My wife received a letter last week from a law firm claiming to be from Toronto, Canada, saying it had discovered an unclaimed $9.87 million life insurance policy. And guess what, my wife might be entitled to it since she has a long-lost relative named Adrianna Lamb who “died in an accident” in Montreal. Never mind that my wife’s maiden name was not “Lamb.”

But since the unclaimed policy is in Canada, the letter stipulates that my wife would need to partner up with the law firm and when the policy is paid out, split 90 percent between her and the lawyer and give the remaining 10 percent “among charity organizations.”

“This is 100% risk free; I do have all necessary documentation to expedite the process in a highly professional and confidential manner,” attorney Glen M. Roy claims in his letter.

Yeah, you bet.

I looked online and, as you might suspect, I could not find a “Norman, Michael and Glen Law Firm” anywhere in Canada.

Upon further investigation, I ran across a story from a television station in Raleigh, NC, that said one of their viewers had received a similar letter. Their investigation found no evidence of such a law firm and when a reporter called a number listed on the letter, a person answered the phone and nervously said “call me back in an hour.” When the reporter called back in an hour, a recording said that an answering system had not been set up.” Repeated calls over the next few days resulted in the same non-response.

The television station also discovered that a similar letter had showed up in Louisiana.

” The Louisiana State Bar Association says when the origins of the letter were investigated, it appeared to be a phishing scam aimed at getting personal information,” the TV story said.

So sorry, Margo, you won’t be able to buy that ranch in Montana or a Learjet. But if you’ll just give me your credit card number, I can get some new fly fishing equipment.

So I walked into a business last week with my wife and immediately felt out of place. I guess it was sort of a sexist response, but I would have expected to feel that way at other locations where I’ve accompanied my wife.

No, it wasn’t the women’s intimate apparel section of Victoria’s Secret.

No, it wasn’t waiting in the lobby of an OB/GYN doctor’s office.

No, it wasn’t shopping for cutesy holiday nick-nacks at Hobby Lobby.

No, it wasn’t waiting at the cosmetics counter at Dillard’s.

It was — wait for it — the fabric store.

There were two other men in the store when I was there, both looking as out of place as I’m sure I looked.

I tried to be helpful, looking through the hundreds of bolts for the kind of fabric my wife wanted for a banner she is making for our grandchildren. I actually found several options, one of which she liked, along with helping select the perfect color of thread for the project and some fringe.

I’ve gone to fabric stores before looking for specific types of fabric or accessories for one of my projects. For example, I found netting for a mini soccer goal that I made out of PVC pipe for our granddaughter a few years ago. I’ve purchased fabric for some vehicle-related projects as well.

But in those episodes, I went in looking for a specific thing, found it, then hurried out without wandering through the aisles of fabric and other sewing accoutrements and also avoiding eye contact with the women there.

Appearing as if I was actually shopping at a fabric store last week was what I guess made me feel that I was outside of my “guy zone.” I know — it’s probably a sexist attitude.

I actually did know a guy who did sewing professionally. He worked in a hot air balloon repair shop, operating a heavy-duty, industrial strength sewing machine that could stitch giant panels of nylon rip-stop or Dacron taffeta together. He later went to work sewing giant swaths of canvas together to create parts of cargo containers that are stashed in the belly of commercial aircraft. He was very good at what he did.

But I’m almost certain he never had to experience walking down aisles of fabric with women peering at him wondering why the heck he was in a fabric store that was clearly out of his domain.

I think I have to go back to the fabric store this week. We forgot to pick up some braided rope to hang the banners. I’ll try to adopt a manly and purposeful look while avoiding eye contact when I go back. Wish me luck.

You may have seen the meme about “Florida Man,” which has been floating around the internet since 2013.

It’s usually a story about some deranged person living in Florida doing something incredibly stupid. The following are some actual headlines:

“Florida man arrested for practicing karate by kicking swans in the head.”

“Florida man changed with picking magic mushrooms while carrying alligator.”

“Florida man sent back to jail after not paying for taxi ride home from jail.”

“Florida man tried to run over son because he didn’t want to take a bath.”

“Florida man beats ATM, says it gave him too much cash.”

New Mexico is no stranger to unusual things, which is largely what prompted me to begin writing this blog. A daily review of the newspaper can usually find story that shows us why the Land of Enchantment can be so, well, enchanted.

