed would often spit a large, gelatinous, foul smelling mass of cud at its detractor.”

My only experience with a camel, other than at a zoo, occurred one fall when I was walking along the bosque trail next to the Rio Grande in Albuquerque’s north valley. In the yard of a large estate, I noticed what I first thought was an odd-shaped horse ambling toward me on the other side of the fence. As it got closer, I realized it was a camel that was clearly interested in me. When it got to the fence, it began this vibrating guttural sound as if its lungs were about to spew out of its chest. I think it expected me to give it a great, but I had nothing with me. After few minutes, it gave up hoping that I would guess what it wanted and wandered off. I’m glad it didn’t spit out a “large, gelatinous, foul smelling mass of cud” at me.

I read with great sadness last week that the Roswell Daily Record is ceasing operations after 123 years of publication. It’s the second daily newspaper in our state to announce plans to shut down this year because of declining readership, rising costs and aging equipment. The Gallup Independent announced late this winter that it was ceasing operations as well.

I had a lot of personal connection with the Record. When my father began his dedicated work as editor and publisher of the Ruidoso News in the early 1950s, he would regularly visit the Record and talk with its then editor Al Stubbs. I remember going with him on some of those visits, when the newspaper was located downtown in an old building that had those unique smells of a newspaper office. It was a memorable scent — ink, giant rolls of newsprint paper, wheat paste glue to post up dummy sheets, oil to keep the presses lubricated, and oily sawdust to clean floors and cigarette smoke from the reporters pounding away on their typewriters to meet a deadline.

Later, when I was state editor with United Press International, I was part of the process that encouraged then publishers Robert and Margie Beck to subscribe to the wire service’s new high speed news delivery network. I worked closely with then editor Jack Swickard to make sure that the state news content that they wanted was supplied by our two bureaus in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. It was a big moment for us at UPI because we had pushed out the competing Associated Press for the honor of supplying the paper with news from the state, nation and the world.

Roswell was the second biggest city in New Mexico when I arrived in the state, fueled in large part by the presence of Walker Air Force Base, which had grown from a World War II bomber training base to host one of the nation’s largest fleets of B-52 bombers. But in 1967, the base was closed largely due to increasing costs of the Vietnam war and a changing focus in the Department of Defense and United States Air Force.

What most people remember about Roswell is the famous UFO incident in 1947, in which the air base played a central role.

Walker officials said a rancher northeast of the city had discovered unusual debris on his land and notified the then “Roswell Army Air Field” about the find. An official news release issued by Walter Haut, the public information officer for the Roswell Army Air Field, claimed that the debris was extraterrestrial. The very next day, the Army retracted the story, saying the debris was actually from a shredded metallic coated weather balloon. The headline about that incident in the Roswell Record is iconic.

But rumor mills began spinning and continue to do so almost 80 years later. There were reports of alien bodies being discovered and autopsied. Numerous books have been written about the incident and the alleged coverup of the crash. A TV series grew out of the story.

Which brings me to wonder who will report something like this in Roswell in the future. Communities in our nation need reliable news sources — not just exaggerated or opinionated posts on social media. Local residents need to know why their school board banned a literary classic at the high school library. They need to learn that two county commissioners got big campaign contributions from a controversial data center planning to locate just outside the city limits. They need to hear good news as well — like when the high school baseball team wins the state championship. They need to hear about when a police officer rescued a woman and her baby from a burning car. They need to hear about a fireman who dragged a wayward fawn from a flooding arroyo to save its life. They need to hear about new businesses that are opening downtown.

As I’ve said before, our local daily newspaper, which used to be a robust publication, has been emasculated by cost cutting, corporate profit taking, declining readership and changes in attitudes toward the first amendment that guarantees us a free press. We have a good weekly newspaper that provides some of the needed coverage, but it doesn’t have the impact that a daily newspaper can provide. Area television stations in El Paso give only a glancing blow of attention to local news in Las Cruces. And many times, coverage from the Albuquerque Journal is our best source of up to date local information from almost 250 miles away.

Current owners of the Record say they will consider a sale or other options to keep the news flowing in that southeastern New Mexico city, but they “make no guarantees.”

My hope is that newspapers will survive as independent sources of news. But unfortunately there are now almost 220 counties in the United States with no local source of news. A lot of bad things can happen when no one is there to report on local governments, criminal activity and shady businesses. A lot of good things happening in communities won’t be reported on without newspapers. And you might just completely miss learning about the next UFO landing nearby unless you’re zapped by a ray gun.

Highway U.S. 70 from Ruidoso to Roswell is a treasure of a drive, especially in the fall when the cottonwoods, fruit trees and other deciduous vegetation are showing their vibrant yellow, red, orange and rust colors. The landscape is spiked by tall rows of Lombardi poplars outlining property boundaries of small farms and ranches.

It winds alongside the Rio Ruidoso until it meets the Rio Bonito about a third of the way along the route, then the river becomes the Rio Hondo which eventually goes dry most years before feeding into the Rio Pecos below Roswell.

