I’ll bet that many of you remember 5th or 6th grade geography class, in which we had to remember the names of each state capitol. Montpelier, Vermont, always stood out in my mind, for some obscure reason. So when it came to Arizona, it was always easy to remember Phoenix as the capitol because it was the state’s best known and largest city.

But did you know the Arizona capitol might have been our own humble little town of Mesilla, in New Mexico? Read on.

I did more research about my recent post about how the states of New Mexico and Arizona, along with bits of Colorado and Nevada, were once lumped together in what would have been the largest state in the nation in 1850.

A map I found in a 1969 book entitled Historical Atlas of New Mexico by Warren A. Beck and Ynez D. Haase shed some more light on the transition of our state’s borders.

According to the authors, there was a proposal submitted by President James Buchanan in 1857 to divide the New Mexico territory into two states horizontally, rather than in a vertical fashion that was ultimately finalized in 1875. Below is a copy of the map showing the proposed division of the territory.

The states would have been divided along the 33 degree 40′ line north latitude. And yes, under that arrangement, the now sleepy little town of Mesilla, highlighted in yellow, would have been the capitol of Arizona.

My friend Lon sent me a message following my original post about why it took so long for New Mexico and Arizona to become states. He discovered this passage in a book entitled Las Cruces by Gordon Owen.

“Stephen B. Elkins (Congressional delegate from New Mexico territory and former Secretary of War) went to congress to lobby for statehood. He walked into congress just as a speaker delivered a barn-storming speech denouncing the KKK and the South in general. The speaker bumbled into Elkins and he, noticing the rousing and approving response, vigorously shook the speaker’s hand. Southerners noticed this and ended any hope of statehood for the next thirty years by only seven votes.”

(More historical drivel you probably didn’t want to know: Elkins began his law practice in Mesilla and served as congressional delegate for New Mexico from 1873 to 1877. He was also a former U.S. District Attorney for the state and was said to have been a member of the infamous “Santa Fe Ring,” which included his brother in law, Thomas B. Catron. Catron, you may remember, was also involved with Albert B. Fall in the Teapot Dome scandal.)

As I had also mentioned earlier, I have read reports that many in Congress did not want Arizona and New Mexico to become part of the union because of the large population of residents of Mexico who lived in the territory and because so many of them preferred to speak Spanish over English.

It’s interesting how boundaries evolved over the years. The Arizona under the 1857 plan would not have been included the Grand Canyon, the red rocks of Sedona, the Navajo Nation and many alpine landscapes. The New Mexico under that plan would have been spectacular, but I’m glad we ended up with the boundaries we have today.

I’ve been driving past this place in Las Cruces Several years. It was the location of Church’s Chicken franchise which apparently did not do well in our city, perhaps because of its location on a busy one-way street, and was forced to close because of limited business. (Truth be told, I ate there one time and promptly got sick, so maybe that was the reason it folded.)

As you can see, the entire building has been torn down, the lot has been leveled and the sign was gutted, except for the marquee which still has the words “closed” on it (circled in blue). The picture may be a little fuzzy, but the word “closed” is still there — with perhaps the letter “E” about to slide off.

That made me think of some other strange signs I’ve seen around the state.

In Espanola, there is a long-vacant paved lot with the words “Espanola’s Best Used Cars” above it. It suggests to me that there aren’t really any good used cars in that city.

And just north of town, there was once a billboard announcing that a local dentist could “cure anything but potty mouth.”

I once visited a location in Arizona where a street leading to a cemetery announced that the road was a “Dead End.”

And as I think I mentioned in an earlier blog, a good friend of mine who was a college professor at the time flew into a rage when he saw an official state highway sign advising trucks with “trailors” should slow down. He was afraid it reflected on the lack of intelligence in our state — which it clearly did.

But my all-time favorite sign was the one I spotted on the Navajo Nation on a roadside stand on the highway between Farmington and Shiprock which read:

The Territory of New Mexico was established on Sept. 9, 1850. At that time, the territory included a vast swath of land in the Southwest, including all of our current state and what is now Arizona, the southernmost portion of Nevada and a portion of Colorado which included the headwaters of the Rio Grande.

The map below shows what an immense territory it was. Santa Fe was the designated capitol.

