A story in this week’s Albuquerque Journal reports that a search is underway for two suspects who flubbed an armed robbery attempt at a bank on the city’s west side.

It seems one of the suspects, wearing the required COVID-19 face mask, entered the bank just before closing ostensibly to cash a check, but with more sinister motives in mind. For some reason, he was told to take his transaction outside to the drive-up window.

So he scuttled outside, walked up to the drive-up window and presented the teller with a note demanding money. The teller, safely protected by bullet-proof glass, steel and concrete, confidently told him no dice. Apparently flummoxed from his failure to think things through, he ran to a waiting car driven by another suspect and sped off.

I think these guys might also qualify for the Darwin Award. However, there are so many of these unbelievably dumb things that occur in New Mexico that I’m thinking of creating an award just for our state to recognize them. I’m thinking about who the award should be named for, so I would appreciate your thoughts on possible candidates.

In this morning’s newspaper, there is only one sporting event listed on TV, which makes sense since it’s the day before Christmas and most people have many more important things to do.

And what is that event? Well, it’s the New Mexico Bowl. Only it isn’t being played in New Mexico. It’s being played in Frisco, Texas, because of COVID-19 restrictions.

So instead of filler footage of beautiful New Mexico sunsets, mountains, deserts and architecture during the game, we’ll see an empty stadium somewhere in Texas.

The game between the Illinois Institute for the Severely Indecisive and the Wyoming School for the Humor Impaired will probably be a real yawner. (Okay, I made that up, the actual teams are Hawaii and Houston — Maybe they should have called it the “H and H” Bowl.)

I just think there was a better way this could have been handled. It makes New Mexico look like we don’t even know where we live.

So now, we’ll end up at the top of the list of “Dumbest Bowl Games Ever.” Right next to the “Buster’s Plumbing Toilet Bowl.”

Many of my friends can recall times when I broke into song with a familiar tune, but definitely unfamiliar and very silly words. Most of the time, this attempt at singing occurs after I’ve one too many glasses of wine or beer.

I usually sing it around Christmas time, but have been known to sing it just about any other time of the year, depending on how much lubrication my brain has received.

So I want you to enjoy it this holiday season. Now, if you’ll imagine the Christmas carol tune for “Deck the Halls” just sing these words in place of the normal ones:

Deck us all with Boston Charlie

Walla, Walla, Wash., and Kalamazoo

Nora’s freezing on the trolly

Swaller dollar, cauliflower, Alleygaroo

Don’t we know archaic  barrels?

Lulla bye, Lilly boy, Louisville Lou

Trolly Molly don’t love Harold

Boola Boola Pensacola, hullabaloo

I wish I could claim credit for this, but it is from the long-time comic strip “Pogo,” written by Walt Kelly. The comic strip, which ran from in the 1950s through early 1970s, featured a gang of engaging critters in the Okefenokee Swamp that straddles the Florida-George state line. The head of the group, Pogo, was a somewhat philosophical possum who managed to keep the other characters in line.

The strip mostly dealt with the shenanigans of the group of swamp dwellers, but occasionally delved into political satire, including pokes at former Sen. Joseph McCarthy through a character named Simple J. Malarkey. Creator Walt Kelly once noted that when seeking inspiration, he needed to look no further than politics. “I came to understand that if I were looking for comic material, I would never have to look long,” he said. “The news of the day would be enough.”

At one point, Pogo became a reluctant candidate for President, running in 1952 and again in 1956 on the slogan “I Go Pogo,” a parody of the “I Like Ike” slogan used by Dwight D. Eisenhower’s campaign.

Pogo was also famous for its memorable lines, like “We have met the enemy and he is us,” or “Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.”

My children used to sing the “Deck us all” song along with me, often on forays to find the perfect Christmas tree in the Gila National Forest. At one point, we started making up a second verse. As I recall, it went something like this:

“See the grazing mule before us… Eat a pancake but don’t bore us.”

It turns out that someone did indeed write equally silly second and subsequent verses, which I stumbled across while writing this post. I won’t provide those lyrics, but you can find them easily on line.

I do need to make sure that I give proper credit for the lyrics I used in this post to the organization that in 1988 appears to have acquired copyright to Kelly’s materials. It is Okefenokee Glee & Perloo, Inc., but attempts to contact them were unsuccessful. The Library of Congress entry about Kelly’s works says “fair use” of the materials is permitted, so I’m hoping that gets me off the hook since words to a song aren’t specifically mentioned anywhere and I don’t make any money on my blog.

