Almost anyone in southern New Mexico who has driven from Alamogordo to Cloudcroft has marveled at the old Mexican Canyon railroad trestle just below the summit of the Sacramento Mountains. 

Built in the early 1900s, the trestle was the crowning achievement of a steep mountain railroad called the Alamogordo and Sacramento Mountain Railway. Work on the railroad started in the late 1890s and by the 1920s and 1930s, it connected a large network of logging railroads in the Sacramento Mountains. The rail lines were constructed primarily to harvest the timber needed for residential and commercial construction in El Paso and surrounding communities and for railroad ties throughout New Mexico. 

The railroad, which was later dubbed the “Cloud Climbing Railroad,” was also used to carry passengers from the desert lowlands to the cool mountain air of Cloudcroft. The railway continued to operate until 1947, when it was abandoned. 

Having grown up just a few miles north of Cloudcroft in the village of Ruidoso, we had visited the area many times. However, until this last week, I was only aware of two other  trestles along the abandoned railway route.

At any rate, it was quite a surprise to find out about the remains of two trestles I had never known about, both just north of the town of High Rolls. My wife, dog Chester and I hiked part of the way along the old railroad bed leading to Bridal Veil Falls when we discovered the trestle. There was a nice flow of spring water beneath the remnants of the trestle, which Chester enjoyed as a place to wade, drink and flop in the cool water.

For many years while I was a journalist in Santa Fe, I reported on progress of the effort to resurrect a section of the old Denver and Rio Grande Western narrow gauge railway between Chama and Antonito, CO. After many years of negotiations, involving two state governments, the dilapidated railway was purchased by the states of Colorado and New Mexico. It has now become a popular tourist attraction known as the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railway

It’s unfortunate that the old “Cloud Climbing Railroad” between Alamogordo and Cloudcroft could not have been preserved for future generations. I believe it was an even more spectacular railroad than the Cumbres and Toltec route or the Denver and Rio Grande line between Durango and Silverton, CO.

I found a link to a document about the railroad that was prepared by the U.S. Forest Service in 1984:

Logging-Railroads-of-the-Lincoln-National-Forest[7918].pdf

There’s also a book about the railroad that was written many years ago by Dorothy Jensen Neal that is still available:

http://twp.utep.edu/cloud.php

At any rate, I hope you’ll take time to take a look at these old trestles and walk along the very easy railroad bed trails. I don’t think I’m as much of a railroad nerd as Sheldon Cooper from “The Big Bang Theory” TV show, but it’s fun to learn about these historic railways in our neighborhood. 

Our daily morning walks around the Mesilla Park neighborhood frequently yield pleasant surprises and discoveries. Earlier this spring, we noticed a century plant starting to sprout up in the yard of an historic old adobe home adjacent to an irrigation ditch that we frequent.

Many weeks after spotting it, it has now grown to be more than 20 feet tall, in full spectacular bloom.

 

Through a friendship between our goofy Goldendoodle, Chester, and a neighbor’s dog, Duck, we’ve gotten to know the person who lives in the house where the century plant is blooming. He said he had lived in the house for more than 20 years and this is the first time the plant has ever bloomed. Because it is protected by a network of trees, it hasn’t toppled over when our often ferocious spring winds create havoc on trees and other plants in the neighborhood. Our neighbor says he thinks its the tallest variety of the plant he’s ever seen. 

We won’t tell you exactly where it is because of the neighbor’s fear that someone might show up and try to hack it down. That’s a sad commentary about how some people regard things of beauty.

At any rate, with all the troubling things in our world right now,  I hope that a tall spectacular plant that shows up only once in every 20 years will be seen as a very positive sign. 

On occasions when I’ve had maybe one more glass of wine that I should have, I have been known to break into embarrassing (for my wife) songs. There are usually three of them that fall into rotation:

“Deck us all with Boston Charlie…” from the comic strip Pogo, which I have written about in an earlier blog.

The other is my high school fight song: “Hail mighty Warriors, brave and bold, onward to victory Blue and Gold…”

And the third is this: “Smokey the Bear, Smokey the bear, growlin’ and a prowlin’ and a sniffin’ the air. He can find a fire, before it starts to flame. That’s why they call him Smokey and that’s how he got his name.” It was written and performed by Gene Autry and was mildly controversial because Smokey’s actual name was “Smokey Bear,” not “Smokey THE Bear.” Anyway, it was an ode to the abandoned bear cub found clinging to a burned pine tree in the Capitan Mountains of the Lincoln National Forest in 1950 who was made famous as an icon for encouraging Americans to prevent forest fires.

