Chester picks… a tie???

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

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

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

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

The pick you’ve been waiting for

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

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

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

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

Potholes followed soon after…

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

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

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

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

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

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

I found this and many other illustrations on the internet about how potholes are formed

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

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

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

First automobile in New Mexico with R.L. Dodson, owner, at the controls. I actually can’t tell which direction it’s going. (Photo courtesy University of New Mexico Library, Cobb photo collection.)

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

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

Doc Martin in 1908 at the wheel of a later vehicle he owned at Taos Pueblo. Photo courtesy Taos Historic Museums.

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

Mexican Caretta. There’s one on display at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Museum in Las Cruces.

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

You ball will disappear just as fast as it did in 1899…

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

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

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

Par 3 sixth hole on the Lodge golf course. If you slice like I do, your chances of hitting the leaning pine tree or the pond are pretty good.

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

The original Lodge, built in traditional log cabin style. It burned down in 1909.

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

Present day lodge, built in 1911.

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

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

The fifth hole at Cl;oudcroft. The tee box is over the rise in the background, so you can’t see the green from there

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

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

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

You’ve got to admire his dedication…

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

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

A dedicated street vendor on a cold, rainy day

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

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

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

I asked him how successful he had been.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe Don Quijote could have learned something at NMSU…

“You know with one shot, you could take out a solar panel that runs a water pump and it would be done. But a windmill can take a lot of damage from a gun and still work.” *

“They’ve always been used for target practice…” **

Growing up in the American west, I’ve always been interested in windmills, particularly the “Aermotor” brand which can still be found in dilapidated or brand new condition throughout the country. I secretly always wanted to acquire a small Aermotor windmill on a weathered all-wood frame and have it in my back yard just for the aesthetics of possessing “an icon of the American frontier” as it has been described. I don’t have a well on my one-third acre urban lot so it wouldn’t serve any practical use.

Of course, they are all pretty noisy when the wind is blowing, banging and clanking at every rotation. I’m sure it would drive my neighbors crazy and they’d work up a complaint to have me remove it or stop it from spinning.

What caught my recent interest for this post was a recent wandering through the New Mexico State University website where I discovered there is a page devoted to windmills, including an on-campus display and a “Windmill Technology Center.” Who knew? It’s yet one more thing to love about NMSU. And interestingly (at least to me) was the fact that the gold standard of windmills — Aermotor — and NMSU, both got their start in 1888.

Here’s the link to the NMSU “Windmill Technology Center”:

https://windmilltechnologyworkshop.nmsu.edu/

Windmill display on NMSU campus

First off, the term “Windmill Technology” was a bit hard to digest, given that I think most of us associate technology with such things as Artificial Intelligence, computers and other electronic gizmos. When we think about windmills, we’re talking about a fairly simple mechanical contraption that has been around for hundreds of years — not high on the “technology” spectrum.

But luckily the web page listed the name of someone to talk to about windmills, so I called him up.

Carlos Rosencrans retired from NMSU after 25 years on the faculty in charge of the Windmill Technology program in what is now the Agriculture, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences College. If anyone on the planet knows more about windmills than Carlos, I’d be hard pressed to identify them.

He still puts on an annual workshop to help ranchers, farmers and anyone else who relies on wind-powered water pumps to learn more about the contraptions and how to make them run more efficiency, repair them and just appreciate them more.

Carlos says he believes the Windmill Technology program at NMSU is the only one like it on any college campus in the United States.

“We get about 40 percent of our attendees to the annual conference from New Mexico,” he told me. “The rest come from all over the country.”

He said the program teaches basic safety about working on the machines, how to do maintenance and how to “take everything apart and put it back together.”

“We teach them how to secure themselves on a windmill so they can use both hands while working on them at the top of the towers,” he said.

He said solar applications have been used in many farms and ranches in the past several years, but they have drawbacks.

