Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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With local county fairs perched on the horizon — Curry County’s opens Tuesday and Roosevelt County’s opens Aug. 21 — area 4-H and Future Farmers of America members are brushing, fluffing, primping, and polishing their hairy, woolly, feathery, and furry projects for all they are worth. The payoff? For those who manage to place high enough in their respective competitions, it’s a chance to sell one animal through the junior livestock sales held on the Friday of each fair. For...
If you hear the words “science project,” and break out into a cold sweat, well, you’re probably not alone. But some folks at Eastern New Mexico University and the Portales Public Library are kicking off afterschool programs in September designed to share their own expertise and enthusiasm with kids who want to know more about science, technology, engineering, and math (popularly known by the acronym STEM). Although Eastern’s STEM Club is starting its second year, this will be...
In a white cardboard box I keep high atop a bookshelf, there is a post-card sized scrap of an old quilt. It’s made from wool, woven in two patterns. One is a muted plaid, with lines of olive, rust, butternut, green, and black; the other is striped, alternating bands of black and rust with narrow wisps of soft green. The hand stitches are made with thick black thread. There is an accompanying piece of paper. “Christina sheared this wool herself,” it reads, “washed it, dyed it...
Country kids, like I was, have pretty low standards when it comes for a place to swim on a hot summer day. Our earliest “swimming hole” was a low spot about a quarter mile south of our house in the pasture. We called it the Caliche Tank, thanks to an outcropping of that chalky rock in the immediate area. After a good rain, it gathered runoff from a large area, and we weren’t the only ones who shared the mucky results. Cattle happily gathered there, as did horses, turtl... Full story
When word got out this spring that Debby Cannon was going to hang up her apron after more than 40 years as the head cook for the Elida school system, a few of her friends contacted me and suggested she’d be a good subject for a column. I agreed. It was talking Cannon into it that was the challenge. If you ask her about all those years and all those students and all those breakfasts and all those lunches — up to 120 most days — she’ll say she was just doing her job. Elida s...
I wish I had crossed paths in person with Father Stanley Crocchiola, the history-loving priest I wrote about two weeks ago. While he was the first to admit that he lacked both the time and resources to deliver polished prose — he was, after all, a full-time Catholic priest — the dozens of booklets he left behind capturing history of local communities are filled with gems that sparkle with optimism. It’s clear that Crocchiola had a deep love for rural areas, and he saw us th...
Bobby Roybal said he was about eight years old when his mother, Helen, taught him to play a “G” chord on a guitar. Two chords later, he was playing his first song, “You Are My Sunshine,” and music was officially embedded in his life. It’s been his soundtrack for 63 years, on a path that has taken many twists and turns. He’s been an officer with the Portales Police Department, the Roosevelt County Sheriff’s Office, and the Eastern New Mexico University Police Department. H...
If you have even a passing interest in New Mexico history, odds are you have at some point encountered the F. Stanley books — dozens of slim softbound volumes that tell the stories of some of our region’s tiniest communities. My first exposure was back in 1979 when I was a new student hire in Special Collections at Eastern New Mexico University’s Golden Library. I had your average college freshman’s interest in history (somewhere between little and none), but I do remembe...
Jim Williamson was just a few weeks shy of his 49th birthday when he became a dad in the early 1960s, considerably older than most guys picking up their first diaper pin. Within two and a half years, he and my mom had three of us. I was the “gal baby,” sandwiched between brothers. I have vivid early memories of my brothers and me piling onto the bench seat of the old red pickup, our dad at the steering wheel, the bed filled with burlap sacks of cottonseed meal, off to feed the... Full story
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know the Fort name and associate it with a well-respected historic ranch family in Lea County. But, for whatever reason, I had never met Curtis and Carol Fort in person until I started working on the feature that published in Sunday’s Eastern New Mexico News. From the moment we said howdy, I knew I was in for a treat, in part because people with dogs named Biscuit and Gravy are my kind of people. The Forts are good neighbors, in every...
If the United States Postal Service had a loyalty program, Lea County cowboy artist Curtis Fort would be a platinum member. Or maybe, more appropriately, bronze. Almost every evening he's in the combination home/studio that he shares with his wife, Carol, near Tatum, he's at his kitchen table, a pen or pencil in his left hand, writing and illustrating notes to be stamped and mailed the next day. In a world where it's easy to acknowledge a passing encounter or kindness with... Full story
When Landry Truex, the recently graduated valedictorian of the Elida High School class of 2018, was just a sophomore, she said she started researching service academies as a possible path for her future. “My dad had jokingly said I should go to one,” she said, “but I took him seriously.” Truex (whose name is pronounced “true” with an “x” added at the end) attended a science / technology / engineering / math camp at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, the s...
My school had no choir, and my acting career was highlighted (or possibly nipped in the bud) by a second-grade appearance as a Moon Maiden in a Dora elementary school production of “Santa and the Spacemen.” We Moon Maidens, in our homemade blue dresses festooned with construction paper moons, probably did sing, now that I think about it. So I guess I have choral experience … of a sort. But I was the kind of kid who would have walked barefooted across a grass burr-...
