Hang on to your seat. This is going to be hard driving piece of investigative journalism.

PSSSST!!! I know where to find Mexican bologna. 

My interest was piqued late last year when I learned about the arrest of a man smuggling Mexican bologna into the US inside a spare tire in a vehicle headed to New Mexico. Then weeks later, another Mexican bologna smuggling case was reported where the captured meat underneath bags of corn chips was destroyed in a “USDA approved incinerator”. Then last week, a third case in which a whopping 188 pounds was “intermingled” with a woman’s luggage in the trunk of her car and discovered on its way to New Mexico. 

Now let me be clear here. I am not intending to poke fun at our neighbors to the south, their culture or their dietary preferences. I just find it amusing that people have resorted to smuggling bologna into the United States. It would be just as amusing to me if it came from Canada or Iceland.

It was reported by one arrested smuggler that you can sell Mexican bologna in the United States for more than twice what you paid for it across the border.  So I can understand the financial interest in taking a smuggling risk. 

But I mean really — it’s still just bologna, the red-headed stepchild of processed meats. And why Mexican bologna instead of just plain old American bologna?

So after my latest post, my son challenged me to find out more about Mexican bologna. He said I should probe deeply into whether there might be a possible Oscar-Mayer bologna cartel in Mexico. And maybe, he suggested, there could be payoffs of customs agents with large slabs of bologna if they looked the other way when a processed-meat laden Oscar-Mayer Weinermobile trundled across the Bridge of Americas in Juarez. With conspiracy theories gone amuck these days, how could I resist testing my investigative journalism instincts.

But mostly, I wanted to see if I could actually buy the stuff in Las Cruces and then see if it tasted any different from what I remembered bologna tasting like the last time I ate it. That might have been about 23 years ago.  

On Monday, I began checking out carnicerias (meat stores catering to Mexican palates) in our area. It turns out there are several. Interestingly about half of them were closed on Mondays. The two I went to said they did not sell Mexican bologna and said they did not know where you could find any around the area, unless you went to Juarez.  I called a store in Dona Ana and asked about availability and was told they were aware of it, but said they never carried it.

I asked the person who answered the phone why Mexican bologna was so popular.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never tried it.”

On Tuesday, I went to one of the stores that was closed the day before. It was open.

In fear that I might have been tailed by the meat police, I parked around the corner and quickly ducked inside. The walls were covered with photos and posters from Mexico. Poncho Villa was the subject of many of the photos. The names of the meats or dishes inside the display counter were mostly unknown to me. 

I asked the young lady behind the counter if they had Mexican bologna. She stared at me blankly and I realized she did not understand English. She went to her supervisor at the cash register and asked her to interpret what I was seeking.

The supervisor acknowledged that they did have Mexican bologna.

“It is $14.95 per pound,” she said. 

I gulped. I can still buy some steaks at that price. I asked if I could buy just a few slices. I was told a pound was the minimum. 

In the interest of investigative journalism, I agreed.

There were furtive looks and hushed conversations between the supervisor and the counter woman. Then both shuffled behind a curtain in the back of the store. About three minutes later, the supervisor came back with sliced bologna wrapped in a clear plastic bag with no labels to indicate how much it weighed or what the ingredients might be. 

As the woman took my debit card for payment, I asked her what made Mexican bologna so special. Her first response was: “It’s from Juarez.”

Okay, I understood that, but is it better than regular American bologna?

“I don’t know,” she confessed, looking rather embarrassed but obviously pleased that I was leaving without causing an international incident.. 

I left the store, looking behind me for flashing red lights and sirens wailing as I drove away. 

Now let me be clear. I have no evidence that the bologna I bought from the store was brought into the United States illegally. I’m sure it was imported through proper channels or it wouldn’t have been so easy for me to buy. My intention for this important journalistic investigation was simply to see if I could find any and then sample some to see what the hypoe was about.

