Warning: This post may include adult content.

An article in last week’s Albuquerque Journal focused on the efforts to reduce pigeon poop in the downtown area of the Duke City. Much to the horror of a city council member, the city’s efforts had been focused on trapping pigeons in a cage which, similar to a mousetrap mechanism, would break the necks of the birds before they could fly and poop again.

The council member had thought a $45,000 allocation in the city budget was to be used to clean up pigeon poop — not the birds themselves. It turns out that the city felt that just 10% of that allocation could be used more effectively for the “trap and snap” solution.

The story reminded me of a tale my late brother told when he was living in Philadelphia years ago about that city’s efforts to manage the pigeon population around city hall. It seems that the pigeons had taken a special liking to roosting and pooping on the 37-foot tall statue of William Penn on the top of the city’s headquarters.

The statue, said to be the largest cast metal structure on a top of a building in the world, has been controversial since it was placed on top of the building. It faces toward the northeast, directed toward a spot where Penn — who founded Philadelphia and for whom the state of Pennsylvania is named — signed a peace treaty with natives under an elm tree in 1683.The sculptor, Alexander Milne Calder, insisted that the statue face south to catch the sun, but when it was placed on top of the building, it was rotated about 90 degrees to the right.

The statue also has another controversial feature. The statue shows pen holding out his right hand almost level to the ground as a symbol of friendship. Unfortunately, as you can see from the picture below, the hand appears to be another appendage when viewed from a certain angle. And, you guessed it, this was a choice roosting spot for pigeons.

So what do cats have to do with this story? According to my brother, the city at one point decided that the best way to move the pigeons away from the William Penn statue was to periodically broadcast the sound of an angry, terrified cat over a loudspeaker system around city hall. The creators of this scheme figured the best way to create this grating sound was to hang a cat upside down with a microphone nearby and then provoke it.

The plan worked, except it had some unintended side effects.

“You’d be walking downtown and suddenly hear this extremely loud yowling cat noise, followed by a flutter of pigeons and then the sound of even more pigeon poop splattering on the nearby streets, sidewalks, and people” he told me. “And of course, there would usually be a few birds that would die of a heart attack from the terrifying incident and plop dead on the streets, sidewalks or on top of unnerved people.”

My brother said they later tried to drug the pigeons, but again, they’d just crash to the street below in their buzzed state, creating an even bigger mess.

The statue still stands today, and while it might not be as famous as the steps to the Philadelphia library that were featured in the movie “Rocky,” it’s probably worth a look if you’re ever there to catch that one unusual view.

I did a little more research on the statue and found an interesting article by a local journalist who probably had too much time on his hands one day and tried to find out more about the illusion. He asked an engineer named Joe Gunter to estimate how big the misidentified “appendage” would be on the 37-foot statue.

“That’s a 4-foot wanger,” Gunter responded, explaining that he did some cursory measurements that showed the hand – as seen from an image – “It is about one-ninth the size” of the overall statue.

That means if an “appendage” of that proportion was on human about 6 feet tall, it would be almost eight inches long. More than enough for a pigeon to roost on, I suppose.

Every New Mexico resident has probably seen it. Our wonderful state being confused with our western neighbor, Arizona. And of course, we regularly discover people who think we’re actually a foreign nation, a rectangular geographical appendage that was somehow transmogrified from the Republic of Mexico.

I’ve written about this in several of my blogs during the last two or three years. The story usually involves me stumbling across something written or created by someone with the geographical knowledge of a fruit fly. I once purchased a kitchen magnet that had the shape of the state of Arizona and was decorated with a saguaro cactus and the words “New Mexico” on it.

And if you’re a reader of the New Mexico Magazine, there’s a regular column called “One of our 50 Is Missing” which summarizes stories of people confusing our state with Mexico or even Arizona or Colorado. (Never Texas, thankfully.) Here’s a link to that particular column, if you want to check out some really funny stories:

https://www.newmexicomagazine.org/culture/one-of-our-50-is-missing/

Usually, these faux pas are the result of things done, said or written from outside our state.

So I was mildly stunned by one such error I ran across this week in a mail order catalog that lists Gallup (New Mexico of course) as its home base. And to make it even more confusing, the catalog promotes arts, crafts and clothing with a connection to our own Navajo Nation.

