Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Welcome to 2020. I’m writing this a few days ahead of this first day of a new decade, but if tradition holds true, my New Year’s eve celebration last night likely involved pajamas, a cup of hot chocolate, and maybe a picture puzzle. Those are typically combined with gratitude that we live in the Mountain Standard Time zone, because when that crystal ball drops at Times Square in New York City, it is only 10 p.m. here — a mere hour or so past my normal bedtime. I can usually ma...
The concept of “the 50-year rule” was founded by the National Park Service back in 1948 as a good measure of determining when something is old enough to be considered officially “historic.” Accordingly, the 1969 Christmas season is entering the pages of history, even as you read. I scrolled through a few copies of the Portales News-Tribune and the Clovis News-Journal from the week before Christmas a half-century ago to see what was going on in eastern New Mexico and what lo...
I grew up in an era before "gift-giving guides" were a thing. Or if they were, we never heard about them. These days we are bombarded with electronic suggestions from emails, websites, and magazines offering lists like, "36 gifts for hard-to-please friends," "26 Secret Santa ideas perfect for co-workers," and "23 luxury gifts for the man who has everything." The closest we had to gift-giving guides when I was a kid in the 1960s were the Christmas catalogs issued each year by...
Long years ago, before my brothers and I had yet learned to read, three of the most-used books in our house were these: Hallmark’s “Poetry for Pleasure,” Margaret de Angeli’s “Book of Nursery and Mother Goose Rhymes,” and a tattered and torn 1929 edition of “The Elson Readers: Book Eight.” It was on page 149 of the last one where we were first introduced by our father to Ebenezer Scrooge. In sessions that spanned multiple nights (we three small children were spellbound, but...
When Thanksgiving happens on its latest possible date — as it did this year — it feels as if we are plunged headfirst into the deep end of the Christmas pool almost before the turkey has been digested. Grab a life preserver. The coming days are filled with events to get us all in the holiday spirit, whether we are ready or not. Because of a love for all things quirky, let me begin with the Bazaar Market that is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday in the lecture hal...
For a mere 50 cents, I picked up a gem at a recent used book sale — “The Woman You Want to Be: Margery Wilson’s Complete Book of Charm.” First published in 1928, mine is from the 18th printing, released in 1942. It’s filled with timeless tips — timeless, I tell you — on how be a better person … OK, a better woman … but you men should listen up, too. If you’re hosting the meal at your house tomorrow, it’s possibly too late to incorporate Wilson’s advice for this year, but come...
Portales' Terri Doerr was watching television on her computer a couple of weeks ago - "mainly ignoring the commercials," she said - when a voice came on that she'd not heard in person for almost two decades. It was her father, Jimmy Self, singing a fragment of a song he wrote and recorded at the Norman Petty Studios in Clovis back in the 1950s. "You're everything I'll ever need to make my dreams come true," Doerr heard her father singing. "You're my recipe for happiness ......
Perhaps in honor of Thanksgiving month — or maybe we are just lucky — this weekend has an overflowing cornucopia of good causes and good music in store for us. I’ll be spending many hours at the Portales Public Library as I do each November when we throw open the doors to the Friends of the Library used book storeroom and practically give books away. Seriously: 25 cent paperbacks and 50 cent hardbacks. That annual sale that supports library activities opens at 5 p.m. Thurs...
When you put Portales old-timers Joe Blair and Jim Warnica together in the same room, it doesn't take long for the stories to start flying. The two have been buddies since "first or second grade," they say. They can't remember for certain. Blair turned 94 a few weeks ago; Warnica was 93 in July. They have hunted arrowheads and sandhill cranes together, consumed endless cups of coffee, and visited almost daily in places like the post office and the hardware store. They even...
When the leaves turn brown and gold and the north wind sends them skittering along the road, I find myself growing nostalgic. It happens every October. One of my earliest memories is from a Halloween, way back in 1964. I wasn’t quite yet 3 that year; my older brother had just turned 4, and my younger brother was an 18-month-old toddler. Our grandfather, Asa Lee Williamson, had been in what we called the Lehman hospital in Portales for a while already by then, his long life g...
If one happened to be in the United States for a conference in Florida - an 8,000-mile journey from one's home in New Zealand, why on earth would one not consider a quick side trip to Portales? Happily, our friend Mandy Welch did just that last weekend, making a quick return visit to the community where she spent a year of her life as an international Rotary exchange student almost 40 years ago. "I've still got my Ram band jacket - I wore it for years," she reminisced,...
If you consider yourself a foodie, you’re in luck this weekend in eastern New Mexico. Things are shaping up to be the culinary equivalent of a perfect storm. Without devoting an inordinate amount of time to research, I’d be willing to gamble that we High Plains denizens may have more opportunities to indulge in a greater variety of specialty foods this weekend than possibly any time in history. (I may be exaggerating, but stick with me.) During the 48 hours that begin at 5 p.m...
