Our daughter and our two grandchildren visited us earlier this month and we made the most of their time here by traveling to various sites around the region. We stopped at City of Rocks State Park, the Catwalk near Glenwood, the Organ Mountains and other places in Las Cruces to keep them entertained.

Our biggest trip was a one-day excursion to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. My wife and I had not been there since our kids were about the same age as our grandchildren, so it was a great time to revisit the park and remember what a spectacular place it is.

Hayes, our grandson who is about to turn four, began having some concerns about what might be in the cave. He knew there would be bats, stalactites and stalagmites but he wondered about other creepy cave dwellers.

At one point he questioned whether zombies might be present in the depths of the cave.

We finally encountered a park ranger on our walk down the steep narrow pathway to the Big Room. I asked Hayes if he wanted to ask the ranger anything. He was reluctant to speak, so I asked for him.

“Hayes wants to know if there are any zombies down here,” I said.

The ranger chuckled and nicely replied.

“We get that question a lot,” he said. “I don’t think there are any down here, but if there are, I’m sure they won’t bother good little boys like you.”

That seemed to satisfy Hayes who became so relaxed that he fell asleep in the arms of his weary mother. She had to carry him the last quarter mile to the elevators, a task I was pretty sure I could not have done at my age. 

About three years ago, out of the blue, I was contacted by an individual wanting to know if I would be willing to allow an oil company to acquire drilling rights from a piece of property near Pecos, TX, that I had inherited.

WHAT???!!!???

I never even knew this piece of property existed. After discussions with the agent from an oil development company, I learned that my father and at least one of his sisters had purchased a few acres of land in a Godforsaken patch of west Texas years ago. My father never mentioned it to me or any of my siblings.

The agent informed me that I was one of many heirs that held an interest to the property. Initially, all the development company wanted was the right to produce oil from the property, if it ever became economically feasible to do so. After some negotiations, each of the heirs agreed to a payment of about $1,500 for rights to develop the property, with an option for renewal three years later.

I never expected much to happen with the property, but over the years had calls from several other oil production company representatives wanting to buy the property outright or acquire the rights to develop that we had already sold. When the development rights option matured last year, the company renewed it, which surprised me.

Then last fall, I received a surprise check for royalties on production of oil on the property. With the continuing boom in the Delaware Basin of the Permian Basin, the property I didn’t know I partially owned was suddenly producing. From what I understand, there were no new wells drilled on the property. The oil was extracted through modern horizontal drilling techniques which can significantly reduce production costs.

Since then. I’ve been getting regular checks for royalty on the oil production on the property. Not much, but between $300 and $400 per month.

That is, until last month, when it dropped down to $285.16.

So this makes me wonder if high gasoline prices this summer are indeed the result of intentional cutbacks in oil production. According to my calculations, the royalty revenue reflects almost a 25% reduction in production since the high point of production in the first quarter of the year. 

If oil companies want to drive up prices, cutting back on production seems to be a good, if not entirely ethical, was to achieve that goal.

But I can’t complain since I never expected to get the money anyway. I guess I’ll just use what I get to pay my gasoline credit card bills. 

 

The City of Albuquerque recently decided to re-implement speeding cameras on several of its high-trafficked streets.

The city had used the speed cameras several years ago, but ultimately took all of them down after a series of complaints, legal challenges and questions about their effectiveness.

Apparently some drivers still aren’t warming up to the idea that they’re being watched so closely. Just 17 days after the new cameras were put into place, someone carefully removed one of the speed cameras at the corner of Lead and Cornell just south of the University of New Mexico. All that was left was the mounting pole, some dangling wires and a few bolts that held the device in place.

The city said it plans to re-install the camera, but this time with more tamper proof hardware to keep it in place.

I’ve had friends who were nabbed by the speeding cameras in Albuquerque, but I never got targeted for speeding where they were located. 

However, I know they are effective. Several years ago, while visiting our son in southern California, I accidentally ended up on a toll highway without paying for the privilege to drive on it. I was in a rental car, so I figured that they’d never figure out who was driving it.

Wrong. About two months after my illegal usage of the highway, I got a letter from the California highway department asking me to pay for using the road. The agency had managed to track the license plate on the rental car on the date that I drove it, find my rental agreement and then procure my name, address and driver’s license number on the document. They sent me a nicely worded suggestion that I pay up ASAP or face the consequences. It didn’t cost that much, and I grudgingly paid it. But I quickly learned that you just can’t hide in today’s high tech, someone’s always watching world.

