Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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After World War I, the Clovis Baptists launched a drive to build a hospital for Clovis. The drive to finance it started in 1919, and by Oct. 7, 1920, the Baptist Hospital at 515 North Prince St. was built. It was the only hospital in eastern New Mexico at that time. The 23-bed hospital cost $35,000 to build, with the sponsor being First Baptist Church at Grand Avenue and Gidding Street. With First Baptist in debt, the New Mexico Baptists took over the hospital on Oct. 31, 1924. For 19 years the hospital carried on, even...
Editor’s note: This installment concludes the story of Otis Kelley, 98, who was 16 and a member of the Clovis Schools All-Band in 1924. He wrote the following in response to a column published Nov. 5, 2006, about the band. It has been edited for clarity and style. I went to Clovis for the sixth grade at Eugene Field School, Sixth and Axtell, living with my uncle and aunt. My parents bought a lot at 1217 Mitchell, and Dad built a house and it was our home until the death of my parents. At that time the seventh and eighth grade... Full story
Editor’s note: This is the first part of a two-part column. The second part will be published Jan. 14. Back on Sunday, Nov. 5, I wrote a column about the 1924 Clovis Schools All-Band, made up of elementary, junior and senior students, and listed some of the students in a photo of this band conducted by Verdi Croft on the front steps of CHS. I was writing about Selecta “Midget” Cumpton, the band’s mascot. One of the students was 16-year-old Otis Kelley. That same day my column was published Kelley sent me an e-mail from Al...
Back in 1978 Christene Hardisty, Extension home economist for Curry County, shared a bit of folklore on black-eyed peas. I am deep into eating black-eyed peas and always ate some for sure on Jan. 1. It is a law that one does that in my family, as my mother was born and raised in Alabama. According to Christene, for more than a century, Southerners have observed the tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day for good luck. Here is her account. “My folks, being Southerners,” she said, “left the impression with me...
Santa Fe Railway mechanical department workers numbering about 120 mass together on a steam locomotive in the Clovis railroad yards on April 8, 1926. Photo courtesy of the High Plains Historical Foundation. The brashness of the railroad in choosing a site on the bald prairie for a new town and division point sent shock waves through the four neighboring towns. They have never really recovered from the slight. Each felt itself the best qualified. Texico (founded in 1902-03, and the first town in present Curry County), Melrose...
This is a story about a little girl who wanted only a dollhouse for Christmas. The time was 1905. The place was between Clovis and Fort Sumner. The 6-year-old girl was named Anna but called Annie by her mother and father, Tom and Etta Brown. She was the only child of this middle-aged couple. Tom was a carpenter. Annie didn’t know nor could she appreciate the difficulties of pioneering in eastern New Mexico that most families experienced. Families spent what little money they had on necessities, not luxuries. Annie only k... Full story
Jim Craven, a friend of mine in Clovis, went to teach 42 to passengers on a cruise ship a while back, hired by the ship’s captain. Craven put in nearly 11 hours teaching that week and what a job it was, he said. The history of the game 42 began in 1887 in the tiny Texas community of Trappe Spring (now Garner), about 45 miles west of Fort Worth. Two young Trappe Spring boys, 12-year-old William Thomas and 14-year-old Walter Earl, really liked to play cards. They found the game of dominoes (legal amongst the Baptists) b... Full story
My sister and her daughter told me to write about myself sometime. They live in Texas, so what do they know about New Mexico? But here goes. Whenever I come to a stop sign, 10,000 cars are waiting right down the street to pass by before I can get a chance to get on that street. It never fails to happen. Around Clovis we call it the “Kilmer Law,” something like Murphy’s Law, which says if anything can go wrong it will. My buddy Harold discovered this law while waiting two hours at one place to get onto 21st Street. At the b...
