Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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In almost 23 years as a firefighter - including three as chief of the Portales Fire Department - Steve Beaty never saved the life of a chicken. "I saved a dog, some cats ... a few people," he said. But chickens? Nope. Not from fires anyway. But from other causes? Undoubtedly. In fact, the first day I talked with Beaty, he had just done blood tests on 150 chickens to screen for pullorum (a Salmonella-related disease that causes high mortality in poultry) and had swabbed the thr...
Even though Roosevelt County’s wettest recorded year happened 20 years before I was born, I rarely empty my rain gauge without thinking of 1941. I grew up on the stories — you may have as well. At our place it was known as “40 inches in ’41.” It was the year our grandparents and great-grandparents were kept busy planting, replanting, and emptying those rain gauges until the rains finally turned off late in the fall. The official precipitation for Portales for 1941 was 43.61...
If you lived in eastern New Mexico prior to 1971 and had pets or livestock, there's a decent chance you remember the veterinarian known as Doc Black. Or maybe, like our family, you called him Ol' Doc Black. His name came up in a conversation a few weeks ago, and it set me to trying to learn more about him. The first challenge was finding out his first name. Turns out I wasn't the only person who didn't know right away - to so many here, he was simply Doc. Thanks to a post on...
All it took to make me nostalgic this week was a box of ripe peaches. I grew up less than a quarter mile from a veritable garden of Eden, although I didn’t properly appreciate it until after I grew up. My grandfather — “Pa” — was the orchardist. He worked most of his magic long before I was born, although he still deftly wielded a hoe into his 96th year. By the time I was old enough to toddle in the shade of his orchard, his life was drawing to a close, and I never got to re...
I was looking over back-to-school supply lists from area schools this month — ‘tis the season, after all, even for those of us whose children are grown. It took me back to my own elementary days even as I realized that many of the items on today’s lists weren’t even invented when I was a kid: dry erase markers, highlighters, hand sanitizer, and zip lock bags, to name a few. One beloved item from my youth remains on every list I saw, however, much to my delight. Crayons...
All it takes is one breath of “rural county fair,” that intoxicating fragrance of horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry, intermingled with all manner of deep-fried foods, and topped with a whiff of warm spun sugar, and nostalgia sets in. What I wouldn’t give to turn back the clock … for a few hours at least … and walk onto the Roosevelt County fairgrounds from my childhood. My first stop would be on the shady bleachers on the south side of the old grassy paddock where a g...
Remember what the weather was like on the High Plains on Christmas Eve of 1992? Iva Stewart of Clovis does. "It was snowing and icy," she told me as she recalled that evening from 29 winters ago. "About the middle of the night," Stewart told me, "somebody knocked on our door and said, 'The newspapers are ready.'" The late-night caller was from the Clovis News Journal. He told Stewart that the next day's newspaper was printed, and that she needed to get cracking and get them de...
I had a weekend craving for a meal I hadn’t eaten for at least 20 years, so I texted three people who I thought might have the recipe written down. One replied immediately that she did, and that she’d “just have to find it.” A few minutes later, a photo arrived of what was clearly a much-used recipe, handwritten on a stained piece of note paper, which had been folded and unfolded so often that it was almost in pieces. It set me to thinking. Like many of us, I get a lot of...
We’re having one of those summers where, when I close my eyes, all I see are snaking tendrils of goathead vines, dotted with those seemingly innocent tiny yellow flowers. You’re not fooling me, Goatheads. I’m on to you. While I have failed to crack Mother Nature’s code as to what conditions are necessary for a bumper crop of these spiky spreaders, I can say with certainty that we have hit on the ideal combination this year, as we do now and again. Also known as punctur...
It’s county fair season, friends. Before I get to the gist of today’s ramblings, here are some dates for your calendar. The Lea County Fair and Rodeo kicks off in less than 10 days — July 30, to be exact — for a week-long run in Lovington. Curry County’s centennial fair won’t be far behind that. It’s set for Aug. 10-14 in Clovis. Then Roosevelt County continues the fun the following week with an Aug. 16-22 run at the fairgrounds in Portales. This marks the approximate t...
If there is anything more important than the sustenance of a meal, how about a nutritionally balanced meal prepared by someone else and delivered to your kitchen table with a smile? That's exactly what Meals on Wheels does, but it can't happen without assistance from some of the most important people in any community: volunteers. In fact, according to longtime Portales Meals on Wheels treasurer Glenn McCoy, "We are a volunteer organization top to bottom. The board and...
If you happen to spy a 1968 red Pontiac GTO draggin’ Main Street in Clovis this weekend, or see it pulling through the drive-up window at Taco Box, take a look inside. In this season of reunions, two former Clovis High School friends and classmates are having one of their own after not seeing each other in person for almost 40 years. They plan to do it in style. Kathleen Rodgers was Kathleen Doran in 1974 when she met Michelle Williams on the staff of Clovis High School’s stud...
