Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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On this date … 2006: Newspaper columnist Bob Huber of Portales wrote about his love for a Model-A Ford he’d purchased when he was a young man. “My longing for (the vehicle) ranked up there with a gnawing appetite for winsome ladies. I figured I’d have access to the latter, if I could just drive the former,” he wrote. He paid $100 for the car, found a mouse nest under the seat and paid no attention until one night on a double date when a girl in the rumble seat began screaming. “A mou-mou-mouse ran up my leg!” she cried. Huber...
On this date … 2006: Newspaper columnist Bob Huber of Portales wrote about his love for a Model-A Ford he’d purchased when he was a young man. “My longing for (the vehicle) ranked up there with a gnawing appetite for winsome ladies. I figured I’d have access to the latter, if I could just drive the former,” he wrote. He paid $100 for the car, found a mouse nest under the seat and paid no attention until one night on a double date when a girl in the rumble seat began screaming....
Jay Miller is a quitter. After just 26 years and 7,200 columns, he’s tacked a “Gone Fishing” sign on his Inside the Capitol column. Jock dads put a little football in their sons’ cribs. Jay’s daddy must have left a tiny typewriter. The column has been a New Mexico institution since the 1940s and, as reported by Jay in his farewell, it was written in turn by Charlie Cullen, Fred Buckles, Bob Huber, Carroll Cagle and Fred McCaffrey. Taking over in 1987, Jay had the longest run of all. Jay’s departure is not a good omen for th...
I asked Facebook friends for stories about the best cats they’ve ever owned. Pep’s Betty Williamson offered the tale of “Fizz Bomb,” named after a “Western Horseman” cartoon character: “Fizz ruled our roost for many years and is remembered for fishing from our aquarium and hitchhiking between our house and our corral,” Williamson wrote. “She’d sit by the side of the road waiting for one of us to drive by. When we opened the door, she’d hop in and then she’d hop back out when she got where she wanted to go.” More favorite c...
It took Portales Municipal School officials a year of fine-tuning their plans, but once the right plan was presented to Portales voters overwhelmingly approved a school bond to build a new elementary school. In higher education, Eastern New Mexico University celebrated solid enrollment and a new facility as the fall semester began. In September, voters voiced their approval for replacing two schools, Lindsey and Steiner elementaries, which are more than 70 years old, with one new school by approving $9.5 million in bonds in...
A daily look at top news stories in August reported in the Clovis New Journal: Aug. 1: A 79-year-old Clovis man had posted a handmade sign in his yard on Calhoun Street, urging drivers to slow down and watch out for children. “I care for these kids and I’m afraid somebody’s going to get run over,” Marcus Urban said. Aug. 2: Clovis Fire Chief Ray Westerman introduced a plan to hike firefighters’ pay and benefits by $272,000 without additional funding. He proposed leaving six budgeted positions unfilled and using that mone...
Five or six dozen friends and family members gathered in Roswell last week to remember Bob Huber, a journalist and longtime columnist for the Portales News-Tribune and Clovis News Journal. Huber died Aug. 3 at age 76. His columns often consisted of lists that ranged from his favorite socially accepted words and phrases — “He wasn’t falling down drunk. He was ‘periodically horizontal.’” — to humorous billboard slogans — “Don’t lose your head to gain a minute. You need your head; your brains are in it.” In tribute to her fri...
He liked a laugh and a good cigar. He enjoyed plenty of both. Robert “Bob” E. Huber, journalist, freelance writer and newspaper columnist, died early Friday morning at his home in Portales. He was best known in Portales and Clovis for his weekly humor column that ran in the Portales News-Tribune and Clovis News Journal. He was 76. “I’ll miss him, I’ll miss his laugh,” said his daughter Holly Huber of Roswell. “He was a true practical joker. He loved to make people laugh.” While he liked to make people laugh, he had no probl...
Whenever I write about the wonder of school children and their test papers, I get enough fodder for another column from teachers who save them. Some, of course, are a little too shady to appear in a family newspaper, and so I sell them on the black market. Here are the latest witty comments gleaned from science tests. Sit back, put your feet up, and enjoy the half-vast intelligence of these children. Keep in mind, they will be running the world 30 years from now. • Question: Name the four seasons. Answer: Salt, pepper, mustar...
A recent trip to our local hospital stimulated my memory banks and brought forth an experience I had with modern medicine a dozen years ago. That memory is entitled, “The Case of the Missing Funny Bone” or “Does an Asafetida Bag Really Help?” I’d heard horror stories about parts gone astray during hospital surgery, and I was convinced my funny bone had fallen prey. Lying in my hospital bed, nothing seemed funny anymore. Still, I was curious about my condition, so I one day asked my doctor what those little tubes running o...
Folks in these parts aren’t real familiar with deep snow, toboggans and holiday omelets, and that’s probably a good thing. But I’m recalling the now famous Great Toboggan and Omelet Debacle of 1945, an unparalleled event in the annals of winter sports, although it was heralded by some as the high water mark of cretindom. It began when my friend Smooth Heine, who was already legendary for killing a militant skunk with his sister’s clarinet, came across an old toboggan in his father’s barn. Snow that night had fallen on the Co...
Now and then I dig into my stale-notes vault seeking something unusual to write about. This year I plucked a familiar poem especially for victims of Post Christmas Blues Syndrome. It’s titled “’Twas a week after Christmas, with apologies to Clement C. Moore.” It goes like this: (Warning! Prepare to shed a tear. When I take off on sentimental stuff, it gets damp around here. I’ve even been known to make sports writers weep.) ’Twas a week after Christmas and all through the house Every creature was hurting, even the mouse....