“A lot of the older ranchers and farmers are of the age that they don’t want to climb the towers to work on the windmills and younger ones sometimes aren’t much interested,” he noted. “But they realize that windmills can operate 24 hours a day while solar cells can’t.”

He also noted that solar-powered water pumps can be disabled by a simple gunshot or other act of vandalism. But windmills can take a lot of beating and still work. If you’ve ever looked at an older windmill still turning in the wind as you drive through the New Mexico landscape, you might see multiple bullet holes in the blades that haven’t hindered its ability to continue pumping.

I asked him how many windmills might still be operating in New Mexico alone. He said it would probably be above 1,000.

“On the Navajo Nation, I’m pretty sure there are at least 1,000 operating there,” he added.

Aermotor was originally established in Chicago in 1888 and has dominated the windmill industry since then. The company was bought and sold several times, then acquired by a company in Argentina. It now has returned to the United States and is located in San Angelo, TX. I’m personally glad the company is back in the United States. Here’s their website:

http://aermotorwindmill.com

And just for the fun of it, I might attend the next windmill conference at NMSU this spring.

*Carlos Rosencrans, NMSU windmill guru

** Margo Lamb, former Nebraska farm girl and my wife

Not navigable…

When I write, I always try to find some connection to New Mexico, since that’s the stated purpose of my website.

However, a recent book that I read and really enjoyed left me grasping for connections to the Land of Enchantment. However, I’ll tell you about the book and then try to make some lame New Mexico connection.

On Nov. 11, 1975, a huge ore carrier with 29 crew aboard was sunk during a “storm of the century” on Lake Superior as it neared the eastern shore of that body of water. The shipwreck was made famous in a ballad by Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot called “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

I can’t recall hearing the news about the shipwreck but I distinctly remember Lightfoot’s song, which fascinated me. You may have read some articles last fall in various publications or on-line posts about the 50th anniversary of the event.

Two summers ago, when my wife and I hosted our children and grandchildren for a delayed 50th anniversary get-together, I had put together a “mix tape” on my iPhone of songs that were relevant to my wife and I during the earlier years of our marriage. One of the songs on that collection was Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

Our youngest grandson Hayes, who would have been five at the time, became fascinated by the story about the shipwreck and asked endless questions about it. We found a children’s book about it, gave him a toy ship that sort of looked like the doomed freighter and have continued to have conservations about it.

He somehow learned (probably from his mother) about the recently published book “The Gales of November”, written by John U. Bacon and convinced her to give it to me for Christmas last year.

I found the book fascinating in its detail and in the relentless pursuit of information about the ship, shipping in the Great Lakes, weather patterns and family recollections about the incident.

The Edmund Fitzgerald before it sank in 1975

In my general conclusion, the ship went down for several reasons, although no one knows for certain. The ship was overweight, weather forecasts were not nearly as reliable as they are today, the captain was pushing the limits of the vessel in a “race” with another ship, navigational aids were not as accurate as they are today and possible structural problems with the ship seem to have contributed to the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald (known on the Great Lakes as “The Fritz”). From my experience and training as a balloon pilot, I’ve learned that accidents in the air (or on the water) are likely caused not by just one single event, but a series of things that sneak up on pilots or captains before they realize they are in trouble. By then, it’s usually too late. The best advice I have is to seriously analyze the first setback of any flight or sail and then try to think clearly about the implications of what might happen if two or three other things go wrong. I suspect more seasoned pilots who read this blog would agree.

On the bottom of Lake Superior

I’d recommend reading the book, which is broken down in short chapters and runs logically through the history of Great Lakes shipping, regional weather phenomena, the building of the ship, personal profiles of key individuals and post analysis of the shipwreck.

So my only connection to Great Lakes shipping and New Mexico is contained in an earlier post I wrote in March of 2022 about a really hairbrained scheme in the early 1900s to channel the Rio Grande between the Gulf of Mexico to El Paso to allow ocean going ships to reach the westernmost city in the state of Texas. The scheme included constructing a damn just north of El Paso, which would have flooded the fertile Mesilla Valley and, most importantly for the businessmen in El Paso, prevented any ship traffic into New Mexico.