“There was an air of excitement in the group for we had planned a big picnic for several weeks,” said Lucille Matlock. “We departed for a far-off destination, Cottonwood Grove, about 10 miles west of Melrose. We all felt a great adventure was in store for us that day. If we had only known! “Ranchvale school had volunteered their school bus for us to ride in on that beautiful summer morning in July 1935. We were the Ranchvale Extension Club, and our kids went with us. “Cottonwood Grove was an old landmark, and the highway to F...
The story is that G. D. Anderson, president of the Security State Bank in Farwell, back in 1966 had a farmer friend named J. W. Crim who had a brother named Bromo. Unlike the uncultivated yahoos of north Abilene, Texas, the Plains country people do not go around remarking that a man’s name is unusual. He might call them by a more unusual one. Bromo was elsewhere, and Anderson and J.W. Crim had been friends a long time when the banker finally asked the farmer why his brother was named Bromo. “Simple,” said J. W. Crim. “That wa...
Back in 1979 I was asked to write up a history of an old insurance company. This company is not in business anymore, and what follows is not a history of that insurance company but some items that might prove interesting. The newspaper in Portales ran a brief item on May 14, 1929, saying: “T. F. Blackburne has sold his insurance business to Roy Smith of Portales.” The Blackburne insurance company was really in Clovis and the name “Roy Smith” didn’t suit C. Roy Smith. Since there was a Roy R. Smith Cleaners and to avoid any co...
Bob Vivian, back in 1978, gave me a 1924 Clovis High School “All-Band” photo. What appeals to those who see it in the Curry County History book, page 77, at the Clovis library, is Selecta Cumpton, the band’s mascot, whom everyone called Midget. As a child she was so small that the family could only find soft baby shoes to fit her. To save wear on them, her brothers of normal size would carry her the long distance to school in Chicago where she was probably born. She came to Clovis to live with her relatives. Mrs. Charl...
In March 2002 it was claimed that the Curry County Men’s 42 League was the largest such league in the state. If “Forty-Two,” the only exciting dominoes game, ever becomes one of the Olympic games, this county in Eastern New Mexico could supply the U.S. team. One warning: These guys are in good form. They play competitively one night a week all fall and winter, and are always in topnotch shape for their annual spring tournament. The 52nd consecutive annual tournament was Feb. 25, 2002, at the Texico Community Center, and I saw...
Editor’s note: The following was told by Jewel Buttram Ames. We came to the (New Mexico) territory Feb. 20, 1907. I was 5 years old. I think we came to establish a permanent home and to own a piece of God’s good earth. We came from ... Henryetta, Okla. My dad and grandparents shipped to Clovis and drove our wagon drawn by our two big white horses (Old Buger and Joe Dabbs) with all of our worldly possessions in that old Springfield wagon. We spent our first night in a tent pitched in a sand bed in the little village of Mel... Full story
The other day one of my great-grandkids asked me, “Grandpa, tell me a ghost story!” Well, maybe when Halloween rolls around the last day of this month, I might do that. The story I must tell you now would make little kids scream and faint. The Wailing Woman is one of the fascinating, some say frustrating, folk tales of northern New Mexico and maybe now of eastern New Mexico. She sometimes screams as though in agony, at other times weeps forlornly or cries out in anger. Her cry is enough to send little feet flying. Wai... Full story
(Editor’s note: This is part two of a two-part column.) Last week the story was about ranchers in Roosevelt County and how they handled money. It was the same in Curry County a few years later. “The homesteaders (nesters, the ranchers called them) encountered many difficulties,” wrote Gordon Greaves in his “By the Way” column on May 15, 1962. “It was a grim, searing experience for many of them,” said Greaves, “in which they fought hunger and cold, drought and the frustrating absence of markets for their produce. It was... Full story
(Editor’s note: This is part two of a two-part column.) Last week the story was about ranchers in Roosevelt County and how they handled money. It was the same in Curry County a few years later. “The homesteaders (nesters, the ranchers called them) encountered many difficulties,” said Gordon Greaves in his “By the Way” column back on May 15, 1962. “It was a grim, searing experience for many of them,” said Greaves, “in which they fought hunger and cold, drought and the frustrating absence of markets for their produce. It was... Full story
This is part of a story written by Rose White, an unofficial, but unanimously recognized historian of Roosevelt County. She takes us back to the cowboy and nester days. She wrote: “The ranchers who moved into the pre-Portales area found that they and their cowboys were the only settlers nearer than Fort Sumner or Roswell, both of which were little country villages, with small country stores. The nearest big stores were at Colorado City, Texas, at least 150 miles away. “Payment for the goods bought by ranchers was made onl...
