Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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The temperature was somewhere around 100 degrees the afternoon I met Esther Steinle in a Clovis coffee shop, which had the doors propped open because of a malfunctioning air conditioner. But we had a chillier topic to talk about: upcoming holiday travel. For a group of young men and women who are stationed at Cannon Air Force Base, Steinle is the most visible "angel" in Angel Arms, a ministry overseen by Clovis' Central Baptist Church, which provides tickets for airmen who...
If you are ever fortunate enough to find yourself in possession of an invitation to a 70th high school class reunion, I have one piece of advice: Say yes, and don't miss a minute of it. I speak from experience. On the last Friday in August, I got to be a fly on the wall as most of the remaining members of the Melrose High School class of 1953 met in a Clovis restaurant to celebrate the years they spent together as Buffalos more than seven decades ago. A dozen of the original...
Of all the events that take place each year at the Roosevelt County Fair, there’s something about the Saturday morning pet show that has a special place in my heart. I’m not sure how common pet shows are at county fairs — I did a little internet searching and didn’t come up with a lot of mentions. I didn’t see one on the schedule at Curry County or at Lea County this year. Yet, the Roosevelt County Fair has hosted a pet show as far back as my memory goes, and for most of t...
The Curry County Fair wrapped up this weekend, and the Roosevelt County fairgrounds will soon be all a-bustle with its annual celebration of many of the things that make our counties special. That was all the nudge I needed to head to the archives and take a peek at the Roosevelt County Fair that was on the horizon 100 years ago this month. The Portales Valley News from Aug. 30, 1923, announced the upcoming event with a full-page ad helpfully locating Portales as “three h...
Fifty years ago right about now, the trees of eastern New Mexico were groaning with a record peach crop. Just reading about it made my mouth water. The Portales News-Tribune from Sunday, Aug. 12, 1973, showed Dora farmer A.W. Stolle cradling a branch loaded with Elberta peaches nearing ripeness. “I just don’t know how the frost missed nipping those buds this year,” Stolle told the paper, “but we sneaked by the late cold spells, and we certainly have a peach crop in the mak...
When James and Stephanie Johnston moved from Wichita Falls, Texas, to Portales in December of 2022, they saw the "Welcome to Portales" billboard announcing our community as "home of 17,000 friendly people (and three or four old grouches)." There's only one problem, the Johnstons said. They insist they've yet to meet a single one of those old grouches. Rather, James Johnston said, "Everyone, to a person, has been so welcoming." This gregarious husband/wife duo made the move to...
I’ve yet to see the new “Barbie” movie that has turned the nation pink this summer, with all manner of merchandise available in that unmistakable hue, from corn tortillas (excuse me?) to lawn furniture. This Barbie-mania has brought back memories of my own less-than-traditional encounters with those iconic 11-inch-tall fashion dolls. Mattel’s Barbie was introduced to the world in 1959, only a couple of years before I made my own appearance, so she’s been around my whole lif...
Any way you measure it — Fahrenheit, Celsius, or scoops of ice cream — it has been a hot summer. It’s a fine time to contemplate how we managed before that best of inventions: air conditioning. Plenty of us grew up in homes without it, passing our summers in sweaty blissful ignorance. At our house, the heat-fighting arsenal included screen doors, open windows, strategically placed fans, outdoor time, and a tank of mossy green swimming water that was ice cold on even the hotte...
Sometimes it takes a pair of fresh eyes to see things hiding in our own backyards. Or maybe two pairs of fresh eyes. Allow me to introduce you to Sajan KC and Anisha Sapkota. It's possible you've already seen this young husband and wife in our area, cameras in hand, on the hunt for some of our smallest and most beautiful neighbors: butterflies. If you don't think of eastern New Mexico as a particularly good place for spotting butterflies, KC and Sapkota can tell you...
I wrangled an invitation several weeks ago from Brendon Asher, director of Blackwater Draw, to visit the summer archaeology field school at Blackwater Locality 1 between Portales and Clovis. Early on the morning of the last Tuesday of June -and long before the temperature climbed to its afternoon high of 110 degrees - I was at the gate to the site to meet Asher and five of the six students who were enrolled in Eastern New Mexico University's summer class, Anthropology 482/583....
Local historians tell us that during the early 1900s, Roosevelt County boasted more than 100 schools in the tiny communities that sprinkled the Plains like cornmeal. By 1957, that number had dwindled to six districts: Causey, Dora, Elida, Floyd, Portales, and Rogers. In May that year, the Rogers community made the painful decision to shutter the doors on its school with only 62 students remaining on the roster following graduation. By fall, many of those students were at...
Fifty-three pieces of art created by 24 area residents are on display at the Runnels Gallery in the Golden Student Success Center at Eastern New Mexico University. Take it from me: It's worth a visit. Dubbed - fittingly - the Community Art Show, this free exhibit opened June 12 and is the first group exhibition at ENMU by local adults in at least 20 years, according to Bryan Hahn, manager of the gallery and curator of the ENMU Art Collection. "We've struggled over the years...