In my previous life as a journalist, I had a colleague who collected funny headlines from around the state. Some of the best ones originated from a small town in southeastern New Mexico named Loving. Here are a few of the headlines I remember him saving:

“Loving man arrested for dismembering wife.”

“Loving Police Chief named in love triangle lawsuit.”

“Loving city council cancels Valentine’s Day celebration.”

“Loving wife abandons children in middle of rural road.”

I’ve decided to start looking for headlines from the small southern New Mexico community of Lizard. Maybe someday I’ll spot one that reads:

“Lizard man raises roadrunners for food.”

“Lizard man named State Police Chief.” (This one is almost true)

“Lizard man marries Loving woman while Florida man without arms films the event.”

Okay, I’m done now. But if you have any suggested “Loving” or “Lizard” headlines, send them my way.

Imagine that you’re planning a driving trip to the West Coast and want to leave right after midnight so you can avoid traffic congestion in Phoenix and Los Angeles along the route you’ve chosen. You’ve loaded up the car with your luggage and other items the evening before so it will be a quick exit when the clock hits midnight.

Then you walk into the garage and see it. A flat tire. You have to have it repaired and it’s not something you can do by yourself. You may have a spare, but it’s one of those silly temporary donuts that won’t let you go any faster than 50 miles per hour. You don’t have room to take the flat tire with you because you have so much stuff in your car. You might make it as far as Lordsburg before the donut spare wears out. And then, the one local tire shop there doesn’t have the correct size rubber for your vehicle. Of course, if you were driving a Ford F-150, they would have every possible wheel/tire combination in stock.

“We can have it shipped in from Phoenix in two days,” the store owner announces proudly when asked how soon you can get a replacement tire.

Who repairs flat tires in the middle of the night? No one.

But all is not lost. When I got up this morning to drink my morning coffee and read the local newspaper, I discovered this story.

Las Cruces now has a marijuana dispensary open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Just what we all really needed!

So I guess the moral of this story is that if things go bad in the middle of the night, you can just smooth it over by going to the 24-hour pot dispensary, then toke up a big fat doobie while waiting for the sun to come up. If you’re still capable of driving, you can take your tire to the local Big O store and wait until the boys finish their breakfast burrito and third cup of coffee. You’re hoping that one of the guys working on your tire wasn’t the same guy you spotted at the dispensary earlier this morning.

Or maybe you could learn how to fix a flat tire yourself.

I know all of you are busy getting ready for a big Thanksgiving feast, so I’ll keep this short.

For several years, Thanksgiving became a bad luck day for me. This mostly happened when I was much younger and I think the stigma has gone away.

For example, one year I was playing in some rock rubble next to a house we were renting in Ruidoso. As I recall, the city was planning on installing sewer lines and had dug up a street next to our house. In the long term, that was a good development, since our house had a septic tank that my parents warned my sister and I to avoid for fear it would collapse if too much weight was placed on it.

So while apparently trying to discover a cave in the rock rubble I dislodged a rather large flat rock the size of a card table and it fell on my back. I was pinned underneath it, but luckily someone nearby either saw what happened or hear me screeching for help. Some people rush to help remove the rock, including my embarrassed father, and I suffered no injuries.

On another occasion, my sister and I were playing a game of “Where do you think you are?” by blindfolding the other sibling and allowing them to wander around to try to figure out their location around our house. (Luckily, we no longer lived in the house where we feared falling into a septic tank). When it was my turn to be blindfolded, I decided to try to explore the area surrounding me by crawling on all fours. Unfortunately, there was a four-foot cliff right in front of me, and I crawled straight toward it, then tumbled into it. I suffered a cut on my head when I hit a rock but did not have a broken neck. My sister swears she tried to warn me of my impending doom, but either I didn’t hear it or thought she was just trying to throw me off my quest of determining where I was.

I can’t recall the other bad Thanksgiving incidents that happened to me over the years, but I do remember being very cautious about everything on Turkey Day for a long time after that.

Anyway, hope you and your family enjoy a nice Thanksgiving and avoid rock piles and being blindfolded — or being a turkey.

Police in Albuquerque are searching for two armed robbers who came into a Halloween store before the holiday and forgot something essential for someone contemplating such a crime.