My son had suggested that I buy some all-American bologna for a taste comparison. I stopped by a nearby grocery store and picked up the American standard for bologna, Oscar Mayer, for considerably less than what I had paid for my find at the carniceria.

When I got home, I placed both on the counter. Our rambunctious goldendoodle, Chester, made an immediate evaluation of the merchandise. The Mexican bologna was his clear favorite in the sniff test.

So now it was time for the taste test. My son had suggested I cook the Mexican bologna first, since there was no label regarding ingredients, recommendations for cooking, health warnings, etc.

So my helpful investigative assistant (My wife Margo), fried each kind on our stove.

So first, the standard of the bologna world — Oscar Mayer. It tasted like, well, bologna has always tasted to me. Soft and mushy, salty and a hint of “you shouldn’t eat a lot of this.”

Then the Mexcan bologna. It was drier, thinner and had a slightly different taste that I can’t quite describe. Not bad, just different. And again, it had hints of “you shouldn’t eat a lot of this.”

Next we conducted a taste test for Chester, our goldendoodle. Understanding that he’ll eat almost anything he sees humans put in their mouth, it was not entirely a clear cut case. He began drooling as soon as he sensed he was going to get something, and then in a blur he had eaten both samples in separate dishes — I’m sure going first for whatever was infinitesimally closest to his mouth. 

I tried again with samples in each of my hands, hoping I would be left with fingers after he grabbed his preferred bologna. In the end, it was the Mexican bologna, which I think is not the best endorsement for human consumption. 

Oh, and then I discovered this afterwards. I was actually charged $4.95 per pound for the Mexican bologna, not the $14.95 I was originally quoted.  I’m not sure whether that was because of an error in communication by the clerk at the carniceria or perhaps they gave me a discount in hopes I would not turn them in. 

So my investigation is complete, leaving me wondering what the buzz about Mexican bologna is about.

And it’s now lunch time. I’m going to have a bologna (baloney to me) sandwich.

Chester picked it wrong for the Super Bowl, going for Cincinnati over the Rams. He fears he has lost a lifetime supply of Milk Bones with his bet. And he apologizes for all of you who lost bets by following his pick.

 

But ever the optimist, Chester says “woof.” (Meaning there’s always next year.)

Last year, we challenged our rambunctious goldendoodle, Chester, to pick the Super Bowl by selecting one of two differently colored squeaky balls tossed to him in our back yard. He correctly picked Tampa Bay, so with a 1-0 record of choosing the winner, here is a video of his pick this year between the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams:

And there you have it. Call your bookie right away. Chester guarantees a Cincinnati win. 

Be sure to check tomorrow’s blog for a high quality video giving you an inside edge to win some big bucks at the Super Bowl this Sunday. 

Really. This is getting silly. A further read of the story which prompted my blog a couple of weeks ago revealed that a woman from Colorado passing through New Mexico was busted for smuggling an even bigger stash of Mexican bologna.

This time, agents found 188 pounds of the meat stashed away in various places in her car, including under the back seat and “commingled with luggage.”

Two thoughts here. The weight of the bologna was equal to at least one other passenger in her car. And if the bologna was “commingled” in the luggage, what would her laundry have smelled like if she hadn’t been caught.

My son had some interesting observation about the bologna smuggling explosion.

“This makes me VERY interested in procuring some Mexican bologna,” he commented. “Maybe after eating we’ll understand why they’re willing to take such risks to smuggle it here.”

And then he questioned “does the illegal smuggling have to do with the notorious Oscar Meyer cartel having the Border Patrol agents in their pockets to keep other product out of their territory?”

Profound thoughts, indeed.

So in the interest of science, I’m going to try to track down some of the bologna in one of the local carnicerias in Las Cruces. In doing initial research, I was surprised to find at least half a dozen such outlets of Mexican meat in our city. 

I’m wondering if you have to say some kind of code to get access to the room where they keep the illegal Mexican bologna — kind of like a 1930s speakeasy.

