Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Don McAlavy: CNJ columnist This is a story a local actor named Fred told me. “It started as fun at Edd’s Bar north of Clovis. Playing pool, having a few beers, with three of my friends from the Caprock Amphitheater after a hard day of rehearsal. I was a young man then, not quite of the legal drinking age. My name is Fred, the horse wrangler and an actor. Rudy, the choreographer, was about 50. Also with us was Scott, the audio director and Valerie, a dang good fiddle player and dancer. The four of us spent a lot of time playin...
Don McAlavy: CNJ columnist T his is briefly how Joseph C. Thomas, a ranch boy, from Norton in Quay Valley, some 25 miles southeast of Tucumcari, came to be in Clovis. Isom H. Thomas and three of his sons, sometime between 1912 and 1913, came from Roger Mills County in Oklahoma to homestead in New Mexico. Isom was Joe’s great-grandfather. Homesteading in Artesia didn’t work out, so back to Oklahoma they went. By 1914 two of the sons, George and Joe, now with wives, came back and the wives filed on land on Plaza Largo Cre...
The late Herman Samson “Don” Boles was one of the more gregarious characters in Clovis from 1945 through 1952. His antics on KICA radio station with R. B. “Mac” McAlister were legendary. Born Jan. 11, 1910, in Wellington, Texas, Boles and his parents moved to Amarillo in 1916. His dad had a grocery store and Boles worked there as he grew up. He graduated from Amarillo High School in 1928. In his senior year he was student-body president. In 1944 went he fell hard in love with Jewell Pond, who worked at John Halsey Drug store...
Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a two-part series. The first part was published in last Sunday’s Lifestyles section. We were about to land, and were low on fuel. We had taken the ‘wind blows’ route while the chase crew (our rescue crew) had to stay on the roads. It was time to land and it would be a leap of faith. “Another thing that I had not considered and took note of while in flight was that I had expected to feel the wind and a breeze. It was a bit of an epiphany for me to realize, we were the wind! It was th...
Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series. The second part will be published in next Sunday’s Lifestyles section. Clovis is not the best place to have a hot air balloon fiesta, but that is just what Clovis did from 1980 through 1986. You never know what the wind will do. This exciting event was called Clovis Pioneer Days Balloon Fiesta. The first one was from June 5-7 in 1980. This is the story told by our daughter, Kim McAlavy Siewert, in a thrilling balloon ride at this event in 1982. “I was involved in the A... Full story
This story was told to me by a friend who died many years ago. I’ll tell it through the eyes of the young girl who was from the caprock area between Clovis and Tucumcari. In 1896, a snowstorm hit us three days before Christmas, with drifts 2- to 3-feet deep in the canyon. There were just three of us — my mama, and my big sister almost grown — in a lonely little adobe and rock house below the caprock. We had wanted to go to the Taylors at the Horseshoe Ranch. I cried, feeling so disappointed. Mama’s husband was off working...
Most old-timers and historians know about Arthur Curren being the father of Clovis newspapers in 1907. Not many know that Arthur’s father, James Edward Curren, established 15 newspapers in the territory of New Mexico, as well as others in Colorado and Texas. Jim Curren was a man of quick wit, capable of vituperation and sarcasm as well as writing clever advertising and news articles. He was a stickler for honest conduct and could tear the lid off chicanery and hypocrisy. In 1881, he closed his Alpine, Colo. paper, True F... Full story
Don McAlvay: Local Columnist J. E. “Big” Johnson, who stood 6-foot-4, weighed 221 pounds, was a man of great physical strength. Legends of his feats are still remembered. Born in 1878 at Gonzales, Texas, Johnson came to New Mexico as a strapping boy of 17 in 1895 and worked on four huge ranches from near present day Portales, all the way to Roswell, ending up on the DZs southeast of Portales in about 1897. Finding he couldn’t mingle his herd of cattle with the DZs cattle, he moved onto the Horseshoe Ranch at the Cuniva some...
Don McAlavy: Local Columnist Take a look up at the top of the two-story brick building at 416 Main St. You’ll see it says “Rogers-Awalt 1908.” The Rogers refers to Bert Rogers, who came with his family to Clovis from Olathe, Kan., in 1908. He and A. L. Awalt built the 416 Main St. building. Rogers worked in the original First National Bank. He had a son, born in 1904 in Olathe, named Charles, later known as the famous Buddy Rogers, movie idol of the silent movies and of the “talkies.” The Rogers lived in Clovis until 191...
Don McAlavy: Local Columnist The Center community a few miles south of Clovis was organized in 1905, four years before Curry County was incorporated. There were only two permanent families there then. The other patrons of the community were bachelors and old maids, who were holding down the claims. In the fall of 1906, several more families proceeded by wagon to Center. Due to the rapid growth of this community in the next several years, a meeting was held in a half dug-out for the purpose of raising money to erect a...
Don McAlavy: Local Columnist Clovis recorded earthquakes in 1925, 1931 and 1935. At 5:17 a.m., July 30, 1925, Clovis felt a tremor originating from an earthquake which registered 4.2 on the Richter scale. Its epicenter was just northeast of Amarillo. Clovis felt two distinct shocks in 30 seconds. Buildings were badly shaken and dishes were jarred from shelves, but no great damage was reported. The 1931 quake came from the Big Bend of Texas. The quake on Dec. 19, 1935, however, originated at Clovis. Even so, split wallpaper...