And I’ve always wondered why the Border Patrol has those cameras on the opposite side of the highway from where the checkpoints are located. Just to be careful, I always flash a friendly smile when I drive past them. If Big Brother is watching, maybe they’ll think my smile is a sign that I’m no threat — or maybe that I’m trying to hide something. 

My good friend Cheryl who doubles as an additional research assistant and fact checker for my blog (I need to increase her salary) came up with some new information about the infamous “Motel Boulevard” that I mentioned in one of my blogs last week.

It turns out that a short section of that road south of Interstate 10 is actually designated as a New Mexico Highway 292. That’s the part where the Coachlight Inn is located, so it’s really not on Motel Boulevard at all.

And even more confusing is that when State Road 292 enters the northern Mesilla Town Limits at Glass Road, the street becomes “Calle de El Paso,” which is odd because it really doesn’t head towards El Paso, which is way south of Mesilla.

Apparently when the street was named during construction of Interstate 10, it was hoped that many Motel 6s, Holiday Inns, Comfort Suites, Hampton Inns, etc., would build along that street.

Now, as my good friend Mike points out, the name of the street must be really confusing for travelers along Interstate 10 who take the exit in hopes of finding a plethora of motels.

So imagine someone traveling on Interstate 10, coming across a street named “Pat Garrett Boulevard. They might think: “Oh, that’s cool. I heard of Pat Garrett and how he killed notorious outlaw Billy the Kid. I’ll bet the town has some interesting things to tell us about its history. Let’s stop and check it out and spend money staying there and finding out what a great place it is.”

Instead, travelers get off I-10, thinking they will find a good motel on “Motel Boulevard.”

After traveling on the street, they probably think: “Well how dumb is this town? It lured me onto a street suggesting there would be motels, but the only thing I saw were some giant truck stops and the stench of a nearby sewer plant. Guess they really don’t want us to stop. I’ll just keep going until I come to Deming (or El Paso).”

And by the way, Cheryl points out that boulevards are typically streets lined with trees with a divider in the middle.

This is from the internet:

Boulevard (Blvd.): A very wide city street that has trees and vegetation on both sides of it. There’s also usually a median in the middle of boulevards.

For our Motel “Boulevard,” the occasional yucca, mesquite or creosote bush — complete with a with a Wal-Mart bag stuck on it and flapping in the wind — only makes us look even more like we’re trying to dupe traveling guests.

A story in last Sunday’s Las Cruces Sun-News announced that Louisiana had named a section of highway in honor of legendary New Mexico lawman Pat Garrett, who killed notorious outlaw Billy the Kid. The Louisiana Legislature designated a section of Louisiana Highway 9 from the towns of Homer to Junction City as “Sheriff Pat Garrett Memorial Highway.”

The story notes that history-minded individuals in that state had confirmed that Garret grew up in the Claiborne Parish area of Louisiana before moving to New Mexico to become one of the state’s most recognized citizens. And the Louisiana residents recognized the publicity value of putting his name on a roadway in that area.

“Pat’s youth was spent working on the farm and hunting in the woods of Claiborne Parish (Louisiana), acquiring the skills to prepare him for a future of hard long trails and difficult times,” the Claiborne County Library said in a notice about the dedication ceremony for the stretch of highway.

But in Las Cruces, our local government couldn’t find the wisdom to offer the famous New Mexico lawman that kind of recognition by renaming a short street in his honor. The local historical association had suggested that a street with the existing uninspiring name “Motel Boulevard” be renamed in honor of Garrett, who was Sheriff of Dona Ana County at the time he killed Billy the Kid. And the current Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Office headquarters is located on that street. Truth be told, there’s only one run-down motel on Motel Boulevard anymore, so any new street name would have been better than that. The motel, called the Coachlight Inn, was once owned by former Dallas Cowboy player Bob Lilly and has seen better days. A faded billboard promoting the property on eastbound Interstate 10 is in a bad state of repair as well, with part of the sign missing but Lilly’s jersey number 88 still proudly on display on a Cowboys helmet.