Consider the dredging operation that would have been required for an operation like that. And consider the little amount of water that now flows in the river.

I don’t think the Edmund Fitzgerald would have made it this far.

And even if the proponents of the Rio Grande ship channel had agreed to dredge the river even further upstream from El Paso, what if Elephant Butte Dam still had been constructed? It would have required locks to lift sea going vessels into what is now Elephant Butte Reservoir.

Once on Elephant Butte Reservoir, what purpose would ships like the Edmund Fitzgerald have accomplished? Hauling adobe dirt in their cargo holds to waiting home builders in Las Cruces and El Paso? Hauling bales of green chile to the Gulf of Mexico for waiting restaurants around the world? Shipping sand for holiday luminarias outside the Southwest?

There were some mining operations in the region, but I doubt they could have produced enough copper, gold or silver ore to make a Rio Grande ship channel profitable.

So I guess we’ll just have to think about how silly that effort was in the early 1900s and be thankful that we at least get to see water occasionally run down the Rio Grande. And if an Edmund Fitzgerald size ship sank in the shallow river during one of our really bad spring wind storms, I’ll bet most of the ship would be visible above the water and no lives would have been lost.

Okay, I’ll end this silly post. But read the book — it’s great.

Unexpected visitors…

When I was growing up in Ruidoso in the 1950s, my father acquired a little teardrop shaped camping trailer and managed to find a secluded spot on the lower end of Eagle Creek where he parked it for weekend getaways. My father named the tiny trailer “Petitesy” after a kitten that my brother inherited and tried unsuccessfully to get us to adopt.

I think the camper was parked illegally on U.S. Forest Service land, but no one ever asked us to relocate it during the four of five years it was there. The land surrounding that spot is now part of a development featuring high six-figure and higher summer homes.

I mention this because of a recent article by Source New Mexico indicating that fireflies (or lightning bugs if you prefer) can be found in certain locations in our state, despite some previous claims that they did not exist in our high, dry climate. Experts say that the number of these insects are declining throughout the world.

Ampyridae (lightning bugs or fireflies) are a family of elateroid beetles

I can confirm that at least at one time, they did exist around our camping trailer campsite along lower Eagle Creek. We were sitting around a campfire one evening and noticed some quickly moving glowing spots a few yards away from where we were. We first thought they might be glowing cinders from the campfire, but when we walked to where we had spotted the source of flashing lights, it was clear that the light was coming from some insects. I can’t recall how many of the bugs we saw flickering near our campsite, but there were enough to convince everyone there that the bugs did indeed exist.

I’ve never seen them again in New Mexico on any of our various outdoor outings, but I have witnessed them in Washington, D.C., near my wife’s family farm in Nebraska and in Austin, TX, where our daughter lives.

According to the Source New Mexico “four confirmed sightings of Photinus pyralis, the Common Eastern Firefly, have occurred in New Mexico since 2021. They all occurred between 8 p.m. and midnight in late June or early July in Northeastern New Mexico, specifically in Guadalupe, San Miguel and the border between Mora and Harding counties.”

Anna Walker, who is associated with the “Western Firefly Project” says she witnessed hundreds of them on the night of July 3, 2021 in Mills Canyon in northeastern New Mexico near the town of Roy. She continues to gather reports about firefly sightings, many of which turn out to be false, but is optimistic that there are enough in our state that you might some day witness them.

If you’re interested in learning more about firefly sightings in New Mexico, and have a sighting to report, here’s the Source New Mexico link:

Researchers insist fireflies exist in New Mexico — if you know where to look • Source New Mexico

Back to “New Mexico Normal…”

I’ve been off the air for the past few weeks due to lots of family at home during the holidays, an annoying sciatica problem and maybe just a touch of the winter blues. My plan is to get back into the swing of writing that I hope you enjoy reading and gets my brain off of negative things.