Gate City beat Vega, Texas, in basketball at Gate City on July 10, 1938. Gate City? Where in the world is Gate City? Think Conchas Dam. Yes, there is a Gate City and old folks around Tucumcari know where it was. I say was because there is no Gate City any more. When the workers started constructing Conchas Dam most of them started their own small city. Soon it was a thriving place and businesses began to open. There was a laundry, a restaurant, a school, a pool hall, a theater, hospital, grocery store and — believe it or n...
First Lt. Thomas W. Seuffert of Dayton, Ohio, “took extraordinary measures and increasing that hazard to himself in guiding his disabled aircraft from an inhabited farmhouse. “The 25-year-old Korean War veteran was killed at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, June 22, 1954, when he attempted to get his F-86 Sabrejet airborne for a routine training mission,” said Cannon Air Force Base Commander Col. James F. Whisenand. The base runway running diagonally southeast to northwest, with the pilot taking off northwest into the wind, was the r... Full story
I watched the Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the New York Jets 16-3 in an NFL preseason game last month. It reminded me of another great football game: the Clovis Wildcats vs. Roswell Coyotes and one of the century’s greatest Wildcat fullbacks. The Wildcats beat the Coyotes 13-0 at Roswell in 1933. Big Joe Maddox was iron horse of the Wildcats backfield for two seasons and All-Eastern New Mexico fullback of 1933. This 180-pound backfield ace was elected captain of the 1934 Wildcats edition at a banquet given in honor of the 1... Full story
Editor’s note: The following account was told by Chick Taylor Jr. It was at Eugene Field I became interested in music because of our Clovis schools active music program. We had music classes and operettas that were fun and exciting. In the first grade our teacher was Miss Pearman at Eugene Field Grade School. Our principal was Rock Staubus. One of the other boys in my class who was a great singer was Johnny Pickering. We were friends and I liked singing with him. He was much better — he and his family were the gospel sin...
I love to travel over the southwest highways. You can almost see forever on some of the highways. Not too many people today know much about the Abo Highway, now called Highway 60. Soon after the creation of the State Highway Commission in 1912, future U.S. 60 (from the Texas line to Belen) got designated as State Road 19. The state slowly made improvements to the highway, though much of it was still cow trails and section lines. The origin of the Abo Highway is murky. Named after a Pueblo Indian trading route, the highway... Full story
Clovis solicited customers in many ways. One of the best ways to entice customers was to meet the passenger trains that stopped at the Santa Fe Railroad depot where passengers got off, to stretch their legs, get a bite to eat or seek a hotel. Soliciting patrons to a hotel was rather dangerous, as you will see. In 1908 J. D. Lyons and his wife Mary (better known as “Mother Lyons”) operated a two-story hotel, the Lyons Hotel, located in Clovis on Main Street between First and Second streets. The Lyonses had come from ope...
An artist in stone was J. M. H. Dwight. The stones he carved on were tombstones. There is not a lot of history on Dwight, but we do know that he was born Dec. 24, 1851, probably in Oklahoma, and he died in Clovis Sept. 6, 1929, still practicing his artistic and unique technique of carving stone. “Mr. Dwight homesteaded near House, in 1908, and his daughter, Lona May Dwight, arrived a short time later from Oklahoma,” said Edith McWherter, widow of Glen McWherter of House and J. M. H. Dwight’s granddaughter. In late 1970,...