A little background. The Navajo Nation was first established in New Mexico in 1868. It was created following the “Long Walk” evacuation of the Navajo people to Bosque Redondo 300 miles to the east in 1834. During the time the Navajos were held at Bosque Redondo, a treaty was signed giving them the right to a part of their original homeland. Additional areas of northwestern New Mexico, northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah were added over the years, with the final pieces tacked on to the reservation footprint as recently as 1934. As it currently stands at about 27,500 square miles, about one-third of the Navajo Nation’s land is located in New Mexico’s northwest quadrant. About one-third of the Navajo people on the reservation reside in our state.

The point is, you’d think that some business based in New Mexico and promoting items from the Navajo Nation would have a little better understanding of the Land of Enchantment.

So here’s what I found in this catalog, which (again) claims to be headquartered in our own state:

I honestly was tempted to order some of the REAL New Mexico caps for our grandchildren, but was concerned that I’d get headgear representing another state. And then I worried that they would probably want to charge me extra to have it shipped to a country outside the United States.

But I decided to give the company a call on its 800 number to see if they knew about the error. What I heard on the call was a bit bizarre. The phone was answered, apparently accidentally, because I could hear a raging argument going on in the background. Despite repeated pleas of “HELLO???!!!???” on my part, no one acknowledged my presence. A woman, with what sounded like an African American accent, tossed an expletive filled bomb at a co-worker or supervisor that they should apologize “for something you did behind my back, you mother f____. You don’t even give a s___…” she said as the argument roiled on. I hung up and tried the number again.

This time the phone was answered by a guy with a distinctly New York/New Jersey accent. I asked him if he was aware of the error in the catalog.

“You’ll hafta call the headquaaaataas,” he said.

I asked him, out of curiosity, where he was located.

“I’d rathaaah not ansaaah that,” he drawled.

He gave me the number and I called it. Not to my surprise, no one answered.

If you look at the ad for the caps again, you’ll see in the lower right hand corner that they feature a cap from — you guessed it — New Jersey. It’s all becoming more clear to me now.

Our rambunctious dog Chester, has experienced multiple ear infections, hot spots, clumps of fur ripped out on his paws and other maladies during the last couple of years.

Our very competent veterinarian advised us several times that we should probably test Chester for allergies as the probable cause of these things.

When my wife and grew up, dog ailments were treated much differently than they are today. If Fido got sick, broke a bone or just got old, he probably didn’t get taken to the vet and eventually died. We just accepted it as part of the cycle of life. That’s not to say we didn’t love them and enjoy their companionship, but pets are treated much differently today. I don’t recall ever taking one of our dogs to a vet when I was young. For my wife, who grew up on a farm, pets mostly lived outside and a vet’s visit was probably limited to income producing livestock.

Believing ourselves to have evolved into more responsible pet owners, we finally agreed to have Chester tested to see what things were triggering his allergies.

I gulped when we got the $450 bill for the testing, but we figured it was worth it because Chester is really special to us.

So here’s what we learned from the tests The top things he is allergic to are:

1. Rye grass. We don’t have any in our yard, but someone down the street plants it in the winter — we’ll just steer clear of it in the future.
2. Fleas. He doesn’t have any that we know of and he gets expensive pills once a month to keep them away. He spends most of his life in the house, and I’m pretty sure neither Margo nor I have fleas.
3. Mesquite. It’s out there on the mesa, but there’s hardly any near where we live.
4. Johnson grass. Well, this is a big one because it grows everywhere here in the valley, especially along the irrigation ditches where Chester likes to run. His favorite place to sniff for interesting things is in clumps of Johnson grass. We will have to keep him on a shorter leash when we walk him in the along the ditches.
5. And finally — topping the list of allergens — HOUSE DUST. Well, duh, Chester, you’re likely the source for most of that. Our solution to that would be just to keep him outside most of the time, but being as spoiled as he is, he wouldn’t like it. And honestly, we wouldn’t either.

We have the option of spending even more money for regular allergy shots for him, some of which are also fairly expensive. We’re evaluating that in addition to limiting his access to things which are avoidable.

But I’ve come up with a plan. When Chester was being tested for allergies, the vet had to shave off an 11 x 14 inch swath of the fur on his right side to inject him with allergens to see which produced a reaction. We’re told the fur will grow back in a few weeks, but of course it’s quite noticeable in the meantime, eliciting sympathy from people who see him during our daily walks.

We that much noticeable space, I’ve decided we could rent it out for advertising to help us recover some of the costs of vet visits.

In the photo below, you can see the area that would be available for advertising. Please get in touch with me if you want to send an impactful message.