But even though I’ve taken some time off, I’m pleased to say that New Mexico hasn’t skipped a beat in offering up some odd stories that makes us the “Land of Enchantment.”

Starting with an always fertile ground, New Mexico politics continues to offer some great stories.

In Albuquerque, during the heated race for Mayor, someone distributed bright yellow sweatshirts supporting incumbent Tim Keller to scores of homeless people wandering the streets of the city. The homeless issue was a topic of much discussion during the race between Keller and former Sheriff Darren White.

Although no one person or group was ever identified as providing the gold and red “I (heart) Tim Keller” “sweatshirts, both sides pointed to the other as the culprit.

Person wearing an “I love Tim Keller” sweatshirt during the heated mayoral campaign. Photo courtesy Albuquerque Journal

Keller demanded that a blogger who said he knew the source of the sweatshirts be investigated, but at this point, I’ve seen no follow-up to the demand. And anyway, Keller won the election, so I doubt the issue will be pursued further.

The last time Keller ran for mayor of Albuquerque in 2021, similar shenanigans occurred with a drone dangling a sex toy buzzed a campaign rally crowd for his opponent, former Sheriff Manuel Gonzales. According to sources “a drone dangling a rainbow-colored sex toy began buzzing near the stage. The device was nicknamed the “Dongcopter” by some media outlets and observers.” Keller’s team denied any involvement.

New Mexico politics has been rife with political silliness over the years in an attempt to disparage certain candidates. I recall a time when I was first reporting politics as United Press International Bureau Chief in Santa Fe that a group who opposed long-time U.S. Senator Joseph M. Montoya came up with a slate of candidates in the Democratic primary election that they hoped would confuse the voters into casting their ballot for the wrong person. They managed to persuade at least three political neophytes to file for the office of U.S. Senator in the Democratic primary. Their names: Joseph E. Montoya, Joseph A. Montoya and Joseph N. Montoya. Again, who was behind the sleight of hand was never revealed, although most figured it was the organization behind the unopposed Republican candidate in the general election. In the end, it didn’t matter because Joseph M. Montoya won handily and continued to represent us.

A good friend of mine recently told me about his first exposure to New Mexico politics during the early 1970s. He was living in Rio Arriba County at the time he went to register to vote. Rio Arriba County seems to always been a source of political chicanery, especially at the time Emilio Naranjo was the power behind the Democratic Party in that part of the state. My friend says that when he went to the county courthouse to register to vote, the registration form section asking to declare which political party they favored was already filled in as “Democrat.”

On another ongoing subject, it appears that New Mexico has moved on from smuggling bologna to smuggling exotic animals. A recent story in the Albuquerque Journal says a man was recently sentenced to 17 years in federal prison for distributing large amounts of fentanyl along with — wait for it — a Bengal tiger imported from Mexico.

The tiger, imported to Albuquerque, was found in a dog crate in a mobile home in the city’s Southeast Heights. The tiger, one of at least three David “Cholo” Mendoza Enriquez is allged to have imported from Mexico was named Duke and has since been placed in an exotic animal facility in Colorado. The story also says that Mendoza Enriquez also offered an alligator for sale at one time.

Duke, the Bengal tiger.

The suspect had posted on a “WhatsApp” social media platform that:”Right now, what I have for sale here are two tigers.” I never cease to be amazed at what people post on social media, but for those investigating crimes, it’s turned out to be a gold mine.

The fates of the other tigers or alligator were not disclosed.

And finally, if you’ve been complaining that your utility bills are too high, just be glad that you’re not a resident of Tucumcari. Apparently due to a computer glitch, some residents of the eastern New Mexico community said they recently received water bills for more than $50,000. One of those was a city commissioner who was charged $55,000 for using more than 9 million gallons on her property.

Another person who received a bill for more than $50,000 simply commented: “I could dig a well for $50,000.”

