On several occasions since I’ve been writing this blog, I have been surprised when someone unexpected from my past sends me a me a note saying they’ve liked what I’ve written and want to reconnect. They usually explain how they tracked me down from a friend’s recommendation, many times from people I didn’t know were following my blog.

So it was a few weeks ago when I got an unexpected e-mail from Tom Toppino, a friend from college, who caught me up on his life and reminded me of a story we experienced together when we lived in nearby bungalows in the Old Town section of Albuquerque.

In this particular case, it regarded an unusual individual who called himself Ulysses S. Grant, reincarnated. I wrote a previous blog about Grant, but the note from my college friend turned up some new details about the character.

“Ulysses” was a hippie type who lived in a commune called Lower Farm near Placitas northeast of Albuquerque. For reasons I can’t recall, he managed to draw attention to himself and then announced in 1969 that he was running as a Republican candidate for governor of New Mexico. His plan was to visit every county in the state while riding his old swayback horse, “Blue” on the campaign trail. He wore striped Civil War era cavalry trousers while campaigning.

I was working for United Press International on the evening shift at the time and decided an interview with Ulysses might make an interesting feature story. So one weekend when I wasn’t working on the news desk or fretting about upcoming college projects, I drove to Placitas to find and interview him.

He was easy enough to find and willing to do an interview. (Aren’t all politicians running for office anxious to be interviewed?) I only remember a few things about the interview. One was that he had an incredibly large barrel of soy sauce in his cabin that served as a chair and whose contents he shared with other members of the commune. I also remember that during the interview while walking around the compound, he decided to relieve himself and did it unashamedly in an open field front of a young woman who had accompanied me for the day. And the third thing was his pronouncement that when he was elected governor, he would build no more roads in the state and not repair any that already existed.

“We have enough already,” he declared.

My story about Grant was distributed nationwide by UPI and featured the photograph below:

Grant managed to get six write-in votes during the 1970 New Mexico primary.

During the interview, I must have told him where I lived and he showed up unexpectedly a few days later riding his horse Blue. He became friends with my pot-smoking roommate at the time and stayed overnight at our place at least once. He enjoyed smoking with my roommate (I was too busy with full-time work and a full college load to participate) and he especially liked riding around in my roommate’s slick Triumph Spitfire sports car.

“I’m not supposed to like modern material things like that, but it’s a really cool car,” he confided to me one day.

Some time after that, there was a report that he had shot and killed two member of the commune and promptly vanished, along with his wife who reportedly had been assaulted by one of the individuals who was killed.

I never heard any more about him, until I got the e-mail from my college friend a few weeks ago. Tom, now a retired professor at Villanova, said his son had become interested in the matter of Ulysses S. Grant, which led to the successful effort to track me down.

I found out Grant’s real name was Donald Waskey and that he was never apprehended for the crimes in New Mexico. However, his charred body and the body of a woman who was believed to have been his wife, were found 18 years later in a burned out building near Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho.

On an internet search, I ran across a story written by Ron Franscell, a self-proclaimed author of some true crime novels which offered this information:

“In the rubble of a house fire near Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho, deputies found two charred bodies. Both had been shot in the back of the head and the fire intentionally set. In a nearby barn, investigators found more than a thousand thriving marijuana plants—the biggest indoor pot farm Idaho had ever seen—along with a cache of assault weapons, machine guns, and rifles with night-vision scopes. They also found booby traps throughout the facility, later estimated to have produced almost $2 million worth of pot every month.“

Authorities believe the murders in Idaho were conducted by a member or members of a rival pot raising operation.

My college friend Tom also had this recollection of meeting Grant in our Old Town neighborhood.

“I remember that he stayed at your house one night. His horse stayed in my backyard! I’m not sure whether it was the same night, but he came over one time when you guys weren’t home. I was fixing dinner, so I invited him to join me, and he accepted. I was in the kitchen preparing the meal (to the extent that my culinary skills allowed), while Ulysses was hanging out in my living room. He came into the kitchen after a while to show me a picture of Ulysses S. Grant that he had found in a magazine I had lying around. I said something like, “Oh, a picture of your namesake!” He looked at me very seriously and emphatically said, “No. This is me.” I didn’t think of him in quite the same way after that.”

In another interesting twist, I also ran across another picture of Grant that was taken by another old friend of mine, journalistic colleague and photographer, Buddy Mays. Buddy now lives in Bend, Oregon, and has also written several books in addition to his award winning photographs. I’d show you the image, but it was sold to Getty Images and to use it would cost me $175. The photo shows him sitting on a log somewhere in New Mexico, with another unidentified man next to him. In the photo, Grant was wearing his traditional cavalry-issue striped pants.