The Las Cruces City Council, in its wisdom (or lack thereof) decided that there were lots of people who could be recognized for their role in the history of our region. One city council member suggested and all-encompassing but insipid name — “Legends Boulevard.” And then another complained that the cost of changing street signs to honor Garrett would have been too expensive. Eventually, the City Council axed the idea on a 4-3 vote, seemingly oblivious to the additional exposure our city would have had (and possibly leaning too much on political correctness.)

So I’ve decided to start a petition to have the street in question re-named in honor of our City Council. It would be “Unimaginative City Council Boulevard.”

A CW Network TV show currently airing is yet another attempt to conjure up stories of space aliens who arrived in Roswell, NM, in 1947. I confess that I’ve never watched it, and at this point don’t really plan on it.

What I found amusing in the promotions for the TV show is the picture showing Shiprock, the famous rock formation on the Navajo Nation with the word Roswell beneath it. That’s about 350 miles away as the crow flies.

Or maybe in the case, as the UFO flies.

It’s another case of people from the West or East coast not really understanding where or what New Mexico is. It’s kind of like sticking a saguaro cactus in the middle of a map of our state — which happens all the time.

Of course, maybe the TV show is trying to tie into the Navajo legends surrounding the impressive rock outcropping. One version is that the mountain, whose name in Navajo is “rock with wings,” flew to northwestern New Mexico to bring the Dine‘ to their new homeland.

Maybe aliens captured the rock on another planet and flew it to earth and picked up the Navajo people along the way.

I’m sure the overly creative minds of Hollywood screen writers could come up with a great story line around that topic. I’m not so sure how the Navajos would feel about being painted as descendants of aliens.

Police in Albuquerque say a man wandered into a Bank of the West branch last month and verbally demanded a teller give him the money in her drawer.

What was distinguishing about him was that he was carrying a red gas can at the time he committed the crime.

Police, who have now dubbed the perp as the “Out of Gas Robber,” had not arrested him by the time this post was written. 

Given the price of gasoline these days, perhaps the suspect was actually hoping the bank would fill up his can in lieu of cash. 

I stumbled across a social media post recently in which New Mexicans’ passion for green chile was on clear display.

It seems a young woman and her boyfriend had broken up, and in the ensuing split, the subject of her frozen green chile stash became a point of contention.

“At one time I went through a breakup and that vato’s mom was trying to move my deep freezer full of green chile out the door,” she said. “I had to put my foot down.”

Responses to the post were pretty funny as well.

“That is sooooo New Mexico,” one person said.

“I can now die happy. That is all anyone needs to know about dating in NM. Green Chile over bros!” another responded.

“Always the chile,” said anaother.

With the early monsoon rains we’ve received in the last couple of weeks over most of New Mexico, the raging wildfires in the Gila and Santa Fe/Carson National Forests have likely been doused by enough rain to be controlled or extinguished.

When reading a blow-by-blow of the travesty of the Hermit Peak/Calf Canyon Fire in northern New Mexico — caused by inept forest management which called for a prescribed burn at exactly the wrong time of year — I found this gem of a statement.

It was from U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore.

He said that prescribed burns “must remain a tool in our toolbox to combat” catastrophic wildfires.

Maybe he meant to say “to cause” catastrophic wildfires.”

Sorry, Randy, but your agency created a catastrophic wildfire.

Another comment I read from Las Vegas, NM, mayor Louie Trujillo, caught my eye. He noted how the federal government had provided significant financial assistance to the residents of Los Alamos County following the Cerro Grande fire several years ago — also started by a bungled prescribed burn by the U.S. Forest Service. Los Alamos is arguably one of the wealthiest communities in the United States, given the high salaries paid to many employees of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Mayor Trujillo said the much poorer rural population in the area of the Hermit Peak/Calf Canyon fire deserved the same opportunity to recover from the disaster.

“We’re no different than the richest county in New Mexico,” he said. “We need to be indemnified fully for every single loss the people in northern New Mexico suffered.”

I hope so. Many of those who lost homes or livelihoods were not able to afford the property insurance that the more wealthy residents of Los Alamos could purchase.

But of course, a real tragedy remains concerning the Black Fire in the Black Range of the Gila National Forest. Now deemed the largest wildfire in New Mexico modern history, the cause of that blaze is still believed to have been humans. Not only has it blackened most of the forest in the Black Range, but it has destroyed habitats of wild Gila Trout and Rio Grande Cutthroat trout populations.

