I always look forward to the Albuquerque Journal’s annual “Cow Chip” awards for humorous things that have happened in New Mexico during the past year. I’ve used the awards for fodder for several of my blogs in the past.

Many of this year’s Cow Chips had a political angle, which could be expected given that it was an election year. I’ll pass on commenting on those, given my desire to remain mostly apolitical in my blogging.

There were some non-political good ones, however. One was about a Southwest Airlines flight that made an unscheduled stop in Albuquerque because a passenger on a flight from Texas to California couldn’t wait for a turn in the on-board restroom and took the option of whizzing in a corner at the back of the plane. The Journal reports that the “pee-pertrator” became hostile when confronted by flight attendants, requiring the unscheduled landing in Albuquerque.

Another story involved a bank robbery in which a man entered a financial institution carrying a gas can and demanding a teller to hand over cash — apparently thinking he couldn’t afford gasoline for his motorized escape.

I’ll keep looking for more of my “why I love New Mexico” treasures in the newspapers and on my travels around the state.

In the meantime, I also encourage you to read Dave Barry’s annual “Year in Review,” which I found online in the Boston Globe. Barry equally skewers everyone — regardless of political affiliation or perceived self-importance — for stupid things they’ve done or said during the year. I look forward to it every year. Here’s the link and I hope you enjoy it too:

https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bostonglobe.com%2F2022%2F12%2F25%2Fmagazine%2Fdave-barrys-2022-year-review%2F%3Fcamp%3Dbg%3Abrief%3Arss%3AMSN%26rss_id%3DMSN_rss_brief&data=05%7C01%7C%7Cab9e22f70af84fe9bba708daec165b86%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638081878007205647%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=X24b0WuE5x3kESfJOdDKgc%2FLqJnRN0ndxfeony4lMNI%3D&reserved=0

Hope your 2023 is off to a good start. Keep me in mind to send me information if you stumble across — maybe that’s not the best choice of words — your own Cow Chip discoveries during the year.

By that, I mean a visit from your grandchildren.

We were fortunate to have all four of our grandchildren visiting us over the holidays. They are ages nine, eight, seven and three. They kept us busy and I’m hoping we will recover from exhaustion by sometime next June.

In what all of us could see coming, I managed to catch a nasty cold from one or all of them. No, it wasn’t Covid, it wasn’t strep throat or the flu. Just the common crud. I’m almost recovered. All four of them, along with my son, had experienced cold-like symptoms before coming here.

Here’s your Christmas gift, Grandpa!

I have not been sick since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, so being sick with a cold was a somewhat perverted reminder of how nice it felt not to be sick for the past three years. My wife and I have been particularly careful during the pandemic, still wearing masks in indoor places where lots of people gather, getting all of our vaccines and limiting our social visits. But in a home stuffed with nine people and two dogs for almost two weeks, you’ve pretty much lost any advantage of avoiding cooties.

And in addition to the cold, we had two additional cherries on top of our Christmas experience. One involved the discovery of three particularly putrid piles of dog poop and the remnants of a puddle of pee on the carpet near our Christmas tree on Christmas morning. Unless we resort to DNA sampling of what we discovered on our carpet, I doubt we’ll be able to identify which one of the two dogs left us the Christmas morning present.

The second was a red blotch on our carpet from dye that came with a fancy microscope kit given to one of our grandsons. He apparently did not make the connection that dyes probably should not be slathered on microscope slides then placed on freshly cleaned carpet. We’re slowly getting it removed.

Although each grandchild had meltdown moments during the visit, we were pleased that they all got along and enjoyed playing with eachother, despite the wide range of their ages.

Like my cold, anything that was briefly unpleasant will all fade into forgotten memories soon. But we did enjoy the visit and look forward to seeing them again this coming summer on a trip we’ve been putting off for the last three years to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary.

And I hope your Christmas and New Year’s holidays were enjoyable.

I wrote this for my grandchildren last year, but I can’t take complete credit for all of it. I borrowed some wording and thoughts from similar New Mexico interpretations of “The Night Before Christmas.”  At any rate, it makes me realize how fortunate we are to live in a place that has so many multi-cultural traditions, especially around Christmas.  Hope you enjoy this and Margo and I (and Chester) wish you a happy holiday season.