A mask.

The store was probably full of them, but the armed robbers apparently were clueless about security cameras in place and allowed their faces to be clearly shown in a video from inside the facility inside a West Side mall. They may have even tried to grab one off the shelves before the store manager figured out their motive.

The only thing the one of the robbers was wearing on his head or face was a backward-turned baseball cap. After the manager confronted the individuals, she was threatened with a gun, then the two fled on foot. Police could not locate the suspects in the area of the store.

Police made a statement that kind of seemed incongruous to the clear photo of one of the robbers that was printed in the Albuquerque Journal.

It said that “Due to the lack of identifying information and not locating the subjects (near the store)…” the report of the robbery was referred to detectives.

I don’t know about you, but I think a clear photo of the suspect would be “identifying information.”

Maybe next time, the robbers will remember to wear a mask and not try to grab one off the shelves after they enter. I think I’d go with one of these:

A befuddled bicycle rider recently wrote to the Albuquerque Journal concerning the sudden appearance of spiders painted on bike lanes in the city.

“Riding my bicycle throughout the city, I have spotted stenciled spiders in various colors in the bike lanes,” the note to the Journal said. “I was thinking they were some kind of signal.”

According to the bicycle rider, the spiders were 12-14 inches in size in shades of yellow, red, blue, green, purple and other colors.

A spokesman for the city said no one knows who is painting the spiders or what their meaning might be. They are considered to be graffiti, so they are being erased as soon as they pop up, they said.

Better painted spiders than this real spider hatch spotted on a street in Vancouver, British Columbia, some time ago. 

More than 50 years after I graduated from college, I still have occasional dreams about not finishing a final assignment in class, missing too many classes, flunking a final exam and not being able to graduate. I’m told that this is a fairly common phenomenon, probably because for the first time in our young lives we were faced with the responsibility and stress of getting things done without our parents nagging or having a watchful eye on our schoolwork.

I think lots of students do this. They wait until the last minute to cram for an exam, throw together a semester paper a week before classes end or try to speed read a textbook that was gathering dust on a shelf in the dorm for most of the year.

Of course, the goody two-shoes students who got 4.0 gradepoints were always on top of things. I wasn’t one of those, but I did make it through in five years while working full-time and graduated with a gradepoint that actually improved significantly in my last four semesters. (Patting myself on the back “:^)

This kind of procratinating student behavior was evident on general election day when I worked as a same day registration clerk at a voting site near the campus of New Mexico State University.

Apparently, the waiting lines at the NMSU voting site at Corbett Center were extremely long, especially toward the end of the day. Our site was the next closest polling place to the campus. As a result, students who didn’t want to keep waiting in line to vote, thought they could get an easy way out of procrastinating by coming to our polling location.

Traffic at our polling place had been steady all day long, with never more than about 10 people waiting in line to vote.

Then at about 6:30 that all changed when we had a flood of students show up to vote. Many of the students had registered in their home town in a different county and some had never registered to vote. As the same day registration clerk, it was my job to process all of these students so they could then vote legally. When the polls closed at 7 p.m., all of the regular voters had been able to cast their ballots. But I was faced with a line of 30 students needing to register or change their address before they could cast their ballot in Dona Ana County.

It was frustrating. One kid showed up and forgot his driver’s license, which was needed for identification so he could change his address. He sent someone to the dorm to fetch it for him. When he appeared before me the next time, he forgot his Social Security number — also needed to change voter registration.

“Would your parents have it,” I asked.

“Uh well, maybe. I don’t know,” he said.

A few minutes later, he had managed to track down his parents on the phone to give him his Social Security number.

I put in that information, along with his driver’s license number and then asked him for his new address.

“Uh, I live on campus,” he said.

“I have to have a physical street address,” I answered.

“Uh, I don’t know what that is. I’m in Pinon Dorm Roof 252D. Does that work?” he asked.

I told him again that I needed a physical street address and suggested he might look on Google Maps to come up with one. Finally, he found one and after three tries, I was able to change his voter registration to Dona Ana County.

This wasn’t the only such case. Most students on campus didn’t have the slightest clue about what their street address might be or remembered their Social Security number. At one point, with about 25 students still waiting in line, I stood up and somewhat gruffly announced that they would all need a driver’s license or other photo ID, Social Security number and a physical street address. There was an audible groan and you could see many of them frantically checking their phones for that information.