No, this is not going to be my opinion about the 2024 general election outcome — just some observations I made while serving as a poll worker two weeks prior to the Nov. 5 general election and on election day itself.

I worked as Same Day Registration (SDR) clerk at the Mesilla Town Hall from Oct. 19 through Nov. 2, and then on election day Nov. 5 as a Same Day Registration Clerk and Machine Judge.

The SDR job entails registering persons who present required proper identification to vote or change their address and then casting their ballot that same day. Required proper identification includes a government issued document with their photo (usually a driver’s license or U.S. Passport), documentation of their current physical address (no post office boxes) and their Social Security Number. We also ask everyone if they are a citizen of the United States and are a resident of New Mexico. If they answer no to either of these questions, they cannot vote. They also can only vote for a slate of officers in Dona Ana County.

There is an exception to this rule which we learned about this year. A person outside of the county where they are registered can vote by provisional ballot only for the national and candidates if they go through a special application process at the County Clerk’s office. We had one such case in which a woman from Albuquerque who had been on temporary assignment in Las Cruces for several weeks prior to the election wanted to vote for candidates in the national and statewide races. She could not vote for down ballot candidates or local bond issues in either Dona Ana County or her home Bernalillo County, but was able to vote for President, Senate and Congressional candidates.

The Machine Judge job is basically to act a second in command under the Presiding Judge at the polling location on voting day and to take voting results to the county election warehouse as soon as possible after polls close. Items taken to the warehouse include a printed voting results tape, an electronic chip which contains voting results, provisional ballots, spoiled ballots, absentee ballots, write-in ballots and documents confirming proper transfer of the voting results and other documents. I suspect I signed at least 10 different documents confirming I had done everything properly, and had not stopped on a bar on my way to the election warehouse, sold the election machine chips to a Russian operative or fiddled with the machine voting tapes. (Okay, I made that last part up, but it was clear to me that the process was tamper-proof).

I worked from about 10:15 a.m. to 7:45 p.m. on early voting days. On election day, I worked from before 6 a.m. to almost 11 p.m. One of my colleagues at another polling location said she did not get home until 1:30 on the morning after election night.

Enough background. Here’s what I observed.

Everything worked very smoothly until election day when many, many people decided to register to vote at the last minute. Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver told a legislative committee this week that the number of people doing same day registration was far greater than they had anticipated. Regular voters had no trouble at our polling location with voting — the longest wait time was maybe five minutes.

Those who chose to wait until the last minute to register were faced with wait times of up to an hour and 45 minutes. When our polls closed on election day at 7 p.m., we had no voters waiting in line, but there were almost 20 people still waiting to register. We did not get them processed and cleared to vote until far past 8:30 p.m. I suspect we had more than a dozen people who finally just got tired of waiting for their registration to be processed and left without casting a vote.

My observation is that many of these last minute registrations were by younger people, mostly under the age of 30 and many of them students at New Mexico State University. The University students, particularly those living on campus, were always a challenge to get registered because they did not know the street address of their dorm and they didn’t remember their Social Security number. Many of the students were merely changing their address so they could vote in Las Cruces, but they could have done this any day within the past three weeks, or earlier if they had gone to the county clerk’s office.

There were of course a few surprises with some elderly people registering to vote for their very first time. I think one of them was in her 80s.

Another observation is that the majority of Hispanic males under age 30 registered as Republicans, likely voting for Donald Trump for President. I think that has been borne out in subsequent post-election analyses.

A third observation is that I simply could not tell by their appearance — especially in younger people — which party they were likely to register as.

A young woman covered in tattoos wearing what I’d call “peasant look” clothing and multiple body piercings registered as a Republican. A young cowboy who drove up in a mud-splattered Ford F-250 wearing an Ariat shirt and a belt buckle as large as the state of Delaware registered as a Democrat. It was a clear case of not being able to judge a book by looking at its cover.

We had no disruptions during voting. We had Republican registered party challengers/observers three different times and one Democratic registered challenger/observer for half a day on election day. A third independent election watch organization also was at the polling location much of the time.