I just hope the USDA meat cops don’t raid the place while I’m, there. 

Maybe we should start being concerned about this trend. 

In December, I wrote a blog about a man who was caught illegally transporting Mexican bologna into the United States at El Paso. The bologna had been stuffed inside a spare tire in the New Mexico man’s pickup truck. Spare tires are common places used to hide illegal drugs being transported into the U.S.  But bologna? Really?

Well, it’s happened again. This time an Albuquerque man was attempting to bring in a large quantity of Mexican bologna when he was caught in January in the nefarious deed at a border patrol stop near El Paso. This time, the bologna was stashed under a pile of potato or corn chip bags. Maybe the perpetrator thought the border patrol agents would believe he was just planning a really big picnic and would let him go.

Customs officials said that the person was carrying 55 pounds of bologna and told the authorities he could sell the stuff in New Mexico for at least twice what he had paid for it across the border. 

And later in the month, authorities arrested a woman coming from Mexico with another stash of bologna contraband under the backseat, under car covers and “intermingled with luggage” in her vehicle.

If you had hopes of tasting some of the bologna to find out why it’s so special, you’ll have to go across the border to try it out. Customs officials said after the contraband bologna was confiscated it was “destroyed using a USDA approved incinerator.”

So if you’re driving around southern New Mexico and smell what what you might think is a really big picnic going on — where grilled bologna is the meat of choice — you’re probably just somewhere near the “USDA approved incinerator.”

 

A story in last week’s Albuquerque Journal gave me a double take.

It was reported that a bull moose had somehow wandered into the town of Shiprock, NM, and was considered to be a potential threat to the local human population.

Okay, take a deep breath. A moose in Shiprock?

Now I don’t want to say anything bad about Shiprock. In fact, one of my best memories of New Mexico was based on a sign I saw on the road from Farmington to Shiprock in which a roadside stand which advertised the opportunity to buy Avon beauty products and live goats at the same location. Really. I wish I had snapped a picture of that sign. Shiprock is in the heart of Tony Hillerman country, with a beauty that has to be seen, absorbed and appreciated beyond somewhere with lush green landscapes. 

Anyway, I never thought of this high desert community on the Navajo Nation as being a place where anyone would find a bull moose wandering around.

The police report speculated that the animal had managed to wander down the Animas River from Colorado and had become accustomed to humans who may have been offering it food or treats. They warned everyone to stay away from it.

 

To begin with, as much as I have wandered around southwestern Colorado over the years, it never even occurred to me that there might have been moose where I was driving or hiking. Perhaps several hundred years ago, moose were there, and maybe even in northern Ned Mexico.  What I found was this from a Colorado wildlife website:

Click to access MooseReintroductionFactSheet.pdf

Although seen in the northern Colorado as late as 1850,  they drifted north at some point and were no longer considered to be a native species. However, they were reintroduced to the northern part of the state in the 1978 and were brought into southwestern Colorado in the early 1990s. 

Apparently, one of the offspring of these critters found its way to to Shiprock sometime late last year or early this year. A website says they can be accustomed to living in a more dry, high desert climate. Welcome to New Mexico, moose. 

A former colleague of mine, who grew up in Wyoming and dealt with moose at her family’s mountain cabin told me that you really don’t want to mess with a moose. Weighing as much as 1500 pounds and being able to run almost 40 miles per hour, they can be pretty dangerous even if they have a mostly docile temperament. 

My wife and I were able to see some at a safe distance when we visited Alaska several years ago and concluded they were impressive and intimidating creatures. 

In our neck of the woods, game officials have introduced native African animals — ibex and oryx — to the Tularosa basin and they have thrived. 

So are we ready for caribou in Cuba or Carlsbad? 

GO PYGMIES!!!

I suspect many of you never saw the story that the New Mexico Tech rugby team finished second in the national finals for small colleges in December.

They finished one place higher than the New Mexico State University rugby team I coached in 1981 to finish third in the final four of collegiate rugby.