I’m not a regular follower of sports, but 50 years ago this month I became a rabid horse-racing fan for at least a season. Perhaps you did, too. It was the spring of 1973 when a thoroughbred superstar named Secretariat blazed into the headlines. He’d go on to win the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes that year — setting records in all three that still stand — and capturing the first Triple Crown of horse racing in 25 years. My brothers and I grew up in a...
I've been to a lot of funerals and memorial services. It comes with the territory when you live in a small community for a long time. The one for World War II veteran Thomas Vernon "Louie" Long held Thursday on a picture-perfect morning at the Portales Cemetery was one I'll never forget. For one thing, it was performed with full military honors, a moving ritual infused with tradition, beauty, respect, and precision that never fails to bring a lump to my throat. But what...
If you grew up in New Mexico and are my age or older, I would bet money you knew someone who was in the Bataan Death March in World War II. It might have been your dad, your uncle, a neighbor, a friend. Take just two of our counties. Fifty-four service members from Roosevelt County and 87 from Curry County ended up on that horrific march in April of 1942. Nineteen of those from Roosevelt County and 40 from Curry County died then or in the prison camp years that followed in...
You’re probably familiar with the Wright brothers of aviation fame, but Portales had its own Wright brothers, well-known in their time for sadder reasons. Durward Haynes Wright and his younger brother Warren Wright both died during World War II, making their mom, Lillie Mae Wright, a double Gold Star mother, an honor no woman seeks. With Memorial Day on the horizon, it’s a good time to remember this family. You can find the Wright family marker in the Portales Cemetery, a shor...
I have a black coffee maker in my kitchen, which is my first destination every morning. Allow me to clarify. Yes, it makes black coffee, but the coffee maker itself is black, which I mention because the dark color makes it a favored hiding spot of our pesky spring visitors, the miller moths. I don’t need to tell many of you that we’ve been host to a bumper crop of those vile critters this year. Even for a woman like me who keeps her rose-colored glasses on the nightstand so...
Novelists Kathleen M. Rodgers, a Clovis native currently of Colleyville, Texas, and Teddy Jones of Friona, Texas, are scheduled to appear at a double author event from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday at the Portales Public Library, 218 S. Ave. B. Rodgers’ work has appeared in Family Circle Magazine, Military Times, and several anthologies. Her fourth novel, “The Flying Cutterbacks”was named a 2022 New Mexico Press Women Zia Book Award first runner-up and a 2021 WILLA Liter...
A cadre of four-legged teachers named Bart, Newbie, Shag, Target, Smudge, Goober, Patches, Lil, and Cricket are on the hunt for some new students. But there are some catches. To begin with, eight of them are a mix of horses and horse/pony crosses. The ninth – Cricket – is pure pony. The lessons they are ready to teach won't take place in a saddle. And it's free. Allow me to introduce the residents of Abrazos Adventure, the business that since 1999 provided countless folks in...
Most of us old enough to remember the first time humans set foot on the moon -- July 20, 1969 -- have a memory of that day. We know where we were, what we were doing. Tamara Ryan Polich’s recollection has a special twist. “We watched the moon landing in this house,” Polich told me Saturday, “on a television set that our dad built.” Tamara and three of her siblings — Mike Ryan, Marla Ryan Chrisman, and John Ryan — were gathered in the Portales home they grew up in to share stor...
Portales High School drama teacher Melody Gallagher jokes that she recruits and retains drama students with the promise of "afterschool snacks and juice boxes." But in reality, "All jokes aside, this department is thriving because theater is such a positive and inclusive environment for all," Gallagher said. Fifty members of that flourishing PHS drama department are preparing to open their spring musical, "Into the Woods Jr." at 6 p.m. Friday in the Performing Arts Center at...
I heard a timely quote this week from Ira Glass, the host of the National Public Radio show, “This American Life.” “I am optimistic,” Glass said, “even when there is no factual basis for it … at all.” So am I, Mr. Glass, especially as the days grow longer and garden centers start to bustle with those most optimistic of humans: gardeners. The reason this quote resonated with me so much is that I not only don’t have a green thumb, I don’t even have a green fingernail. Flowe...
A life-sized interactive reproduction of Moses' tabernacle of the wilderness is in Portales for a return engagement after being experienced by more than 3,000 locals when it was here in 2015. Central Christian Church at 1528 S. Main St. in Portales is hosting the multi-day event that continues through Sunday, according to Senior Pastor Don Thomas. He said the idea of bringing "The Tabernacle Experience" back to eastern New Mexico was an easier sell this time than it was eight...
In a short-lived fit of spring-cleaning last week, I was dusting a kitchen counter and wiped a layer of accumulated topsoil off of a couple of small wooden boxes that sit in a back corner. These boxes remain on my counter solely for sentimental reasons. They are filled with recipes — many handwritten — from my maternal grandmother, a woman who died in the early 1950s, long before my existence was ever even a consideration, much less a twinkle in anyone’s eye. I never use these...
At the age of 93, and after 3 1/2 years of residency in Wheatfields Estates senior living in Clovis, you might expect someone like Lois Barnes to be living a quiet life of retirement. Perhaps you haven’t met her yet. I learned last summer in our first visit that Barnes is a woman on a mission and she’s looking for recruits. “What made Fort Sumner famous?” she asked me the first time I met her, before quickly providing the answer: “Billy the Kid. Is there any proof of that?...
