Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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On this date … 1951: Ramona Griego had been unable to celebrate her fourth birthday because she was in Clovis Memorial Hospital. The child, who lived at 205 Cameo, was suffering from polio, doctors said. She’d been admitted over the weekend with severe weakness in her arms and legs and was confined to bed. She was listed as Curry County’s 10th polio victim of the year. In August 1955, the Clovis News-Journal reported Ramona and a Tucumcari child had been flown to a hospital in Truth or Consequences for treatment. Ramon...
Thirteen years ago this week, I was given the privilege of sharing a few words with readers each week in what was then the Portales News-Tribune. We’ve been through some big changes since then, including a consolidation with the Clovis News Journal to become the regional Eastern New Mexico News. About 675 columns later — yikes — it’s still great fun, and I hope to keep going for a long time. But this 13th anniversary is bittersweet, because this gig would never have happene...
On this date … 1941: One robber was dead and three more in jail after a Grady hardware store owner fought off an attack. R. C. Knowles, operator of the store, told authorities two men entered the store and asked about purchasing bullets for a rifle. When Knowles, 74, reached for the bullets, one man jumped him and the other hit Knowles on the head. Knowles said he fought off his attackers, then opened fire on them with a pistol. A Portales man died on the sidewalk outside the store. Three other Portales men were arrested a d...
On this date … 1944: A Parmerton woman was recovering from an accident involving a pressure cooker. Mrs. G.H. Brock was cut by glass when a jar in the cooker exploded. Several stitches were required to close the wound. Parmerton was in central Parmer County, Texas, and was the county seat for seven months in 1907 before that distinction went to Farwell. 1946: Republican candidates had made “a strong bid for the veteran vote” at a rally in Portales. Gubernatorial candidate Ed Safford “declared flatly that he favored the sam...
On this date … 1969: The Eastern New Mexico University Symphony was preparing to make its season debut at the annual Pops Concert Banquet in the Campus Union ballroom. Symphony director was Arthur Welker. He planned to present selections from “My Fair Lady,” “South Pacific,” “Sound of Music” and “Carousel.” The banquet menu called for prime rib, baked potato, fruit cup, a vegetable and dessert. Admission was $2.75. That included the meal. 1970: The Portales Rams, fresh from a surprising 20-14 win over previously unbeat...
Gift giving guides suggest diamonds and emeralds are appropriate to commemorate 90th anniversaries. As Eastern New Mexico University continues the celebration of its 90th year with homecoming festivities this week in Portales, they might be more likely to suggest theater and football tickets, barbecue, and drones. Tens of thousands of us Greyhounds have passed through campus over the past nine decades, and with luck hundreds (dare I say thousands?) of us will be back on campus...
On this date … 1914: Model Grocery in Clovis advertised pie peaches for 10 cents per can, 20 bars of soap for $1 and 12 pounds of sugar for $1. 1933: New Mexico Gov. Arthur Seligman died and Andy Hockenhull, a Clovis lawyer, banker and Central Baptist Church Sunday school teacher, was appointed his successor. Hockenhull, 56, had been the state’s lieutenant governor. Seligman died after complaining of a sharp pain in his chest, just minutes after speaking at a state banker’s convention, The Associated Press reported. 1941:...
On this date ... 1910: Miller & Luikart, a Portales dry goods store, offered men’s black derby hats for $3. 1931: Pearson Valley school 26 miles west of Portales was wrecked for the second time in two weeks. Teacher Ruth Isham opened the school to find desks crashed to splinters, blackboards demolished and school records torn to bits and scattered over the floor, the Clovis Evening News-Journal reported. 1941: De Baca County homes were being evacuated and broomcorn farmers feared heavy crop losses after torrential rains f...
A friend of mine, who has long been retired from her career as an elementary public school educator, was reminiscing recently about her days in the classroom, and the stories she read aloud to her students. Her favorites were the “Little Britches” books by Ralph Moody, autobiographical accounts of Moody moving west with his family in 1906 to a Colorado ranch and the many adventures that followed. She said she found that no matter where she was teaching — and no matter the a...
On this date ... 1946: Almost every Portales business had plans to close its doors for a city-wide cleanup planned the following Thursday. “Only postage stamps will be for sale,” area media reported. The Portales City Council was encouraging everyone volunteer to help clean up the town and had drawn up an ordinance that would increase garbage collection fees and require health inspections of cow lots, chicken pens and open toilets. 1947: Clovis Police Chief Nelson Worley, Officer Herschel Pendley and City Hall Janitor Cha...
If you were born in Roosevelt County from 1936 to 1979 (with the exception for part of the 1940s), you may have been delivered by Herman O. Lehman. He was our family doctor and friend for most of those years. We called him Doc Lehman until his son Charles, also a doctor, moved to Portales in later years to practice in the office that had once been his dad’s. At that point, Herman became “old Doc Lehman,” since Charlie was – obviously -- “young Doc Lehman.” Old Doc Lehman came...
On this date ... 1915: Area drug stores advertised Doan’s Kidney Pills, a “tested and proven remedy” for kidney and bladder problems. They were 50 cents per bottle. 1951: Eastern New Mexico residents scrambled to dig out their coats and sweaters as temperatures dropped 35 degrees in 24 hours. Winds were clocked at 23 mph, with 30 mph gusts, as temperatures fell from the low 80s to the mid-40s. Weather forecasters were predicting lows in the upper 30s over the next day or two, but said there was little danger of a freez...
