Now before you jump to conclusions and assume there was a secret Japanese or German bombing attack in New Mexico that you had never heard about before, read on.

I recently wrote about a town in New Mexico I’d never heard of before — Omega — whose location appeared on a national television show earlier this summer because of potential flooding. Well now I’ve come across another New Mexico town I’d never heard about before — Tolar.

Tolar was a stop on the Santa Fe Railway in eastern New Mexico west of Clovis. It had the misfortune of being literally blasted out of existence on Nov. 30, 1944 — not from a Nazi or Japanese bomber, but by a Santa Fe Railway train loaded with munitions, fuel oil, aircraft engines and other supplies for the American war effort in the Pacific. And fortunately, there was only one death reported in the blast.

The explosion was triggered by an overheated bearing (called a hot box) on the axle of a tank car carrying fuel oil. When the axle broke, 37 of the train’s cars derailed and a resulting fire from the hot box ignited the fuel oil. The burning fuel oil then spread to other cars on the train, including ones carrying 160 500-pound bombs (enough to load four B-29 bombers). The burning fuel triggered the bombs’ fuses.

The resulting explosion was immense. It could be heard as far away as Clovis and 60 miles away at Muleshoe in the Texas panhandle.

An axle from one of the cars smashed through the roof of the town’s only general store. A complete aircraft engine was found one mile away from the site of the explosion. Virtually all buildings in Tolar, including homes, the post office and depot, were leveled by the blast and multiple vehicles were destroyed. The one casualty, Jess Brown, was killed when a piece of shrapnel struck him in the head. His wife later received a financial settlement from the Santa Fe Railway for his accidental death. Many of the people who lived in the small town were likely saved that day because they had traveled out of the community of various errands.

A story about the blast was recently posted on You Tube by a person identifying himself as Lance Geiger, “The History Guy,” and suggested Tolar was “the only town in American to have been destroyed because of World War II.”

In my opinion, that statement is a bit of a stretch. However, an article by writer Alabam Sumner in the Dec. 1, 1944 edition of the Clovis News-Journal was a bit more reflective of the event.

“Indirectly bringing the war into our own front yards … the explosion on the Santa Fe tracks at Tolar Thursday gave folks a small idea of what the majority of the world’s nations are now undergoing as an outcome of this, the second world war,” Sumner wrote.

So concerned were military authorities that a couple of P-40 fighter planes from a nearby airfield in Fort Sumner were dispatched for a fly-over to investigate. A subsequent investigation by the FBI concluded that there was no sabotage to the train that caused the explosion, and that it was basically just an “industrial accident.”

According to a source on Wikipedia, news about the huge blast apparently influenced leaders working on the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos. The authorities concluded they could fool the public about the real reason for the huge explosion on July 16, 1945 in south central New Mexico by claiming it was an accidental detonation at a munitions dump near the Alamogordo air base.

In November of 2014, the New Mexico Department of Transportation erected a roadside sign at mile marker 244 on U.S. 60 commemorating the explosion. The location is about two miles east of what was the town of Tolar.

The final nail in the coffin of Tolar occurred in 1946 when its post office (apparently reconstructed after the original one was leveled in the blast) was closed.

Darting around a 55-gallon aquarium in an elementary school classroom in Silver City are 31 healthy juvenile Gila trout, awaiting their release into the waters of southwestern New Mexico sometime this fall.

It’s the first time this variety of fish — once and endangered species — have been raised through Trout Unlimited’s “Trout In the Classroom” program to help students learn about the importance of clean, cold fisheries and protecting the environment. It’s also hoped it will stimulate kids’ interest in fishing.

Fifth and Sixth grade teacher Keith Rogers has been spearheading the program in Silver City, with the assistance of Trout Unlimited staffer Eric Head, some U.S. Forest Service volunteers and to some small degree, myself.