Truth be told, we would have finished fourth, except that the University of Michigan  cheated and illegally played graduate school players in the tournament and were disqualified. Still, the fact that we made it to the final four was pretty impressive. I wish I could say that it was because of my coaching that NMSU got as far as it did, but I inherited a bunch of great (but often goofy) young athletes who pretty much did it on their own.

But more about NMSU rugby later.

The NM Tech team lost to Christendom College of Virginia 34-29 in what was said to have been a very close game.

Back in the dark ages when I was playing and coaching rugby, the New Mexico Tech team was also a strange group of guys — engineering nerds is virtual isolation from the world at NM Tech in Socorro. Among them was their leader, Phil Pourier, who we nicknamed “The French Tickler” and who reportedly lived in a cave during his time at Tech. They always hosted a tournament every St. Patrick’s Day, which marked the unofficial beginning of the spring rugby season. 

The team, apparently now known as the Miners, were known as the Pygmies at that time. However their colors are still black and blue, very fitting for the sport.

I was very glad to see that the team still existed and has been flourishing. I’m not even sure what the status of the NMSU team is these days, given that the campus was virtually shut down for so much of the last year. I’ll have to make a trip out to the pitch (which appears to have been temporarily converted into a soccer practice area) this spring to see if the Chiles are rucking and mauling their way down the field at the corner of Williams and Wells on campus. I’ll post an update if I find out more.

In 2006, while excavating an area for the new Sweeney Convention Center in downtown Santa Fe, archaeologists found an unusual mix of items that had been tossed down a communal outhouse.

As expected, there were many bottles of liquor, medicine (probably mostly alcohol) and laxatives (again, probably mostly alcohol) that had been dropped in the latrine. There were no reports of finding old handguns or rifles, although I’ve read those kinds of things show up frequently when archaeologist dig through old outhouses.

What was unusual, however, were the numerous broken off heads of several China dolls. The rest of the dolls’ bodies could not be found in the contents of the toilets. Perhaps some twisted souls were reenacting the fate of Maximilien Robespierre.

Which brings me to Barbie. I think most young girls have at one time or another have given gruesome haircuts to their favorite dolls. Our daughter did that too, but she was particularly brutal to Barbie dolls. 

Parents sometimes think their kids’ toys — Star Wars action figures, baseball cards, Cabbage Patch dolls, etc. — will turn into a valuable investment at some time in the future. Of course, the most valuable toys are those that are still in their original packaging or very lightly used.

Our daughter’s Barbie dolls, however, could never achieve that pristine classification. For some reason, many of their tiny rubbery toes were chewed off during the time she played with them. I’m sure it was just a teething issue, and not something like what was going with those China dolls found in the Santa Fe privy.

So I’m imagining the day when forensic archaeologists dig through the rubble of our house and find either Barbie dolls with their toes chewed off or perhaps the little nubby toes themselves. 

Okay readers, it’s time to ‘fess up about what weird things you did to your dolls, Star Wars figures, stuffed animals or Hot Wheels while growing up. I may put them in a post — without naming you, of course. 

Several things caught my eye today in the newspapers we read daily.

The first was the announcement by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham that. because of increasing teacher shortages in public schools in the state due to COVID, members of the New Mexico National Guard may be deployed to fill in as substitute teachers.

This raises several questions and some observations. First, the governor said that the substitute National Guard teachers did not necessarily have to wear their uniforms, but could do so if they wanted. But, she stipulated, none should be armed.

So what kinds of courses would the guard members teach? Field stripping of class computers? Tactical maneuvers to avoid the cafeteria on bad food days? How to organize student pickup and drop off convoys? PT including a five-mile run instead of PE classes with badminton and medicine ball tossing?

And my wife wonders if students will display much stricter discipline when someone in a military uniform is standing in front of the class, even if they’re reciting lines from Shakespeare.

