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.

Yes, you read that right. Here’s the story, and it’s not as sordid and you might have been wanting.

In my freshman year of college at the University of New Mexico, my fraternity brothers learned that Playboy magazine was going to be on campus to do a photo shoot for next year’s male college fashions. The magazine was conducting interviews at the UNM Student Union for student models to wear clothes that were expected to be the “in” look for the following fall.

I went to the interview with another member of my fraternity and spent a few minutes talking to a rather voluptuous woman from the magazine staff, then left. After my fraternity brother completed his interview, he told me that the woman confessed to him that she had found me “darling” looking. I would have hoped for “handsome” instead.

At any rate, I got a call the next day that I had been selected for the photo shoot and would be paid a whole $50 for my services. That was about a semester’s amount of beer money at the time, so I jumped at the chance.

The clothes they gave me to wear were hideous. It was a moss green corduroy set of pants and a matching top, with leather lacing on the chest. I looked like Robin Hood without the triangle cap and a protruding pheasant feather. Errol Flynn would have laughed hysterically.

I was matched with two young, wholesome looking, fully-clothed coeds and stood on a rock while one of the girls twiddled with my lacing and the other hugged my arm. I struck a serious pose while hiding disdain for my sartorial trappings. I am attaching a photo below to prove this actually happened. I often wondered what happened to the two coeds who posed with me. Having to explain that they had been in a Playboy photo shoot carried much more baggage for them than me.

The magazine came out the following fall and I was a bit of a celebrity in my family and in the fraternity for a brief period of time. Then the memory mostly went away and the beer money was long gone.

However, it was always a useful topic in later years when at “get to know your co-worker” sessions, you would be asked to reveal something about yourself that others would never suspect.

I had told the story about 40 years later to one of my skeptical co-workers, Valerie, who thought it was hilarious. While I had no proof of my claim, she set out on a mission to find a copy of the magazine with my photo in it. Some time later on a business trip to Seattle, she came across a store that kept old magazine issues and after digging through stacks of musty publications found the September 1966 issue.

I still have it as proof of my hidden salacious background. And if everyone has one minute of fame and this was mine, it was pretty lame.

For several years, my long-time fly-fishing buddy Bill and I used a guide on the San Juan River who was quite the character. He would work on his guitar music in the winter, then guide on the San Juan in the spring, summer and fall, living in what we suspect was not much more than a lean-to on the banks of the river. He was a philosophical and gentle soul, and we wonder what has become of him.

One of his passions was Marilyn Monroe, and on one of our outings, he proudly announced he had accumulated a “buttload” of photos and other paraphernalia about her. We interpreted the word “buttload” in the most pejorative of meanings and I have used the word since them to describe a large amount of mostly noxious “stuff.”

Well, it turns out that buttload is a real word. I discovered it by accidentally flipping through an online news post the other day describing things that you probably never knew.

Here’s what I found online from some source I’d never heard of called “Ponder Weasel:”

“A Buttload is an Actual Unit of Measurement. Okay, the measurement isn’t actually a buttload. It is the “butt” that carries historical measuring significance. From the Italian word botte, the word for cask or barrel, the word butt came to into being as a unit to measure wine and other alcoholic beverages.”

There are lots of other citations on the subject on Internet if you choose to waste more time reading them after already wasting time on my post, but suffice to say, it was an unexpected find for me.

Full disclosure: The word does NOT appear in my 10th edition of the Merriam Webster Collegiate dictionary.

So in the future, when you want to sound just a little bit spicy, you can use the word “buttload” in normal conversation. Once the shock to your listener is over, you can then initiate a follow-up conversation to prove how erudite you are about the word’s meaning and origin. And you can thank me a “buttload” for this valuable information.

Last week, police in Roswell apprehended a California man on charges of kidnapping, robbery and carjacking. Taken to the police station to face further questioning, the suspect — wearing a blue jumpsuit from the Chaves County detention center — managed to break free from officers and run away.

About two hours after the escape, police issued an alert saying the suspect had been spotted on a security camera no longer wearing the blue prison jumpsuit, but a red skirt and a colorful scarf on his head. In addition, he was carrying a pink purse.

A photo of the suspect in the Albuquerque Journal shows him sporting a mop haircut and a distinctive red beard.

At the time of this posting, the suspect is still at large, apparently still making a fashion statement in Roswell.

It’s said that most pilots can sense the smallest nuance of change in the performance or “feel” of their aircraft. Being attuned to these clues usually results in quickly identifying the source of the change so necessary safety measures can be taken, if necessary.

I experienced one of these incidents many years ago while flying my hot air balloon on a ride I had offered to a local newspaper editor and his son.

While hot air balloons are not nearly as complex as fixed-wing or rotor aircraft, they do give the pilot signals when something is not quite right.

When you engage the burner of a hot air balloon, you often feel a bit of a jolt in the basket from the blast of propane-fueled flame. Burners are the incredibly powerful engines of hot air balloons, producing millions of BTUs and enough heat to raise the temperature inside the balloon’s envelope to more than 200 degrees in a matter of a few minutes.

On this particular flight, I could feel a much stronger jolt each time I hit the burner, followed by a quivering sensation on the floor of the basket. My first instinct was to check the rigging between the basket and the envelope, then the fuel system and its various components.

I saw nothing, but continued to feel the sensation. Not quite ready to declare an emergency, I looked around once more and observed my passengers — and there was the problem.

It seems that the younger passenger — probably 10-11 years old — had a fear of heights he had not been aware of until he was flying in an open basket several hundred feet above the ground. Each time I hit the burner, he jumped slightly, then began quivering in his knees until the sense of doom temporarily subsided. I assured him and his father that all was well and that we would land as soon as possible.