Our son, Tyler, was born the day after Christmas in 1978 while my wife and I were living in Albuquerque.

A few weeks before he was born, I recall going to the obstetrician’s office for what would be my wife’s final checkup before delivery. While visiting with the doctor, he complained that he had spent the last several nights folding hundreds of luminaria sacks to line the streets and surround his house in the old Country Club neighborhood of Albuquerque.

“I would watch whatever NBA games were on TV and fold sacks like some kind of non-stop machine,” he told us.

I secretly worried that his skillful surgeon’s hands and fingers might be out of commission from the frantic activity by the time our son was due.

The Country Club area of Albuquerque was known then and still today for its spectacular displays of luminarias during the Christmas season. Cars still choke the streets of the neighborhood to get a view of the flickering lighted paper sacks lining the streets and adorning the historic homes there.

Of course, these days, displays of luminarias are common in virtually every city and town in New Mexico and the tradition has grown beyond the state.

My display of luminarias peaked in the 1990s when I would put out more than 225 at our home in Las Cruces, including lining the roof of our Southwestern style home. Getting up on the roof these days would be a little more challenging for me, so I’ve stopped doing that. However, with the help of visiting grandkids, we still put out about 150 along our street and lining our driveway and sidewalk on Christmas Eve.

I remember reading something my son brought home when he was in high school which tried to explain how living in Las Cruces was so unique.

“A brown paper bag of sand and a votive candle are considered normal Christmas decorations,” it said.

From my online research, the tradition of luminarias began more than 430 years ago in the state. An entry from the New Mexico History Museum blog has this to offer:

“In a Dec. 3, 1590, journal entry, Spanish explorer Gaspar Costaño de Sosa mentioned the small bonfires his cohorts had lit to guide a scout back to camp. Luminarias, he called them…”

At some point, the word farolitos was substituted for the word luminarias, since the word depicted a small lantern. Sometime in the 1800s, when the tradition of decorating the outside of your New Mexico hacienda at Christmas with small bonfires from your limited pile of winter firewood became a concern, someone came up with the idea of using paper bags, sand and a candle.

In northern New Mexico, many people continue to prefer the word farolitos while south of I-40, the word luminarias has become more commonplace.

Again quoting from the New Mexico History Museum blog:

In the 1930s, as more people got the paper-bag bug, newspaper articles dithered, alternately calling them farolitos, linternitas, and farolillos. In 1958, the august New York Times chimed in, but said Albuquerqueans called them farolitos, further confusing the geography.

Before his 1996 death, Fray Angélico Chavez himself waded into the debate and essentially concluded, “Whatever.”

What I have learned is that whenever I write about “luminarias,” spell checkers are constantly trying to change that word to “luminaries,” which is not a word I would use to describe the wisdom of whoever wrote the spell checker rules.

About a year ago, I reconnected with my stepsister — the only daughter of my father’s second wife. I had not seen or heard from her in many years. She somehow found me through a search process, which I think was rather difficult since I don’t have a Facebook account or post on any other social media platforms. (The only thing I do on the Internet is write this blog a few times a month when something strikes my interest.)

To make a long story short, her mother had died fairly recently and my stepsister was checking to see if I wanted some of my father’s old things that she had kept. She delivered them on a trip to visit friends in El Paso last spring. Among them were some old Ruidoso News issues that were published in the 1960s when my father owned that publication. There were also some of his drawings and paintings, a personal note from Charles M. Schulz of “Peanuts” fame and an old clunky typewriter that I didn’t remember my father owning. I mentioned some of these in previous blogs, but I didn’t know much about the typewriter, a very old Oliver No. 9, often playfully referred to as the “batwing” model because of its unusual design.

Last week, my wife found a newspaper article about old typewriters being used by two local writers in what they call an “act of public typing” at a local coffee shop. They use the typewriters to pound out stories or letters with a simple mechanical device that is not connected to any electronic network. According to one of the writers, the simplicity of the machine allowed him “to get away from all of the distractions and just be present with my own thoughts.”

That piqued my interest in the old Oliver typewriter that had been largely ignored and gathering dust in my office. (I even found a couple of tiny dead spiders underneath the keyboard.)

I checked the internet for information about the typewriter and found that certain models of this device can fetch more than $1,000 if in good condition. I also looked at the history of the brand and discovered that it was invented by a pastor, Thomas Oliver, who wanted to make sure the sermons he was writing were more legible when he read them to his congregation. The design was patented in 1892 and production began in 1894. The company was based in Woodstock, Illinois, near Chicago. The typewriters were produced until 1928, when an English company bought the brand.