I’ve seen this map before and wondered what a spectacular state, geographically it would have been had it been left this way. It would have included the Grand Canyon. The highest point in the state would have been more than 14,000 feet high in the Sangre de Cristo range of what is now central Colorado. The San Luis Valley would have been part of New Mexico.

Las Vegas, Nevada, would have been in the state, confusing everyone since there would have been two towns with the same name. Hoover Dam and Lake Mead would have been in New Mexico.

The red rocks of Oak Creek Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, Humphrey’s Peak and the Flagstaff area would have all been in the Land of Enchantment.

And of course we’d still have our spectacular Sangre de Cristo mountains, Sacramentos, Gila country, beautiful plains, White Sands, Carlsbad Caverns and the Rio Grande valley — among many other geographical features.

And to top it off, it would have been bigger than Texas. Take that, Lone Star State!

But things were afoot in Washington at the time that led to the separation of the western part of New Mexico into what became Arizona territory. The Civil War and the issue of slavery played into the drama of granting statehood to either state. President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation in 1863 — during the height of the Civil War — called the “Organic Act” which designated Arizona as a separate Territory.

The two states finally joined the Union in 1912 — New Mexico on Jan. 6 and Arizona on Feb. 14 — but not without a last-minute effort to join the two states again.

The then Speaker of the House, John Gurney Cannon of Illinois, was behind the effort to re-unite the two states. Known as someone who ruled the House with an “iron fist” and often referred to as “Czar Cannon,” the Illinois lawmaker failed to gather the 33 additional Republican votes he needed to merge the states.

No doubt his failure to achieve his goal led to this famous quote, possibly referring to some lawmakers who failed to support him on the issue:

“Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks, but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons.”

Even then, Arizona’s road to statehood was bumpy because of a provision in their proposed constitution which allowed judges to be recalled. There was also speculation that New Mexico’s path to statehood was delayed because of its large Spanish-speaking population that some politicians back East felt were not worthy of being U.S. citizens. The political cartoon below shows some of the thinking at the time. Note the snake with the words “judiciary recall” attached to the Arizona character and how the New Mexico character is represented in a Mexican sombrero.

I also ran across another bit of information in the 1905 Santa Fe New Mexican, which said then territorial Gov. Manuel Antonio Ortero was planning a month-long vacation to California to recover from what he said was an exhausting session of the New Mexico Legislature. On his way back from California, he said he traveled through Arizona and talked with residents of that state about the possibility of the two states being joined again. He said he found “little interest” in the concept.

So the die was cast and New Mexico and Arizona retained their own identities. It’s hard for me to imagine us being one state these days. Of all our bordering states, my opinion is that we have less interaction with Arizona than any of the others. And in past years, I think we’ve become increasingly separated by political ideology.

In retrospect, it’s probably good that we remained separated. But wow, what spectacular and beautiful state we would have been.

On one of our daily walks about three years ago, my wife and I discovered some spectacular artwork on the side of an arroyo just east of the New Mexico State University golf course.

Images of various animals, reptiles, birds and insects were created out of rocks, tiles, glass and other materials were displayed in a truly creative menagerie where you wouldn’t expect to find it.

The artwork was done by Las Cruces artist Kathy Morrow who started the project in January of 2017 while walking her dog along the top of the Tortugas Dam. She discovered that someone had started lining the top of the dam with a small different colored rocks. She took the rock artwork a step further and began creating her designs on the side of the arroyo and the dam.

Fast forward to 2022, when the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, which owns the Tortugas Dam, announced it was planning to upgrade the structure. That meant that Morrow’s work would likely be erased in the process.

She spent much of last year dismantling what she had created and is now moving it — along with some new creations — to the side of a hill just south of the NMSU golf course clubhouse. NMSU, which owns the land, has given its approval for creation of the new art project. Morrow has several volunteers now helping her with the project. The work involves haling large buckets of heavy rock and other materials so it can be placed on the side of the hill.

In an article in a recent Las Cruces Bulletin, Morrow explains that because of the shallow slope of her new hillside “canvas,” she has to consider the perspective from where the work will be seen and distort the images to be wider on top so they look more natural when viewed.