The fertilized Gila trout eggs from a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hatchery in northern New Mexico were delivered last spring and hatched soon thereafter in Rogers’ classroom. Unlike some other programs I’ve been involved with, this program has been a great success so far. The fish have been thriving and will be released into Lake Roberts or a tributary to the Gila River in early October. Even though school was out for the summer, Rogers and other volunteers kept a regular watch over the trout this summer, making sure they were fed, water chemistry was correct and the tank was cleaned regularly.

Attached is a video taken by Rogers of the fish swimming around the tank a week or two ago during feeding time:

The fish have grown to about two inches in size, with the largest almost three inches. They are also getting more colorful, showing off their basic golden hue with tiny dark spots on their body and white trim on some of their fins.

With the disappointments we had at Ruidoso during the last two years, this is good news. The first batch of fish raised in a Trout in the Classroom program at White Mountain Elementary were released days before the first of many floods ravaged the town and the Rio Ruidoso. The second group acquired last fall all perished for some still unknown reason. Fortunately, the Mescalero Apache Fish Hatchery saved the day by providing three juvenile adult trout for the students to observe in the classroom during the spring 2025 semester and were released at the Inn of the Mountain Gods lake.

But a sad note to that story was the widespread damage and destruction of the Mescalero hatchery this summer when torrential rains flooded that facility. The hatchery lost about 50,000 fish of various sizes — almost 80 percent of the population. It will take at least a year before the hatchery, which provides trout to various tribal waters throughout the Southwest, will be back to full operation.

I’ll keep everyone posted as we get closer to the time the Silver City Gila trout will be released into the wild.

Six years ago on this date, I had my heart valve replacement. I have written a post each year on the anniversary of the event, which I’m sure is repetitive and not that interesting any more to my few readers.

The bottom line is that everything still keeps working okay, at least from the information I get from my cardiologist who I only see a couple of times a year. I was born with a heart murmur that never seemed to slow me down until about seven years ago. Thankfully, doctors who did the procedure to replace the defective valve found nothing else wrong with my heart or nearby plumbing (no stints or other replacement equipment were necessary). I do seem to take a few more naps these days — which I feel guilty about — but I guess it’s not that unusual, given my tenure on the planet.

I learned last year from my cardiologist that my replacement valve came not from a pig — as I had long been led to believe — but from a cow. I’m not sure how I feel about that, one way or the other. Pigs are supposedly smarter, but I guess that coming from a much larger animal, a cow valve might be stronger.

I looked up “pigs vs. cows” and found that cows seem to be a bit more sociable with larger groups (think herds) and gentle natured in their behavior. On the other hand, pigs prefer smaller groups and are also known for their curiosity and playfulness. However, having an organ from either one of these animals certainly does not imply that I got any of those characteristics from the procedure.

And as far as cows, I found this old Gary Larsen cartoon suggesting that cows indeed may have a bit of playfulness.

Otherwise, my health has been good since the heart procedure. My only hiccup was an unfortunate fall while fishing in the Gila Wilderness a couple of years ago which resulted in seven or eight broken ribs. But it turned out to be fortunate because an X-ray of my broken ribs also revealed the presence a previously unknown large kidney stone which required two surgeries to remove. I was glad to have it extricated from my body, although it was a painful process and an annoying recovery.

Going back to my search about pigs vs. cows, I stumbled across this interesting article by author Jennifer Shindman in a publication by the Albert Ellis Institute of Rational Emotive Behavior.

Shindman writes about an incident in which a man was driving his car on a winding country road and meets another car driven by a woman.

“It was a warm summer day and the motorists had their windows open. He started around the bend and another car came from the opposite direction. A woman leaned out of the window of her car and shouted, “Pig!” In a fleeting second he felt angry that he was unjustly accused of being a chauvinist. He wasn’t even “hogging” the road, and so felt this accusation was unwarranted. Being angry at this name calling, he returned the perceived insult by shouting “Cow!” Then, as he came around his part of the bend, he ran over a pig in the middle of the road. How easy it is to misinterpret others’ behavior and give it a meaning they did not intend.“

Shindman concludes:

“The lesson of the day: SLOW DOWN! Pay attention to your thoughts and notice when you are coloring a situation by evaluating it. Instead, try just describing the events as they happened. This way, you will avoid feeling unhealthy negative emotions…. And killing innocent pigs.”

