Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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I have very little history on C. Roy Smith of Clovis. His full name was Charles Roy Smith. For some reason, he is not in our history books, but he had a good keen sense of what to do with $5,600 in 1934. With two employees, without salary, but with a small office in the 100 block of West Fourth Street, he built a building and loan association business into a very successful venture. I am not going into the history of his building and loan business or his abstract or insurance association. Smith was born in Matagorda, Texas....
About 1963 Keith Ingram went to work for KCLV radio station. Bob Gold hired him as a disc jockey. The Echols still owned that station then. But Ingram went over to KICA radio station at 10th and Sycamore in 1966, at age 21 or 22, as a disc jockeys for that station In 1965 Pams Inc. out of Dallas, a jingle company that thought up promotions and gimmicks to aid radio stations, succeeded in talking KICA into their five disc jockeys coming up with a promotion (in this case a song) to promote KICA as well as Clovis. The song...
CNJ staff photo: Tony Bullocks Clovis Parks and Recreation Director Rob Carter points out a marker on the Hillcrest Park archway that explains who built the structure. The Hillcrest Park entry arch has welcomed visitors for nearly 68 years, and it could soon be listed on the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties and the National Register of Historic Places. The state and national registers recognize historic properties worthy of preservation. The state’s Historic Preservation Division has accepted the city of C...
Years ago a book called “Ghost Towns and How to Get to Them” listed eight ghost towns in Curry County. Don’t blame it on the Chamber of Commerce. Curry County had no Hispanic settlements or mining towns. 1. Contara — The word means “pitcher” in Spanish. This so called ghost town was located 30 miles west of Clovis on the Santa Fe Railroad. Only stock pens and a railroad switch and a post office there from 1908 to 1912. No ghost town. 2. Claud — About 12 miles or so north of Clovis. It was named for Claud V....
Back in 1976, I received a letter from J.C. Compton, chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court, who was at that time nearly 90 years old. “Dear Don: I noticed in Curry County Times newspaper that there is a possibility that you may suspend your articles (columns) about early events and persons; for instance, Jack Hull. Those articles make great reading, both to old-timers and newcomers. I hope you keep it up; you tell it so well. Sincerely, J.C. Compton.” I wrote him back and thanked him for his complimentary words and...
Marvin “Big Boy” Martin was born Nov. 8, 1885, in Calloway County, Ky., and because of his father’s ill health (asthma), his family came to New Mexico on Nov. 12, 1906. His father, Richard “Uncle Dick” Martin homesteaded near Blacktower, southeast of Field. “My father built and ran a hotel at Blacktower, but he died in 1911,” Martin said. Martin said he was big and able to hold his own in a fight with Cecil Honea and his brother at Blacktower. “The Honea boys, heavier than me, had been riding their horses into father’s hotel...
The affray was reported to be the termination of a factional neighborhood quarrel resulting from ill feeling over different affairs of several years standing. The shooting occurred just at the close of the evening’s church service at the Moye-Sunrise schoolhouse about 7 miles southwest of Clovis. The evening service of a revival meeting was being conducted by Rev. J.W. Slade, Methodist Circuit Minister of Clovis. As Rev. Lewis, visiting Baptist minister, was pronouncing the benediction, loud quarreling was heard just o...
In May 1977 I received a letter from a man engaged in research on capital punishment in our country. He said he was developing a biographical sketch of each person to have been legally executed in the United States as well as a brief account of the crimes for which each died. “According to records that I have,” he said, “no person sentenced from Curry County has been put to death since the state of New Mexico began executing its condemned felons at the State Prison in 1933. However, prior to then, those sentenced to die w...
In 1902 “Big Mama” Whiteman, a widow, left Clarksville, Texas, and homesteaded southwest of Portales. At this time Levi J. Whiteman was 15 years old, one of four children. A good friend of Levi’s, Gilbert Terry back in Texas, talked Levi into going into the mail-order business. Yes, two 15-year-old kids. “The mail-order business,” said Levi, “would need a lot of printed material, so according to Gilbert’s scheme, I was to do the printing, and he would head the merchandising department. He gave me a catalog of printing equipme...
