Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Sorted by date Results 276 - 300 of 399
Just prior to the beginning of Clovis Army Air Field in 1942, that air field was the Clovis Municipal Airport. In 1941-42, Clovis High School classes were conducted in the old hangar at the air field. Ramon P. Vargas learned to be an aircraft mechanic there. “There were instructors from Albuquerque,” said Vargas. “One other instructor was Carl Miller, who later taught machine shop at the high school in Clovis. “The main part of the old 1929 hangar was used for the classroom. The first plane they used to work on was a Piper C...
Just prior to the beginning of Clovis Army Air Field in 1942, that air field was the Clovis Municipal Airport. In 1941-42, Clovis High School classes were conducted in the old hangar at the air field. Ramon P. Vargas learned to be an aircraft mechanic there. “There were instructors from Albuquerque,” said Vargas. “One other instructor was Carl Miller, who later taught machine shop at the high school in Clovis. “The main part of the old 1929 hangar was used for the classroom. The first plane they used to work on was a Piper C...
Several times in the past couple of years I have been asked about the history of the Clovis Municipal Airport on East 21st Street. I didn’t have any history of this airport. And when I started researching, I ran into a brick wall, so to speak. It seemed all the people involved in the creation of CMA (Clovis Municipal Airport) have died. I finally talked four Clovis men into helping me, a couple of them old-timers and pilots that flew out of CMA. They came up with some information that was useful, but I still didn’t have a d... Full story
Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part column on the Asimos family, which came to Clovis from Greece. Also, last week’s column incorrectly reported that Italian soldiers were invited into the Asimos home during World War II. Family members said the soldiers were German and they were not invited. After arriving in the United States in 1945 from Greece by ship via Italy, France and Egypt, Tom Asimos’ wife and children headed for Clovis. First, Tom stopped in Dallas where two uncles entertained them all for two weeks an... Full story
We’ve had at least three prominent Greek families in Clovis for the last 60-70 years — the Rallis, Augustino and Asimos families. They were all in the restaurant business. Many of us may not have understood their language, but we understood their good food. This is the how the Asimos family lived through World War II in Nazi-occupied Greece, and how they managed to get to Clovis, according to family accounts. Tom Asimos’ father died in 1904, leaving the family penniless. An uncle in America heard of the death so he offer... Full story
Burl “Booger” Mullins, father of Mennell Mullins of Clovis, was a trainer of horses. He taught them to do tricks that included jumping over cars. Back around 1934, Booger appeared as an American Indian on his horse in Tucumcari, and was photographed by Gene Autry’s film crew, as an “End of the Trail” photo. “End of the Trail” depicted, in a sense, the last of the noble American Indians. Later, the photo was enlarged and made into a painting. The painting hung in the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City until Autry built a...
The community of Ricardo, now lost to just memory, was 13 miles southwest of Fort Sumner. The Santa Fe Railroad put in a depot and a water station there when the Belen Cutoff was built. By 1908, a small town had sprung up and many wannabe settlers came to find their Utopia. (My Dad homestead 10 miles south of Ricardo in 1921.) Since 1956, nothing remains of Ricardo, except the cemetery. In February of this year, a request came to Clovis’ historical society from Timothy Lakin in New York. He asked about a relative being g...
John Matthews’ life suddenly changed in 1984 when suffered his first serious stroke. Then 55, Matthews had been a full-time youth and music minister. Bu the major impact of his stroke was visual impairment. “After that stroke I couldn’t lead music, couldn’t drive; so I started looking around for what I could do,” Matthews said. “It all started with an article in a 1985 Fortune magazine. It said the best bet to invest in would be a Mexican fast-food chain because the popularity of Mexican food was crossing the Mississippi...
The first thing I read every Sunday morning are the color comics. I bypass the bad news on the front page and go to my favorite comic strip, Blondie and Dagwood. I want a laugh. Long ago, they said the funnies were responsible for selling a lot of newspapers. But in these days, it’s killings, tragedies, wars, child molestations and celebrities that have gone to pot that sell papers. My opinion. Blondie and Dagwood is the oldest continuous cartoon strip, an American tradition, having been created in 1930. But you wouldn’t bel...