I’m glad she has agreed to move her artwork to be seen by more people. However, one of the things that made her original project so great was that it was completely unexpected when you stumbled upon it as you walked through the desert.

If you’re interest in learning more about the project, or want to help with donations to help complete it, you can go to her website below:

kathymorrowstudio.com

I’m glad I’m not flying a hot air balloon these days — especially an all white one.

The recent shoot-down of four high altitude balloons by the U.S. Air Force over the U.S. and Canada made me wonder if some loose cannon might decide that any large orb seen floating in the sky might be fair game for target practice. I really doubt that will happen, but it certainly crossed my mind and I suspect it has crossed the minds of other hot air balloon pilots recently.

I didn’t fly it, but I worked with another pilot several years ago who had a solid white balloon. It was used in a television commercial that advertised a European fragrance called “Joop.”

The filming took place in the dunes at White Sands National Park (then just a National Monument). The balloon owner from California did logistical support for movies, television and video productions and shipped the balloon envelope to Alamogordo. Because of problems associated with shipping a balloon basket with propane tanks, he contacted me to see if he could borrow the basket from the balloon I was flying at the time that was compatible with his envelope. My late friend and fellow pilot Bob Haynes and I jumped at the chance to be on the set of a video production and drove our basket from Las Cruces to White Sands to assist with filming the commercial.

The script for the commercial went something like this:

A beautiful woman is running away from her love interest because she wants to establish her freedom. She spritzes herself with “Joop” cologne, then hops into an illogically waiting hot air balloon and flies away across the White Sands to her freedom.

As you might expect on the set of any movie/video production, there was a lot of standing around and waiting, but it was all interesting. (We at least got a great lunch out of the deal). The balloon owner did inflate the all-white balloon and tethered it for the scene of the beautiful woman flying away to freedom. But in the end, the director decided to go with a close-up shot of the woman in the basket as it was lifted into the air by a hidden large fork-lift.

I got a VHS video tape of the commercial after it was produced, but I’m not sure I can find it anywhere.

However, if the guy from California still has that balloon, I suspect he’s keeping it out of the air these days.

And in conjunction with that, I found this on the Internet a couple of days ago. It was from a woman who claimed to have been following a suspicious all-white spy balloon for several miles over California, only to come to the realization that it was just a splotch of bird poop on her windshield.

Again, the Chinese spy balloon incident continues to provide endless comedic diversions.

As usual, New Mexico has been hijacked again.

With the kerfuffle surrounding the New Mexico State University basketball team this week, NBC and its various offshoots seem to have grabbed the wrong name and the wrong video when attempting to link the incident to the correct school.

Much to the chagrin of Lobo fans, the University of New Mexico’s name showed up in bottom-screen crawlers during TV newsfeeds about the incident. Then to add insult to injury, a video of Lobo players and the UNM basketball court showed up in stories the NBC group was proffering on its newscasts.

I’ll bet NBC never gets Michigan and Michigan State or Florida and Florida State mixed up when they do stories about those universities.

But as a UNM graduate but a converted Aggie fan, I’m okay that we stay under the radar as much as possible on this one.

And then last week I got the following in the mail from Progressive insurance.

Yeps that’s a saguaro cactus right next to the words “Land of Enchantment.” And no, Progressive, saguaros do not grow naturally in New Mexico. A green chile pod might have been a better icon.

As I think I mentioned before, I have found two saguaro cacti growing in Las Cruces, both transplanted very close to heat absorbing southwest facing adobe walls. One of those is below.

And finally, not related to our misplaced state, but to another rant I’ve made about the dearth of proofreaders.

Our ever watchful, detail oriented good friend Cheryl spotted this in a story about Lee Trevino in Golf Digest, a major publication about the sport. Here’s how the article quoted him:

“At the age of 22 I got out of the Marine Core.”

Beyond the lame use of Core for Corps, the quote should have had a comma after “22.” We must fight back against the impending death of the English language.

And for Pete’s sake, the Oxford comma is just dead wrong. Read Eats Shoots and Leaves Lynn Truss.

Well, Mexican bologna is in the news yet again.

The first notable item occurred when President Biden visited El Paso last month to see what was happening with the large influx of migrants from Mexico, Central and South America. He spent a lot of time with U.S. Border Patrol Agents, and one of the things he was shown was the effectiveness of the service’s contraband sniffing dogs.