I had to ask one person to remove a hat that promoted Donald Trump, but he complied without incident. Another person (a former county clerk) walked in wearing a Democrat branded hat and t-shirt, but quickly realized he needed to remove the items of clothing and did so without prompting by poll workers. (Electioneering, including wearing of political apparel, is not allowed within 100 feet of the polling location.) Some group calling themselves “Election Protection” showed up on election day wearing shirts proclaiming that they were there to protect the election, but they had not registered as observers or challengers and were told to leave. The organization, I later learned from their website, is a national group devoted to assuring that everyone who is eligible gets to vote. I think they should have spent more time learning about the requirements to be at polling locations to observe and/or assist.

We also had one guy who swooped in unannounced and began photographing the election machines, apparently looking for proof that they were connected to the Internet. (They are NOT connected to the Internet). He was quickly told to leave.

Other than many long hours and the last day frustration with people waiting to register to vote at the last minute, it was a good experience — one that I will likely do again. I got to visit briefly with many people who I had not seen in years who stopped at the Mesilla Town Hall to vote.

And I got to have my picture taken with Mrs. New Mexico, Catherine Czaja, who stopped by several polling locations during the day.

There’s something strange going on in southeastern New Mexico.

I’ve discovered a disturbing trend where trees have started growing up in the middle of abandoned cars found in a Roswell auto scrap yard and on a ranch southwest of there on the Rio Penasco. Like my recent post about truck parts being highjacked around my part of town, I have photographic evidence of this phenomenon.

My interest in the “trees in cars” phenomena occurred when I was stumbled across a website with photos of a bunch of old classic cars in a Roswell automobile scrap yard. (Yes, I know only nerdy gearheads like me look at stuff like that.)

So I found these two examples from that location.

So what do all these have in common (other than my suspicion that the seeds were planted by aliens who first visited the Roswell area in 1947)? First, I believe all of these cars have been sprouting elm trees. And secondly, all of these vehicles were Chevrolets.

The conclusion is that if you want to grow an elm tree, have an alien plant the seed and use a Chevy for fertilizer.

It’s fairly certain that many of the students at White Mountain Elementary School in Ruidoso lost their homes in the devastating fire and flooding early last summer in the mountain resort community where I grew up.

When I learned about how widespread the damage was, my thoughts first turned to the third graders at that school — many of whom I had met during the spring semester Trout in the Classroom (TIC) project. I feared that some of them, as well as some of the inspiring teachers who coordinated the program, had lost homes in the fire and/or flooding.

As a quick refresh, Trout in the Classroom is a program sponsored by Trout Unlimited, a national organization dedicated to protecting and restoring cold water fisheries in the United States and encouraging fishing in those waters. The program involves having students participate in the raising of trout from eggs to adults in classrooms (preferably elementary) and then releasing the adults in nearby approved lakes and streams. Its intention is to give young students hands-on learning about the life cycle of trout and instill the importance of preserving and protecting fish habitat.

I had assumed that because of the chaos created by the Ruidoso disaster and the uncertainty of the future for the school and the community, the Trout in the Classroom program would likely be put on hold for a year or two.

But to my surprise, I got an e-mail mid-summer from one of the two teachers who coordinated the TIC program last year saying they were ready to do it again. I was thrilled and excited.

The teachers also said they wanted to start the program this fall so the fish would be much larger when they will be released next spring. We quickly determined that the new release site would be Grindstone Reservoir instead of the Rio Ruidoso ,where we released the fish last spring. I’m fairly certain none of the fish we released in the river survived the terrible flooding. The river is still recovering so the reservoir is a great alternative.

The rainbow trout eggs were delivered to the school mid-October and when I drove to Ruidoso about two weeks later, some of the eggs had already hatched and the fish were in the alevin stage. (Alevin are trout or salmon that have hatched from their egg but still carry a yolk.)

The students in the five classes participating in the program are already excited about this year’s fish experiment. They have drawn posters showing the life cycle of trout that have been placed in the school hallways. A picture is below.

I spoke briefly with students in the classroom last week and answered some of their questions about trout. Then I asked them a question I’d been wondering about.

“How many of you lost your home in the fire or the flood?”

About three or four hands went up in each classroom.

“How many of you know someone who lost a home in the fire or the flood?”

Virtually every one of the students raised their hand.

I think the impact of the fire and flood was a lot for the third graders to process. I’m hoping that the fish project will be a metaphor for new growth and optimism about the future and can help them move forward.

I’ll keep you posted about this year’s project.

Like any state, New Mexico has its share of strange laws.

For example, we may be the only state that has an official question: “Red or Green,” referring to our choice of chile on our favorite Mexican food dish.

And I’m pretty sure we’re the only state that has an official aroma: “the smell of roasting green chile.”

