State Police reported that they were summoned to investigate a knife attack on a passenger aboard an Amtrak train during September.

The train — en route from Los Angeles to Chicago — had to be stopped along its route through Valencia County so the incident could be investigated, according to a report by KOAT-TV in Albuquerque.

The story identified the attacker as Gerald Bell and the victim as Charles Cowley, who suffered a knife wound to his head. Witnesses on the train said the knife used in the attack was very large — more like a machete. Authorities say that the incident started as a result of a shouting match between the two passengers. At one point, one of the men claimed the other had a gun, but no gun was found during the investigation.

The suspect in the stabbing has been charged with attempted murder. And when authorities questioned the victim, they found 20 pounds of methamphetamine in his posession. For reasons not clear, he was not charged for that incident.

New Mexico has had its share of strange incidents on trains. The RailRunner commuter train between Albuquerque and Santa Fe struck a wandering cow on its first trip between the two cities. And another time, the train was late starting its route because the engineer could not find the keys to the locomotive.

But perhaps New Mexico’s most notorious train incidents were robberies initiated by the outlaw Thomas Edward “Black Jack” Ketchum and his gang. I know I’ve written about this before but it’s still a spicy tale about the Old West.

Ketchum and his brother Sam were originally cowboys who grew up in San Saba County, Texas, then moved to New Mexico to work on cattle ranches. When they learned that a more lucrative trade could be had as outlaws, they formed a gang which sometimes rode with the infamous Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch.

Eventually, the Ketchum gang began a habit of robbing trains in northeastern New Mexico. Their method was to stop the train, decouple the mail and express cars, move them about a mile away from the rest of the passenger cars and then proceed to loot them.

A train heist by the gang on July 11, 1899 apparently was the last straw for lawmen in northeastern New Mexico. Although Black Jack was not involved in the heist that netted the robbers $50,000, the gang was chased back to their hideout near Cimarron. In the ensuing gun battle, Sam Ketchum and others were wounded. Sam was taken into custody, placed in jail in Santa Fe but died from gangrene before he could be tried.

Brother Black Jack, apparently unaware of his gang’s train robbery and the capture and death of his brother, decided to hold up a train near Folsum, NM, on Aug. 16, 1899. A conductor on that train had been robbed three times before and had had enough of these incidents when Ketchum showed up in the mail car. The conductor drew his gun but was shot by Ketchum first. However, the conductor still managed to get a shot off that almost severed the outlaw’s arm. Ketchum tumbled out of the mail car and managed to get away on horseback. Because of his frail condition, he gave himself up the next day.

He was taken to a hospital in Trinidad, CO, where his arm was amputated, then was convicted of the crime of “felonious assault on a railroad train” and sentenced to be hanged. (Ironically, the law was later deemed to be unconstitutional, but the ruling was too late to benefit Ketchum.)

On the day of his hanging, Ketchum was led to the gallows and told onlookers “Hurry up boys, let’s get this over with” and then admonished them to “bury me deep so the coyotes don’t get me.” When the sheriff cut the rope and Ketchum’s body fell through the trap, he was immediately decapitated. His severed head was attached to a black shroud that had been pinned on his torso prior to the execution and appeared to be the only thing that kept it from rolling toward onlookers gasping in horror.

Fortunately, the undertaker was able to sew the Ketchum’s head back on the body before his funeral.

If you want the gruesome details, there is a photo of the decapitated Ketchum after the hanging. Scroll down a little further and you’ll see it:

I confess, I like junk food and eat it more than I should. Maybe once a week (although my wife would probably argue that point.)

This morning, as part of our usual routine to pick up groceries, I grabbed something for breakfast at McDonald’s. I placed my order for an artery-clogging Egg McMuffin and hash browns and pulled up behind a car bearing an official state license plate.

Upon further inspection, we discovered a tag on the bumper indicating the vehicle was from the motor pool of the Department of Health (The circled letters DOH). Wait, aren’t these the people who are supposed to be looking out for our health?

To quote John 8:7 from the Bible:

“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…”

So I will avoid passing judgment on this event as I munch on the bad-for-my-health Egg McMuffin. But you get the irony, I hope.

Pity poor Asha, the lonely Mexican gray wolf who has wandered around a good chunk of New Mexico this year looking for a proper mate, but still hasn’t found the right guy.