Roosevelt County's Gayle Walker is an artist - and a good one - but I think you'd have to call her a local historian as well. Most years for nearly a decade now, she selects one of the small rural communities that dot our county, and puts in hours of research on its history, including interviews with current and former residents. Then she retreats into the well house-turned-studio that sits behind her family's farmhouse near Arch and transforms her findings into an oil...
You would have to look long and hard to find a nicer person in eastern New Mexico than Bill Parson. Even if you don't know his name, chances are you've seen him. Parson was a long-time "cart pusher" at the Portales Walmart and now works in maintenance there. He's also an active Special Olympian, where at the age of 61 he regularly out-bowls and outruns athletes a fourth his age. And he spends at least an hour each day on bicycle, pedaling the streets of Portales, a tall...
As Eastern New Mexico University celebrates its homecoming this weekend, it seems fitting to look back to the first one that was held 85 years ago — on Oct. 6, 1934. That first gathering didn’t include alumni. There weren’t any yet. Eastern New Mexico Junior College had only opened for business a few months earlier. The 17 students in the first graduating class wouldn’t receive diplomas until the following spring. But the day-long event on the first Saturday of long-ag...
On the third Saturday of almost every month for the past five years, volunteers have filled the fellowship hall at Central Christian Church in Portales to assist in an impressive community food distribution program called The Emergency Food Assistance Program, or TEFAP. That will happen again beginning at 8 a.m. Saturday at the church at 1528 S. Main. But after that Saturday distribution, TEFAP will be a program without a home in Portales. Organizers are on the hunt for a new...
Clovis second-grade teacher Regina Griego may have the best excuse ever to explain why she's late for school this year. Yes, this year. While her students reported for the new semester on Aug. 12, Griego had a big project she had to finish first. It involved saving a couple of lives. Regina and her husband, Gerald, are both Clovis natives. She teaches at Zia Elementary School, and he's the chief executive officer for the family construction firm, Nick Griego & Sons. They have...
My Uncle Jack Williamson called himself a “desperate optimist.” I always liked that term, that desire to keep a positive outlook even in grim circumstances. The older I get, the more I relate. Especially on weeks like this. I write these columns a couple of days before they’re published each Wednesday. As I am at the keyboard committing these words to paper, the communities of Odessa and Midland are mopping up crime scenes and starting to piece together lives that were shatt...
Seventy-five years ago, Bill Vinzant — better known as Billy Glen in those days — was a 10-year-old boy living in Portales, the son of the long-time county extension agent W.G. Vinzant. It was 1944, World War II dominated the headlines, and it was the third consecutive fall without a Roosevelt County Fair, thanks to the ongoing austerity of war. It was also the year that the fairgrounds — which looked a lot different back then — became the temporary home for about 200 German...
Albert Flinn's official job title is head rodeo coach for Eastern New Mexico University. This summer, he's also been a trail boss and herd wrangler, searching out "strays" for the upcoming reunion of the school's competitive rodeo teams from 1967 to 1969. Eastern's 2019 College Daze Rodeo, scheduled Sept. 19-21 in Portales, will serve as the roundup corral for the ENMU Rodeo Reunion, with special recognition in store for the members of the 1969 men's national rodeo...
As I was savoring the heady aroma of raindrops sinking into parched earth during an unexpected rain shower earlier this week, it occurred to me that some of the best scents of the year happen in August: ripening gardens, roasting chiles, back-to-school supplies, fairs. My friends who are better at working the earth than I am have mature tomatoes growing on lush and aromatic green vines right now. It’s almost worth buying plants at a nursery in the spring only for the scent o...
I was at a concert outside the Lea County Museum in Lovington last week, enjoying a balmy evening and some good tunes. As the sun set and the evening thankfully began to cool off, multi-colored neon lights started to wink on a few blocks to our east. Although I was puzzled at first, it soon became clear they were the tops of carnival rides, setting up in preparation for the opening of the region’s first county fair this year. If you’re the kind of person who keeps score (an...
I was visiting with a new acquaintance last weekend in her lovely home in Portales. During the afternoon, as we sipped ice water and munched on cookies she’d baked earlier in the day, she twice used a word that rarely makes it into conversations any more. In fact, I can’t think of the last time I’ve heard anyone use it. It’s not a challenging or unusual word. It’s not even hard to spell. It was this: Content. I’m talking about the one with the accent on the second syllable; t...
If you ever go looking for James Golden, here’s a tip: He’s probably somewhere within arm’s reach of a piano. He has spent most of his waking hours at keyboards in Portales and Clovis for well over 20 years, accompanying school choirs, collaborating with singers of all ages, performing hymns for churches, providing music for weddings and funerals. What makes that run even more remarkable is that Golden is still a few months shy of his 30th birthday. You see, he started his f...
Amy Corbin, the newly inducted president of the Rotary Club of Clovis, claims that any effort she's ever made at creating artwork has been, well, "disastrous." So why does she have more than 150 works of art currently stacked in her office at Community Healthcare in Clovis? For the best possible cause. Corbin and her fellow Rotarians are hosting a months-long area-wide project called "Painting a Better Story." It's a creative (in every sense of the word) fundraiser that she...