If you want to know more about Pogo and Walt Kelly, a former cartoonist for Walt Disney Studios before he began his comic strip, check the link below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comic_strip)

Anyway, grab a glass of egg nog or whatever warms you up during the holidays and belt out the song. Your friends will be both amused and confused.

Last week, police in Las Cruces responded to a break-in call at the local Baskin-Robbins store. An alarm had been triggered when someone smashed a window at the ice cream parlor and when the cops arrived, they found a somewhat disoriented man wandering around the premises.

He first claimed he had no knowledge about the break-in but a quick review of the surveillance video showed that he, in fact, was the guy who had busted through the window.

Upon further examination of the suspect, officers found he was hiding a stash of powdery crystalized material believed to be crystal meth or some similar illegal product.

It’s not known if the “sprinkles” he was hiding were as good as something Walter White from “Breaking Bad” might have cooked, but at last check, Baskin-Robbins has not been offering this as a new topping.

You may remember my recent blog about the fact that “buttload” is an accepted term for a measurement.

Here is is, if you need to refresh your memory: https://aero-cordero.com/2020/11/25/a-brief-diversion-into-almost-bathroom-humor/

Well, someone in Albuquerque took this term to a new level about two years ago.

A man riding a motorcycle was pulled over by a Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Deputy because the vehicle did not display a license plate. The suspect was handcuffed in preparation for a trip to the county jail. Then, in an extremely contorted maneuver, he managed to pluck a plastic bag of 44 loose diamonds he had stuffed into his posterior region, while still wearing the handcuffs. The suspect was apparently hoping to toss the diamonds away before the sheriff could see what he was doing. But something didn’t “smell right” to the astonished deputy when he witnessed the awkward attempt as the items were removed from the “intergluteal cleft.” (Yes, that’s the proper anatomical term.)

Frequently, criminals hide drugs in this particular location of their body to avoid their detection by authorities. The deputy concluded that the diamonds must have been contraband and promptly tacked another charge onto the motorcyclist’s arrest sheet.

Think about it — the suspect could have covered his butt if he had just put a license plate on his ride. And I’m sure the deputy was glad he didn’t have to do a body cavity search. He might have found crack, however. (Okay, I can hear your groans from here — sorry.)

Our golden doodle, Chester, turns three years old today. He still has lots of energy and acts like a puppy most of the time, but we’re okay with that. He gets better every day in responding to our commands. He thinks everyone and every dog wants to be his best friend, and a treat is always welcome.

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This last Sunday, my wife and I, along with our dog Chester, explored an unexpected geological treasure near Las Cruces. It’s appropriately called “Slot Canyon,” and as my wife noted, it looked like it could have been on the set of an Indiana Jones movie.

It’s a very narrow canyon gouged by rushing water though the sedimentary rock in the Robledo Mountains, northwest of Las Cruces about halfway up the road to Hatch. The trail through the bottom of the canyon is as narrow as a foot wide in some places, and the walls reach 50 or 60 feet high, obscuring the sky and sun along much of its quarter-mile route. The canyon zigs and zags through distinct layers of sedimentary rock, some with compressed fine sand and others with larger aggregate.

The trail is off of New Mexico highway 185 and the trailhead is not marked, but relatively easy to find. You have to climb over a locked green gate (or if you’re Chester’s size, scramble under a barbed wire fence) to start on the easy to follow trail. It’s on land that is part of the Organ Mountain-Desert Peaks National Park. If you go to https://www.alltrails.com/ and enter “slot canyon” you will see several slot canyons listed around the country, including one near Las Cruces. Click on that and it will give you the information you need about the trail.

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We greeted several other hikers and dogs on Sunday morning, so the trail may get crowded at times . The canyon is so narrow that you should probably take a mask to wear during these COVID-19 times in case you come face to face with someone and have no room to socially distance. I think winter is a great time to go — just bundle up because it’s chilly in the always shaded heart of the canyon. Later in the spring or summer might not be so good because of the chance of encountering rattlesnakes. And if there is any thunderstorm activity in the area, you’d definitely want to avoid the canyon.

The hike up to and through the main part of the canyon is very easy, about a mile round trip. There is a longer loop trail above the canyon that gives you nice views of the Robledo Mountains, the Uvas Mountains and the Rio Grande Valley. All worth a short drive up the valley from Las Cruces.

The main takeaway is that you can always find interesting places to explore right outside your door if you just take the time. And in these months with lots of sitting around the house, isn’t that a good option to have?

A faculty organizer for the 2006 Rio Grande High School homecoming dance was in charge of selecting a memento for the event. His choice — a shot glass.

Following an apology from the school administration, the faculty member who selected the item said he “didn’t think students would actually use them for alcohol.”