In June, I wrote about how the animal — ignominiously identified by federal wildlife officials as wolf #F2754 — had strayed from her relocation in the Gila country to areas as far away as Taos in northern New Mexico. She has a collar which allows her to be tracked.

After her first re-capture, she was placed with a male gray wolf at a holding location in central New Mexico in hopes that the two would breed and have a litter of wolf pups. And although the two animals got along, they apparently never “got it on.” After the failed arranged romance, Asha was released back into the Gila wilderness.

Now she’s been tracked again wandering far away from the Gila country, this time in the Jemez mountains north and west of Albuquerque.

Because she seems focused on being somewhere north of Interstate 40 instead of southwestern New Mexico, authorities now say Asha may be allowed to just keep roaming until she finds the right guy.

A representative of a group known as Defenders of Wildlife says the wolf’s movements may show she is interested in getting as far north as Colorado to find a mate and some new digs.

“This is a clear sign that wolves will again roam from the northern Rockies in Canada to the Sierra of Mexico if we let them,” the representative said.

An official representing the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association says they are more concerned about the roaming wolf population. They claim wolves kill their livestock and pose a danger to humans.

I get that. But I’d really like to spot one in the wild some day — at a really safe distance — and hear one howl.

I found a school of them (pardon the pun) at White Mountain Elementary in Ruidoso last Friday. They’re excited and ready to watch tiny trout hatch and grow in their classroom this coming spring semester and then be transplanted as fingerlings into rivers or lakes near them in the Lincoln National Forest.

Here’s what’s happening:

Because of my lifelong interest in fly fishing and long-time membership in Trout Unlimited (TU), I’m helping head up a project by TU called “Trout in the Classroom” at a school in my alma mater in Ruidoso. (Well actually, my elementary school back in the Dark Ages when I attended was only named Ruidoso Elementary and later Nob Hill Elementary that’s since been torn down, but that’s beside the point.)

My good friend Ken (from Albuquerque) and I helped set up the fish tank in the third-grade classroom of teacher Michelle Thurston at White Mountain Elementary. It was a Friday, the first snowstorm of the season, a couple of strange men setting up weird equipment in the classroom and a hot cocoa award event, so you could expect the kids to be especially wild (I actually liked that). But all of the kids seemed really interested in the program. Ken and I will be back in a few weeks to get the equipment fully prepared and then I will be back in early January to bring about 35 rainbow trout fry or eggs from a nearby hatchery in Mescalero to put in the tank. The project will be shared among all four third grade classes at White Mountain Elementary. Michelle is exactly the kind of enthusiastic teacher that you need to spearhead the project, and I know she’ll do a great job.

The program provides teachers in third and fourth grades with an opportunity to raise trout either as eggs or as fry in a 55-gallon tank in the classroom and watch them grow into fish that can be transplanted into local waters. Students record data on such things as water temperature, Ph balance of the water, feeding schedules and estimated growth during the four months they’ll have the fish swimming around in their classroom tank. Toward the end of the semester, the students will take a field trip to a local fresh cold water river or lake to release the trout into the wild.

I think it will be similar to FFA or 4H kids who raise animals for the county fair, then sell them at auction to a bidder who will likely turn them into tomorrow’s steak, bacon or chicken nuggets. The fish that will be raised at White Mountain Elementary may eventually be caught by local anglers and consumed. Like a lot of the kids who raise livestock and see them sold at the fair, I suspect there will be tears when the tiny fish (many of whom may be named) will be released back into the wild for an uncertain future.

The point of the project is to teach kids about responsibility of caring for living things and the importance and protection of clean, cold-water streams and lakes in our country. My hope is that they will become fishermen and fisherwomen (like my own wife, son. daughter and grandchildren) and appreciate the great outdoors as much as my wife and I have over the years.

I’ll keep you updated over the coming months. I think it will be a fun project.

It’s a great program, and if you’d like to learn more go to this website:

https://www.tu.org/conservation/outreach-education/headwaters-youth-program/explore-watersheds/trout-in-the-classroom/

After a 14-hour day working the polls on election day, Tuesday, Nov. 7, I am finally recovering.

This year’s experience as a poll worker was much less intense than last year’s election. I first worked as a “Same Day Registration” and “Sample Ballot” clerk for two weeks beginning Oct. 21 through Nov. 4. On election day, I did the same thing and was also the “Machine Judge” for the polling place. And no, I don’t judge machines in that position. The job involves taking any absentee, spoiled or provisional ballots, along with the voting machine data card and printed tabulation report, to the election headquarters immediately after the polls close.