And speaking of Smokey, years ago my sister Wendy was photographed cuddling a small female bear cub named “Smokina” who was possibly to become Smokey’s paramour. She too, like Smokey, was found abandoned in a forest fire in the Lincoln National Forest in the late 1950s. I never heard any more about Smokina — apparently she did not have an agent as effective as Smokey’s. Despite the best plans for bear romance, Smokey never had offspring because his private parts were apparently scorched during the 1947 fire, making him sterile and unable to produce any offspring.  That’s probably more than you really wanted to know. 

Smokey is buried in Capitan at the Smokey Bear Historical Park after living many years in the National Zoo in Washington. I’ve attached a photo of his burial plaque and a link to the park if you’re interested. We visited the park a couple of years ago with good friends, and it’s worth the trip.

EMNRD Forestry Division (state.nm.us)

So why all this blathering about Smokey? Well last week, I read an article in the Albuquerque Journal that said that 28 abandoned campfires had been found in the Santa Fe National Forest, one of them still with flames lapping at logs. My wife and I once ran across a similar still burning campfire in Colorado — and dutifully extinguished it. It was scary and a completely irresponsible act by whoever left it.

But for Pete — or Smokey’s sake, please douse your campfire during this extremely dry windy spring season in New Mexico. As Smokey was quoted: “If it’s too hot to touch, it’s too hot to leave.”

 

One of the reasons why hot air ballooning is such an adventure is that you almost never know exactly where your flight will end. You may have a general idea of an area where you might land, but subtle variations in wind direction, changes in winds at different altitudes during your flight, landing site restrictions and other factors completely outside of your control make predicting a precise landing spot virtually impossible. 

I’ve landed in many interesting places over the years. I’ve touched down several times on residential streets in the middle of a surprised neighborhood. A couple of times I ended up way out in the middle of nowhere in the deserts west of Albuquerque and Las Cruces. Other landing sites included crowded parking lots, gated and fenced in plots of land, city parks, river levee roads with locked gates, and a pasture where I was greeted by a friendly herd of cattle apparently thinking my wicker basket was a giant bale of hay for them. I even landed in a narrow mobile home lot with a giant electrical substation looming in front of me — my scariest landing by far.  (Maybe more on that in a later blog.)

But as we say in ballooning, it’s all a matter of simple math: If the number of landings equal the number of takeoffs, you’ve had a good flight. So far, all of mine have been good flights. 

On only two occasions have I managed to land back almost where I launched. Both were at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta when mostly predictable “Albuquerque Box” winds allowed me to land within a few spaces of my original launch site. It was a challenge for me to work the wind currents to “get back home,” but it was especially boring for the crew who just waited around the launch field during my entire flight for me to come back.

So it’s not surprising that newcomers to ballooning don’t understand how little control you have over where you go in a hot air balloon. I try to explain my general flight plan, but most don’t seem to understand that I can’t just point the aircraft in a specific direction and end up there.

That was made especially evident to me one year when I flew one of the Wells Fargo balloons at Balloon Fiesta. I had been assigned the duty of flying a couple of passengers who had won a bid for a balloon flight for a charity event (something we did quite frequently). The passengers arrived and as usual, it was one of those mornings where the winds were slow and we were in a “hurry up and wait” mode. I told my passengers that because of the launch delays, I thought they had time to go to vendor’s row to look around before coming back to the launch site to begin their hot air balloon adventure.

Well, things changed quickly and I was suddenly confronted by a launch director who advised me that I needed to get into the air quickly to avoid slowing down the launch process for many other balloons nearby. My passengers were nowhere in sight, so I grabbed a couple of extra crew members who had not been able to fly at Fiesta before and put them in the basket. We launched on time and had a great 45 minute flight — but landed somewhere far away from the field. 

When I came back to the field after packing up the balloon, we returned to our launch site to find my two original passengers standing around looking bewildered. I apologized profusely for not being able to give them a ride when one of them responded:

“Oh, we saw you launch and fly away. We just thought you’d eventually fly back here and land to take us on our ride, so we just waited around.”

So now, when I’m flying new-to-ballooning passengers, I try to make clear that the unpredictable landing site is part of the thrill of the experience. And maybe we’ll find another herd of welcoming cows to really make it a really fun day. 

In case you missed it, last Friday, May 7, was “No Pants Day.” It was the last in the rush of truly significant events — Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you), Cinco de Mayo (when maybe a ship carrying a load of mayonnaise was sunk), and then on Friday, “No Pants Day.”