On this date ... 1923: Jerry “Bruiser” Nuzum was born in Clovis. The son of Mr. and Mrs. W. N. Nuzum became the first Clovis High School graduate to play in the National Football League. The halfback spent four seasons — 1948-1951 – with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He died in 1997, at age 73. 1952: The Clovis Mattress company was featured in the business review section of the Clovis News-Journal, and noted for having the only felting machine in the city. "The felting machine felts cotton giving you a mattress free from lumps a...
I learned last week there is an organization called the National Coffee Association. Each spring it releases a “National Coffee Data Trends (NCDT) report,” as it did earlier this year. In skimming the highlights from its press release, I discovered that I’m among the 67% of Americans who drink coffee on a daily basis, which they claim is “more than any other beverage, including tap or bottled water.” Coffee wasn’t a regular part of our family life when I was growing up....
On this date ... 1914: The Barbara Worth Hotel in San Diego advertised “A room with a bath for a dollar” in The Clovis Journal. 1941: Portales city officials were making plans for a Sept. 12 statewide blackout. About 80 “special police” were appointed to help organize the civilian defense drill in which all lights were to be shut off and windows covered. The drill was mandatory across New Mexico because military leaders considered border states “of strategic importance from the standpoint of an invasion possibili...
I live at the end of a long dirt road. For much of my life, it was easiest found with a white metal arrow emblazoned with our last name installed next to the highway and pointing in our direction. We took that sign down last year. I still field occasional calls asking me if it’s been stolen. The truth was, it had outlived its purpose. While it’s hard to believe in a world with global positioning systems built into our phones, not all so long ago that sign served an imp...
On this date ... 1918: Workers were just about finished paving the north end of Clovis’ Main Street, between Fourth and Eighth streets, with bricks that remain today. A Plainview company did the work after a winning bid of $32,846.20, the Clovis News-Journal reported. 1936: A convicted Clovis rapist’s home was destroyed in a fire while he awaited transport to the state penitentiary. Curly Reynolds had lived at 204 Edwards St. in a small adobe house. Neighbors alerted firefighters to the blaze. Reynolds had pleaded guilty to s...
On this date ... 1910: The Roosevelt County Herald readers learned 2,000 “of those special lemonades” had been created in a week at the Dobbs Confectionery — a record. “Better get in for one or more early in the week in order to avoid the rush,” the newspaper ad claimed. 1941: The Clovis News-Journal asked area judges about the strangest wedding ceremonies they had performed. Justice of the Peace W. E. McConnell said he married a couple on horseback at a riding academy and married a couple at the county jail just before th...
As our area schools fall into the rhythm of a new academic year, I had fun last week looking back 90 years ago as Eastern New Mexico Junior College was gearing up for its first “winter term.” Opened as a two-year college in June of 1934, a preliminary round of summer classes with 168 students in attendance had been successfully completed. By early September, 18 faculty members were engaged to welcome an anticipated 250 “farm boys and girls,” according to an article in the Sep...
On this date ... 1939: John Sparks, the son of Mr. and Mrs. J.C. Sparks, had learned a valuable lesson about riding his bike alongside a car. The boy was riding to the Portales swimming pool alongside a car driven by his friend Billie Kenyon when the bicycle “dumped him underneath the car,” according to the Portales Daily News. “His arm was run over,” the paper reported. Fortunately, both boys were Boy Scouts and they used their first-aid skills to stop the flow of blood from John’s arm. He was rushed to the Portales hospital...
On this date ... 1905: A post office was established at Tolar in Roosevelt County. It closed April 5, 1946, according to a study by L. Keith Payne, less than two years after a train carrying 46 tons of military explosives leveled or caused major damage to nearly every building in town when it blew up. 1916: Portales was preparing for its annual city picnic, with 2,000 people expected to attend. The Clovis Ladies’ Band was scheduled to kick things off with music at 10 a.m., followed by a few short speeches and then more m...
If I didn’t know that nostalgia can’t actually be transported, I would swear it must arrive each August on the Roosevelt County fairgrounds by the truckload. I was looking through some of our old Kodachrome family slides last week and found a few images that my mom captured at the Roosevelt County fair in 1965. In one of my favorites, I’m holding two soggy paper cones that I know for a fact contain the sticky remnants of red snow cones from the American Legion food booth...
On this date ... 1941: A Wichita Falls teenager was charged with killing two traveling companions and placing their bodies on the train tracks four miles south of Clovis. Officials at first believed J.V. Harden and Arthur William Hall had fallen from the tracks and been run over by the train. Charles Alexander then told authorities that the dead men had been traveling with him and Jess Fuller, but went ahead without them when Alexander and Fuller decided to rest for the night. Alexander, 15, theorized the dead men had...
On this date ... 1941: Clovis was about to become the “most important cold storage point” in New Mexico, according to Railways Ice Co., which was constructing cold-storage lockers. Facilities under construction in Clovis would ultimately contain storage for 55 carloads of produce, including butter, eggs, poultry and fresh vegetables, the Clovis News-Journal reported. Nearest comparable cold-storage facilities were in Oklahoma, Denver and El Paso, officials said. 1942: Bob Wills, the King of Western Swing, was hon...
If you want to fall in love with your community, there may be no finer way to do it than from the top of a Ferris wheel at a county fair, ideally with a cone of cotton candy melting into your hand as you ride. If we’re lucky, we have a number of upcoming opportunities to do just that. Curry County’s annual fair runs from Tuesday through Saturday in Clovis, and folks in Roosevelt County will be following suit from Aug. 20-25 in Portales. I have no insider’s information on wh...