As you can tell, I’ve gone completely off the rails from my original subject, my heart valve replacement. But it proves what I’ve learned about writing this blog — you might never know what interesting thing you might find if you just keep looking around. Or you might save a pig.

I did a bit of a double take this week while driving down University Avenue when I spotted a service van on the road next to me. Emblazoned on the side of the blue van were the words “Organs Cleaning.”

If you poke around on internet search engines, you can find lots of other signs that were not well thought out when they were displayed.

Anyway, if the blue van showed up at the hospital surgery wing before I had a procedure, I’d be a bit worried if it involved one or more of my organs — especially since there was a ladder on top of the vehicle.

But wait, maybe they only clean church organs. Or maybe they multi-task and do both. I’ll hold onto that thought. At least, as it says on the side of the vehicle, they are “bonded and insured.”

There’s a line in one of my favorite Lyle Lovett songs entitled “White Frieghtliner Blues,” that goes like this:

“Well New Mexico ain’t bad, people there, they treat you kind.”

The song was written by Townes van Zandt, a Texas native who Bob Dylan once called the greatest singer of his generation. Van Zandt was a tortured soul, suffering from schizophrenia and subjected to shock and insulin treatments. His songs have been performed by many artists over the years, but I always thought Lovett’s version of White Freightliner Blues was the best. It’s a fast-paced version of the song and it will definitely get you pumped up.

Van Zandt also wrote the song “Pancho and Lefty,” made famous by Willie Nelson, and also a favorite of mine. It’s about a complicated relationship between two outlaws, Pancho who is killed by the Federales in Mexico and Lefty, his friend who betrayed him. Lefty then moves to Ohio where he is haunted by his regrets of letting Pancho die at the hands of Mexican federal agents.

But I digress. I’m not sure why van Zandt said that “New Mexico ain’t bad” and that the people here were “kind.”

I mention this because I stumbled across something on “Buzzfeed” on the internet the other day which ranked New Mexico as the third friendliest state in the United States. I’m not sure how scientific the survey was and how the author of the article came up with the rankings, but with all the other low rankings New Mexico gets in other categories, we’ll take this one.

The top ranked state was Wyoming, and the survey said that was because “there are no people there.” Fair enough, I guess.

Second was Alaska, again mentioned because of its low population, and then for New Mexico at No. 3, there was this comment:

“I have lived in Illinois, Colorado, and now New Mexico. Whenever family comes to visit us in New Mexico, they talk about how absolutely nice and welcoming everyone is here and how you do not see that back home (in Illinois, for example). So, I will say New Mexico.”

My Nebraska farm girl wife was annoyed that her home state, which ranked 8th, was not listed higher. I have to agree with her since I’ve always felt that Nebraska was friendly place.

But getting back to New Mexico, I wondered if a sign I saw last week along Interstate 10 in Las Cruces might make people rethink how friendly or welcoming our state is.

Yes, the sign says $8.88 per gallon for regular gasoline But actually, it’s misleading. The sign was apparently being tested after installation at a new “Maverik” travel center at the corner of I-10 and Avenida de Mesilla. I’m sure the price listed on the giant sign will be reduced significantly when the station opens.

But for someone whizzing along I-10 and not understanding what was happening, I’m sure their reaction was to keep heading west to Arizona or east to Texas and hope they didn’t run out of gas before they got to that state and found more reasonable prices.

Last week, I hosted an annual party for a Boy Scout (now known as Scouting America) troop at our neighborhood swimming pool. I am an adult member of the group, Troop 66, which was originally founded at our church almost 125 years ago by the legendary southern New Mexico Missionary Hunter “Preacher” Lewis.