And as a good friend of ours who owns a cabin (that was thankfully spared) near Winston and Chloride asked:

“What has happened to all the animals in that forest.”

Let me start by saying that stories about people conspiring to hire someone to kill a family member they don’t like isn’t funny. It happens too often.

However, a case which was reported in Las Cruces recently was just too full of ridiculously fragmented planning to pass up comment. Luckily, the hit job never happened and it also may have given us a new nominee from New Mexico for the Darwin Awards (click on darwinawards.com for more info).

A 32-year-old man went onto a fake website called “Rent-A-Hitman.com” to see if he could find someone to knock off his mother-in-law. The slogan for the website was “Your point and click solution.” I mean really, did the perp really think that someone could put up a dumb-sounding website like that without someone from the government noticing? And was he so dense he didn’t suspect it was a spoof? And how about the website operator’s slimy sounding name: “Guido Finelli?”

In fact, the website was the work of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which hoped to identify people seeking a source to commit a hit job and get them into jail before they did something rash.

At one point, the suspect told the website operator that he needed the hit done “as soon as possible and no evidence.” Well, duh, don’t you think that “no evidence” would be the “core value” of a “hit for hire” business?

As negotiations for the hit began moving along with the fake website, the suspect said he didn’t have much money to pay for the contract and would have to ask his wife for an advance to get the job done. He assured the website operator, however, that he would not divulge the purpose for the financial request from his wife. Well duh, again.

“It’s my wife’s mom we are talking about, so I don’t want any evidence to come back to me or you,” he said.

And again, didn’t he think that writing something like that on the Internet would eventually be divulged?

When the wife said she could only afford to give her husband $53 for his unspecified need, the suspect wrote this gem to the operator of the website:

“Change of plans. She is only giving me $53 so let’s use a baseball bat.”

Federal ATF officials eventually arranged to confront the man when they sent an undercover agent to his home.

It turns out that the suspect was being monitored by a state appointed guardian for intellectual and developmental disabilities. The guardian was able to retrieve the man’s laptop and gave it to authorities to unravel the plot.

Following a hearing before a judge, the suspect was placed with a full-time caregiver and is being monitored full time.

I also don’t mean to make light of people with intellectual and development disabilities. But if the state was already taking care of this guy for his problems, don’t you think they could have figured out something was up much earlier? Maybe whoever was in charge of his case should be on the Darwin list too.

New Mexico is on a big learning curve about consequences of legalization of marijuana, put into motion this year by the state legislature and implemented April 1.

Sales boomed during the first month of legalization, then have dropped back significantly since. Who knows what demand will be like in the long run? That should make things difficult for the proponents who predicted that state coffers would benefit from massive revenue growth from pot sales.

There’s also the issue of how vulnerable pot stores will be to robbery and break-ins, given the fact that they have to deal in cash because of rules involving monetary transactions for what the federal government still considers to be an illegal drug.

And so far, I have not yet seen any statistics about DWS (Driving While Stoned) cases. A big concern I have is how police will be able to tell if someone is driving under the influence of marijuana. Bloodshot eyes would probably be a clue, but in our humidity starved environment, high desert redeye is a pretty common condition. Maybe the only ones who will get stopped will be cruisers like Cheech and Chong in the movie “Up In Smoke,” in which a thick cloud of pungent smoke rolls out of the car when doors are opened on a police stop.

But in Algodones, a small community between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, a new wrinkle showed up a few weeks ago.

It seems that an eight-year-old girl discovered her parents stash of pot-infused candy, apparently looking like Gummy Somethings. Thinking she was doing her classmates a favor, she took the candy to her class and shared it with her BFFs. Later that day, 14 of her classmates became sick, requiring some to be hospitalized. Others felt nauseous or lethargic. But by the next day, most were back in class, apparently none the worse for wear.

At least the Sandoval County Sheriff’s Department cut the youngster some slack. “There was no intent of distributing any kind of drug or anything of that nature,” the investigator said. 