Bea Alma Peacock died at age 88 on June 6, 2005, at Plains Regional Medical Center. She was born northwest of Clovis, at Hassell, but later raised her family at Ima. In her obituary she listed five of her grandchildren, one of them being Misti McAlevy living with her husband Ronald McAlevy at Broken Bow, Neb. That started my search for Misti and Ronald McAlevy. When I e-mailed the Chamber of Commerce in Broken Bow to located Ronald and Misti McAlevy, the lady said she didn’t know that name. Finally I contacted Alvie and L...
“We came to Clovis in 1945 for health purposes,” said Charles Samuel Stanfield. “Our baby girl, Beth, was born in Houston with asthma. Our pediatrician advised us to take her to a better climate. We took her to Dallas but she continued to have problems breathing. I saw in the Dallas newspaper an advertisement saying the Clovis News Journal needed a sports editor. I immediately called Dick Hindley and got the job on a month’s trial basis.” “We spent a week at the Hotel Clovis and a week at Bert’s Court waiting for our house...
My mother and us three kids came to town (Clovis) from the farm and met Otto Smith in the summer of 1944. She asked Smith if he would be her lawyer in the divorce of her husband. Smith said he would and immediately asked my mother if my brother, 16-year-old Herbert, being a farmhand, would work on his farm during wheat cutting. She told Smith that her son would like to go to work for him! And that’s how we met one of the smartest lawyers in Clovis. Otto Smith was born Oct. 20, 1892, in Clinton, Mo., the son of William T. a...
Scores from Friday night Boys Fort Sumner 74, Clovis Christian 51 Grady 54, Melrose 53 Muleshoe 54, Highland Park 45 Portales 61, Hatch Valley 52 Springlake-Earth 52, Bovina 48 Sudan 60, Farwell 54 Texico 47, Friona 45 Girls Clovis Christian 51, Fort Sumner 49 Melrose 39, Grady 35 Muleshoe 55, Highland Park 51 Springlake-Earth 62, Bovina 43 Texico 41, Friona 28 Sudan 70, Farwell 45 Go to varsity.com on the Web site for more coverage of the Fort Sumner-Clovis Christian doubleheader and previews of Clovis' boys and girls games...
Don Kinzie was a Clovis News Journal paperboy in the early 1950s. On Wednesday, he e-mailed a couple of photos from those days, which we’ll post as a “Photo of the day” in the next week or so. Kinzie lives in Lake Havasu City, Ariz., now. “My father was a railroader and moved the family (from Clovis) to Belen in January of 1953,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I left Belen in 1957 when I joined the Air Force.” Kinzie says he spent 21 years in the Air Force before retiring in 1978. “During the last 60 years I have traveled throug...
Clovis’ Christy Mendoza will be rooting for the New York Giants the remainder of this football season. “I was in New York for their historic win against the Cowboys and got caught up in Giant Fever,” she wrote in an e-mail. “It was a lot of fun and a few fights.” Mac McDonald is cheering for San Diego. “Since one of the backfield coaches for the Chargers (Matt Simon) played four years at Eastern New Mexico University, I think that is the one I would love to see win the Super Bowl,” he wrote. District Attorney Matt Chandler...
One of the first bills New Mexico lawmakers pass each year is the “feed bill,” which allocates funds for the legislative session. This year, they’ve proposed almost $5 million for 30 days. Those fees include $144 per day per lawmaker for expenses. New Mexico legislators are not otherwise paid for their work, but that could soon change. Dana Bowley, executive director of New Mexico Press Association, reports a constitutional amendment has been proposed that would establish salaries for legislators – about $25,400 per year. ...
Clovis’ historian Don McAlavy reports Gayla Brumfield or Gloria Wicker would be the city’s first female mayor if either is elected in March – “as best my memory tells me,” he writes. “If you wait a while,” he adds, “you might discover a woman becoming president of the United States. But being the Republican that I am, I’ll not vote for her.” • • • Want to participate in question-and-answer sessions with the editors? [email protected] us We’ll provide the questions. Your answers will be posted here....