If you tuned into KMUL radio in Muleshoe 25 to 45 years ago, you’d be certain to hear the “Muletrain News” six days a week. You’d hear the gravel-voice, gray-haired station manager Gil Lamb energetically begin his praises of Muleshoe country. Lamb would declare Muleshoe to be a good place to raise one’s children, with more churches than service stations, located only 18 miles from Earth and 29 miles from Bula Land. Here is Lamb’s story, with a lot of input from his daughter, Magann Rennels: Gil Lamb was a shoulder to... Full story
O n Nov. 18, 1987, Santa Fe Railroad spokesman Richard Hall announced the division offices in Clovis and La Junta, Colo., would shut down and consolidate in Albuquerque during the latter half of 1988. Sure enough, Clovis suffered a closure on June 27, 1989, but we lived through it. After 80 years of continuous train dispatching in Clovis, the railway company closed the division operation center. The dispatching center at the railroad managed railroad traffic along 800 miles of track. It controlled the lines between Clovis...
Five single brothers were the first settlers in what is now Clovis. Alfred Liebelt, the oldest brother of the Liebelt brothers, came from Bunzlau, Germany, to America at the turn of the 20th century and went to San Francisco in 1902. Alfred was sent by a doctor to Las Vegas, N.M., for his health. There he met a man named Tom Staats who convinced him to file on land in eastern New Mexico. Perhaps Staats knew that a railroad was to be built? Alfred filed on a quarter-section of land in 1903. That property is now where the...
The Clovis Army Air Base of 1944 embraced a tract of approximately 2,000 acres of federally-owned land located on the Santa Fe Railroad on Highway 60, some 6 miles west of Clovis, the third largest city in the state of New Mexico. The site was chosen because of its mild, dry, healthful climate and level terrain. This was essential for best results in training crews for large planes. From early 1943 until May 1944, the base was used in training crews for B-24 bombers. In 1944 it was converted into a B-29 bomber field. The B-24...
On the windy afternoon of April 25, 1942, at Camp William C. Reid on the south edge of Clovis, the Stars and Stripes were raised during a small but impressive ceremony and the 713th Railway Operation Battalion was born. The U.S. Army, realizing the major role rail transportation was to play in World War II, decided to organize and train units for this purpose. The mission was to create a dependable rail transportation for troops, supplies and equipment in the battle zones of North Africa, Italy, France and Germany. The...
Editors, as a whole, are usually decent, hard-working and totally dedicated to their task. Editors of small town newspapers in the old days, not too unlike their counterparts today, often found it difficult to please everybody. On April 23, 1909, in the first issue of Clovis’ first daily newspaper, “The Pony Post,” editor H. A. Armstrong summed it up neatly this way: “The pathway of the small town editor is not gorgeously bestrewn with pansies, mignonettes and violets — not noticeably — but is much beset with many variet...
UFO SIGHTINGS FOLLOWED SPUTNIK IN 1957 The UFO sightings around Clovis and other places in 1957 were probably touched off by the Russians’ first satellite, Sputnik, which was launched into space in October of that year. Odis Echols Jr., of Clovis, was in a car with his wife and his parents. Odis “Pop” Echols was driving south of Prince Street and was about to turn off on East Seventh to head for the Country Club for dinner. This was Saturday evening, Nov. 2, 1957. Odis Jr. looked out a side window in the back seat and saw a...
Here’s how the Chamber of Commerce announced plans for the 50th birthday celebration of Clovis: “Three nights and two days will be jam-packed with action for the thousands of visitors and old-timers expected to throng the streets of Clovis, June 6, 7, 8, 1957.” This is how the action stacked up: June 3 — June Dairy Month Banquet. Selection of Anniversary Queen. June 6 —First Rodeo Performance. June 7 — Civil Air Patrol fly-in breakfast; arrival of Cyrus K. Holliday Engine with Santa Fe Railroad officials; parade; luncheon; v...