When someone takes action that could have prevented a tragedy — but not until after the tragedy has already occurred — well, you probably know the saying: It’s like closing the barn door after the horse is already out. Darla Reed and the staff of the Roosevelt County Driving While Intoxicated Grant Program are trying to beat that horse to the barn door with a free program on Saturday, which they have dubbed Prevention Day. It’s worth a look. First of all, it’s not a whole day...
In the time it takes most people to eat lunch, Portales flint knapper Tommy Heflin can pick up a chunk of obsidian, chip away at it with homemade tools, and turn it into a perfect arrowhead with edges sharper than a surgeon’s scalpel. And he can tell stories the whole time he’s doing it, and even make it look easy. That’s what 44 years of experience can do for a guy. Heflin worked his magic — and it really is magical to watch — for the Friends of the Portales Public Library l...
Melanie Patrick is a woman on a mission. Actually, make that several missions. And she’s working hard to encourage more of us to get involved. Patrick moved to eastern New Mexico a year ago from San Antonio, Texas, with her husband, Col. Chris Patrick, commander of the 27th Special Operations Medical Group at Cannon Air Force Base. “I’m a military spouse and boy mom,” Patrick said. “I don’t really care for the traditional unspoken rules for military spouses. I honor my hu...
From geraniums to petunias to steel magnolias, this is a weekend filled with flowers, good causes, and even an opportunity to think about a trip to Israel. The Eastern New Mexico University College of Fine Arts, in conjunction with the Department of Theater and Digital Filmmaking, kicks things off at 7 p.m. today with the first of four performances of “Steel Magnolias,” a comedy/drama that remains an audience favorite more than 30 years after it first debuted off Bro...
People who are serious about butterflies and moths are known as lepidopterists, a word that might seem better suited for a spelling bee than a nature walk. Maybe that’s why Steve Cary is simply called “The Butterfly Guy.” It’s a title he’s earned after 37 years of living in New Mexico, often in pursuit of some of our tiniest and most beautiful residents. Cary calls Santa Fe home, but he has traveled the state exhaustively, and spent years as the New Mexico Park Service’s...
Sometimes life in a small town feels a little confining. But then — if you’re lucky — you have one of those moments that reminds you of the very best part of being in a rural community. I lost a decorative pin in Portales last Friday. It wasn’t especially valuable, but it was sentimental. A dear friend made it, a tiny prairie chicken created from various metals. It was on my shoulder at lunchtime; by late afternoon it was missing. This weekend was a whirlwind and I didn’t... Full story
Boston and New York City may have their famous marathons, but on certain weekends, we have marathons of our own on the High Plains — times when a number of events converge as they do this weekend. Put on those running shoes and see how many things you can fit onto your calendar. Here are some of the highlights: The Portales High School spring musical, “The Addams Family,” opens at 7 p.m. today in the Performing Arts Center at the high school, 201 S. Knoxville, for a four-... Full story
Editor's note: Anytime we ask readers what they want to read, they always say the same thing: "Human-interest stories." This year, we're deploying two of our best correspondents — Wendel Sloan and Betty Williamson — and asking them to spend time with some of our region's most interesting humans. The resulting feature is scheduled to publish the first Sunday of each month. Enjoy. PORTALES — If you didn't know Oscar Robinson had first come to Portales in 1985 only months befor... Full story
The next time you are waiting to see a doctor or nurse practitioner in Clovis or Portales, here’s a name worth remembering: John Sidney Pearce. Better known as Doc Pearce, this Roosevelt County pioneer physician came to eastern New Mexico about 1900, setting up practice in Portales while New Mexico was still a territory. He was a pillar of the medical community for the next 40 years, remembered in numerous local historical accounts. Pearce’s house was one of the first dwe...
Most mornings — if the wind isn’t flinging sand and hurling tumbleweeds — I am outside close to sunrise to take a few quiet sips of the sweetness of dawn on the High Plains. That little cup of pure, soul-satisfying nature is even better this time of year because it is also the season when our shyest and most reclusive neighbors, the lesser prairie chickens, set aside their inhibitions and return to the leks — their historic breeding grounds — for a few weeks of loud and reckl...
There’s a ball on the calendar at the Clovis Civic Center. In this case, there is no prince involved, simply three big-hearted women, and the guest list won’t include residents of mythical kingdoms, but instead is open to all adults with special needs in eastern New Mexico. The second annual Special Hearts Prom is scheduled for 6 p.m. March 24, at the Clovis Civic Center, 801 Schepps Boulevard. The organizers want to make sure that every eligible individual in the region hea... Full story
When you lose someone you love, as many of us did last week with the passing of our friend Sharon King, it’s hard not to think of the African adage: “When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.” Now, Sharon would smack me upside the head for suggesting she was an old man, and I’m not. Replace “old man” with “a beloved friend,” “a small-town mayor,” “a favorite aunt” — whatever description fits best — and the adage still rings true. It’s the loss of the wealth of inf...