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 (our dog) 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.”

You might recall a blog I wrote recently about the cannabis store in Las Cruces that has plans to be open 24 hours a day. I lamented that you couldn’t get a flat tire fixed at 3 in the morning, but you could get pot at that time.

Well, I discovered a new twist on pot sales earlier this week. A new drive-in pot dispensary has opened up on Valley Drive. It’s called “High Horse Cannibis Co,” which is a guess a pretty descriptive name if you are graining your buckskin mare and mix in some pot with it.

The most interesting thing about this store is that it is right next to a very popular frozen custard location called Caliche’s, which also has a drive-up lane. In theory, you could hit the drive-in window at High Horse, then just as you get the munchies, drive over to Caliche’s without going on a city street to order a Gizmo sundae. Then you could loop back to High Horse — again without going on a public road — and start the sequence all over and keep going until you run out of gas.

_________________________

On another topic, I wrote recently about a homeless man named Keith who had visited our church and filled out the guest book and listed his address as “under the bridge.” He even left his phone number in the column for that information.

Well, Keith came back and signed the guest book again, but this time in the column for phone number, he left this sad note:

“My phone got stolen.”

So I guess if our church is planning to track down Keith encouraging him to come back, we’ll be out of luck — unless we go checking out the space under the bridge.

_________________________

And finally, there was sad news today about the death of Mississippi State football coach Mike Leach. He was, but all accounts, a truly innovative and well-respected expert on the game — particularly his passing offense.

But what I think a lot of people will remember is his off-beat comments about everything from aliens to weddings to team mascots to candy corn. The best interview I ever heard him give was about one of his daughters quizzing him about the style of wedding invitation she should send out. I couldn’t find it on the internet, but I’ll keep trying.

In the meantime, here’s a link from USA today about some of his most memorable quotes. I hope you’ll get a chuckle out of it.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2022/12/13/mike-leach-best-quotes-candy-wedding-advice/10886994002/

Yes, this sad looking Lockheed Jetstar that is wasting away on the tarmac of the Roswell Industrial Air Center airport, was once owned by “The King” — Elvis Presley.

But it could be yours, for the right amount of money — probably lots of it. Here’s the story.

In my previous life as a bank executive, I flew in and out of the Roswell airport many times after our banking group acquired a failing Roswell bank that we were hoping to resuscitate. As our company’s spiffy twin-engined Cessna 414 taxied toward the terminal, we would always pass by this once proud by now fading red corporate jet. I was told by our pilot that the plane once belonged to Elvis and had been left there — along with other mothballed aircraft — awaiting sale to a new owner. I was skeptical of the story, but I recently found news about the plane on the internet.

It was, in fact, purchased by Elvis in 1976 and added to his fleet of aircraft. The sale price on the plane when he bought it was about $840,000. He only owned it for about a year before re-selling it to another party. How many times he actually flew in it is not something I could determine. It is not also clear how the jet ended up in Roswell, although that facility has been a storage place for many larger aircraft over the years.

The 1962 Jetstar was considered the first “corporate jet.” It had four engines, was heavy and extremely thirsty for fuel. It was quickly upstaged by Learjets, Cessna Citations, Gulfstream G20s and the like and fell into disfavor among the “jet set.”

But before he sold it, Elvis tricked out his plane with the garish red paint job and a full red velvet interior, giving new meaning to the phrase “velvet Elvis.” It even had an on-board microwave oven, TV and VCR.

The plane has been on the market for years and has passed through the hands of several speculators who assumed it would be worth more, but never got a good offer. It continues to sit sadly at the airport in Roswell, wasting away in the high desert sun. It has been stripped of its original four jet engines and many of its instruments and avionics. The pilot seats are tattered but the interior is still in somewhat good condition.

But in January, Mecum Auto Auctions will offer the plane for sale in an auction in Kissimmee, Florida. Bidders will have to just look at pictures of the plane, since the aircraft is far from airworthy. The company or individual offering up the plane has said that it will have to be disassembled in order to be transported to the new owner — if someone comes forward.

Are you ready to make a bid? It might make a swell conversation piece in your back yard.

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.