With that assurance, the jolt and quivering seemed to subside significantly. After a few more jolts and quivers, we found a nice open field in which we landed safely. I believe the young passenger literally leaped out of the basket upon landing. If he could have done so without embarrassing himself, I’m sure he would have kissed the ground.

The City of Sunland Park, located on the Mexico-New Mexico Border just west of El Paso, has gained a bit of a reputation over the years as the poster boy for bad local government.

Because of constantly changing managers, elected officials, clerks and police officers, stability has not been a phrase used to describe city government staff in the small community.

Perhaps its most memorable chain of staffing events occurred about seven years ago when the mayor at the time admitted to signing contracts on behalf of the city while he was intoxicated. Then later, apparently oblivious to the fact that there were convenient airline connections between nearby El Paso and Washington D.C., he drove a city car cross country to the capitol, got lost at one point and ended up in New York, then completely missed the meeting he was scheduled to attend. He still billed the city almost $2,400 for his trip. Figuring that the jig was up, he resigned and the city council appointed a successor.

The successor, it turns out, had previously been convicted of bribery, extortion and taking kickbacks. Because of his conviction, he could not be allowed to receive the oath of office from the sitting town clerk.

Undaunted, the city council tried again, only to select a successor who had to resign 10 days later because the meeting at which he was appointed did not follow proper procedures.

I’m wondering if some day, the Sunland Park City hall will have to add a new wing for a wall large enough to contain the names and photos of all the previous mayors — and maybe a “most wanted” poster board.

On Monday of this week, I received mail from an organization called the “Neptune Society.” My first thought is that because of my interest and involvement in fly fishing that it might have some connection with fly fishing for bonefish or permit in the flats of the Caribbean. Okay, I thought, I’m intrigued and I’ll take a peek.

I guess I should have been a bit suspicious because it was postmarked from Kutztown, Pennsylvania, a town I had only heard about because of a rugby team my NMSU squad once played in a collegiate tournament. As I recalled, the town (and Kutztown University of Pennsylvania) were hopelessly landlocked somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania, nowhere near an ocean.

Upon opening the mail, I discovered it was a solicitation for cremation services.

“We provide simple cremation at an affordable price without any of the unnecessary services many people don’t want,” it proudly announced.

This triggered many questions. How “affordable” would it be to ship my body to Kutztown? What are “unnecessary services”? Return of my ashes to loved ones once you’re torched? A container other than a Ziplock bag to hold what’s left of me? Burning my corpse over a buffalo dung fire to save the expense of gas or electric utilities?

What was also concerning is how they had somehow identified me as someone close to kicking the bucket. They had my correct name and address and got it from some mailing list that I suppose was labeled “Persons ready to check out at any minute,” or “Has been in the hospital fairly recently for heart surgery,” or “Anyone over 70 who lives in an area with a high COVID-19 infection rate.”

They offered to send me their “latest version of our cremation book” which I think I’ll skip. I’m not that desperate for reading material right now. I do, however, appreciate the mailing because it gave me something to write (and think) about.

Stay safe, and I hope you don’t get any mail from the Neptune Society. Your number could be up soon.

In the chaos surrounding our election, you may have missed the story about a French bulldog named Wilber being elected as mayor of the town of Rabbit Hash, Kentucky.

https://apple.news/AGRIqeVrVRWm0lkgvtjCUdw

Well, Rabbit Hash, Kentucky has nothing over Vaughn, New Mexico in efforts to empower four-legged furry friends.

In 2012, a police offer in the tiny central New Mexico town stepped down after he pleaded guilty to charges of assault and battery.

Then, to make matters worse, the police chief was charged with selling a rifle owned by the police department and pocketing the money for his own use. He was forced to resign.

That left Nikka, a certified and deputized drug sniffing dog, as the only remaining official member of the Vaughn Police Department.

I’m not sure how long Nikka stayed in her position of acting chief and what crimes she may have solved during her tenure, but the pooch probably saved town a lot of overtime pay by just accepting a few Milk-Bone treats now and then for her duties. And it’s not clear she ever learned how to drive the town’s squad car. If she did, I’ll bet her growl and a bark were more effective than the unit’s siren.

In the past several weeks, I had been thinking of calling my long-time friend and banking colleague Tom Mobley to see how he was doing. I also had a bit of an ulterior motive, wondering if he might need me to do grunt work at his ranch in the fall to help sort cows for vaccinations, help with branding or test them for pregnancy.

It was, as my son once said, a chance to go to a fantasy cowboy ranch for a day, to get real cow **** on my only occasionally used roper boots and wear ranching duds. (I only wore a baseball cap, not a Stetson).

But the real reason was that I really liked being around Tom, hearing him talk and learning from him. He was, in the most sincere terms, one of the most genuine person I’ve known.

Tom died of COVID-19 on Monday. He was a few years older than me, but he was not one of those people who get an asterisk by their name suggesting it was caused by “underlying conditions.” He was in good health, worked harder physically than I’ve probably done in all my life and didn’t deserve to die at his age. It is a real tragedy that he is gone.

Tom had more integrity than about any other person I’ve ever met. He was a stickler for details, could be bull-headed with his opinions and he and I knocked heads more than once on issues. In retrospect, I realize he was usually right on the position he took.

He was the person who unlocked the door at the bank for me on the first day I reported to work. He helped my wife sort through some details on how to deal with her family farm in Nebraska. He was good humored about my constant teasing about him being an “agricultural relic” to be considered as an exhibit at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Museum.

I could go on and on, but everyone who knew him has a story. I’ve attached a link to his obituary below:

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/lcsun-news/obituary.aspx?n=thomas-noah-mobley&pid=197044415&fhid=7156

But the real point of this blog is to urge you to call someone if you’ve been thinking of them lately. Tom would have appreciated my call to catch up with him. I didn’t make it, and I feel sad about that.