I recently saw a copy of one of the old printed shopping lists provided by Grady’s Food Market in Portales, the grocery store of my childhood. It’s funny how a small piece of paper can bring back so many memories. Grady’s got its start on the square, I’ve been told, as Grady’s Red and White Grocery. At some point before I was old enough to remember — or maybe even before I was born — it moved to 217 S. Ave. C in Portales, on the site now occupied by Aaron’s. Grady and Ethel...
It is one thing to see a problem, point it out, and grouse about it, as many of us like to do. It is quite another to see a problem, mull over how to fix it, then set about doing that ... especially when you're only 12 years old. That is exactly what Kaylee Jo Summers of Elida did (the latter, not the former). Thanks to an effort spearheaded by this enthusiastic soon-to-be seventh grader in the Elida Schools, the existing playground area in Elida's shady green town park is on...
I face an ongoing dilemma: I love having a clean house, but I hate cleaning. But with an incoming overnight guest on the way last weekend, I tackled our abode in an all-out scrub fest. By nightfall, it was far from immaculate (because let's be real here), but by golly, it was a lot cleaner than when I started. Then sometime around 11 p.m. Saturday, the first of two overnight sandstorms arrived, pummeling the north side of our house. I raced around in the dark, slamming...
On this date… 1966: Eight Roosevelt County girls were packing their suitcases for New Mexico Girls State, set to open later in the week on the campus of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Dora School’s representative was Nicky Gresham, while Causey School was represented by Ramona Casey. Elida School’s candidate was Beverly Radcliff, and Mary Ella Dobbs was selected by Floyd School. Portales High School had four representatives: Sheryl Brasell, Sue Kremenak, Coret...
On this date… 1971: The Pioneer Days Rodeo parade was declared such a success that instead of awarding top prizes in only three categories, the judges gave five first-place awards and four honorable mentions to participants in the 56-unit parade. Doc Stewart Chevrolet-Buick won the judges parade award for an entry featuring a new pickup perched atop a slanted float emblazoned with the company logo. Other award winners included La Vista Lounge’s float featuring a bunch of hil...
I counted recently and discovered that my shelves are creaking with more than 80 yearbooks from various schools. The oldest is from 1940, the most recent is from 2016. They're mostly from this immediate geographic area: Eastern New Mexico College (and later University), Dora, Floyd, and Portales. While I can say with complete certainty that selling yearbook ads tops the list of activities I am grateful I never had to participate in again after graduation, I find those ads...
On this date … 1966: Local Future Farmers of America members returned from the state FFA convention in Albuquerque, where Pat Woods of Grady received the Sunshine State Farmer Award, “the highest annual honor bestowed by the state group,” according to the Clovis News-Journal. Woods, a third-year member of the Grady FFA, was farming 100 acres of wheat and 73 acres of grain sorghum, and owned 90 feeder steers. Jerry Wood of Dora received a Foundation Award at the conve...
I never crack open a raw egg without thinking of an old family friend named Mrs. Klein. Mrs. Klein was the mother of one of my mother’s best childhood pals in the 1930s and early 1940s in Cleveland. Improbably for two big-city girls, my mother and her friend ended up living only 18 miles apart in eastern New Mexico, so Mrs. Klein stayed a part of my mother’s life — and eventually mine — for all of her remaining years. Mrs. Klein was still living in Ohio when I was a kid, bu...
I have a proven record of misidentifying things I see. It isn’t getting better with time. Once it was an owl. I would have bet money on it. It was nighttime and our dog was in the front yard barking like a maniac. I flipped on the porch light and peered out to see what the cause of the ruckus might be. On the ground, maybe 30 feet from the porch, I was met by two glowing eyes, their gaze fixed upon me. It was unquestionably an owl. There was simply no doubt. I knew it s...
I saw a recipe for cicada cookies this week that took me back in time. While I have zero desire to incorporate these large, loud, and crunchy (I’ll come back to that) insects into any aspect of my diet, they are part of one of the most vivid memories of my life. It was purely by accident that I happened to be living in the Washington, D.C., area in 1987, during one of the mega-emergences of the 17-year cicadas that make their home in the Midwest and eastern United States. T...
I read something recently that proposed an interesting conundrum (and gave me an excuse to use “conundrum,” which is one of my favorite words): We humans love choices, but we hate making decisions. There is no question I agree with the latter part of that statement. After all, I have spent my entire life surrounded by people who would rather keel over from hunger than agree on a restaurant. “I don’t care. Where do YOU want to eat?” “Whatever you want is fine with me.” “You d...
I never see a printed school menu without being reminded of my own years in the lunch line and cafeteria at the Dora schools. As a species, we humans love to complain. In those long-ago days before cell phones and the internet (also known as the 1960s and 1970s of my youth), one of the only things most of us had to grouse about was school cafeteria food. Our lunch ladies at Dora made that exceedingly hard. Most of our lunch ladies were also school bus drivers. It was a good co...
This past weekend offered numerous opportunities to spend time (both virtually and in-person) with other people who love books and reading as much as I do. First came three days of events associated with the annual Williamson Lectureship hosted entirely online this year by Eastern New Mexico University. Then there was a Sunday afternoon backyard gathering of several vaccinated members of a loosely organized book club I’ve belonged to for years. In both cases, there were l...