Do you remember the Snazzy Pig? Don McAlavy ate a lot of hamburgers and tried to pick up girls at Clovis’ old restaurant on east First Street. He shares his stories in Sunday’s Clovis News Journal. • • • Dorothy Nelson says Rube Render is her choice for mayor of Clovis. “He’s retired military, also retired from Lockheed Martin, has a master’s degree in human resources, and is just a genuinely nice guy … all qualities which would serve a mayor well,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Rube seems truly interested in community affairs...
When I was going to school in Clovis in the late 1940s, I would often get down to the Snazzy Pig at noon just to eat one of “Pop’s” great hamburgers. The Snazzy Pig was just around the corner from the Clovis Steam Laundry, on east First Street. “Pop” Townsend’s first name was Charles, we learned a long time later when he died Dec. 29, 1984, at age 91. Pop cooked all the hamburgers. He’d put the hamburger buns face down on the greasy flat-iron and would that make them so tasty. I haven’t eaten hamburgers like that since. Sor...
About 13 years ago I was suddenly awakened early one morning by a loud boom, and then another boom, and I thought we were being bombed. At this time I was living on the Pleasant Hill Highway northeast of Clovis and the booms came from the southeast. It sounded like a giant walking across the country. Sometime later I discovered the booms came from Rolland Lusk’s farm just east of Clovis. He had an anti-hail cannon, the first, he said, to be installed in the United States. A hail cannon? Who was he shooting at? Well it s...
In the year of 1903 Tom Brown, a young man of about 22 years, boarded a train for New Mexico’s lonely prairies. Now Tom really did not know just where he was going or what he was going for. He had heard of the wild and woolly west, and something seemed to attract him, so he came. When Tom arrived at Texico, he seemed to think that was far enough west, although it was just inside of New Mexico. Stepping off the train he said to himself: “I must see the roundup grounds (rodeo grounds)”. As he walked along he found in Texic...
Editor’s note: Clovis historian Don McAlavy reports Arthur Curren likely wrote this piece. Its intent was to boost economic interest in Clovis before Christmas 1913. Curren was Clovis’ first newspaper editor. Misspellings were likely intentional. Dear Darlin Mirandy: I kum back to Clovis yesterday an found much of a change in the ol’ burg since you and I wuz here. This hear is bein writ on this dey, Dec. 12, 1913. hop yew get it by Xmus. Everybody seems rite peert and industrus and redy few Xmus. Now deer darling sugar plum,...
As told to Don McAlavy by Steven Brian of Colorado: “I read your column ‘Clovis man spent majority of life in grocery business’ with great pleasure. I am one of the proud graduates of ‘Hubby Tech’ as Less jokingly referred to his store. Anyway, I wanted to write you also because of what your article left unsaid. I know you can only cover so much in a small article, however, my thoughts center on something that I can’t let be overlooked. Not only did Less spend the majority of his life in the grocery business in Clovis, but...
Harold Kilmer is well known in Clovis, not only for the music he makes in several bands with his fiddle, but also for the history and genealogy work he has taken on, plus his work to establish the only historical society in Curry County, the High Plains Historical Foundation, in 1972. The New Mexico Genealogy Web Project which Kilmer will become head of starting Jan. 1, was formed 10 years ago. The goal of the NMGenWeb site is to provide free genealogy information for researchers for New Mexico. Kilmer is the fifth state...
John Edward Homan came to Clovis in 1910. For 12 years he was a horse dentist who had his office in the Beck and Bells Wagon Yard at Second and Mitchell streets. The wagon yard was on the northwest corner. His family included his wife Myrtle and 10 children, five of them born in Clovis: Buford, Vivian, Lilburn, Pat, and Mary Alice. Dr. Homan developed a large and highly successful practice and his services were sought after by ranchers and cattlemen from a wide area surrounding Clovis. Then he loaded up his family and moved...