Christmas Eve always reminds me of the old bromide, “Bizarre conditions are easier to get into than out of.” Which somehow explains why I’m too old to play with toys, but I’m just not willing to give it up and go through a painful withdrawal. You see, foraging through toy sections in department stores on Christmas Eve has always been a great delight for me. I dress up in tie and hat so the clerks will think I’m a promising customer, a man of expansive income who tolerates the extravagant tastes of his grandkids. So I wander...
This time of year I’m always reminded of a Christmas season my wife, Marilyn, dragged me to a holiday concert. In fact, it almost erases a previous Christmas memory — the time my wife and I were caught with other travelers in a Wyoming blizzard and spent the night in a Rock Springs bawdy house. But that’s another story. The Christmas concert I’m talking about was free, and even though I warned Marilyn about the pitfalls associated with free lunches, she lugged me there along with our small grandkids. She said it would d...
Before sunup each day, an east-west train rumbles through town while everyone sleeps. The engineer pulls a rhythmic whistle cord on the east side of town, and he doesn’t stop until he breaks out on the west side. By the time the last car chugs by the canning factory, everyone in town is awake, ready to face another day. But they don’t know what woke them up. They’re unaware that they’ve been roused by train whistles. Whenever I’ve mentioned this unique citywide alarm clock, I’m not believed. No one heard any train whistles. T...
Whenever the yuletide season rears its evil head, I’m always reminded of my world-class journalistic enterprises. In fact, I get all teary eyed and go looking for Kleenex tissues with wintry scenes printed on them. Back in olden times I reported for the Denver Post, and my city editor, a weary cynic named Snyder, said through his hangover, “Huber, go find a heart-rending Christmas story.” “What a unique notion, boss,” I said. “How do you come up with these ideas?” “But just remember to include the eight golden items of...
I recently entered into deep debate with my dog, Cody — short for Co-dependent — concerning the relative differences between man and canine. It was Cody’s contention that dogs were intellectually superior to men. I know it’s ridiculous, but Cody is, after all, just a dog. His proof was that a man provided food, shelter and a comfortable place to sleep, and all a dog had to do was eat, sleep, stay healthy and bark at strangers. It helps if the dog occasionally wags his tail, cocks his head, and puts on an expression that sa...
I once asked a gubernatorial candidate to give me one word that would describe why he put himself on the awful election campaign trail, and after a moment, he looked at me and said, “Ego.” So now that all the election rhetoric is over and the winners are happily getting muscle cramps while patting themselves on their backs, and the losers are vowing revenge on those who voted against them, I’m transported to happier political times, days when affairs of state were not so polarized and lots more fun. Ah, those were the days....
I was still in high-top shoes when my Uncle Claude, a luckless man, tried to cash in a one-way ticket to eternity. He tried to commit suicide. It was in the autumn years of the Great Depression, and Uncle Claude’s luck fit the economic catastrophe. He was thousands of dollars in debt, he drank too much and his wife, Beulah, was pregnant. There seemed no way he could avoid life’s bottomless pit. That’s why he sought a means for his family to collect double indemnity on his life insurance. But Uncle Claude faced a quand...
I’m convinced that influenza is the curse of great men. It was undoubtedly the root cause of Napoleon’s Waterloo, Noah Webster’s misspellings and Custer’s — well, the Little Big Horn was no place to sneeze, because Sioux Indians in those days could hear an antelope sniffle five miles away. Anyway, a flu bug recently bit me. It had been lurking in a dark shadow in my office like a cobweb you can’t spot until it drops from the ceiling on guests for dinner. By noon I was exhausted. By nightfall I contemplated suicide. By...
First they shut down daylight-saving time. Two days later they celebrate Halloween. Is that a conspiracy or what? The mystery is, who’s behind it? Here at the Academy for Thorny Plots I’ve researched that question, coming quickly to the conclusion that in both cases I need a government grant for more research. But I’ve made progress in one area—the conspiracy lies within the medical profession. (You can’t blame lawyers for everything. In fact, 99 percent of the lawyers give the rest a bad name.) Here’s how the conspiracy...
With the thrill of elections just around the corner, it’s time to play “Who Said It?” which is a test of how smart you are about government and who said what about it. The game reveals whether or not you can cast your ballot without asking your wife’s opinion. All you have to do is write down the name of the author of each quotation listed below, and then check your answers with the names at the bottom of the page. If you guess all the names correctly, you will be awarded a hive of Africanized bees to ward off last-mi...
If you’re looking for answers that have eluded mankind for a dozen millennia, find a bunch of kids. They have all the answers. I received a real-life list of these answers recently from my niece Whitney, a soon-to-be college graduate. (No gifts please; send money!) Here they are: How do you decide who to marry? •“You got to find somebody who likes the same stuff you do. Like, if you like sports, she should like it that you like sports, and she should keep the chips and dip coming.” (Alan, 10) •“No person really decides bef...
Now that summer’s over, we can all give thanks for seasonal changes. In other words, no more steaming days, sweltering nights, grass clippings and asparagus sprouts. The asparagus liturgy at our house began one day years ago when my wife, Marilyn, came home with a sack of roots. She’d paid $6 for that sack and had an expression on her face similar to the boy who traded his mother’s cow for a bag of beans. Then without a thought for the future or giants lying in wait in the clouds she dragged me around the place to dig small...
(Editor’s Note: WARNING—The following column may produce symptoms of depression and queasy stomachs and should not be taken lightly by people over the age of 60. Old news reporters are also advised to avoid alcohol after consuming.) There is definitely too much time slipping through our fingers these days — you’d think Mr. Bush would do something about it — and if you don’t believe it, ask loyal readers Pat and Ed Watson of Portales who sent me a list of lady celebrities and their ages. In a side note Pat asked: “How’s this f...