I joined because a good friend had asked me a few years ago if the troop could have a party at the pool during the summer months. As pool members, we are allowed to have a couple of parties each year at the facility. Having been a Boy Scout myself years ago when growing up in Ruidoso, I thought it would a nice payback for me memorials as a scout and it would be more “official” if I was a member of the group that was using the pool.

Many of the adult troop leaders wear the official Boy Scout uniform shirts at these events, so I thought it would be appropriate for me to have one as well. I purchased one at the official scouting store and my wife quickly festooned it by sewing on a myriad of official patches, including one identifying our troop number, council membership and my role as a member of the ambiguously named ” Troop Committee.” (Full confession — I’ve never actually attended a meeting of that committee.)

And by the way, my wife says I look good in a uniform.

I wore my shirt to the pool event Thursday, discovering that I was the only person wearing one there. I stood out like a sore thumb, but I carried on and did whatever I could to make sure the event ran smoothly.

After the event, I had volunteered to pick up the two large bags of trash that had been generated and drop them off at our church’s lightly used dumpster. When I arrived at the church, there was white sedan with California plates in the parking lot with its hazard lights flashing and its motor running.

Curious, I went up to the car and saw a person partially slumped over behind the steering wheel. There were two yapping Chihuahua dogs in the seat next to the person and the back seat was crammed with what looked like luggage, blankets and pillows. I knocked loudly on the window of the vehicle, but got no response from the person inside. Assuming the worst, I called 911 and they dispatched a fire truck with EMTs to help determine if the guy was just sleeping, passed out or possibly dead.

The EMTs were more persistent than me and after several louder raps on the window, the man inside awakened in a stupor while both Chihuahuas yapped away furiously. One EMT determined that the door of the vehicle was unlocked so he opened it and began asking the driver questions.

The driver first mumbled that he was waiting for his wife to come back from somewhere unspecified. The EMT then asked him if he had been drinking, to which he replied “no” in an unconvincing manner.

After discussing it with the EMTs, who inquired about who owned the property, we decided to let him sleep off his drunken stupor in the parking lot, hoping he would stay off the road and not endanger others until he sobered up. I figured he was on a cross-country trip and began drinking and finally had enough sense to stop and sober up before continuing.

It was at that point that I remember that I was walking around in my Boy Scout shirt, looking for all the world like the nerd I was at that moment. I’m sure the EMTs thought I was some kind of wacko who got his thrills from wearing a uniform and looking for opportunities where I could look official and try to save people. I’m lucky they didn’t field test me for drinking or arrest me for trying to impersonate an officer or a 12-year-old Boy Scout.

Since then, I’ve been wondering how their conversation about me went when they drove back to the fire station. I’m sure it wasn’t flattering.

And I’ve also been thinking that I’ll be a bit more discreet in the future when I wear my official scout shirt.

In 1927, a 13-year-old orphan of Aleut-Russian descent, came up with the design for the Alaska state flag. The simple design featuring the big dipper and the north star in gold on a dark blue flag, was submitted by Benny Benson to the Alaska Department of the American Legion, which had conducted a design contest for the then territory’s flag.

Like New Mexico’s iconic red Zia on a yellow-gold background, the Alaska state flag has consistently been picked as one of America’s top ten state flag designs because of its elegant simplicity and meaning.

What made me think about this was the discovery of a dead “official state insect” on the grounds of our church earlier this week. The insect was the tarantula hawk wasp  (Pepsis formosa), which became the state’s official insect because of a project by an elementary school class in Edgewood, NM.