The task they gave the dog was pretty lame, I thought. The pooch sniffed out a six-pound roll of Mexican bologna stashed in the trunk of a car. I mean really, our dog Chester can sniff out a cheese snack from 100 yards away. I think sniffing out six pounds of especially pungent processed meat is something most any dog could do without special training.

Anway, the story about Biden’s Mexican bologna encounter was part of a larger article on how USDA officials continue to be concerned about the large amount of that meaty concoction that crosses the border at El Paso and then makes its way up through New Mexico. An article in the El Paso Times said that although other ports of entry from Mexico to the United State seize shipments of bologna, the Border Patrol’s “El Paso field office is the only one that consistently reports large seizures of the lunch mean known in Spanish as salchichon.”

You may recall that this intrepid reporter was able to score Mexican bologna in Las Cruces last year and perform a taste test without getting busted by either Border Patrol or U.S. Customs agents. 

How the bologna I bought made its way into Las Cruces was not revealed, but stories about the lengths to which smugglers try to conceal the meat are pretty entertaining. Large rolls have been stuffed inside spare tires, under car seats and intermingled with underwear in suitcases.

Well, the latest trick to bring in bologna was pretty ingenious. Smugglers were able to find a loophole that if Mexican bologna was in a sandwich, it could not be confiscated. Their response was to slice six-inch thick slabs of the meat and stuff it between two pieces of bread and call it a sandwich.

I think I’ll recommend that Subway add the six-inch balogna stack to its menu.

I’m not going to get into the arguments that have erupted about the Chinese “spy balloon” in recent days. I will say it has created a treasure trove of comedic responses on both sides of the issue.

I’ll say that the one below made me laugh out loud the most.

So here’s what I know about balloons, having flown them for almost 35 years. If you are flying one in the sky, it will be noticed. They move very slowly, they are unique from other aircraft and other items in the sky, they are spectacularly colorful (not the spy balloon) and they always attract attention. If you screw up and you crash a balloon, hit a neighbor’s fence with one land somewhere you shouldn’t, it will be noticed.

When I was considering purchasing the first hot air balloon promoting a bank in the United States, the vendor told us a story about how a balloon they manufactured flew over a major highway in an urban area with nothing more than a large telephone number displayed on the envelope of the aircraft. Within hours, hundreds of calls came into that number inquiring what the promotion was about. Balloons get noticed.

It’s no surprise that people in Montana and other states noticed the Chinese balloon, even though it was flying at an altitude far above where hot air balloons normally fly.

In the past, I’ve seen high altitude weather balloons where I live and largely dismissed them, thinking I knew what they were. In retrospect, maybe some were spy balloons.

Here’s another thing that occurred to me. In 1947, the U.S. Air Force reported the crash of an alien spacecraft near Roswell. Within a couple of days, the Air Force retracted the report and said what crashed was a weather balloon.

So now that we’re recovering debris from the “spy balloon” which China says was a “weather balloon,” is the U. S. military now recovering alien bodies from the debris field? I’m proud to stay I may have started this rumor, and hope others will pile on with equally silly suggestions.

And on a final note, when I asked my very good friend Don in Billings, MT, about whether he had spotted the spy balloon over his state, he said he had not. However, my other very good friend, Victor, suggested that it might have been me flying over Montana in my own balloon trying to get current (according to FAA regulations) and trying to spot a perfect fly fishing stream down below.

I have to confess, it was me.

I’m sure many of you saw recent news accounts that the New Mexico Legislature is considering legislation to make the scent of roasting green chile the state’s “official aroma.”

My first response is a big thank you to the lawmakers for giving me a wonderful topic for my blog.

My second response is amusement about how these proposals get hatched. If you’ll recall, New Mexico got national attention when it passed legislation declaring “Red or Green” the official state question. And of course, we have the bolo tie as the official state neckwear (even though Arizona also claims this sartorial appendage as its own official state necktie).

At the time of this writing, I’m not sure how far this important piece of legislation has moved through the Legislature. I’m sure it’s getting as much attention as a bill which prohibits senators and representatives from consuming alcohol during important voting events during the session (yes, another post will be issued soon on that — again, thank you New Mexico Legislature for giving me great fodder for my blog.)