The design was unique at the time because writers could actually see what they had typed on the paper. Most of the earlier models were in a heavy cast metal base painted dark green — an “olive” color in honor of the inventor’s last name.

The typewriters are very heavy. My particular model has two two-inch curved protrusions on each side to allow a person to lift the device more easily and hopefully avoid a back sprain.

The type fonts swoop down onto the roller holding paper from U-shaped arms, one on each side with a satisfying clacking sound to form the letters. The keyboard is a standard “qwerty” design in three rows.

I have not been able to determine what year my model No. 9 is. The plate which I think had that information printed on it has been smoothed over during the years. The best I can guess is that it was made about 1917 because of a list of patent renewal dates listed on two separate plates at the back of the machine. The most recent date of the patent renewals is 1917.

Now that I know a bit more about the machine, I plan to clean it up and maybe start using it on occasion. It appears to still be in working order and I will abide by the instructions on its front which urge me to “Keep Machine cleaned and oiled.”

Of course, if you want to see what I wrote on it, I’ll have to scan it on my printer/fax machine, send it to my laptop, then convert it to a PDF file, save it to my photos file or the Cloud, then convert that to a jpg file, then insert it into my blog using the complicated “WordPress” program. That kind of defeats the goal of keeping things simple by using a typewriter.

Yes, readers, they are indeed related.

You may recall that earlier this fall, I decided to do a post updating on a story I wrote many years ago while Bureau Chief and State Political Editor for United Press International in Santa Fe. The story involved my curiosity about how many exotic vehicles were registered in our relatively small population base in New Mexico.

Working then directly with the New Mexico Motor Vehicle Department, I was able to obtain that information rather quickly. I discovered that there were more exotic car brands registered in the state than I had expected, including in such unexpected locations as Truth or Consequences.

Fast forward 50 years and my initial inquiries to find the same information ran into a brick wall. To begin with, it was impossible to find a live person to talk to at the Motor Vehicle Department, even after going through multiple recorded menus. I was directed — by a voice recording — to the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department, which now oversees the MVD. I got nothing but more recorded menus and nothing remotely close to the information I wanted.

I then called the governor’s office and spoke to a live person. They gave me the name of someone in the Taxation and Revenue Department, who then referred me to a process to request such information through the state’s Open Records process. After filing such a request, I got a message back that “no such information exists.”

Stonewalled and becoming more frustrated, I decided to seek help from my New Mexico State Representative, Michaela Lara Cadena. (Full disclosure: We contributed a small amount of money to her first campaign a few years ago, but I doubt she remembers that. I also mentioned in my request that she and my daughter once played on the same high school soccer team, which she acknowledged.)

I sent her an e-mail and within a day, she responded. She said she would direct her Constituent Services Representative, Marijka Cunningham, to help me track down the information. My quest was delayed for a couple of weeks while I volunteered as an election clerk, but as soon as that was finished, Marijka picked up the pace and directed me to a woman at the Motor Vehicle Department, April Vigil. April then forwarded my request to agency Project Manager Sean Bulian. I received the information on Nov. 25 in a nicely prepared Excel spreadsheet.

Once I had contacted my State Representative, the process to get the information I sought was fast and efficient. I was beginning to conclude that everything in State Government was as bogged down as many naysayers proclaim. To my delight and surprise, it worked well once you got to the right person. And to be honest, my request was not nearly as important as many other projects that these individuals work on daily. Still, they were all very pleasant to deal with and professional in their response.

I do have to admit that it was a bit annoying to have to go through as many steps as it took to finally talk to someone in person. And I wonder if someone who has no personal connection to someone in state government, their legislator or the governor will get a response to their inquiry.

I think endless recorded telephone menus are just the norm these days, regardless of whether it’s state government or your cable or cell phone provider. I’d honestly be willing to pay a few extra bucks a year to be able to reach a live (and knowledgeable) person when I need customer support.

Enough pontificating. So what did I discover with this updated information?

Well, the most surprising thing is that one or maybe two people in extremely rural Catron County in far western New Mexico own exotic Ferraris. This is the part of the state where the standard vehicle is a Ford F-250 dually with a gun rack in the back window and a winch on the front bull bar. Cruising a bright red Ferrari in downtown Reserve with a snarling V-12 would definitely get you noticed in a town where people work hard not to be noticed and many prefer to live off the grid.