When I finally processed the last registration/address change, it was about 8:30 p.m. All of the other workers at the poll had been done with their jobs shortly after closing time at 7 p.m. And by the time I took the ballots to the Election Bureau warehouse, it was after 11 p.m. I had started my day at the polls at 6 a.m.

Overall, my time as a poll worker was a satisfying experience. There was a lot of dead time during my two and one-half weeks at an early voting site. Election day was satisfying, helping people correct the information on their voter registration records or registering first time voters.

And I thought it was important to see the process from an insider’s viewpoint, given all of the claims of voter fraud that had been circulating in the past two years. I can say without hesitation that I saw nothing of that nature during my tenure an election clerk. And I have great respect for all the people who work long hours for very little pay to make sure Democracy is working.

But for Pete’s sake, if you’re going to change your voter registration address or register to vote for the first time, come prepared. Bring your darn photo ID, Social Security number and current physical address with you.

—Mark Twain on a speaking tour of England in 1897

I’ve written two earlier blogs about people who were reported dead, even though they were very much alive. One involved our good friend Cheryl who discovered on her Ancestry family tree that she had been listed as dead since 2011. She is still very much alive. Another involved a woman struck by a bicycle in Albuquerque who police listed as dead when she was placed in an ambulance, yet turned up to be very alive at the hospital the next day. Chagrined police issued a profuse apology to her and her family.

And I know I’ve mentioned this before, but for fans of the extremely silly movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” you might remember a scene in which a man believed to be dying from the plague is brought to a cart carrying dead victims to the grave. The cart is accompanied by a man who rings a bell and calls out “Bring out your dead” as it rolls along gritty streets somewhere in England.

As he is about to be loaded onto the cart, the presumed dead man calls out “I’m not dead yet,” then later says “I’m getting better” and concludes with “I think I’ll go for a walk.”

Frustrated that they can’t complete their gruesome work, one of the workers whacks the complaining man in the head, making sure he is in fact dead.

“Ah, thanks very much,” replies the worker who brought the man to the cart.

Below is a link to a short You Tube video of the scene if you’re interested:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=i%27m+not+dead+yet&&view=detail&mid=FC8F3B8D2193099D3194FC8F3B8D2193099D3194&rvsmid=BC279C80F53A24D0FEA2BC279C80F53A24D0FEA2&FORM=VDRVRV

What leads me to this discussion is a story I read in a book by good friend and author Jack Wilson about the Lincoln County War. His book, Merchants, Guns & Money, is an excellent and thoroughly researched accounting of the bloody Lincoln County War in the late 1800s. I strongly recommend it for anyone who wants to learn the whole story about this slice of New Mexico history. 

An episode in the book that caught my attention involves the hanging of a murder suspect, William Wilson, who shot another man in response to some harsh words at an earlier political convention. Following a quick kangaroo court trial in which he was convicted, Wilson was sentenced to hang in Lincoln. On the day of his hanging, Wilson was asked if he had any last words. He began to say that he blamed Maj. L.G. Murphy — one of the key players in the Lincoln County War — for his predicament. 

“You promised to save me,” Wilson said, “but…” 

And at that moment, before Wilson could finish his dying accusation, Murphy kicked the trigger to the trap door of the gallows and the convicted man’s body jerked and started swinging.

After nine and one-half minutes, the authorities took down Wilson’s body and placed it in a coffin. Shortly thereafter, someone noticed that Wilson was still breathing. A group of soldiers from nearby Fort Stanton took the body out of the coffin, put a new noose around Wilson’s neck, then hung him a second time for another 20 minutes. 

That apparently did the trick.  

I’ve completed my first week as a clerk in an early voting polling place at the Mesilla Town Hall.

Everything has run smoothly, except for a couple of hiccups I created when registering people to vote. My fat fingers on a tiny keyboard didn’t help and some misunderstanding on birth dates and name spelling by both me and my registering voters were to blame. We got it sorted out, and everyone got to vote.

Nothing has happened that would suggest any vote tampering. It simply isn’t possible at the level I’m working at with the abundant checks and balances that are in place.