And how about bugle calls instead of school bells? “Reveille” instead of the first bell to begin classes, “mess call” for lunch in the cafeteria and “assembly” to meet in the school gymnasium to watch a 40-year-old film about the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases.

And of course “taps” when the school basketball team goes down in defeat.

And on another subject,  University of New Mexico football coach Danny Gonzales, whose Lobos finished the season 3-9 (1-7 in Mountain West Conference play) announced he has recruited a new quarterback through the transfer portal.

Gonzales proudly announced that the recruit, Miles Kendrick, “knows how to win.”

However, it should be noted that Kendrick played at the University of Kansas, which managed only a 2-10 season (1-8 in Big 12 conference play) during 2021. As much as I like the University of Kansas, I don’t think anyone could honestly say that players from a program suffering years of a losing tradition (last winning season in 2008) “know how to win.”

And finally, a truly sad note on human behavior in Hatch. Police said two men got into an argument over who would load a child’s bicycle in the back of a pickup. The disagreement led to one of the individuals pulling out a gun and shooting the other person, who died of the gunshot wound.

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I wanted to share a brief personal update. Our seven-year-old granddaughter in Austin, who contracted COVID early during the outbreak of the virus in 2019, caught it again last week in a breakthrough case. She had been vaccinated after her first bout with COVID, and is not suffering as badly as the first time around, when her temperature spiked to over 103 degrees. But now her little brother, age 3, has caught the virus and is recovering. His symptoms so far have not been too serious.

AND I JUST GOT NEWS THAT OUR SON’S YOUNGEST SON, AND OUR WONDERFUL NEXT DOOR NEIGHBORS, HAVE ALSO CONTRACTED COVID, BUT ARE DOING OKAY.

In the last few weeks we have learned of so many friends, neighbors, members of our family,  church and casual acquaintances who have contracted the virus. Most of these are breakthrough cases and the individuals seem to not have severe symptoms, but we really don’t know the long-term effects.

Please get vaccinated if you haven’t already, get the booster if you haven’t already and keep using masks and social distancing when necessary. I’m darn tired of this thing going on as long as it has, and I think we all need to do what we can to stop it.

In 1995, birds were making news in New Mexico.

In the first instance, several emus were released (either accidentally or intentionally) in the Gila National Forest and were spotted multiple times running wild. One observer reported to authorities that he had seen “a really big turkey.” If it had been spotted further east in the Lincoln National Forest, some might have thought it was a mutant “down-winder” turkey that was transmogrified by  fallout from the 1945 atomic bomb test at Trinity Site.

At any rate, authorities became concerned that the birds might be a traffic hazard from people slowing down on highways to gawk at the critters. The newspaper article about the renegade emus never said if they were all eventually tracked down. Maybe they’re still up there, spooking the other native animals in the Gila. But for all my trips to the Gila over the years, I can verify that I have not seen one — yet. 

The other bird story from 1995 involved a trucker who smacked something large while driving in the vicinity of Espanola. When he spotted what he had hit, he removed a large portion of the grille from his truck and drove immediately to a veterinarian in Espanola. At the vet’s office, a rather dazed but still living owl was extricated from the innards of the front of the truck and released. 

I guess the driver preferred having a goose-like “honk” emanating from his truck instead of a “hoot.” (Okay, that was bad — it’s late in the day)

Speaking of owls, that reminded me of a story about five years ago in which a family of burrowing owls had taken up residence at the Aggie Memorial Stadium on the campus of New Mexico State University. Because the owls were considered threatened or endangered, crews planning to install artificial turf at the football stadium were forced to put the project on hold while the birds could be relocated. 

My wife recently received a summons for jury duty, her third since we’ve lived in Las Cruces. (I’ve only served on one jury panel in my life, while living in Santa Fe more than 40 years ago.)

Despite some occasional grumbling about it, my Nebraska farm girl wife — armed with straightforward and honest Midwestern values — will do her civic duty and faithfully serve on the jury panel to the best of her ability. 