With only local candidates for municipal offices and school board positions, along with several bond issues, there was much less on the ballot compared to the general election last year.

Last year, we had poll watchers peering over our shoulders the entire time. This year, because none of the candidates or other ballot issues were tied to major political parties, we had no observers.

As I concluded last year, it would be virtually impossible for anyone to stuff the ballot boxes or change the outcome of the election in our County. There are seemingly endless protocols and security measures in place to block any attempt to fiddle with the results. I’m even more convinced of the purity of the process after this year’s election.

Yet, I’m sure when next year’s general election rolls around, there will be those who again raise the issue of manipulated results. I’d be glad to talk to anyone about what I know and have seen, not what I might be able to read on misleading social media sites.

I feel good about my experiences in helping the democratic process and I’ll probably volunteer to work the election again a year from now. And please exercise your right to vote and work toward what you think is important through a process that has served us well for almost 250 years.

I just finished reading what I considered to be a really entertaining and engaging book by a retired New Mexico State University economics professor. And no, it’s not some scholarly tome analyzing micro economic impacts of locust infestations on eastern European wheat farms.

The book, by long-time friend, neighbor and distinguished NMSU professor Jim Peach, was exactly the kind of fiction I like — a tale of international intrigue including murders, multiple suspects and skullduggery in world energy markets.

I first met Peach, a Regents Professor of Economics at NMSU and author of many scholarly papers, when I needed statistical data for market research I was preparing for the old First National Bank of Dona Ana County. I struck up a friendship with him and his wife Kathy that has lasted for years. My wife and I see them regularly on walks through our neighborhood and our dog Chester, has identified Jim as an easy mark for treats.

I knew Peach had a great background in economics, population growth and other factors that were of interest to a bank’s market research. But until I read his book, I never knew how much of an expert he was in energy markets. I also never knew he had so much experience in international travel. And I never suspected he had a novel in him.

Both his experience and background in energy markets and international travel make his book “Hinton” such a great read. It’s well written and entertaining, but also full of interesting and educational insights. I won’t go into any details about the story — you’ll have to read it yourself.

I’m no literary critic, so I won’t critique the book in any way except to again repeat that I really like this kind of story and rushed through it in just two days. (I do, however, have to express my disappointment in his use of the Oxford comma — something former journalists like me disdain because we were always coached by editors to trim superfluous punctuation in our stories).

Peach grew up around oilfields in both Texas and Oklahoma and his experiences there show up in many places in the book. One quote I particularly liked by the protagonist Hinton confessed that he had “about as much influence with the (oil and gas) industry as a half-pint of whiskey split eight ways in a Texas deer hunting camp.” Hinton also claimed to be on a never-ending quest for the best chicken fried steak in Texas and said he would never stand a chance to be elected to Congress from Oklahoma because he was a “native Texan and an academic.”

“Neither of those things would go over well in Oklahoma,” he declared.

Peach’s experiences in international travel were valuable, bringing details about restaurants, hotels and travel options that added a richness to his story.

And of course, as a long-suffering Chicago Cubs fan, he couldn’t pass up opportunities in the book to share his views on baseball and the “Loveable Losers.”

His book is currently for sale on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble online and you can soon be able to find it at local booksellers. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

My readers may be tiring about recent posts regarding my father, but I hope you’ll forgive me for writing one more. The posts are the result of me acquiring some documents, drawings, letters and other memorabilia in a box given to me by a step sister who I had not seen for years. I recently found at least one more thing to write about from the treasure trove

I was just about to toss a stack of his letters and papers that didn’t seem to have too much interest for me or my sister when I spotted a small bright yellow envelope. The envelope featured a sketch of the Snoopy character and had a return address of “Number One Snoopy Place” in Santa Rosa, CA.

I opened it and found a personal typed note from Charles M. Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip, to my father.

My father had moved to Sedona, AZ, after he sold our family-owned newspaper in Ruidoso, NM. He and his new wife had opened a small curios/office supply/general store in the middle of the old part of Sedona. As he did in Ruidoso, he took an immediate interest in the Sedona area, including its history, geology and culture.

On one of his frequent drives around Sedona to get to know the territory, he can upon a red rock formation which locals had dubbed “Snoopy Rock” because of its similarity to the Peanuts character when he took a nap on his dog house.