The class had discovered that New Mexico was one of a few states that did not have a state insect, so students began researching for a candidate. After looking around for something that was unique and creepy at the same time, the students came up with three choices, then asked other students around the state to vote for their favorite insect. The tarantula hawk was the students’ choice. It is a giant wasp that laid its eggs in the living body of a tarantula spider — both common species in the high desert climate of New Mexico. And to make things even creepier, they discovered that a sting from the wasp is said to be the most painful sting of any flying insect. (Luckily, not many human stings are recorded because the insect does not sting unless provoked or it finds a suitable tarantula scuttling along the ground.)

They are very large and have a rather imposing presence with orange colored wings and a black almost blue body. A predominant feature is the extremely long stinger at the end of its abdomen. The dead insect I found at our church did not appear to have a stinger still attached, so it may have delivered that weapon earlier.

American entomologist Justin Schmidt created the Pain Scale for Stinging Insects with the help of variably willing or unwitting test subjects. He once described the tarantula hawk’s sting as “instantaneous, electrifying and totally debilitating.” Schmidt has also in the past suggested that when stung, the only response is to “lay down and scream.”

Fortunately, the pain seems to go away in about five minutes, according to sources in my search.

One writer about this insect said its life cycle “sounds like the most gruesome horror story Hollywood could make up.”

To begin the cycle, the tarantula hawk wasp looks for tarantulas, which often come out from their underground burrows after Southwest monsoon rains to look for mates. After spotting one, the wasp makes a quick attack on the otherwise gentle spider, paralyzes it, lays a single egg in the body of the spider and then drags it off to a nest where the baby wasp will then hatch inside the body of the victim. The body of the spider — still living but still immobilized — then feeds the baby wasp when it hatches.

So thanks to the kids at Edgewood Elementary School, we have a really creepy insect specimen that was adopted by the New Mexico Legislature in 1989. And ironically, a group of students from Alaska heard about the New Mexico school’s insect project and traveled all the way to New Mexico to watch the legislature vote on the official state insect.

I suspect they didn’t trade one of their state’s flag for a live tarantula wasp.

In 2017, someone accidentally flew the Nebraska state flag upside down at the capitol in Lincoln for 10 days before someone noticed the error.

It’s understandable. It’s a busy state seal placed over a dark blue background that looks like state flags from several other states that seems to have been designed around the same time.

I imagine this conversation from state flag designers of that era:

“I know, let’s put our indecipherable state seal on a safe dark blue background,” says one.

“Yeah, sounds cool. Maybe we can plaster a conestoga wagon on it too so it shows our pioneering history,” the co-designer responds.

We’re fortunate in New Mexico to have a flag design that is consistently ranked in the top 10 (most of the time top five) designs of all state flags.

The iconic red Zia symbol over the yellow gold background is a simple and elegant expression about our state. And as I’ve said before, it’s pretty much foolproof. If you hang it upside down, no one would notice. I’m sure if it was accidentally hung vertically, there’d be a quick adjustment.

I’ve written previous posts about our flag. The New Mexico Secretary of State’s Website has this historical information about it:

In 1920, the New Mexico Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (D.A.R.) advocated the adoption of a flag representative of New Mexico’s unique character.  Three years later, the D.A.R. conducted a design competition, which was won by the distinguished Santa Fe physician and archeologist, Dr. Harry Mera.  The doctor’s wife, Reba, made the winning flag design with a symbolic red Zia on a field of yellow.   In March of 1925, Governor Arthur T. Hannett signed the legislation, which proclaimed the Mera design as the official state flag.

But it could have been much worse. The original state flag was designed by self-appointed New Mexico historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell, a prominent figure in the early years of New Mexico’s statehood. Said to have been a member of the infamous “Santa Fe Ring,” Twitchell came to the state from Chicago in 1882 or 1885 as an attorney representing the Santa Fe Railway. He became enamored with New Mexico and later began writing what was then considered to be the definitive book on New Mexico history. The enormous two-volume “The Facts of New Mexican History” weighed 20 pounds. Over the years, the luster of Twitchell’s book has faded a bit, with current historians questioning some of his facts.