Of course, in this time of COVID, there are extra precautions being taken this time around, including routine temperature scans when she shows up for duty.

While thinking about this, it occurred to me that a high-level scientific research project conducted years ago by my daughter for her 7th grade middle school science fair project could be useful to those seeking to avoid attendance at events they’d rather skip.

My daughter’s project, which by the way won her a spot in the New Mexico Science and Engineering Fair at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, was entitled “Chile Heat.” The research involved whether someone eating very hot green chile would experience a sudden rise in human body temperature.

So armed with a batch of extra hot Bueno green chile, my daughter set off on her experiment. Because the scientific experiment involved human subjects, we were required to have the research supervised by a “doctor.” We kind of fudged on that, asking my friend Joel, who holds a doctorate in economics and was a professor at New Mexico State University, to sign off on the experiment. Well, he does go by “Dr.” and the rules didn’t specify “medical doctor.”

The experiment went like this: I rounded up some colleagues at my work during their morning coffee and asked whether they would be willing to sample a spoonfull of extra hot green chile while recording their body temperature before and after eating the spicy New Mexico staple. My daughter would take and record their body temperature with an oral thermometer before eating the hot chile, then take it again after they had eaten the sample. And sure enough, after eating the hot chile, all of the subjects showed a significant rise in temperature. For one of the participants, the chile was so hot that she launched into a rather violent round of hiccups that lasted for several minutes.

So here’s the bottom line. If your aunt Millie has asked you to come to her house for a Tupperware party, tell her that you want to be extra safe and will check your temperature before attending in case you’ve contracted COVID or some other malady. Then slurp down a large spoonful of extra hot chile, wait a few minutes and take your temperature.

“Aunt Millie,” you say on the phone in your most sincere of voices. “Id love to come to your party but I’m running a fever and think it would be safer for everyone if I just stay home.”

Hopefully, you’ll get off the phone before the hiccups start. 

In 2011, a 78-year-old man in Hobbs was trying to accommodate three young men who came to his his house late one evening asking to use a telephone for an emergency. He went to grab his cordless phone but when he came back, the three forced their way into the home, pushed him to the floor and demanded any cash he had.

Unbeknownst to them, he had grabbed a wicked looking meat cleaver on his way down to the floor and began threatening the intruders with it.

 

Seeing they were no match for the cleaver-wielding man, the would-be robbers quickly fled the scene on foot. 

The moral is that it’s not the size of the man in the fight that counts — it’s just how big his meat axe might be. 

I think I’ve touched on this subject before, but a recent story out of Ohio made me think about it again.

The story in Ohio involved the issuance of a new license plate. The plate, the first new design to be issued since 2013, was vetted by many different groups over its 15-month development. It sought to depict  the rural and urban aspects of the state,  its history and appeal of its natural beauty. Even the breed of a dog shown on the plate romping with a young boy was hand picked by the governor and his wife. In a move to showcase Ohio’s history, the plate shows Orville and Wilber Wright’s airplane pulling a banner across the top of the plate proclaiming it to be the “Birthplace of Aviation.” The problem is that the Wright Flyer is going the wrong direction.

 

Most modern aircraft have their horizontal stabilizer mounted at the rear of the aircraft. The Wright brothers, having no previous aircraft to model their contraption after, mounted the horizontal stabilizer in front of the plane, ahead of the pilot. If you look at the license plate design above,  keeping in mind the forward horizontal stabilizer in their design, you can see that the actual front of the airplane appears to be pushing the banner.

More than 35,000 of the license plates were produced before some aviation expert noticed the flaw and the direction of the plane was corrected.

Which brings me to the New Mexico flag. No matter how you mount it, you can’t get wrong. Backwards or upside down, it always looks the same. 

In my mind, it’s always been a great design for its sheer simplicity and use of my favorite colors, yellow and red. But I’ve sometimes wondered if someone wanted to fly it upside down to signal a state of distress, how would anyone know?