He apparently thought that Schulz, creator of Snoopy, would be interested in knowing about the rock. He snapped a photo of it and sent it to the cartoonist in 1975. Schulz responded promptly. I was pleasantly surprised that someone as famous as Schulz would have taken the time to respond to what I’m sure were many notes and letters he received while he was drawing his famous cartoons.

Below is the letter and the envelope.

I was driving to the auto parts store last week when I spotted this gem rolling through the parking lot. I walked over to the vehicle when the owner was getting out and asked if he minded if I could take a picture of it. He was proud of his ride and proud to have it photographed.

I’ve spotted other automotive gems around the state in recent years. Below is a picture I took in a supermarket parking lot a few years ago that was enhanced by my son. It is an interesting interpretation of an RV camper.

And then there’s this surefire way to make certain someone doesn’t steal your wheels and tires. (But it might make quick getaways pretty tricky.)

Finally, here’s a pink love machine spotted in a parking lot in Ruidoso a year ago. Maybe the giant spoiler on the back is actually a sail that can help propel the car forward during New Mexico spring winds.

We seem to be especially proud of our unusual vehicles in New Mexico. I’ll keep taking pictures of native off the wall rolling stock and post them here. And if you see something unusual, snap a picture and send it my way for future inclusion on what will likely e an ongoing tale.

As I think I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been going through a stash of personal papers and memories of my father that were given to me last month by my step-sister.

One that caught my eye was photograph my father took when he was editor and publisher of the Ruidoso News of artist Peter Hurd behind a controversial portrait of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The photo was not dated, but I recall that my father took it before the portrait was officially presented to the President.

Johnson apparently had been a fan of Hurd’s work in the past and commissioned the artist from San Patricio, New Mexico, to do the official presidential portrait. San Patricio is just east of Ruidoso in the Hondo Valley, and my father and Hurd were friends.

When the portrait was finally revealed at the White House in 1967, a scowling Johnson looked at it and declared it was “the ugliest thing I ever saw.” He claimed one of his shoulders was too long and he didn’t care for how Hurd had depicted his face. He flatly rejected the work and Hurd took it back. The story made national news. It was later shown at an art gallery in Texas, apparently by Hurd in retaliation for Johnson’s rejection. Because of its notoriety, the portrait was accepted in 1968 by the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. The Gallery agreed not to display the work of art until after Johnson left office.

Hurd is well known for his works throughout New Mexico and the Southwest. He studied under N.C. Wyeth, a legendary painter and illustrator of the early 1900s. Hurd married one of Wyeth’s daughters, Henriette.

I recall going to Hurd’s gallery at his ranch in San Patricio one time with my father, where the two engaged in a long conversation that I wish I could remember. My father also kept several short letters and notes he received from Hurd over the years, but I cannot seem to locate them or recall the topic of the communication. I also recall watching a couple of Hurd’s whimsical “cowboy polo” matches at his polo grounds on the ranch.

Hurd was a truly gifted western artist, capturing the rolling hills of the Hondo Valley and vast plains between there and Roswell in powerful images. One of his most famous paintings, “The Red Pickup” used to hang in the lobby of the original First National Bank of Dona Ana County, where I worked for many years. It was on loan to the bank from Gen. Hugh Milton and was later donated to New Mexico State University, where it still is kept today.

You can still get signed copies of the print from the Hurd-La Rinconada Gallery in San Patricio for $600.

When the late Sen. Frank O. Papen owned the First National Bank, he wanted Hurd to paint a large mural on the east wall of the new bank headquarters at 500 South Main. Hurd was interested, but said he was too busy at the time to do the work. He referred the project to an El Paso artist, Manuel Acosta, who had studied under Hurd. Acosta’s enormous pigment tinted plaster mural hung in the building for many years, but was eventually covered with cloth because it depicted a Confederate flag as one of several that had flown over Dona Ana County during its history. The political correctness police decided the image of the Confederate flag was too controversial. That building is currently empty, and I’m not certain what will become of the mural when and if it reopens under new ownership.

You can always tell a true New Mexico resident by these three behaviors:

1. When it rains, we stand outside getting wet it to fully immerse ourselves in the rare phenomenon.
2. We spend too much time deciding whether to order green or red chile on our favorite Mexican dish.
3. We always complain about how many Texans are around.

In Tuesday’s Albuquerque Journal, there was a story that Texas has erected a razor wire barrier in southern Dona Ana County to keep people in New Mexico from entering the Lone Star State.