And there’s the 1953 law that stipulates that election ties are to be resolved by a game of chance — usually a poker hand.

That law was most recently used in 2021 when two candidates for town council of the tiny Village of House (population approximately 80) in eastern New Mexico received exactly the same number of votes — 17 each. Each of the two candidates drew cards and when the incumbent’s 9 topped the challenger’s 6, the race was decided.

There are several other strange laws in New Mexico that you can find on this website:

https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/state-pride/new-mexico/crazy-laws-nm

My favorite on this list was one which stipulated that “idiots” were not allowed to vote in New Mexico. That might be particularly appropriate in this election year, depending of course, on how each party defines someone as an “idiot.”

What brought all of this to mind was a story last week in the Albuquerque Journal about the ghost town of Shakespeare, which you’ve driven by if you’ve traveled to Tucson, Phoenix or San Diego from Las Cruces. It seems the town, just shy of the border with Arizona west of Lordsburg, once had a vigilante law enforcement code which provided that anyone convicted of being a “damned nuisance” could be hung. That severe outcome happened to a “real bad man” named Sandy King. King earned his reputation when he went to a local general store to buy a silk handkerchief to celebrate his arrival in the town of Shakespeare. When the store clerk asked for payment, King drew his pistol and shot off the man’s little finger.

A former resident of Shakespeare named Emma Marble Muir wrote an article about the incident for the New Mexico Magazine several years ago.

“The jury could see no homicidal intent in this, for Sandy could have shot him through the heart more easily; but could not consider it an accident,” Muir wrote. “So after deep thought, the jury convicted him of being ‘a damned nuisance.’ In that day and place it was just as great a crime to be ‘a damned nuisance’ as a horse thief.

King, along with a real horse thief named “Russian Bill” were subsequently hung together on the streets of Shakespeare.

I suspect we all know someone who we consider to be “a damned nuisance.” So now you can tell them this story next time they annoy you, in hopes that it will tone down their attitude.

My son sent me this photo last week of the latest edition to the Irvine, California, police department.

Yes, it’s a Tesla Cybertruck, decked out as an intimidating official police vehicle in Irvine, CA, where my son and his family live.

Having visited my son and his family several times in Irvin, I suppose this purchase by the Irvine Police Department doesn’t surprise me. Irvine is a town where everything is, as Mary Poppins said — “practically perfect in every way. ” It is the epitome of a master planned community with beautiful landscaping, strategically located shopping, a perfectly functioning surface street system and a Tesla in every driveway. Well almost — my son (thankfully) doesn’t own one.

Everything is so perfect there that the police department would probably be more concerned about the noise generated by the firing of a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum than discovering a victim on a city street who got blasted by it. And of course, the local maintenance crews would be on site within minutes to mop up the blood from the victim before someone complained about the dirty street where the murder occurred. But how silly of me — the place is so perfect there are probably no murders there.

The following is a true story: Several years ago, my wife and I observed a city crew wiping down and polishing the surface of a stop sign on an Irvine street.

So how will the Irvine coppers use their fancy Tesla Cybertruck? Well, it goes from 0-60 in 2.6 seconds, so it should be able to keep up with most speeders, unless they are driving an even fancier Tesla sedan. It can tow 11,000 pounds, so it could be used to tow away a yacht that someone had parked slightly crooked in their driveway. It’s high-strength stainless steel body might be used to deflect any unwanted vehicles driven by individuals who don’t meet the city’s minimum income requirement.

And did I mention that the sticker on this probably tops $125,000 after all the cool lights and other security gizmos are added to it.

I was very jealous when I saw the photo my son sent, so I thought I’d check up on what our local law enforcement officers drive in the Town of Mesilla, where I live.

These fine vehicles, all with peeling paint, low or flat tires, rotting interiors and odometers that have probably spun past the 100,000 mile mark several times, are currently mothballed behind the Mesilla Town Hall, where I am currently working as an early voting election official. The town does have at least one operating police vehicle, a somewhat new Dodge Durango, painted the same intimidating dark gray shade as the Irvine Cybertruck. At least they’re on the right track, I guess.

But it could be worse. I Googled “unusual police vehicles” and came up with this:

It’s a 1950s era Nash Metropolitan. Maybe the police department that owns it thinks that if a perp is being chased by this, he or she will start laughing so hysterically that they’ll crash into a light pole and make the arrest by the cops fairly easy — if this vehicle can get to the scene in the next 30 minutes.