And at some point, Twitchell submitted the following mind-boggling design for the state’s official flag:

There are so many weird things about this design. First, the moniker “The Sunshine State” was usurped by Florida in 1949 and then made official in 1970 before New Mexico could officially claim that wording. Although “sunshine state” had appeared on New Mexico license plates as early as 1932, the New Mexico Legislature never got around to adopting that wording. The more appropriate wording “Land of Enchantment” had been used by a state tourism agency starting in 1935, but it was not officially adopted until 1999. The great seal of New Mexico (which is actually a pretty good design that I’ve written stories about previously) is displayed in what would be an awkward spot in the lower right hand corner of the flag — even smaller and less visible than the one on the forgettable Nebraska state flag. The main color of the flag may or may not be turquoise. (It looks more like a teal green to me, which does not seem to represent anything New Mexico other than a scrub juniper or dark-colored sagebrush). The American flag on the upper left hand corner has 48 stars (which you have to assume would be updated as more states were added to the union.) The “47” appears to designate that New Mexico is the 47th state to be admitted to the union before Arizona. — a number that many people would find confusing without knowing our history. And then for some strange reason, the words “New Mexico” seem to have a typographic anomaly of shrinking in font size as one reads from left to right.

Twitchell may have been widely acclaimed for his historical work, but I think we can all conclude that he should have stayed away from graphic design. And some current historians apparently think he should have stayed away from writing about New Mexico’s history.

Frequent reading of the Albuquerque Journal’s “Business Outlook” section provides fodder for my brain to turn the mundane into a blog.

For example, there’s always the Restaurant Inspections section which provides some cringeworthy details of why certain eateries have been shut down. Consider these:

“Person in charge unable to provide records…”

“Unlabeled spray bottles containing cleaners misrepresented as sanitizer…”

“Observed staff failing to wash hands…”

“Vomit observed in men’s restroom toilet…”

“Orange mold-like substance in debris buildup on ice machine…”

There are also interesting items included in the “Patents” section. Many of the inventions are far to complex for me to understand. Like this one:

“System and method for a digitally beamformed phased array feed.”

Then there’s one that’s pretty straightforward for my brain to grasp:

“Calf nursing cradle.”

And this kind of scary one:

“Systems and methods for immersing spectators in sporting event and evaluating spectator participating performance.”

I envision some sort of brain probe attached to your head when you go to enjoy a football game and are forced to initiate a crowd wave when the fourth quarter gets too boring.

And then there was this one, which I will let you ponder, without my warped interpretation:

“Systems and methods for positioning an elongate member inside a body.”

Remind me in the future to always check first with my good friend Jim Libbin, retired Acting Dean of the New Mexico State University Department of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences before I post anything agricultural related.

He thankfully called me out on the errors I made in post earlier this week regarding New Mexico’s cattle ranking against other states. The source I found on the internet, which was not verified, said New Mexico ranked No. 11, but it was not clear exactly what that meant.

According to Jim, it was the ratio of cattle to humans in each state. South Dakota ranked first, with more bovines than people. In New Mexico, it turns out there is approximately six-tenths of a cow for every human.

I was surprised when I saw that New Mexico was ranked higher than Texas in the chart, but it’s because of that state’s much higher population than the Land of Enchantment. According to a National Agricultural Statistics Service source provided to me by Jim, Texas had approximately 12.2 million cattle, compared to New Mexico’s measly 1.2 million bovines.

Jim also notes that our cattle number are higher in part because of the large dairy industry in the state.

“The only difficulty with the cattle inventory number is it incudes dairy cattle in addition to beef cattle, and New Mexico has a bunch of dairy cattle,” Libbin said. “We’re #22 because of dairy cattle, we would probably be in the high thirties, down with Nevada without the dairies.”

I’m glad to have all of this clarified. And by the way, in addition to 12.2 million cattle, Texas also has more than 160,000 oil wells and more than 83,000 gas wells. Which explains the rich odors we occasionally get when the wind blows from the east.