For years, many of us in New Mexico secretly wished we could erect some kind of barrier to keep Texans away. They overwhelm our favorite spots like Santa Fe, Ruidoso, the Gila and Pecos Wilderness, Taos, Gallup, our ski areas and our favorite camping, hiking, hunting and fishing spots. This feeling has been evident for decades. Territorial Governor Manuel Armijo, who served three terms from 1824 to 1846, was once quoted as saying: “Poor New Mexico! So far from Heaven, so close to Texas.”

I’m not going to venture into the politics of the issue of border fences. The move to install fencing near Sunland Park was the latest effort by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to stem the influx of migrants from central and south America into his state. He claims that too many migrants are dodging the barriers he has installed along the Mexico border near El Paso and are now coming to Texas by a more circuitous route through New Mexico.

My first thought about this concerned future trips to see our daughter and grandchildren in Austin. If things get too serious, I guess we’ll have to drive to the northeast corner of the state to cross into Oklahoma, then drive through the Texas panhandle to get to Austin.

And if serious repercussions gain momentum in the Land of Enchantment, maybe we’ll erect anti-Texan barriers on our southern and eastern borders and won’t see as many black and white license plates with a lone star at our favorite places.

___________________________________________

Briefly on another subject, I have agreed to serve as an early voting election official again starting this week and going through the election on Nov. 7. I did this last year for the general election. This election is for local races in the various communities in the county, as well as school board positions.

I’m sure it won’t be as intense as the last election, but it will keep me occupied for a couple of weeks and my posts may be limited during that time. I’m sure I’ll have things to discuss when I’ve completed the job.

Stay tuned.

Sometimes, you get weird inspiration while you’re tossing and turning in bed trying to go to sleep. This is the story of one such inspiration.

In 2018, a total solar eclipse passed directly over my wife’s family farm in Nebraska. We had thought about going there to view it, but making the trip became somewhat complicated. We (mostly my wife) later regretted not making the 12+ hour drive to get to Cozad to view it.

So this year, when we learned there would be an annular eclipse right in our own state in mid-October, we concluded were not going to miss this opportunity. I started thinking about it during one of my not-so-restful nights.

The path of the eclipse went directly over Albuquerque and down further south in the state close to Roswell. We thought about going those places, but decided they were either too far away or would be too crowded. Then I looked at map projecting the path of the eclipse and found the perfect spot for viewing — Corona, NM, where we could see the sun’s corona in a really rural location. And then, on another restless night of sleep, I decided to make things even more interesting — adding add Corona beer to the equation and toasting the event with a bottle of the Mexican lager as the sky darkened to reveal the sun’s corona. I guess we could have added a fourth Corona — infecting ourselves with the Corona virus in Corona, but we thought better of that.

I began designing a t-shirt to fit the occasion. Here’s the design, printed on a black T-shirt:

I casually mentioned my plan to a good friend of ours, thinking he would blow it off as a really goofy idea. To my surprise, he texted me the next day saying he and his wife were interested in joining me and my wife on our adventure.

So the plan was set in motion. I ordered t-shirts, double checked the weather and planned our route so we would be there at the peak of the eclipse. We left early Saturday morning.

If you’ve ever been to (or more likely sped through) Corona, you know there’s not much “there” there. (I used to pass through there frequently when I was in college on my way back and forth from Ruidoso to Albuquerque. I even played high school football there on an all-dirt field that still remains, complete with goat-head stickers and other weeds instead of grass.)

I had surmised that we might be the only people strange enough to have ventured to such an out-of-the-way location to view the celestial spectacle.

I was wrong. When we got close to the central New Mexico village, we started seeing cars stopped along U.S. 54, the main route through that part of the state and the main drag in Corona (population about 250). Some of the vehicles had set up elaborate viewing stations with bazooka-sized telescopes and cameras with lenses as large as the Stanley Cup trophy.

We rolled into town and found a spot near the local Marathon gas station, where several other vehicles had gathered and figured it was as good a spot as we would find with a clear view toward the southeast sky. Even more vehicles rolled in. It became almost comical. The Marathon gas station became the most popular (and maybe only) retail spot in town that day, especially when people needed a restroom. At one point, the line to the unisex bathroom snaked out the front door.

Of course by that time, we were wearing our obnoxious black and orange/yellow t-shirts.