But here’s the question. If each state has their own “official aroma,” what would that be? A few are obvious:

• Nebraska — Feedlot odors
• Texas — Crude oil vapors
• Arizona or Florida — Airborne notes of analgesic smeared on aging human joints
• Nevada — Casino cigarette smoke
• Maine — Various sea odors mixed with indistinct lobster smells
• Oregon or Colorado — Marijuana smoke wafting through the air
• Kentucky — Thoroughbred horse manure

I recently wrote that a Bengal tiger found inside an apartment in Albuquerque was deemed not to have had enough proper credentials to be placed permanently in an American zoo. It almost seemed that the animal was expected to be carrying some kind of ID card with its proper credentials.

I mean really, even if the critter didn’t follow the rules, you could tell it was a tiger just by looking at it. I’d be glad to see it safely kept in a zoo, even if it didn’t follow the rules.

I theorized that might have been easier for the large cat to have been admitted to Harvard Law School than to get the proper clearance for a safe home at an American zoo.

Well now we have another wild animal in a predicament about not following the rules.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently reported that a member of the Mexican gray wolf population that was introduced in southwestern New Mexico several years ago had wandered north of Interstate 40 and was tracked as far north as Taos. The Fish and Wildlife Service has said that under the agreement to relocate the wolves in New Mexico, the animals were not to roam north of I-40.

The wolf known as Asha — a name given to her by schoolchildren — has an electronic collar which allows authorities to track her movement. The problem is that Asha doesn’t know exactly where she is and has not been given the proper equipment or training to track herself on a GPS device. Humans, however, seemed to know her every movement and eventually captured her somewhere north of I-40 and returned her to southwestern New Mexico.

Ranchers don’t care much for Mexican wolves because they believe they pose a threat to domestic livestock. Although I don’t know where you could find accurate information, I suspect that there are more cows north of I-40 in New Mexico than there are in the southwestern part of the state. So it’s just natural that wolves would want to go somewhere where they might have an easier time finding a snack.

Also, authorities say Asha may have been looking for a mate. You have to admit that traveling several hundred miles away from home is a sign that Asha was pretty lonely.

The bottom line is that Asha didn’t follow the rules — even if she didn’t know what they were — and is now back home pondering her next move.

I’m imaging a scene when Fish and Wildlife Service authorities were about to let Asha out of her cage and gave her a last-minute lecture on the error of her ways.

“Bad wolf! Bad wolf,” a sternly voiced Fish and Wildlife agent might have said. “Now you stay near home and don’t cross any highways. Remember what your mother told you when you were a pup — don’t cross any roads because you might get squished by a Ford F-150. And besides, it’s against the rules.”

Glad to be done with the lecture, I’m sure Asha dashed off into the wilderness the second the gate in her cage was opened. She’s probably not thinking about the rules but is pondering hooking up with that cute male wolf who wandered over from Arizona a couple of weeks ago.

“It ain’t worth the cook if it ain’t got that hook!– doo wah, doo wah, doo wah, doo wah
Doo wah, doo wah, doo wah, doo wah.”

(with apologies to Duke Ellington)

I’ve run across a couple of articles recently on work done at New Mexico State University to bring back the original strain of flavor and heat consistency of the legendary “Big Jim” variety of New Mexico-grown chile.

Originally developed by chile guru Dr. Roy Nakayama at NMSU in 1975, the variety was known for its distinctive flavor, medium heat, size and thick “meat.” Unfortunately, over the years, the variety became diluted with repeated plantings and cross-pollination and lost some of its valued characteristics — flavor being the most important.

Luckily, Dr. Paul Bosland of NMSU had assumed research work on chile started by Dr. Nakayama and his efforts have been instrumental in reviving the Big Jim variety, now known as “NuMex Heritage Big Jim.”

In 1975, seeds of the original Big Jim variety were stored at the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation in Ft. Collins. Bosland was able to retrieve some of those seeds and began working at the NMSU Plant Science Research Center to re-create a variety as close as possible to the original Big Jim. By 2013, the new variety was available for commercial production. It still has all of the qualities of the original variety — size, thickness of meat, and taste. However, it is slightly hotter than the original Big Jim — not quite as hot as the Sandia variety, but enough heat to please the palates of the most discriminating chile connoisseurs.