My Christmas gift to my readers…

You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting many blogs lately. I am trying to recover from a painful sciatic nerve injury that I’ve had since Thanksgiving. My best guess is that I aggravated the nerve in my lower back/left hip while playing soccer with my seven-year-old grandson in our back yard. The injury has made walking and sitting in a chair for a prolonged period of time a bit unpleasant.

Yes, I know that these things can happen at my age, but we all want to think we’re still 28 years old. At least one other person I know says he suffered a leg injury over the Thanksgiving holidays when he was playing a game with one of his grandchildren. It just happens and forces us to think about how to be sure we don’t do this to ourselves again.

Anyway, enough whining from me. Below is a small gift that I share with readers every year at this time. It’s my New Mexico spin on “The Night Before Christmas

__________

T’was the night before Christmas in New Mexico

And everywhere luminarias were starting to glow.

The stockings were hung by the horno with care

In hopes that Pancho Claus soon would be there.

Outside on the porch, ristras swayed in the breeze

And as the sun dipped down, it was starting to freeze

Los ninos were dreaming, all warm in their beds

And swung at pinatas that danced in their heads

Mamma and Chester were snoozing away

In a bed that left me no room to lay

So I sat in a chair watching the pinon fire die

When I heard a strange noise coming down from the sky

I ran to the back door to look out on the lawn

Which was soft and white from a snowfall at dawn

We don’t get much snow in the desert, you see

So the view outside was exciting to me.

Then suddenly I spotted something that was even more to behold

It was pack of coyotes with a wooden cart in tow

In front of the coyotes with a beak that was red

Was Rudy the roadrunner, who was always ahead

And driving the cart was a fat jolly man

Wearing a sombrero and a waving his hand

It was Pancho Clause, of that I was sure

And he called to his coyotes as they ran in a blur

“Now Pedro, now Carlos, Jose and Miguel,

On Cisco, Jesus, Juan and Manuel

Over the mesquite bush, don’t linger and stall

Through cactus and sand dunes, now dash away all”

So up on my casa the coyotes flew

With a cart full of toys and Pancho Claus too

And a noise from above gave me a start

Coyotes howling as he stepped off his cart

He slid down the chimney with his bag full of toys

And began his work without any noise.

He wore a pony tail at the back of his head

And his velvet Navajo shirt was a cheery red

His shirt was laced up with fine goatskin leather

And his face was rugged from the Southwestern weather

His eyes were like turquoise, his dimples so sweet

His nose and his cheeks were like red chile heat

The steam from from a pot of posole in la cocina

Formed a shape over his head that looked like a Zia

He was a true Land of Enchantment elf

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself

But seeing his smile, I knew I had nothing to dread

Knowing that soon I would be back in my bed

He said “Ya-ta-hey” to me as he started to work

Filling up the stockings, then turned with a jerk

He’d noticed biscochitos we’d left him for a snack

And stuffed a few of them for later in his pack

Then before I could blink, back up the chimney he went

Leaving only the smell of a sweet pinon scent

He sprang into his cart, gave his coyotes a shout

And was gone just like that, to the next hacienda, no doubt

But I heard him call as his cart flew away

“Feliz Navidad, In New Mexico we say.”

Giving someone a chance…

Several years ago, when I was the volunteer rugby coach at New Mexico State University, I was approached by a young man after practice who said he was interested in playing rugby. He explained that he was still in high school, but would be coming to NMSU in the fall and asked if I could include him on the team.

I remember looking at him that day and thinking that he’ didn’t seem to be the type of kid who would do well as a rugby player. He still had baby fat on his face, had a shy demeanor and nothing about him said “competitive athlete”.

But I said I’d be glad to have him on the team, silently assuming he’d come to only one practice, never to return but be able to tell his geeky friends that he was once on a rugby team NMSU.

I was completely wrong to make such a quick judgment. I should have known that kids at the age of 17 still have a lot of physical and mental growing to do.