There is a mysterious vortex in our part of town sucking up random truck parts and spiriting them away to places unknown. I have photographic evidence.

Clearly, if you were trying to sell this vehicle — as the sign on the front bumper suggests — you’d want to offer it with wheels and tires. But the truck parts snatcher got there first.

And then there was this gem down on Motel Boulevard a few years ago.

Since it still had wheels, you could at least tow away this emaciated vehicle before the parts snatcher got the rest of it. But as you can see, the snatcher already got the doors, seats and front grille.

What brought this serious matter to my attention was the discovery earlier this week of an entire truck engine languishing in the middle of the intersection of Motel Boulevard and the on-off ramps of Interstate 10. What I saw was just a very large truck engine — no accompanying chassis or body.

I’m thinking that the persons in the picture next to the abandoned engine are comparing theories about how some unquantifiable force surgically separated the engine from the rest of the truck. Of course, the explanation might have been as simple as someone failing to secure the heavy object on the back of a flatbed trailer as he zoomed through the intersection. I might have seen that trailer nearby this location, but I’m going to stick with truck parts snatchers, just to keep things more entertaining.

My recommendation is this: be sure your truck mudflaps, retractable running boards, custom wheels, dual exhaust system and 20,000 pound trailer hitch are securely bolted down if you venture into our part of town. And maybe you should put locks on your wheels and the bolts holding your doors and engine.

I learned last week of the death of John Gierach, a writer whose work I’ve admired for years. His subject was invariably fly fishing, but his messages were always far beyond just the nuts and bolts of the sport and his experiences on the water.

He had written more than 20 books and countless articles for various sporting magazines, including Trout, the official publication of the group I’m heavily involved in, Trout Unlimited. He is credited with coining the phrase “trout bum,” which is one of the titles of his books.

He died Oct. 3 of a massive heart attack at an age dangerously close to mine.

I’ve come to appreciate his careful selection of words, his clever humor, the timing in his writing and the close attention he paid to detail — particularly of the natural world around rivers, lakes and mountains.

Most of what he wrote was about his experiences fishing around the world, but mostly in Colorado where he lived. But always interlaced with his writing was philosophy. Take, for example, this passage from his essay “Trout Candy” in his book “Even Brook Trout Get the Blues.”

“Fly fishing, you see, is supposed to be a very difficult and painstaking business in which success can be rare and fleeting and with complex philosophical undercurrents. That’s the sport’s main attraction and why so many of its practitioners are such misanthropes. We don’t actually hate society, we just feel like we’re plugged into something bigger, better and more interesting, so that the more alienated we become on one hand, the more at home we feel on the other.”

As I said, most of his writing was based on personal experiences, but he did venture into fiction on occasion.

One of my favorite John Gierach fiction pieces is also in his book “Even Brook Trout Get the Blues” and is entitled “The Poacher: A Fictional Fish Story.” The story involves the fictional narrator’s friendship with a larger than life character named Harvey who enjoys the thrill of fishing — uninvited — in private waters to catch lunker trout while risking being caught or even shot at by irate landowners.

Harvey is a philosopher himself.

“Organizations,” he said, “are by definition organized, and therefore both predictable and ineffective. Clear thinking and effective action emanate from a political party focused enough to have only one member.” Harvey then goes on to describe himself as a “Jeffersonian Zen Buddhist Agrarian Anarchist. There are few committee meetings.”

Harvey convinces the narrator to try fishing at a fabulous private lake which he has scouted earlier in his red pickup. He later confesses that he even cut the lock to the property the day before. On the day of the secretive fishing excursion, he drives a different vehicle — a heavily banged up and bandaged Land Rover — to the property and hides it behind some obscuring bushes. Prior to this, he had assured the narrator that he had obtained the landowner’s full permission to enter the property. The reluctant narrator, after catching some giant trout on the lake soon forgets about the danger of poaching. But then both are spotted by the landowner who is literally hopping up and down mad on the other side of the lake before chambering two rounds in his rifle and firing it threateningly into the air.