The old two-land highway was very twisty and dangerous to drive, with very flew places where it was straight enough to pass a slower vehicle. Now four lanes most of the way, it passes old haciendas, skirts the tiny and historic old St. Anne’s Episcopal chapel, sweeps by the once grand Tinnie Mercantile store and restaurant and the once infamous White Cat Bar. The towns along the route have memorable names — Glencoe, Hondo, Picacho, San Patricio, Riverside and Tinnie. There’s a turnoff to a ghost town town with what I’ve always thought was one of the prettiest names of any community in the state — Arabela. The town was established in the early 1900s and named by the local postmaster for a Mescalero Apache woman he had become smitten with — Arabela Barela. According to historical sources, Arabela and her two sisters, Damiana and Carolina, ran a local house of ill repute to serve ranch hands and miners in that lonesome outpost on the far eastern tip of the Capitan Mountains.

The road also goes though Peter Hurd country, passing his old ranch home where he painted many scenes of the rounded hills surrounding the deep valley.

On year, on a drive with my parents from Ruidoso to Roswell, we had just left the Hondo valley at the restaurant/gas station at Riverside, where the highway abruptly turns north up a steep incline to reach the flat plains above. As we crested the hill, one of the most memorable things I ever recall seeing was jutting obscenely upright in the bright sunlight above the flat surrounding terrain.

It was a gleaming silver Atlas missile, which had been elevated from its underground silo for a training exercise. At 83 feet tall towering over the treeless high desert, It was a stunningly unexpected sight.

There were 12 of these Atlas missile silos located in eastern Lincoln County and throughout Chaves County, all associated with the former Walker Air Force Base. The New Mexico historical marker below gives a brief description of the silos and their history in that part of our state.

The silos have all been acquired by private interests and some have been turned into underground “airbnb hotels.” Here’s a link to a story about one of them near Roswell:

https://www.krqe.com/news/new-mexico/cold-war-era-missile-silo-in-new-mexico-transformed-into-air-bnb

The silos are about 18 stories deep, and were well equipped for the crew to survive the worst imaginable scenario during a cold war nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States.

What made me think of this was a television commercial I recently viewed in which a UPS or FedEx truck stops to make a delivery in a barren desert landscape with no visible dwelling in the area. The delivery team looks bewildered when suddenly, a manhole cover pops open and a man pokes his head out of an underground silo to announce that this is, indeed, a correct address for the delivery.

I don’t think I’d care to stay in one of these abandoned silos. I’d rather spend the time in a cabin in the mountains watching nature and not thinking about Armageddon.

As you’ve probably guessed from reading my blogs from the past, I have a special appreciation and love for the once endangered Gila trout. Once near the edge of extinction, efforts by government and non profit groups (like Trout Unlimited) have brought this fish back to swim in increasing numbers in waters of the Gila country of southwest New Mexico.

There are many spectacular looking trout in the world, but by far my favorite has always been the brook trout. Although technically not a trout, the fish is considered a char. Both trout and char are members of the larger salmonid family, which includes trout, char and salmon.

The most noticeable difference is the coloring on the fish, which is what I think makes them so gorgeous, especially during spawning season. According to various sources, true trout have a light colored body with dark spots whereas char have a dark body and brightly colored spots. In particular, during the spawning season in the fall, a brook trout’s spots are brilliant red, blue, yellow, with an orange fins tipped with black and white and an orange belly on top of the dark green body. The colors are so bright they almost seem artificial.

Another reason I like brook trout is because they’ve always seemed to be guileless about food when I’ve fished for them. In my experience they seem to strike at anything that vaguely resembles food, where other species of trout often seem more selective.

Although the first trout I caught was a rainbow (likely stocked) on the Rio Ruidoso, the fish I remember being most excited about were tiny brookies on the north fork of Eagle Creek. They seemed eager to take my crudely tied fly and fought like much larger fish when hooked.

Unfortunately I suspect that entire population has been wiped out because of the terrible Little Bear fire in 2012. That fire literally exploded through the narrow Eagle Creek North Fork watershed, leaving a true scorched earth in its aftermath. Later rains flooded the canyon, suffocating any remaining fish in the creek.

I bring all of this up because of a post regarding brook trout that popped up online last week that literally made me laugh out loud.

Although I’ve tied a few fishing flies in the past, I’ve never ventured very far from one pattern that has always caught fish for me. Some fly tyers, however, are always experimenting with new designs in hopes they come up with the next breakthrough in attracting trout.

Recently, some angler on the east coast (where brook trout are prolific) decided to make a fly that looked like a miniature taco — something that never occurs in a trout food chain. After a few refusals, the brookies unexpectedly began taking the fly.

Field and Stream magazine wrote about the guy who invented the “taco fly,” commenting that the brookies in one river “were eating just about everything he threw at them.”

“At first, the fish wanted nothing to do with it,” the article said about the “taco fly.” “A few drifts later, curiosity got the better of them. Turns out brook trout aren’t above questionable food choices either.”

I sent my fly tying friends a photo of the “taco fly,” asking them in jest if they could tie some for me.

One responded: “How about a burrito fly?”

Maybe that will be the next breakthrough in fly tying experiments.