The young man turned out to be one of the best rugby players I had the privilege of coaching during my time at NMSU. He became a team leader, was dominant and aggressive in his play and ended up winning several regional honors and was mentioned as a possible All-American college rugby player.

There was another young man I coached who previously had no athletic experience in high school.

“I was a band nerd,” he told me.

He was tall and lanky and wanted to play scrum half, a position which usually requires a person with a short physical stature and quick reflexes. I initially didn’t think it would work out but I gave him a chance at that position. In his senior year, he was named as a member of the all-tournament team for the western regional college rugby competition.

I was also fortunate to have two fine young men named to the collegiate All-American rugby team. In both of those cases, I was able to convince them to play a different position than they originally wanted to play.

So I got two right and two wrong.

Rugby scrum

I mention this because I’ve just read the story about former NMSU quarterback Diego Pavia being named as a finalist candidate for the Heisman trophy. My wife and I were fortunate to see Pavia play for two years at NMSU. He came to the Aggies from New Mexico Military Institute after the University of New Mexico did not give the Albuquerque native a chance to compete for that school. I wonder how the person who made the final decision not to take Pavia at UNM feels now.

Diego Pavia at NMSU

I think we’ve all learned our lessons over the years that you should not make quick judgments about people and their ability. It’s easier to say than to do it.

Look in the sky! It’s a dwarf planet! It’s a Greek God! It’s a cartoon dog???

By now, you’ve probably figured out that I’m writing about Pluto. Specifically the object orbiting our solar system that was discovered by New Mexico State University Astronomy Professor Clyde W. Tombaugh. It was first declared to be the ninth planet when discovered in 1930, then in 2006 the International Astronomical Union dumbed it down and declared it just a lowly dwarf planet.

There was much controversy about that when it happened. Al Tombaugh, Clyde Tombaugh’s son who I worked with for many years in my career in banking, led a protest around the NMSU campus when the demotion occurred, carrying signs and chanting “size doesn’t matter — it’s a real planet.” The effort to return the object’s status to a planet was unsuccessful, however.

Actually, it kind of looks like a planet to me. It’s spherical in shape, has five moons and orbits the sun. The orbit, however, is huge, tilted away from other planets’ orbits and is elliptical. It takes 248 earth years to complete a full orbit of the sun. At one point in its orbit, it passes closer to the sun than Neptune.

Pluto sure looks like a planet to me

Tombaugh, who at one time lived in a house just two blocks south of our home in Mesilla Park, made a methodical search at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ , for a suspected ninth planet in the solar system. Percival Lowell, after whom the Flagstaff observatory was named, had concluded that a “Planet X” existed because of the interference of some object on the orbit of the planets Uranus and Neptune. He died before he could find it, but Tombaugh persevered and identified it on Feb. 18, 1930.

Clyde W. Tombaugh at work

I think I might have met Tombaugh in person a time or two. What I do remember is him slowly driving around our neighborhood at an age where he probably shouldn’t still be driving any more, hunched over the steering wheel of a battered brown Toyota pickup.

Tombaugh didn’t name the planet Pluto, which is the name of the Greek God of the Underworld. That was decided by the Lowell Observatory, which first considered Minerva and then Cronus, but then settled on Pluto because of its connection to other Greek gods who had been namesakes for other planets in our solar system.

The name Pluto also came to be associated with a Walt Disney character, a non-anthropomorphic mixed breed dog with short yellow hair, black ears and expressive eyes. He is Mickey Mouse’s pet.

Walt Disney’s Pluto.

Created by Disney and animator Norm Ferguson, Pluto had appeared in three films before he was given his current name in a feature called “Moose Hunt” in 1931. There was speculation that the name was adopted because of the extensive publicity surrounding the recent discovery of ninth planet. But one Disney animator named Ben Sharpsteen remembered it this way:

“We thought the name [Rover] was too common, so we had to look for something else. … We changed it to Pluto the Pup … but I don’t honestly remember why.”