Um, sure. I’m going with the theory that students put water in these small glasses to hold their boutonnieres or corsages to keep their Homecoming memory fresh after the dance.

In 2006, an 8th grade student at Rio Rancho Mid High School was booted out of class for five days after he was spotted passing some kind of drug to his friends. The school had a zero-tolerance policy for drugs, so it required immediate action.

When the drugs were turned over to authorities to analyze, it was discovered several days later that they were — wait for it — Gas-X.

The news article about the “drug” incident never disclosed what reconciliation might have been offered to the student. We can only hope he hasn’t moved on to Beano.

During the pandemic, as my wife and I have tried to limit our excursions out of the house, we’ve started watching more and more mysteries on TV. We have, I think, become self-anointed experts on what makes a good mystery.

It always starts with an unexplained clue (or in some cases, a dead body), then goes into a series of twists and turns, is sprinkled with interesting characters/suspects and ends with the mystery being solved by a determined sleuth who never assumes the most obvious solution is correct.

So on our daily walk Monday along an irrigation ditch, I spotted something that was a clue to some kind of mystery. Semi-hidden behind the trunk of a large tree just outside a rock wall was a pair of square-toed cowboy boots. One standing upright was fairly easy to spot, and the other was scrunched between the trunk and the rock wall. The boots were well worn but from my observation, might have been made serviceable with new soles. I chose not to pick them up for further examination over concern that they may have been worn by a COVID-19 carrier. Not having my fingerprints on them was also something that crossed my mind. I also thought it best to leave them there to see how the mystery develops. (They were still there Tuesday, and from footprints nearby, it appeared that several people had given them closer inspection.)

So why where they there? There was no unusual disruption of the ground around the boots, not even bare footprints. I looked up in the tree to see if I could see more clothing, someone hiding in the branches, even perhaps a body. Nope, no more immediately observable clues. Why didn’t the person who owned them simply drop them off in a garbage bin nearby? Why not put them in the trash at home? Why were they partially hidden, but still visible enough to be discovered? How long had they been there before I spotted them? What kind of shoe — if any — replaced the boots when the owner left the scene. So many more questions to be answered.

We’ve all seen sneakers dangling from powerlines where they were tossed by kids or blown-out flip-flops discarded along a street, so seeing abandoned shoes isn’t that unusual. I suspect these boots were left by a person most likely in the country illegally, walking along irrigation ditches to avoid authorities. But I’m still curious about why they were abandoned in that manner in that particular spot. Did they contain clues to a bigger mystery? Yes, I know I’m over-thinking a mundane discovery, but I blame COVID-19 for too much idle time in my brain.

My wife has frequently told me I should write a mystery book, so maybe this is the tipping point to begin that project.

We live in a great neighborhood, made better by the interesting mix of people who live here. My next door neighbor and I have frequent conversations across the joint wall in our back yards while sipping a glass of wine or his favorite Jim Beam. An occasional discussion focuses on our neighbors and how we might write a titillating fictional story about all these characters and the mysteries they might be hiding. I’m certain all have perfectly normal lives, but what do we REALLY know about them? Weaving these characters into “The Mystery of the Abandoned Boots” would be a natural.

I encourage any suggestions you may have about how the mystery might unfold. I may include them in future posts on this topic.

Now I need to start writing my novel. Yeah, sure.

In 2012, the Alamogordo owner of a 35-pound desert tortoise discovered that the critter had figured out how to push open a gate in his back yard. The tortoise, off on an unknown adventure, could not be found anywhere.

Imagine the surprise of the owner when a week and one-half later he got a call from a golf course in Ruidoso — about 45 miles away — to say the tortoise had showed up on one of the course’s greens. The news report of the incident had no mention of how the animal and its owner were identified.

What’s more baffling is how quickly the lumbering Gopherus agassizii (scientific name) managed to cover the distance to Ruidoso in such a short time. By my rough calculation, it covered about 4.5 miles per day — a lot even for a guy like me.

Maybe it was picked up off the street in Alamogordo and dumped off near Ruidoso when its captors discovered it did not have a pleasing personality. Maybe it snuck aboard a vehicle and clung to its undercarriage until falling off somewhere near the golf course.

At any rate, the critter wasn’t talking and was probably glad to be back in its yard, surrounded by extra security measures and contemplating a book with movie rights about the adventure.

Wish I could say I thought of this, but I got it from an Instagram post by my long-time work associate, Andrea.

If you’re like us, we have a steady stream of deliveries at our door because of COVID-19 restrictions, and with the holidays we’re getting even more deliveries. These people are working late into the evening, they’re at our door and gone so fast that we never have time to say thanks. And we’re especially grateful to our USPS route driver, Lillian, who never fails to give our dog, Chester, a snack.