I fully participated as you can see from the photo below. (I tried to emulate a no-pants event once before wearing a long trench coat with no socks and my pants rolled up so they couldn’t be seen — I was asked to leave the office. Maybe more to be revealed in a later post.)

 

I first learned about this from a couple of cartoons in Friday’s Albuquerque Journal, where artists had made reference to the event. I looked it up online, and found initially that the main reason for “No Pants Day” was just random silliness. A closer investigation, initiated by my wife, said it was actually part of an effort to encourage people to donate gently used clothing to help the more unfortunate and homeless. I’m all for that, especially considering that after COVID-19, my size 34 pants are no longer useful and my waist prefers a size 35. I’m sending a batch of these pants to various collection points.

But the main point of this blog is to credit my best next door neighbor ever, who will remain nameless but who lives just west of me, with likely initiating this significant event. He can occasionally be spotted picking up the newspaper, hauling out his trash gondola and occasionally just scoping out the early morning neighborhood activities without pants — even in 28 degree weather. Luckily, almost no one ever sees him in this mode except for me. Yes, he does wear some kind of undergarment, so he is not on any deviant list. He has become my role model for freedom of expression and I am honored to have him as a friend and neighbor. And no, he really doesn’t do this much — it’s just mostly a joke between us. 

So if you have spare pants, please donate them to your local homeless shelter, Salvation Army, Good Will or other favorite charity — or maybe to my neighbor. 

 

New Mexico is frequently confused with our neighbor to the south. In fact, the New Mexico Magazine has a regular column entitled “One Of Our 50 Is Missing” in which readers offer their stories of being told they can’t ship items to a foreign country or that they’ll have to prove they have the proper vaccinations before traveling here.

I’ve often wondered about the impact of our state’s name on our progress — or lack of it — compared to other surrounding states. But that’s a matter for another blog which I’ve already written and will share with you some day.

And New Mexico often gets confused with other locations because of town names like Cuba or Des Moines.

And then there’s Carlsbad. In 2012, a Serbian tennis player was scheduled to play in a tournament in Carlsbad, California. Her travel agent unwittingly booked her a flight to Carlsbad, New Mexico.

The tennis player arrived, rather bewildered by the fact that she hadn’t been able to see the Pacific Ocean when her plane was on approach to the airport. Still not comprehending what had happened, she went to the outside of the airport terminal where she was expecting to be picked up by a pre-arranged VIP ride service — apparently two states to the west. When her ride didn’t show up, she made a rather huffy phone call to her driver.

“I am the only person here,” she said. “How can you not see me?”

At that point, it probably dawned on her that her ride probably wasn’t going to get wherever she was. And she probably realized she wasn’t going to make it in time for the tournament.

During the 2016 Presidential Campaign, a high level Democrat in New Mexico was chastised for bashing a piñata bearing the image of Republican candidate Donald Trump. I’m not going to dip into the political issues involved in this story except to say that piñatas are essential parts of our New Mexico heritage,  often used to express things that are of current topical interest.

We should appreciate the clever examples of this tradition that show up on hanging from the ceilings or on the shelves of various arts and crafts stores, grocery stores, convenience stores and yes, even Wal Mart stores. I’ve seen dangling images of “Frozen” characters, Batman, monster trucks, “Despicable Me” guys and yes, maybe even Nancy Pelosi portrayed as an evil character worthy of bashing. 

 

So when a mother went shopping for a piñata in Clovis at the local Wal-Mart store in 2010, she found more than she wanted in the paper stuffed inside the candy pouch of the traditional looking piñata. The newspaper pages used to construct the piñata were replete with “girly” photos of half-naked women, showing their eye candy to anyone who might have ripped open the mangled object in search of more “candy.”

The woman immediately complained to the store manager, who promptly removed all of the offending works of cultural art, leaving future piñata purchasers with empty shelves or without offensive hanging objects.  Okay, you can insert your own offensive comment here. “:^)

Odors, scents, smells — good and bad — often make lasting memories in our brains. We associate a particular moment, time of year, place, person or experience with them.

I can still remember the smell of Aqua Net hairspray that girls in my high school spritzed on themselves to pump up their bubble hairdo that was so common in the late 1960s. Toxic as it probably was for the environment, it gave me pleasant memories of that time of first infatuation with the opposite sex, young and the faint hope that you might one day actually be of interest to one of them. It was young love in a single sniff.