Here are some other interesting discoveries about exotic vehicle registrations in New Mexico. There are 565 Ferraris registered in the state, 414 Maseratis, 242 Bentleys, 106 Lamborghinis, 91 Rolls Royces and 140 Tesla Cybertrucks.

As expected, Bernalillo, Santa Fe, Dona Ana and Sandoval County (Rio Rancho), have the most exotic cars.

For some reason, Maserati is a hot commodity in oil-rich Lea County (Hobbs, Lovington), where 15 of them reside, the fifth highest count among all 33 counties.

Lincoln County (Ruidoso and home for lots of ex-pat Texans) seems to have lots of exotics for its population size. There are 12 Bentleys, eight Ferraris, five Maseratis and one Lamborghini residing there.

And Grant County (Silver City) had a surprising 21 Ferraris registered there — not too far away from the two lonely units in adjoining Catron County.

Rio Arriba County (Espanola), likely because of its proximity to Santa Fe, had two Ferraris, two Lamborghinis and one Rolls Royce there.

Bernalillo County had 231 Ferraris registered in and around the Duke City, 137 Maseratis, 97 Bentleys, 40 Lamborghinis and 37 Rolls Royces.

With Bernalillo County holding first place for the number of Cybertrucks — 60 — Dona Ana County and Las Cruces came in second at 18. Santa Fe claimed 15 and Sandoval county had 16. The strangest place I found a Tesla Cybertruck was truly rural Mora County, which had one. I suspect there aren’t many Tesla charging stations around that part of the state.

So that’s the conclusion of my research that no one — except maybe for maybe a few nerdy gearheads — really cared about. And if you need some information from your state government and get stonewalled, I hope you’ve got someone as responsive as my state representative.

I’ve attached the information I received if you are interested in looking at it.

(A SPECIAL EDITION OF MY BLOG FOR YOUR THANKSGIVING DAY READING)

Last Saturday, Albuquerque radio station KKOB staged a promotion in which hundreds of rubber duck “turkeys” offering various prizes were dropped from the station’s hot air balloon over a crowd at Balloon Fiesta Park.

It was reminiscent of the 1978 episode of the television series “WKRP in Cincinnati” in which live turkeys were dropped from a helicopter over a local shopping mall as part of a Thanksgiving promotion. The incident was reported by the station’s hapless reporter Les Nessman who had said “as God as my witness, I honestly thought turkeys could fly.”

A the turkeys plummet to earth, Nessman goes into his over the top reporting mode:

“Oh, the humanity! People are running about. The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! … Children are searching for their mothers and oh, not since the Hindenburg tragedy has there been anything like this.”

Hopefully, none of the rubber ducks or people on the ground were injured during the Albuquerque promotion last weekend. However, I discovered an article in the Omaha World Herald this morning in which a real turkey drop was staged in 1946 in the town of Alma, Nebraska. Alma is a small farming community on the Nebraska-Kansas state line, population about 1,500. (The nearest town is named Prairie Dog.)

According to the Omaha World Herald, the Alma promotion was organized by the Alma Chamber of Commerce. Local pilot Jim Waldo was tabbed to release 20 turkeys over the downtown area of the city. Because his plane was small, he could only carry 10 of the birds at a time, so he had to make two passes to release all 20 on that fateful fall Saturday morning.

As it turns out, the birds could actually fly — maybe flutter is a better word. A story in the local newspaper, the Harlan County Journal, said one woman was especially lucky in catching one of the turkeys.

“Two or three of the birds set their sails at a high altitude and really gave the boys and gals a run for their money,” the Journal reported. “The honors for being the luckiest of the day must be awarded to Miss Ruth Swindell. She was in her Main Street apartment, confined with the mumps. As she watched the scene of flying turkeys and lunging chasers, a big turkey landed on top of the porch next to her window.”

“Before Mr. Turkey could gain his bearings,’’ the Journal reported “She opened the window and pulled him into her apartment, and while still holding the prize, called for assistance over the telephone.”

And in another similar promotion in 1930 in in the Florence neighborhood of Omaha, turkeys were released from rooftops of local businesses as a Christmas promotion.

To close out the turkey story with a New Mexico angle, an article in today’s Albuquerque Journal says that researchers at New Mexico Tech in Socorro have created a flying drone using a turkey that had been preserved by taxidermy and infused with a flying drone platform. According to professor Mostafa Hassanalain, the taxidermed turkey and ducks are being created to help understand wildlife and possibly learn more about aerodynamics by studying nature.

So however you got your turkey today, I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

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.