Clovis and Curry County had a great year in 1949. Here are some of the things that happened: • On April 25, 1949, a groundbreaking took place at 12th and Main for the new St. James Episcopal Church, built in the Spanish adobe style. It’s still the most attractive church in Clovis. • In a gala ribbon-cutting ceremony, the Texico highway between Clovis and Texico became the first four-lane highway in this area. The nine-mile stretch was named for Gov. Thomas J. Mabry. This was on April 27, 1949. Gov. Mabry started one of the f...
I recently received an exciting letter from rancher Juanita Wallis at Quay. “I received a phone call from Bud Hefley on a ranch west of Tucumcari,” she wrote. “He was on Cloud 9. He heard of a woman in Texas who could witch for ( sense) unmarked graves.” A person who can “witch” for something is a person who can sense it without seeing it. “You guessed it!” Juanita continued. “Bud tried witching for unmarked graves in the old Hanley Cemetery. He found many unmarked graves.” Bud Hefley heard about Marjorie Lee Burnett’s myste...
The Artrain came through Clovis in 1973. The Santa Fe and other railroads provided the six-car traveling exhibit at no charge. It carried a cargo of “old masters,” contemporary and western art on loan from various institutes and galleries valued at more than $1 million. The project started when the Michigan Council for the Arts prepared a train with paintings and other art objects to tour the state in 1971. In 1973, the Southwestern United States saw the tour go through Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nev...
Paul Crume was a columnist for The Dallas Morning News. He came from Farwell, yet wrote many columns saying he grew up at Lariat, a skip and a hop east of Farwell. Crume’s daily morning column, “Big D” received front-page space. He was born in 1912 and died in 1975. Here’s one of his columns: “Yes, W. W. Vinyard was the Santa Fe agent at Farwell and Texico and when he said something, people listened. Had the habit of knowing what he was talking about. He even knew who broke the top of his roll-top desk while wrestling with an...
This story began early in 1942 when the Army began making plans to pepper the United States with internment camps for prisoners of war. The Army decided to make a camp near Hereford for the purpose of housing captured Italian soldiers. Most of the Italians were captured in North Africa late in 1942. The first to arrive at the Deaf Smith county camp came by train in early April 1943 at Summerfield and were marched 8 miles to the camp. The camp that was to be their home for the duration of the war covered 800 acres of land 6... Full story
Tom Pendergrass moved with his family from Texico to Clovis in 1907 when he was 7. He remembered all the excitement of those early days, especially the fires. This is his story about what he called the “big fire” in 1909: “Clovis’ first major fire occurred on April 29, 1909. That’s what my dad said. A lot of fires had happened since 1907 in the 100 block of Main, caused mostly by youngsters playing with matches between the wooden buildings. “The fire started at 3:30 in the morning and nobody could say what started it.... Full story
Don McAlavy: CNJ columnist “Desperate” and “Discouraged” she wrote in a Feb. 2, 1951, letter to Thomas H. Uzzell, an author who had written “The Technique of the Novel.” “Dear Mr. Uzzell ... One summer years ago I was a student at New Mexico A&M College. Mr. W. Earl Beem, head of the English department, urged me to write. Finally, about five years ago, without benefit of formal instruction, expert advice, or even more than a scant knowledge of grammar, I started to work. My first novel came straight from the family album; it... Full story
Don McAlavy: CNJ columnist Tom Jernigan began his professional career in Portales when he was elected sheriff of Roosevelt County in 1929. Those were the wild days of prohibition. There were quite a few shoot-outs and drunks being rounded up in the enforcing of the prohibition. You young whippersnappers don’t recall prohibition, but that was a deal where the federal government outlawed liquor from 1919 to 1933 in the United States. It was a silly attempt to make better citizens out of us grown people. Some of those grown p...
