Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Unless you’re hibernating under a rock, you’re keenly aware that the endless political season will grind to a halt on Tuesday (or somewhere in that vicinity … all bets are off at this point). Pollsters predict a tight race. If they are correct, somewhere barely below half of us stand to be bitterly disappointed with the outcome. That’s why this seems like an excellent week to focus on kindness. I can’t speak for you, but I know in my own circle of friends, I have people I...
On this date … 1940: Two young male lions were sold to a circus by the Clovis zoo. Cole Bros. Circus purchased the lions and a monkey in a cash transaction following its Clovis performances, the Clovis News-Journal reported. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 1940: Clovis High School band members needed new uniforms and they were willing to work for them. Band members said Nov. 9 was going to be “Hobo Day,” during which they would mow lawns, clean up trash, wash dishes or perform just about any other task in excha...
A friend of mine told me recently she’d been invited to a Halloween event by her young grandson. Naturally she’d headed straight to a seasonal pop-up store and purchased a costume so she could be a cool grandma and go as a “Minecraft creeper.” Since I was unfamiliar with both “Minecraft” and “creeper” (at least in a context for which a grandmother would attend an elementary Halloween party), I turned to the internet to learn more. I failed to gain a usable understanding o...
On this date … 1937: A.L. Watson of Clovis was fined $100, with $50 suspended, after pleading guilty to riding with a drunken driver. The driver pleaded not guilty to the allegations and was going to trial. 1940: More than 100 blocks of Clovis city streets had been paved since March, city officials said. Eight more blocks were expected to be paved within the week — two on East Fifth, one on North Wallace, one on West Eighth, two on West 12th, one on North Reid and one on North Hull. 1941: An overnight drenching left far...
When I was growing up in south Roosevelt County, our television viewing choices were (no matter how you counted them) darned limited. In the earliest days, we had one station that was magically (and still somewhat inexplicably) cobbled together from the available networks at the time. Our early viewing favorites included “Captain Kangaroo” each weekday morning, and “Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color” one cherished evening each week. Eventually that station split into th...
On this date … 1941: New Mexico’s state game commission had announced the 1941 quail season had been canceled. The decision was made “reluctantly,” wire services reported, because quail populations had suffered from heavy rains and flooding during the nesting season in the spring and again in September. Game Warden Elliott Barker said the birds had been recovering nicely until the September storms “virtually wiped them out.” 1960: David Thompson and Marsha Simms, both 11, were among Parkview Elementary School students pr...
As our mountains turn gold and our chiles turn red and our skies get even more impossibly blue, the weather is so perfect and crisp (yes, crisp is finally in the forecast), that it creates a problem. But it’s a good problem. The calendar of events overflows. Who wouldn’t want to take advantage of this glorious season? Take, for example, only events involving music this week on the High Plains. It’s a dazzling array, and many of these offerings are free. In the interest of spac...
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...
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...