Another person in the Disney studios said they thought Walt Disney himself once had a dog named Pluto and selected the name because of that.

What triggered all my rambling about Pluto was my accidental discovery of the map below on a neighborhood internet bulletin board:

Yes, that’s New Mexico highlighted in purple, which still strongly believes that Pluto is a real planet. I have no idea why Illinois is conflicted about the issue when the rest of the 48 states appear to have gotten over the demotion of New Mexico’s favorite celestial body. And I have no idea where the map above originated and how that information was gathered. I do suspect that it is correct, however, knowing how passionate we New Mexicans seem to get over such seemingly esoteric things as:

  1. Why did Aliens choose New Mexico for their first (botched) landing on Earth?
  2. Why do we think a paper bags, sand and candles make good Christmas decorations?
  3. Who makes the best green chile cheeseburger in the state?

    It’s all about that gravy…

    Traditional Thanksgiving dinners should be in my opinion, well, traditional. Turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, a vegetable medley, pumpkin pie and of course, gravy are what I look forward to eat on my favorite holiday of the year.

    As we approach Thanksgiving, there are frequent recipes in the newpaper or TV food network episodes about doing something really fancy with the turkey. Such turkey menus might include brining it in holy water with salt from the Dead Sea, stuffing it with chipotle peppers while slathering it outside with blue cornmeal mush with a dash of native sage and mutton fat, smoking it with Palo Santo wood (the incense of the Andes) and frying it in dehydrogenated whale oil. (Okay, I made those up.)

    I’ve actually tried the smoking and frying thing, but in the end, my opinion is that it should be cooked very long in an oven to fill the house with that unmistakable Thanksgiving day aroma. (One of my favorite things on Thanksgiving day is to split wood in the back yard on a cold morning, then come into a warm house to savor that aroma.)

    The problem with other methods of cooking turkey are that you don’t get those good juices to make my favorite part of the meal — gravy. I think I’ve become a bit of an expert on making it, mostly following the traditional recipe that comes stuffed inside your Butter Ball turkey along with the neck and giblets. It’s a simple but tasty concoction made from flour, milk, salt, pepper and of course, the drippings.

    I’ve also experienced some weird variations with gravy. One time a guest spent at least an hour making a gravy out of all sorts of strange ingredients and herbs to produce a concoction that in the end almost tasted like “gravy.” And there was that time that we found a lukewarm gravy with slices of boiled egg swimming in it. To say I was horrified at that sight is an understatement. I later looked it up and found that it might be a “Southern” thing. My late sister Kay from Texas, who was all things Southern and spoke with an impeccable twang in her voice, said she was equally disturbed at the thought of boiled eggs in gravy and said she’d never heard of that deviation.

    However, last Saturday, and food article popped up on the Omaha World Herald online site that my Nebraska farm girl wife uses to faithfully follow the Cornhusker football program. The article was about various Nebraska cooks sharing their favorite Thanksgiving recipes. I figured most of them would suggest strange things that I’d never want to try and would steer me away from what I think is my God given right to have traditional Thanksgiving day feast.

    But one of those alternate recipes caught my eye. It was from a woman who was from the University of Nebraska Extension Service, a “food safety educator.” Her secret ingredient? Bacon.

    Cindy Brison of the University of Nebraska Extension Service making Thanksgiving turkey stuffing (with the requisite red “N” for Nebraska football in the background.) The “Bird and Bacon” will come later.

    “Wrap turkey in a basket weave design with bacon,” says food safety specialist Cindy Brison of the Nebraska Extension Service. Then “Wrap turkey legs with bacon.”

    As most of us non-vegetarian guys know, bacon makes everything better, so I’m almost tempted to give it a try. I do think it would be a spectacular looking bird with the basket weave bacon design over the breast and drumsticks twirled in bacon slices. However, I do wonder if the fat and juices from the bacon will add a non-traditional taste to the gravy.

    It probably will, but I’m sure it will be better than gravy with boiled egg slices in it.