Harvey quickly concludes they’ve caught enough fish for the day and says it’s time to head home. The two perps escape without harm but are later confronted by the incensed landowner and a sheriff’s deputy at Harvey’s home. The landowner claims to recognize them both and says they snuck into his property in a red pickup. They claim no knowledge of the incident and point to a disabled red pickup in the back yard of Harvey’s house. Cleverly, the day before, Harvey had dismembered the truck’s transmission and scattered its innards on the ground next to it. That way, in case someone wanted to point to it as evidence of a mode of illegal entry, they would find it completely immobile. Harvey then fabricates a story that he was fishing in plain view of the world by a bridge on public waters earlier that day and the narrator quickly invents a claim to have come to Harvey’s house only moments ago “to borrow a pair of pliers.” With no solid proof, the Sheriff convinces the landowner to tuck his tail between his legs and go home.

After another such adventure involving an irate landowner, the storyteller concludes: “So that’s when I stopped going fishing with Harvey.”

And of course, they go on another similar memorable escapade not long afterwards.

As said, it’s great writing in my humble opinion. The stories are short and full of entertainment, some genuine fishing tips and spiked with doses of humor and philosophy. I’d recommend any of his books, which are available in paperback on Amazon.

Mercedes Benz joined with Chinese automaker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group in 1994 to produce the “Smart” brand of very small two-passenger cars for urban markets outside of China.

You still see a few of the “Smart fortwo” models buzzing around, but sales in the United States stopped in 2019 because of a declining demand for such small vehicles. BMW had the better idea for very small cars when it revived the legendary “Mini” brand 2000 and has since sold thousands in America. The cars come in a variety of models and normally seat four people.

I personally think what led to the death of the Smart brand in the United States was the use of a Smart fortwo model driven by the hapless Inspector Clouseau (played by Steve Martin) in the movie “Pink Panther 2.” If anyone as goofy as Clouseau chose a vehicle like the Smart fortwo, then your ownership of one might brand you as being in the same category as the bumbling inspector.

I mention Smart cars because on my way to my temporary job as an election official, I passed by the car in the picture below.

As you can see, the tiny car is squished between the house and a fence on the edge of the street right-of-way. My lumbering GMC Sierra 1500 pickup would have protruded almost halfway to the median of the street if it was parked in the same spot.

And also as you can see in this photo, the vehicle is very well protected by a flotilla of equally small but yappy Chihuahua dogs that made sure I was not welcome when I took the picture. I’m sure these small but fierce dogs can easily fit in the Smart fortwo. Our dog Chester, however, takes up most the entire back seat in our pickup and instead of barking at any dangerous person, he’d be drooling and expecting a treat from them.

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And as a note to my very few readers, my posts will likely be fewer in the next few weeks as I work as a volunteer early voting election clerk. If I have time before or after the days I work, I’ll try to post something if I think it might be interesting to you.

My wife and I attended the Southern New Mexico State Fair last month to watch the Ranch Rodeo competition, which is always a fun event if you’re never seen one. As opposed to professional cowboys riding bulls, busting broncs and roping calves, the Ranch Rodeo events are closer to what real cowboys do during their work. Teams of up to six cowboys from real ranches compete in a variety of entertaining events and are timed for a combined score.

The event I like the most is when a team has to rope a steer, load it into a trailer (which is no easy task with an agitated bovine), then load a horse in the same trailer, then dash to jump into the bed or cab of the pickup pulling the trailer. The horses are particularly entertaining to watch because of their speed, agility and uncanny ability to work with humans to keep ropes tight while the cowboys do their jobs.

My next favorite is the wild cow milking contest, where roping is a bit more difficult because cows don’t have the horns that steers sprout and the animals are much larger than the roping livestock. Cowboys usually resort to pulling on the animal’s tail while two others try to hold it by the head while a fourth tries to get a small amount of milk from the unruly bovine.

But the best part of the evening was when a young woman was singing the Star Spangled Banner and a group of calves being held in pens for an upcoming event decided to join the chorus. I hope you can see and hear the video attached above. It was quite comical, and I’m amazed that the young woman was able to keep her cool while being joined by the calf cacophony.

Otherwise we spent $36 for two corn dogs, one small freshly made lemonade and a pile of curly French fries that probably could have fed the entire population of a third world country (think of El Guacador) for six months. Admission to the fair was reasonable — $15 for each of us with access to everything except for carnival rides. We chose not to go on any of the rides, mostly because I feared I would toss most of my $15 French fries at the top of the “Loop of Death” or whatever the most treacherous ride was called.