A woman named Angie who said she had lived in Corona for 28 years spotted us and came over to look at the shirts. She said she loved them so much that she wanted to buy one. I have her contact information and I’ll just send it to her for free. I’ll bet if we had worked on it, we could have sold 100 of them at a roadside stand.

When the eclipse finally happened, we were surprised by two things. First, how cold it got when the sun was mostly blocked out. And even though the center of the sun was perfectly and symmetrically aligned behind the moon, the visible corona provided so much light that it was never anywhere near being dark. The available light was like you’d expect on a heavily overcast day.

We also met up with a really nice guy from El Paso, a former soldier at Fort Bliss named Ed, who cheerfully took pictures of us. I have his e-mail address and am going to try to send him a T-shirt as well.

Overall, it was a really fun experience, with lots of laughs, a spectacular view of the skies and driving through some really beautiful areas of the state that most of us don’t get to see often enough.

The next really big eclipse is supposed to happen next year and will pass right over our daughter’s home town of Austin, TX. We’re planning to go and it will be fun, but I doubt as weird as the experiences we had in Corona.

What follows is important journalism, loyal readers! It may take a while to read and digest it all.

As I think I’ve mentioned several times in my blogs, I grew up in the southern New Mexico mountain community of Ruidoso in the shadow of Sierra Blanca peak.

Sierra Blanca is the tallest mountain in the southernmost third (maybe southernmost half if you count the Florida keys) of the United States.

For as long as I could remember, road maps, charts, magazine and newspaper articles, travel brochures, signs and other points of information listed the altitude of the mountain as 12,003 feet.

But somehow, in the last 15 or so years, the “official” height of the mountain has been dumbed down to 11,981 feet — a full 22 feet shorter than what many people were led to believe for years.

So what happened to those 22 feet? I can’t find the exact period of time when the maps started showing the lower altitude of the mountain top. Maps from the time when I lived in Ruidoso all showed the altitude at 12,003 feet. And I couldn’t find out who or what agency made the decision to officially downsize the altitude.

The newest New Mexico road map I have in my possession is a 1999 Rand McNally “Easy Finder” laminated quick fold edition, which shows the altitude of Sierra Blanca as 12,003 feet. If you can’t trust Rand McNally, who can you trust? (I have a lot more faith in them than Siri on my i-Phone for giving directions and accurate information.)

A book we have called “New Mexico Place Names” from 1965 lists Sierra Blanca as having an altitude of 12,003 feet. If I took the time, I’m sure could find many more documents with the 12,003 foot listing for the mountain’s elevation.

So who or what agency made the decision to make the altitude change. My logical thought was the U.S. Geological Survey. I found an 800 number of their website and called it, assuming I would get a mind-numbing and endlessly repeating list of menus with no live human ever answering.

To my surprise, after a number of rings, a real live guy answered the phone and was immediately engaged in my quest for information on this subject. He said he’d been with the agency for almost 40 years and loved weird quests such as mine. A true nerd like me, I suspected. He was very willing to help with my search for the truth.

He checked various sources at the USGS and found several current things showing that the mountain is listed in their current database as 11,981 feet. He scrolled over a digitized map from the 1950s and couldn’t find a pinpoint location for the top of the peak above the 11,950 foot line. He found another database from 1980 listing a height of 11,854. Then he found another document with an altitude of 11,974 listed for the top of Sierra Blanca.

But nothing anywhere in USGS documents he could find showed when the mountain was “downlisted” to its current sub 12,000 mark. (One theory he tossed out was that rising sea levels had reduced the elevation “above sea level.” That would have been a lot of rising of the sea that I think would have been noticed in Miami, New Orleans and a lot of small islands in the South Pacific.)

So what happened? After discussing it further with him, we both concluded that the 12,003 foot mark had been “Chamber of Commerced” way back when. I mean, what sounds better:

“A mountain more than 11,000 feet high”

or

“Soaring more than 12,000 feet above the New Mexico desert”

I think some local promoter from Ruidoso back when we had a sketchy system for determining elevations saw that Sierra Blanca was just shy of 12,000 feet and just fudged the elevation to be higher. Chamber of Commerce stuff, right? We’ll likely never know who that person was. If you have any information about this, I’d LOVE to hear from you. Otherwise, we’ll probably see the issue slide into the realm of conspiracy theories.