Understanding how hard these delivery folks are working, Andrea set up a snack bucket outside her front door as a simple way to thanks for their work during this difficult time. We’ve done the same and I’ve posted a couple of pictures of our “thank you bucket.” And thank you, Andrea, for a great idea.

I began playing rugby in the 1970s, having first seen it played when my wife and I stumbled upon the annual Aspen Ruggerfest tournament on an early fall excursion to Colorado.

We were living in Santa Fe at the time, and when we returned home, I poked around and discovered that there was a local rugby club, the “Santa Fe Santos.”

The first time I showed up for practice, no one had a real rugby ball, so we played around with a football in a small park just up the street from where were living on Canyon Road. I eventually figured out the rules of the game (complicated because the British invented it) and became a marginally useful player.

Over the years, I ended up playing for a team in Albuquerque, helped start another team in Albuquerque and eventually ended up as volunteer coach for the New Mexico State University rugby team, the “Chiles.” That team even made it to the national “Final Four” in collegiate rugby — a club sport.

Looking back on what appealed to me about rugby, I think it was mostly that it was an outlier kind of sport. Not like mainstream softball, flag football or pick-up basketball. It it was full of really unusual characters that made it highly entertaining. And there was a high level of comradery because of the unusual nature of the sport and the fact that so few people were involved in it. I also really liked rugby jerseys.

Rugby has been tamed a bit from when I played it, and I guess that’s a good thing. But I guess I really miss some of the characters, even though some stuff they did was bad, but mostly harmless. And of course the fact that they liked to drink lots of beer and Guinness resulted in some bad decisions along the way.

Some of my memories of rugby:

The team from Harvard Medical school that rolled cadaver skulls onto the pitch at the start of a game to intimidate the oppononent.

A guy once described as “smart as a box of rocks” who managed to get free drinks every time he could recite the names of all the 37 bones he had broken during his career.

A student player of mine, who when asked if he knew what a “pseudo intellectual” was, responded by asking: “Isn’t that one of those Japanese wrestlers?”

A guy who used to start the Aspen Ruggerfest tournament by playing the Star Spangled Banner on his accordian.

A guy who swiped a lawn mower to “trim” the shag carpet in the lobby of a plush hotel. (Yes, he paid to replace it.)

A few members of my college rugby team, who after an evening of drinking beer, went on to the NMSU golf course and rounded up all the flag pins on the greens and took them to their dorm. When I learned about it and barked at them, they quickly returned the flags. I suspect it’s why pins are removed every evening at the course now.

Players who shaved off the eyebrows of one of their teammates when he was asleep.

Another player, who for some unknown reason was asked what he thought his name would be if he was Jewish. His response: “Johnny Bagel.”

And perhaps most memorable was an incident with a free spirited player named Ralph. Ralph, who played with reckless abandon at times, had joined with other members of the team to help clean up a post-tournament event at the Southern New Mexico State Fair Grounds. When we were finished and were driving back to town on Interstate 10, Ralph was riding in a pickup truck in front of me. At about 70 miles per hour, he decided to climb out of the side window of the truck and into the bed of the vehicle. At that point he began stripping off his clothes — all of them. Standing upright with wind-whipped flesh and complete disregard for his safety, he began waving at passengers as they drove by.

I’ll never forget the look of horror in two elderly women in a Buick who happened to be rolling by Ralph’s truck when he blew them kisses in his natural state. I’m hoping they did not suffer heart attacks.

I’ll probably write more about rugby later, particularly why it was so rewarding to be a coach of young men — who despite occasional youthful foolishness, have turned out to be fine citizens and individuals who have made me proud. Among them are a bank president, fire chief, high school football coach, construction foreman, teachers, lawyers, small business owners, a high level law Border Patrol agent and good husbands and fathers.
I hope I played some small part in their lives.

In 2006, a sheriff’s deputy in Albuquerque pulled over a vehicle that was suspected to have been involved in a minor traffic accident.

When the officer approached the car, he found a somewhat confused looking young man who seemed to be wrestling with a moral dilemma.

Before the deputy even began the interrogation process, the driver blurted out:
“I’ve got to be honest with you. There’s 100 pounds of weed in the trunk.”

A quick search of the vehicle’s trunk — aided by the willing driver — revealed 68 bricks of marijuana, not cleverly concealed. Perhaps the driver thought that the traffic citation he was facing was worse than a drug conviction and he wanted to work out an on-the-spot plea deal.

That approach did not work for the hapless driver and it clearly shot holes in his theory that honesty is the best policy.