I start my duties today, Oct. 8, as an election clerk, Machine Judge and Same Day Registration official for the Nov. 5 general election. My first job is fairly simple — retrieve absentee ballots from the collection box outside the polling place where I will be working during the election and turn them into the Bureau of Elections at the Dona Ana County Clerk’s office. I’ll collect any absentee ballots there three more times before I begin my twelve days of on site work as a Same Day Registration official and Machine Judge and then finish up with one r-e-a-l-l-y long day on election day, Nov. 5.

I’ve already attended two training sessions in preparation for my work. Our procedures will be pretty much the same as they have been for the three previous elections for which I have volunteered. The overriding emphasis in our training is making sure the process is fair and accessible to everyone eligible to vote. As I have said in posts about this previously, the number of security steps we go through make it virtually impossible for someone to manipulate results of the election.

One of the things we learned during this year’s training is that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Election Data and Science Lab has ranked New Mexico’s election process as the best in the nation. MIT’s ranking system analyzes each state’s voting procedures. New Mexico got the top spot after MIT reviewed “a variety of performance indicators measuring aspects of election administration such as voter registration rates, post-election audits, security protocols, ballot rejection rates, wait times, and more.”

Here’s a link if you want to read more about it:

New Mexico’s Elections Ranked Number One in Nation | Maggie Toulouse Oliver – New Mexico Secretary of State (nm.gov)

New Mexico often ends up 48th, 49th or 50th on many rankings evaluating our state’s performance in such categories as poverty, education, child care, bad drivers, etc., so it’s nice that we are on the top of this particular review.

One thing of interest that was emphasized during our training is that this election is expected to have the highest turnout in recent history. We also learned that in New Mexico there have been more people who have registered as for this election as challengers, watchers and observers than in any previous election.

It will be an interesting election. I urge all of you to exercise your right to vote and have confidence that the process in New Mexico is working well.

“You are requesting information which we have determined does not currently exist and would, therefore, require the TRD (New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department) to create a new public record.  We are, therefore, unable to provide for inspection of the records that would include the information that you have requested.”

The above is the state’s response to what I thought would be an easily accessible bit of information that I suspect is actually available somewhere and would be of use to quite a few people — automobile manufacturers and dealerships in particular.

What I was seeking was the number of Ferrari and Rolls Royce vehicles registered in the state, by county. It was just something I was personally curious about. I was able to access this exact information easily more than 40 years ago when I was a journalist and Bureau Chief for United Press International in Santa Fe.

When we get our annual registration form or get a title to our vehicle, it clearly contains the make and model of that vehicle. That information is stored in the bowels of some computer mainframe in Santa Fe. I’m not a computer nerd, but I suspect it’s much easier today to do cross reference searches and calculate vehicle type by county than it was four decades ago.

Yet, I’m told by the state that information “does not exist.”

Imagine, if you will, that you are Subaru of North America and you want to see what sales opportunities are in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Las Cruces used to have a Subaru dealership but it disappeared many years ago and we don’t have one now. Yet when you drive our streets, the number of Subarus you see clearly indicates the popularity of the brand. We have one family just down the street from us that has three of them — all relatively new models. When our daughter visits us in her Subaru, I’m sure she would appreciate it if a dealership was available locally if she had any service needs or even wanted to buy a new one.

Yet, according to the New Mexico Motor Vehicle Department (under the Taxation and Revenue Department), Subaru of North America could not determine exactly how many of their vehicles are owned in Dona Ana County and therefore could not determine what kind of market penetration they already have and project the potential for new sales.

I’m sure I’m simplifying what factors are involved in determining what vehicle franchises are awarded in certain markets, but I am pretty sure the type of information I was seeking would be something they would look at before making a decision on a dealership.

And imagine this scenario. State Police are seeking a serial killer somewhere in Valencia County. One of the things police know is that the suspect drives a 1998 dark green Ford van — license plate unknown — that was seen at multiple crime scenes. They try to narrow their search by determining how many of those are in Valencia county, and who they’re registered to, only to be told by another agency that the information “does not exist.”

But I’m not giving up. I suspect that if a representative from a vehicle dealership called the MVD to find this information, they would probably have a more direct line to a data center that could supply that Subaru count in Las Cruces. I have a couple of friends in the new car business that I may ask to see how far they can get with my simple request.

And yes, I know that this is not the kind of hard-hitting investigative local journalism like Woodward and Bernstein did, and I know 99.9% of my readers don’t care. But in my mind, there is a principle about how easy it should be to get information from our state government — especially if it becomes something very important to a larger group of its citizens.

I’ll keep you posted. But of course, you’re free to just ignore my ramblings.