In Colorado, there are lots of mountains topping 14,000 feet. There are hikers who work to scale each of the state’s “14ers” in the state each year. (See website www.14ers.com).

At one point, there was dispute over which of Colorado’s two highest mountains was actually higher — Mount Elbert or Mount Massive. There was only 12 feet of difference between them, with Mount Elbert at 14,440 feet getting the nod as the tallest.

“This led to a dispute which came to a head with the Mount Massive supporters building large piles of stones on the summit to boost its height, only to have the Mount Elbert proponents demolish them,” according to an entry on Wikipedia.

In New Mexico, we only have two mountains that top 13,000 feet — Wheeler Peak in Taos County at 13,167 and Truchas Peak at 13,108. Sierra Blanca is the 8th tallest mountain in New Mexico. All the rest of the tall peaks are all in the Sangre de Cristo Range between Santa Fe and the Colorado border.

So far as I know, there has been no effort in New Mexico to place 59 feet of rocks on top of Truchas Peak to make it the tallest.

HOWEVER, maybe’s it’s time to return Sierra Blanca to its 12,000 foot plus glory.

There was a movie produced several years ago starring Hugh Grant entitled “The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain.” Based loosely on rural legends, residents in a town in Wales near a large hill were upset that the geological feature was just short of the elevation it needed to be categorized a “mountain.” The townspeople came together and organized an effort to pile enough rocks on top of the hill so it would become tall enough to be labeled a mountain. The joint effort succeeded and the hill became a mountain.

So New Mexico, are we up for the task to make Sierra Blanca a “12er?”

I’ve actually hiked to the top of Sierra Blanca (and also to the top of Truchas Peak — both many years ago). Neither hike was a difficult technical climb — just lots of short sprints with lots of breaks to pant and scoop up more oxygen before pressing on. The tops of both of these mountains are barren with a few large rocks strewn around. Maybe enough to cobble together for a 22-foot high mound.

It’s entirely possible that if each of the many hikers who hike to the top of Sierra Blanca each year carried a few small rocks (maybe no bigger six inches in diameter) near the summit and stacked them on top of eachother, there would be a mound that would push the peak’s summit past the 12,000 foot mark.

Yeah, I know, creating a rock pile 22 feet high is a bit of a challenge.

How about this as an alternative? We ask some wealthy person to hire one of those giant sky crane helicopters to carry a load of rocks and some bags of cement to dump on top of the mountain on some moonless night. We’d have to line up a crew team of concrete workers to be flow to the top of the mountain to put the rocks together in a permanent formation, but I’d volunteer for that.

So if you’re a wealthy person looking for something memorable to do, contact me. We’ll put a plaque on top of the 12,000 + mountain to commemorate your vision.

Otherwise, it’s entirely possible that someone else is going to seize this opportunity by lifting a fully functional McDonald’s fast food outlet up there and just dump it on top of the mountain. I think those stores are at least 22 feet high.

A relative stopped by our home last week to drop off a box containing historical items from my father, Vic Lamb. The box included memorabilia, artwork, old newspapers, business papers and other things his second wife had kept over the years.

There were some things that I expected to find in the box and some that I didn’t. There were several copies of the Ruidoso News that my father and mother owned from the early 1950s to the late 1960s. They’ve been great fun to read through. I enjoyed seeing reports of events, the names of people and local businesses I knew in the then very small town in the mountains of southern New Mexico where I grew up.

In the box, there were a three of his pen and ink drawings and some of his cartoons that I recognized, I’m going to have one of his drawings of an old juniper tree in Ruidoso re-framed sometime in the next month of two. My sister and I remember sitting outside in a meadow on a fall afternoon watching him work on the drawing. He was very talented artistically.

There was also a really old Oliver typewriter that he had acquired sometime in the past, probably after I had gone off to college. Below is a photograph of it. I think it still works, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it.

There was a welcome history of his family, which I had been wanting for many years. It confirmed quite a bit of what I knew, but had some other insights that were new and valuable to me.

What impressed me the most were some hand-made newspapers that he “published” in 1928 under the name of the “Ellis County Eagle.”

Ellis County is south of Dallas, with Waxahachie the county seat. My father’s “newspapers” claim to have been printed in Ray, Texas, which I cannot find on the map. I suspect it was a suburb of Waxahachie, but I’m not certain. There are other oddly named unincorporated towns of villages on the map in Ellis County, like Maypearl, Italy, Boz, Lone Cedar and Onion Springs, but no Ray I could find.