Similarly, an odor that always reminds me of the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta and my good times there for almost 35 years is Cocoa Puffs cereal. Immediately south of the Fiesta launch field is the General Mills cereal factory, which each fall produces a batch of Cocoa Puffs for waiting kids around the nation. The unmistakable sticky sweet odor drifts up from the factory’s ventilators into the atmosphere and into your nostrils as you pass over and downwind of the plant. All you need is some milk.

For my wife, who grew up on a farm in the middle of Nebraska, it’s the smell of freshly cut alfalfa from late spring until early fall that reminds her of home.

Similarly in Las Cruces, smells of late fall remind me of red enchiladas. North of our home, there is a factory that begins processing red chile for various uses just when the air starts turning colder. With a predictable down-valley drainage wind, the smell of processed red chile envelopes our neighborhood. The first day or two that you smell the processed chile is appealing and pleasant, but by mid December it’s kind of annoying — like you’re working in a Mexican food restaurant 24 hours a day.

At a similar chile processing plant in Santa Teresa in southern Dona Ana County, things got a little more than just being annoying about 10 years ago. It seems that the facility was processing an exceptionally hot batch of habanero chiles when some of the powdered mix seeped into the main floor of the facility instead of going out through the ventilators.  So intense was the blast of habanero chile powder that a local HAZMAT crew was called in. One woman was taken to the hospital, and other workers complained of irritated eyes, sore throats and bloody noses.

Every New Mexican has encountered an exceptionally hot enchilada at one time or other and managed to suffer through eating it — with a good dose of sopapillas and honey to numb the taste buds afterwards. But in this case, the workers didn’t even have the pleasure of having their appetites satiated.

On a trip a few years ago to visit my sister in Cochiti Lake, I passed by a street sign that literally made me stop and take a second look. The name of the street was “Sparkling Moolah Road,” just south of metropolitan Pena Blanca. 

After some research, I discovered that the street was named after a race horse that won about a dozen quarter horse races in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I’m assuming that the horse was bred and raised at a horse farm at the end of that road. A map proving that I did not make this up is below.

 

There was another amusing story regarding street names in Las Cruces a couple of years ago. Some local historians had suggested that the bland name “Motel Boulevard” be changed to “Pat Garrett Boulevard” in honor of the famous Dona Ana County lawman best known for killing Billy the Kid. Garrett, who was twice sheriff of Dona Ana County, was also the father of Elizabeth Garrett who penned the lyrics to “Oh Fair New Mexico,” our official state song. 

Well, the “inclusive police” stepped in and decided there were many more legendary people in Las Cruces who should have a street honoring all of them. It was suggested by a city council member that the street name be “Legends Boulevard.” I mean honestly, “Motel Boulevard” was a better choice than “Legends Boulevard” in terms of attracting attention to our city.  The idea, thankfully, was eventually dropped. But I honestly hope someone steps up and pushes the “Pat Garrett Boulevard” proposal again. 

Which brings me to my final point. While driving to Albuquerque last week, I noticed a very cleverly named street on my car’s navigation screen while driving just south of Truth of Consequences. 

The street was named “Yippie Calle.”

Okay, think about it for a second, then say it out loud. 

My wife used to remark that our children’s dental bills probably paid for one of the propellers on our orthodontist’s fancy twin-engine airplane.

A recent confirmation of discovery of the fossil of a “Godzilla Shark” that swam in a shallow sea covering what is now New Mexico 300 million years ago puts those dental bills in more perspective.

 

A fossil of this giant shark predecessor was discovered in the Manzano Mountains of central New Mexico in 2013. It took several years of research to confirm that it was a new species. Weighing in at about 200 pounds, the apex predator also had jagged spines on its back and — get this — 12 rows of teeth. My kids’ single row of teeth was expensive enough.

What was interesting to me is that the shallow sea where the Godzilla shark was swimming was then located at the equator, apparently long before even dinosaurs showed up. Tectonic plate movement and continental drift has since moved the bed of that sea thousands of miles north to form the bedrock of many parts of New Mexico. 

So if you’re thinking of dipping your toe into Elephant Butte or maybe even the Rio Grande, just hope that the genetic wizards from Jurassic Park haven’t slipped one of these into the water. 

For the last several weeks at our church, St. James’ Episcopal, I’ve been noticing pennies in the collection plate and outside the front door of the church. Usually, the pennies are lined up along a metal railing leading to the front door. 

I wondered where they were coming from and why somebody would bother leaving just a few pennies for the church. I figured they were probably left by some children and were more trouble for the church office to count and deposit than they were worth.