I visited the New Mexico Chile Pepper Institute on the NMSU campus earlier this month to learn a little more about the variety and to also attempt to verify or debunk some “urban legends” about chile.

What was most interesting about Big Jim — both in the original and newer variety — is that they can easily be visually identified by a distinctive hook at the tip of the chile. Most other chile varieties have a sharp, rounded or even double pointsat the bottom of the pod.

I also asked about where in chile pods the “heat” is concentrated. Over the years, I had heard it was in the veins on the inside of the pod or in the seeds themselves. Turns out, it is mostly concentrated in the “placenta” of the chile — the whitish pithy part of the pod in the center of the top and surrounded by seeds. Because seeds are next to the placenta, heat often gets transferred to them, giving rise to the belief that the seeds were the culprit for chile heat.

I also had heard stories that chile grows hotter the long it is left in the freezer. Not so, says the Chile Pepper Institute. Barring freezer burn, chile left in the freezer has a long shelf life and its heat level will remain stable.

If you want more information on New Mexico grown chile, go to the Chile Pepper Institute’s website. There you’ll find lots of information about how each current strain was developed, a store to order chile nick nacks, salsas, books, other items and the seeds of many varieties. You can also become a member of the Institute for just $25, which I have done to stay on top of this fascinating part of New Mexico culture.

https://cpi.nmsu.edu/

I’ll be back with more stories about chile in the future, so stay tuned. And in the meantime, when you get depressed about New Mexico being at the bottom of lists measuring us against other states, remember, we are NO. 1 IN CHILE PRODUCTION in the United States.

Earlier this month, we discovered a large box on our front door mat that appeared to be leaking some sticky and high viscosity clear liquid.

Upon further investigation, we determined that it had been shipped by UPS from Sam’s Club. We were pretty sure it was an order we had placed for two refill jugs of hand soap.

When we opened the box, the packing material and the sides of the box had been soaked in leaking hand soap. At first, I suspected one of the jugs had been accidentally punctured during the shipping process.

Nope, that’s not what happened. It appears that at the time it was shipped, the cap on top of one of the jugs was very loose and fell off during shipping or was simply never attached at the time it was shipped.

I guess we’ll never know how the cap actually came off the jug. If it was just loose, I think a quick visual inspection of the product before it was placed in the shipping box would have prevented the spill. I guess no one had time to do that, even while stuffing packing paper around the jugs in the box.

At any rate, I think the jug began leaking almost immediately when it began its journey to our home. That means that when the UPS driver delivered it at our front door, he or she could clearly have seen that it was leaking. He or she seemed to not want to deal with the problem. However, I suspect the delivery person found a gooey mess inside the UPS delivery truck which probably got onto other packages delivered that day. It might have even dribbled all over the cargo hold of a UPS Boeing 777 aircraft before it was placed in the delivery truck. And yet, no one seemed to care. What it if had been some kind of really toxic liquid?

Once dropped off at our house, the soap leaked on to our very absorbent front door mat and I had to spray off as much as I could. It created an embarrassing sea of white foam in our front driveway which took at least half an hour to disperse. I don’t think I got all of it out, and I suspect the mat will continue foaming until we finally decide to pitch it in the trash.

I get that pushing stuff through the shipping process is a fast-moving and largely unappreciated job. But don’t you think that at least somewhere along the line, the packer or the UPS driver could have noticed that something was amiss? 

The good news is that Sam’s agreed to a refund of the entire order. So we got one full jug and one jug about 1/8th full for free. The compromised door mat, however, was not part of the refund equation. We’ll probably have many sleepless nights wondering if a white foam monster might appear at our front door when we step out to get the morning newspaper.. 

 

Yes, that describes me these days, but I’m referring to something else. Read on…

I stumbled across a recent story about how the Union Pacific Railroad was instrumental in the development of the world’s first ski chairlift.

The chairlift was developed for use at the Sun Valley, ID, ski area which had been acquired by the Union Pacific as a destination resort along its vast east-west railroad system. The chairman of the UP at the time, Averill Harriman, thought the destination could lure more visitors by offering a safer, faster way to get skiers up the slopes. Up to that time, awkward tow ropes were the only uphill transportation at ski areas. He asked the railroad’s mechanical engineers to develop something new.