Anyway, the Ellis County Eagle was all hand created by my father, including articles and illustrations. I’ve copied some of the pages of his publication and included them in this post. They are tattered and have yellowed over time, but I think you can get an idea of his work. In the three copies of his newspaper, there were stories about an attempt to fly an Ford Tri-Motor airplane from the United States to Australia (or maybe the other way). That attempt, along with what I suspect was a failed attempt by an airship to set some kind of flight record, seemed to capture his imagination. I’m not sure where he got details about the flights.

He also put a notice at the top of his front pages when the newspaper was “off the press” at a specific time.

What is amazing is that he produced these when he was just 16 years old. He never finished high school, yet seemed to have good writing skills and a sense of what was newsworthy. He said his father was a newspaperman all of his life. I’m sure he developed his ability to draw cartoons by himself without any guidance from an art teacher. He continued to draw cartoons for the rest of his life before he succumbed to Alzheimer’s in the early 1980s. He included his drawings in several of the newspapers he operated, including the Ruidoso News and a few in the Texas panhandle. He entitled his artwork “Vix Pics”

In his “Ellis County Eagle,” he did a Sunday section with its own comics, also shown below.

Granted, his comics were pretty corny, but that was his sense of humor that served him well. over the years.

I’ve already posted some items that I found when reading through some of the old newspapers from 1966-68, and I’m sure I’ll find other entertaining things in the future.

In the meantime, it’s been kind of sad to think about my dad while wishing that I could have spent more time with him learning about his life. He was an eternal optimist, a trait I wish I had inherited.

I guess most young people who are anxious to break out of the nest have a tendency to miss learning more about their parents. I was certainly focused on getting out on my own at the time and I was strapped to the necessity of working full time while putting myself through college in five years.

So young readers, be sure you take time to talk to your parents and learn from them. When you realize you should have done that, it’s probably too late.

While looking through some old issues from 1967 and 1968 of the Ruidoso News — the newspaper that my father and mother ran for almost 20 years — I’ve run across many interesting things. I’ll post a longer article about the newspaper and my father soon. But in the meantime I’ll pass along some things about automobiles of the era.

The weekly report from the police department lists details of various automobile accidents. Many are the result of someone’s car skidding on an icy road and veering into oncoming traffic. In one such incident, the crash was enough to send someone to the hospital.

The crash involved a 1968 Pontiac GTO (the IN car for gearheads at the time) and a 1967 Plymouth. But despite the apparent severity of the crash, the police report said there was a miniscule “$150 damage to each vehicle.”

In another slippery road accident, a Ford pickup smashed into a Porsche. Damage to the Ford was $25 and damage to the expensive German sports car was $400.

In today’s world, I’ll bet damages to those vehicles would have topped $10,000 each (or probably $20,000 in the case of the Porsche.)

In another accident, a woman forgot to engage the parking brake on her 1963 Ford while stopping for an afternoon cocktail at a local pub. While sipping her martini, her sedan rolled across the street and smashed taillight first into the Covered Wagon Curio Store. on Sudderth Drive. According to the police report, damage to the vehicle was $50 and there was “$5 damage to the building.”

And in today’s world, the owner of the building would probably have filed a lawsuit for damages to lost revenue while customers avoided the building during the investigation.

Also in the paper was an ad for a brand new 1968 Chevy half-ton pickup for just $1,998. I spotted an ad on the Internet last week asking more than $80,000 for a professionally restored version of that truck. Average plain old “used” versions of that same truck are fetching around $15,000.

But what really caught my attention was a nationally produced advertisement in the Ruidoso News for a 1967 Chevrolet Impala. I’ll show it below, but the feature being touted in the ad was the smoothness of how the ashtray worked. Never mind that you’re wrecking your lungs while driving and smoking, your hands won’t be overworked when pulling out the receptacle for your cigarette butts. The smooth ride of the ashtray was because of “four shiny little ball bearings” installed in the rack to make its extraction and re-insertion is effortless.

Neither of my wife’s car or our pickup truck even have ashtrays. My classic 1975 BMW 2002 has three of them — two in the back seat and one in the center console, just down a bit from the all important cigarette lighter.

My wife’s car has a feature that allows you change the color of the car’s interior accent lighting to six different shades. Maybe in 40 years, someone will make fun of that feature as being trivial as we cruise around in zero pollution vehicles to help fight climate change.