About two weeks ago, the mystery was solved. A homeless man who calls himself Clint has been leaving them at the church during the week, and almost always on Sunday during the 8 a.m. service. When I am an usher, I can hear him come into the narthex. He won’t go inside the nave, so I go outside to greet him.  I notice that he has put a few pennies on a table in the narthex. He’s pretty scruffy looking, but very friendly. He says that he has done “work” for the Episcopal church in the past, but doesn’t elaborate. I invite him in, but he says he needs to go. I tell him “God bless you.” Then he gets on his rickety bike, pulling some kind of trailer with all his worldly belongings and pedals off. 

He obviously doesn’t have much in the way of material possessions. But he has a wealth beyond what many of us have in our bank accounts. I think we should all try to emulate Clint. 

 

 

Las Cruces Public Schools confirmed last week that up to 150 students attending Mayfield High School had held a “secret prom” the previous weekend at an undisclosed location.

The discovery has led to the suspension of in-person learning at Mayfield — which had just resumed two weeks ago — for 10 days. School authorities said the non-sanctioned event triggered concern about spread of COVID-19 at the high school.

Details emerging about the “secret prom” seem to point to parental involvement in planning and conducting the event. There was a paid DJ who played music for the attendees, He confirmed the event to the local newspaper and said adults were there to supervise. He also noted that although some students wore masks when they arrived, photos showed few wearing them while dancing. The DJ commented that “the kids had such a good time, you could just tell.”

Well, the Las Cruces Public Schools and the New Mexico Department of Education didn’t think it was “such a good time.” Both are investigating the event and say those who participated will face some kind of punishment, including possibly not being allowed to attend graduation ceremonies.

And ironically, the school district was already at work to allow the students to hold a fully sanctioned safe-distancing prom event later in the spring. 

Fat chance that will happen now.

Some of you might remember the Weird Al Yankovic parody of Michael Jackson’s hit pop song “Bad.” In the Yankovic version called “Fat,” an enormous man becomes even more enormous while complaining about the effects of continuously stuffing his face with food. “If I have one more pie alamode,” he laments, “I’m going to need my own zip code.”

In 2017, Police in Albuquerque arrested a man who might have been the inspiration for Yanovic’s song. The large suspect was sought for his role in at least 47 store robberies, many of which involved fast food joints. On one occasion, he picked up a couple of slices of pizza from a Pizza Hut during the heist and on another, ordered the terrified staff of a Taco Bell to prepare two tacos for him while he finished digging through the cash drawers.

There were plenty of security videos of the easy to identify suspect waddling in and out of his target stores. Witnesses to the robberies also added insult to injury when they consistently described him as being obscenely overweight. One witness said his face had so many layers of fat that he looked like a Shar-Pei dog.

He was finally captured after a robbery when he tried to lumber away from approaching  police and jumped into his getaway car — only to discover that he was too fat to close the door. Police said even with the door only partially closed, the upper part of his body was extruded out the driver’s side window. 

Two thoughts. A fixation for food and robbery at the same time don’t seem to be a good mix. And maybe he needed to re-evaluate his getaway vehicle and consider a semi, dump truck or front-end loader.

 

My wife has always suspected that instead of feral cats, we have feral Chihuahua dogs running wild in Las Cruces. We’ve seen evidence of that to some degree.

I’m no fan of Chihuahua dogs. To me, dogs need to be medium to large in size, have hair and not be yappy. The only small dog we’ve ever owned was a Shi-Tzu that was “gifted” to me by my late brother, who feared the dog was going to become a snack for coyotes in his rural home in southern Arizona. Spot was sweet and friendly dog, who unfortunately lost his sight and hearing and never demonstrated having a large amount of intelligence in his walnut-sized brain. He was the alpha dog to our late large Golden retriever, Jim, who cowered when Spot would occasionally snarl at him. It was entertaining to see the interaction. But at least Spot was not yappy.

However, I did have some sympathy for the Chihuahua breed when I spotted this recent story from Albuquerque.

KOB TV, Channel 4, reported that when elderly woman recently died and friends/relatives came to her home to clean up and assess her estate, they found 46 Chihuahuas that she was caring for — probably indicating the woman was on the edge of being a hoarder of these diminutive critters. 

The article said most of them were older and many needed dental work, up to the tune of $1,400 each. 

So there is now an “Operation Chihuahua” that you can help these forlorn dogs find a home. I’m not planning to adopt one myself. I don’t think our large and rambunctious Goldendoodle Chester would appreciate one as anything more than a moving chew toy. But if you have it in your heart to adopt one of these guys, look at the website.

http://nmpaca.org/index.php/news-events-menu/34-newsletters/149-current-news

I sincerely hope they’ve all been adopted by the time you read this.