Nevertheless, we’ve had at least 10 Republican challengers (more like observers) show up to watch what we’re doing to make sure everything is above board. They’ve asked a lot of questions, which we’ve been able to answer. Unfortunately, the only person who was turned down to vote was a Republican. It seems his wife accidentally sent in his absentee ballot, which had already been counted. The County Clerk’s office is trying to work through the issue and hopefully, he will be able to case his own vote. We’ve only had one Democrat show up to observe. I’m glad all are there to see the process in action.

Our early voting polling location crew of eight people includes five Democrats, three independents and no Republicans. I am sorry there are no Republicans. From what I’ve been told, there were not enough GOP members who volunteered for the election jobs to make sure there was representation by both parties at all polling locations.

Tedium is the biggest issue I’ve faced so far. There is a lot of waiting around for people to come to the polling place. Most of them simply vote and don’t see me for same day voter registration. A few, however, are new to the area and need to have their voter registration changed to reflect their new address. A couple were new to the state, but had all the proper credentials to vote — at minimum a confirmed local address and a photo ID.

In between those times when I help people register to vote, I’m reading books, chatting with my fellow poll workers or taking strolls around the building. But mostly, it’s really a lot of deadly time killing.

We usually have a burst of voting activity right when polls open, then a steady stream of voters until mid afternoon followed by the time-dragging last three hours before polls close at 7 p.m.

So far, my most interesting experience involved the change in registration for an elderly man who had moved from Rio Arriba to Dona Ana County. He was assisted by his daughter and granddaughter, who apparently live in the Las Cruces area.

As I went through the relatively simple process of changing his address so he could vote in Dona Ana County, he was asked what his party affiliation was. He had previously been registered as a Democrat — not unsurprising for someone from Rio Arriba County where the Democratic party has had a stronghold even since before the legendary party boss Emilio Naranjo ruled the roost there. But he said he wanted to be a Republican.

His daughter and granddaughter thought he had made a mistake.

“Don’t you mean Democrat?” the daughter asked.

“No, Republican,” he answered.

“Really, are you sure?” asked the granddaughter, her eyes rolling in protest.

“Yes, Republican,” he said.

The daughter and granddaughter accompanied him to get his ballot, then helped him vote, which I’m certain resulted in more eye rolling and some votes for the relatively few GOP candidates on the Dona Ana County ballot.

At my temporary job as an election clerk for the November general election, I’ve been tasked with doing same day voter registrations. We don’t expect many of them — at least at my polling site — but we do have to follow specific procedures in order to register someone on the same day.

One of our primary conditions for approving a same day voter registration request is confirmation of a local address within Dona Ana County.

Two Sundays ago, a homeless man named Keith came to our church and sat in on the service. He even put five pennies in our collection plate and asked for a copy of the Bible, which I gave him.  I noticed last Sunday that he had signed our guest book. I’ve edited out his last name, phone number and information about a previous guest. Our homeless guest, listed his address simply as “under the bridge,” apparently meaning the bridge on I-10 over South Main adjacent to our church.

I doubt this would qualify as an approved local address, so Keith probably wouldn’t be able to register to vote.  He did, however, seem to have a phone with an area code (575) number, which is proper for Dona Ana County. And I noticed that his home church is “open.” 

He seemed like an intelligent, decent guy — much easier to deal with than previous homeless people I’ve written about who have appeared at our church. It just makes one wonder what led up to his current situation.  I hope that some day his address will be more permanent than “under the bridge” and that he can register to vote if he wishes.  

During the next couple of weeks, my posts may be a bit sporadic — if at all. I decided earlier this year to answer the call for people to serve as election clerks in Dona Ana County and I’ve been assigned to do an early voting job in Mesilla starting Saturday, Oct. 22. By the time you read this post, I will have worked my first shift.

With all the rhetoric surrounding the security of our elections, I thought it would be worthwhile to volunteer my time to get involved in the vote gathering process.

I’ve already attended a couple of training sessions and my role will be to process same day registration requests.

My observation so far is that the entire election process, at least here in Dona Ana County, is very professionally done with multiple security steps to ensure that the process is free of any outside influences, political or otherwise. No one has told me to flip a switch to favor certain candidates or do anything like that.

However, when doing my training last week to check the absentee ballot drop box outside the Mesilla Town Hall, my trainer, Carlos, passed on some interesting information. I asked him if the drop boxes sometimes contained unusual things that people had dropped in them.