What was interesting to me was that the actual development of the lift was done in Omaha, NE — not a place that you would expect to be the center of emerging ski technology. It was first tested in Omaha using the bed of a pickup truck to simulate the movement that a skier could expect when loading onto the chair. Even Harriman agreed to try out the design and found it acceptable.

The story made me think about the first chairlift installed in New Mexico, at Santa Fe Ski Basin in 1949 by Ernie Blake, the New Mexico skiing pioneer from Germany who later developed Taos Ski Valley.

The lift, affectionately referred to as the “Old Red Chair,” was quite a contraption and I’m glad to say I rode it many times before it was eventually retired and then dismantled sometime in the late 1960s.

Since no company was fabricating chair lifts in large quantities at the time the Santa Fe Ski Basin was being developed, Blake concluded he would have to make his own lift.

Blake discovered that there was an abandoned cable ore carrier from a mine in Silverton, CO. He was able to acquire it, along with pilot’s seats from mothballed World War II vintage B-24 bombers. The seats were welded together in pairs, then attached to one of two cables used in the ore carrier. One cable was used to support the chairs and the other was used to move the contraption as it hauled skiers up a 2,600 foot route to the top of the mountain. The cables were apparently manufactured in 1888 by a famous steel maker in Sheffield, England. When it was determined they could be repurposed for use on the Santa Fe ski lift, the rust that accumulated on them over the years was removed and they were tested for strength and safety.

Because the lift was not originally designed to haul people, it had its share of idiosyncrasies.

To begin with, it was very slow and clunky. Many times the hauling cable would slide off its tracks, requiring those on the lift to be lowered down by ropes. The width of the cable tracks was very narrow, requiring some corrugated tin guards to be placed next to each lift tower so riders would not catch the tips of their skis in the open framework.

As a skier in my college days, I remember rides up the chairlift. You’d always expect multiple stops and starts as it moved you slowly up the mountain. I can remember the clunky noises it would make as it passed over the support towers. I remember how close you’d come to the towers on the way up and how you’d always try to get the outside seat of the two chairs so you’d avoid any accidental contact with structures. And you always breathed a sigh of relief when you had made it successfully to the top of the mountain.

The original lodge at Santa Fe, now midway up the mountain, still has a set of the original red bomber seat chairs. They’re great to sit in while sipping a beer after your last run down the mountain. But because there is no padding (there was never any to begin with), your butt can get kind of cold while you’re taking in the scenery.

You can find a story about the Old Red Chair and other early chairlifts in New Mexico on the Ski New Mexico website. I’ve posted a link below.

https://skinewmexico.com/?s=santa+fe+red+chair#

I’m sure many of you have read or seen stories in the last couple of weeks about a real Bengal tiger cub that was found in a mobile home in Albuquerque during a drug investigation.

Although cute and cuddly for now, the wild animal will need to be placed somewhere safer and more appropriate as it grows into its natural wild animal persona.

When first discovered by Albuquerque police, the New Mexico Game and Fish Department was contacted about keeping the cub. As far as I know, there are no naturally occurring tigers in New Mexico, so it’s doubtful that the Game and Fish department had a lot of expertise in taking care of such an animal.

The next call was made to the Albuquerque Zoo, which had a temporary place for the cub.

But when asked if it could be placed permanently at the Albuquerque Zoo or some other zoo, officials at that facility said that “because the genetic lineage of the animal is unknown, it will not be placed in a zoo accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.”

That makes it sound like it might be easier for the critter to get into Harvard Law School than to find a safe place to live in one of hundreds of zoos across the United States.

There is an addendum to the story. Albuquerque police were tipped off about a tiger living in an apartment in the city last summer but could never find it. Based on the information they had at that time, police do not feel the cat found earlier this month is the same animal. That means, Albuquerque residents, that a tiger may still be lurking around your neighborhood.

In the meantime, I hope the still missing tiger is working on perfecting its genetic lineage record, its resume and other credentials so that it might have an easier time getting into an “accredited” zoo if and when it is captured.