We’re fortunate to see red tailed hawks flying and soaring around our neighborhood on a daily basis. They roost in some tall Afghan pines nearby and always put on an entertaining show when they began their skillful riding of thermals in the afternoons. What’s especially amusing is how quickly the flocks of white wing doves dive for cover in lower trees when the hawks show up. They’re apparently wanting to make sure they’re not on the hawks’ lunch menu.

I wrote two weeks ago about how humans have been helping abandoned or injured animals around the state and came across another similar story recently, but with a funny twist.

It seems that some hikers along a trail In Oliver Lee State Park on the west side of the Sacramento Mountains near Alamogordo came across what appeared to be an injured red- tailed hawk. The bird appeared to have some blood stains on it and was not able to quickly fly away.

Aware that raptors’ talons and sharp beak can cause some serious injury to humans, the rescuers were able to wrap the bird in a spare jacket for their protection. They quickly took the raptor back down the trail and put it in their car to take it to the Alamogordo Zoo to see if someone could help rehabilitate it.

In their rush to get the injured animal to the Zoo, they exceeded the speed limit and were promptly stopped by a local police officer.  Apparently sympathetic to their rescue effort after seeing the subdued hawk rustling around in the jacket, the officer let the driver go with just a warning ticket.

Once at the zoo, the staff determined that the bird had been injured in an encounter with a high-voltage electric line. After being patched up and kept in captivity while it healed, the hawk was released back into the wild in in Oliver Lee State Park by the family who found it. 

And hopefully, they took a leisurely drive back home this time and avoided any officers swooping in to write a speeding ticket. 

Our church, St. James’ Episcopal in Mesilla Park, is located just across South Main Street from the heavily trafficked north-south BNSF Railway.

Trains passing through this part of town and blasting their horns have always interrupted church services — sometimes funerals — at totally inappropriate times because of the numerous street crossings in the neighborhood. Two long horn blasts, a short and a long required for every road crossing. And then on top of that, the BNSF recently increased speeds of its trains through the Las Cruces area, and if you’re near a 50-car train with three locomotives moving at 45 miles per hour, you can feel the rumbling through the ground.

Our church, built in 1911, is an historic structure that at its age, is getting pretty fragile. Over the years, cracks in the interior and exterior walls have developed, but the building is still in basically sound condition. It is a gem of traditional gothic architecture required by the Episcopal Church of all its churches built during that time period in the United States.

Still, when trains have rumbled through the neighborhood in the last few years with the faster BNSF speed limits, I have witnessed small chunks of plaster falling from interior walls and arches.

Which brings me to this. At our services, we do three Bible readings, one often from the Old Testament, one from the New Testament and one from the Gospel. In between the first and second readings, we join together in reciting a Psalm. 

A couple of weeks ago at our church service, the Psalm appointed for the day was Psalm 103. At the 33rd verse, the Psalm read:

“He looks at the earth and it trembles.”

Our reader, Jennifer, had impeccable timing that day. 

At the moment she led us through those words, the BNSF 8:16 to El Paso rumbled through Mesilla Park and our historic church and those attending the service experienced mighty “trembles” and a shaking building as the train rolled through. 

If you question your faith, then maybe a moment like this will make you think about it a little more. 

 

Well no, not my wedding anniversary. I think Margo would have been a bit annoyed if I had forgotten that one, although we usually don’t make a big event out of it.

What I DID miss was the posting of my first blog on June 5, 2020. I’ve now written 256 of them in the past two-plus years. (At some point, I’ll write a blog about how I will always remember the date of June 5 (1967) but you’ll have to wait for it. )

For my few but dedicated readers, thank you for reading them. Thank you for saying you liked some of them. Thank you for saying that you laughed at some of them. Thank you for indulging me.

I enjoy writing and I think it keeps my brain active. I’m always looking for a blog topic. My favorites, of course, are anything that I think is humorous and unique about New Mexico. There’s never a lack of those kinds of topics in our state.

I hope you’ll stay connected with my writing. I know everyone is busy, so I promise to try to keep things brief. I also promise to avoid being political. One thing I have learned over the past couple of years is that people who I may disagree with politically are still great friends who are kind and would help me and our family at a moment’s notice. Thanks for that.

The only thing I ask of you is to communicate with me occasionally. Just let me know if you read something that interested you. Or maybe didn’t like. I still just want to hear for you. Maybe just to let me know if you’re still out there.

Thanks.