“It’s pretty hard to get anything large in there because the slot is so small,” he said. “However, at the Las Cruces City Hall drop box, there are occasionally black widow spiders living inside that you have to be careful about.”

So is a spider infestation a Democrat or Republican ploy to keep voters away? Or just a random act of nature? I’m sure it is the latter, but if you have comments or thoughts, I’d love to see them. And with the recent infestation of scorpions in our neighborhood in Mesilla Park and probably in Mesilla, I hope none of those critters decide to make a home in the drop box I will be attending.

So far, I’ve been sort of overwhelmed by learning the acronyms for the process and remembering the steps I have to go through to take same day registration requests. I still have a lot of “what if” questions, but I think I can get the job done.

There was a story in the Albuquerque Journal last week quoting our Secretary of State, Maggie Toulouse Oliver that she expects additional challenges during the election process this year. I can understand that, given the current political climate, and am looking forward to see how that may play out in what I will be doing.

At any rate, I promise to be completely apolitical during the process (I willingly took an oath to that effect) but I will be observant about what I may report on this blog in the future. Because I’ll be working several hours per day, I may not have time to write new blog posts, so I hope you’ll forgive me for the lapses.

Last weekend, I attended a reunion of the New Mexico State University rugby team, which I coached for many years starting in the early 1980s. I think I was coach for more than 10 years. During that time, I had one team which finished third in the national championships, several teams which won regional championships and had the pleasure of coaching two fine young men who ended up being All Americans in rugby.

I wish I could say all the successes we had were because I was a great coach, but as they say — when the team wins, it’s because you have great athletes, but when you lose, it’s the coach’s fault.

I also had the pleasure of coaching my two children’s youth soccer teams, beginning when they were in elementary school and going through middle school. In retrospect, I’m not convinced the difference in attention span between elementary kids and testosterone fueled college guys was much different. But that’s what makes it challenging, entertaining and fulfilling.

I’m proud to say that most of the rugby players I coached have turned out to be fine young men, with families and good careers. And most of the kids I coached in soccer have turned out to be fine mothers, fathers, public servants and career successes. And ironically, one of the kids I coached on my son’s soccer team in middle school ended up playing rugby at NMSU after I finished coaching that sport.

I’m convinced that everyone who has the opportunity should coach young men and women in some sport. It is a black hole for time and energy and is often frustrating, but in the end well worth it. Coaching rugby was particularly gratifying in that none of the young men had ever played — much less seen — the sport before. Unlike football, baseball or basketball, rugby was completely new to them and they really listened to what the coach said.

Here are some comments I got from former players following the reunion:

“I’ve always appreciated everything you’ve done for me and this rugby family. You were a great coach…”

“I’m really glad you convinced me to keep playing prop (a position on the front row of the scrum). I wanted to play flanker, but you said I could go further if I stayed with being a prop, and you were right.” (This was from a young man who ended up being one of my two All American players).

“… it’s hard to believe how much fun we had and the huge impact you had on so many players, myself included.”

“Thanks for everything you have done for us as young men and the club in general.”

It made me feel that I’ve done some good during my life.

I read with amusement in last week’s Albuquerque Journal about some skullduggery by two contestants in an Ohio walleye fishing tournament. The two claimed to have won the tournament by catching fish that weighed more than those of any of the other contestants.

After some eyebrows were raised because the winning fish seemed to be much heavier than comparably sized walleye, they were slit open to reveal that someone had added weight to them with some lead pellets and fillets from another fish. The contestants were disqualified and are now facing charges.

I focused on this because my wife and I just returned from Northern New Mexico on a great fly fishing adventure with another couple, Dave and Gloria, who we’ve known for years.

All of us caught nice fish on the trip. Gloria had the biggest and Margo caught the most. None of them were stuffed with lead pellets or fillets from other fish. All were returned to the river.

The fish we caught were on the Rio Costilla, about 45 miles north of Taos near the Colorado border. It was beautiful fall weather, with a new dusting of snow on top of the Sangre de Cristo mountains and vibrant fall colors in the valley.

No, I won’t tell you exactly where our best fishing spots were or even the name of the place we stayed. I will, however, guarantee that our fishing stories will get bigger — not heavier.