I’ve lost track of Alva J. Parker. Last I knew he was with his daughter in Farmington. I hope he’s still kicking. Parker won more fiddle contests left-handed than most right-handed fiddle players won. He did not change the order of the fiddle strings. Parker shared his fiddle with his two brothers, but when he attempted to reverse the strings on that one fiddle, his brothers said “no, you can’t mess up our only fiddle.” So, Parker had to learn to play it backwards, so to speak. Parker was the Senior Champion Fiddler o... Full story
Don McAlavy: Local columnist G. A. Campbell came to Texico in 1906, from Rogers, Ark. He was born in 1882. Sadie Tagader also came to Texico in 1906, from Colorado in a covered wagon with her family. Her father was a horse trader and blacksmith. Campbell opened a small confectionery store in Texico, but soon moved to the new town of Clovis. G. A. and Sadie were married in 1908. Campbell manufactured his own ice cream. About 1913, he bought out a small soda water bottling plant and moved it and the ice cream manufacturing...
Cletis Ball of Texico, following a sentence by Judge Carl A. Hatch, was given 18 months to two years to be served in the state reformatory. This was on May 6, 1929. Cletis Ball was 11 years old. On a previous occasion, after Cletis had been released from jail, a jailer named Clark looked for a pair of jail keys, but couldn’t find them anywhere. Suspicion directed his steps to the home of Cletis’ parents near Texico. And there he found the keys. Cletis had informed some of the prisoners that he would be back in a few days and...
A lot of people in Clovis today may not remember Bob Spencer. He was manager of the Chamber of Commerce for 25 years, from 1957 to 1982. We have a file of his notes of the history of the chamber, donated to the High Plains Historical Society by his wife Helen in 1983. Spencer retired as executive director on June 1, 1982, having fallen ill at age 63 with a disease called dermatomyositis. He died Dec. 5, 1982. The 1982 Pioneer Days Balloon Fiesta was named in his honor and the sports complex on the northwest edge of Clovis...
Don McAlavy: Local Columnist One of the oldest families settling near the soon-to-be Clovis in 1904 was the Joel C. Faris family of eight. A farmer who raised cotton, horses and mules in Texas, Joel Faris was also a carpenter, building the first homes when Clovis began. He built the first real estate building at Third and Main, made for Clayton Reed and C. V. Steed. One of his grandsons was Carroll Faris, Clovis High School Class of 1950, one of CHS’ great athletes. Carroll, like his grandfather, was an entrepreneur too, f...
Hear that lonesome whistle sound As it passes through the night. It’s the old Santa Fe freight train As it rumbles out of sight. Back around 1971, I wrote this piece about the steam locomotives leaving Clovis for good. I never published it until now. I wasn’t an historian then, but felt sad about witnessing the end of a by-gone era. No longer do you her that old whistle. That whistle and the old steam locomotives are gone from the Santa Fe trains. Now it’s just the moanin’ of the diesel engines that haul the freight up and...
This story comes from John Paul Pitts, a Texas oil man. He was 9 years old when he feared the world had come to an end near Wink, Texas, about 200 miles south of Clovis. This was in 1940, on a Saturday night, long after the sun had set. A mess of roughnecks and roustabouts and their wives, or girlfriends, would gather each Saturday night in Pitts’ grandparents front yard. “On this night,” Pitts reported, “as I was about to nod off, a strange and heavenly event began to unfold. Suddenly the sky became alive with ‘falling stars... Full story
Longtime Clovis historian Don McAlavy has left the dusty plains of eastern New Mexico for the tropical shorelines of St. Petersburg, Fla. But McAlavy insists his days of recording Curry County history are not yet history. McAlavy and his wife, Katherine, recently sold their home on the Pleasant Hill Highway and quietly moved to Florida on July 30 to be close to family. They have no immediate plans of returning to Clovis. However, McAlavy said he does plan to come to Clovis when the city celebrates its 100th birthday in 2007 a... Full story
Mykell Jackman Brewer, a Clovis High School graduate who now lives in Virginia, wrote recently to report the CHS class of 1959 will hold its 45th reunion at the Downtown Sheraton Hotel in Albuquerque, Sept. 17-19. She was looking for any good stories that I might know from that era. I never went to the new Clovis High School, which opened in 1956 at 21st and Thornton. I graduated in 1950 from the old high school where Clovis-Carver Public Library is now located at Seventh and Main. Some of us cried when they tore down our...
I didn’t know Gerald F. Fisher of Clovis very well, but he seemed an extraordinarily smart guy. Back in 1986, Fisher found an article in the American Association for the Advancement of Science about “Clovis.” “Well, actually, he said, it was about some place in the Yukon Territory of Canada, which has been attempting, for eight years, to steal some of Clovis’ glory. This is what Fisher reported: “What they wanted is the one thing for which Clovis, New Mexico, is uniquely recognized worldwide — the only singular aspect of rec...
Toward the end of 2003, Doc Stewart was recognized for his many years of dedicated and faithful service to the community of Clovis, Cannon Air Force Base and the Committee of 50. He deserved all the applause and thanks he received. The Committee of 50 was organized before Stewart arrived in Clovis, so this is the history that Gene Walker has written about this organization. “In 1948, Mr. J. Harvey Wilson, manager of the Southern Union Gas Company and chairman of the Clovis Chamber of Commerce, called my father, Roy Walker (...
A dispute over a few head of cattle led to the killing of brothers Ed and Tom Hall along the Pecos River, south of Fort Sumner and west of Kenna, in 1911. This account comes from a booklet — “My Family, My Life and Times” — written by a nephew of the victims, and from an old newspaper article probably published in Fort Sumner. To the south of the Hall ranch lived the Zumwalts. Brothers Will and Alec Zumwalt were taking care of 1,200 head of cattle owned by Dee Harkey, a lawman from Carlsbad. Harkey had come up to get the Zum... Full story
In 1929, a small-town newspaperman came to Clovis from Kansas to start a dynasty. Not only did Mack Stanton combine two weekly newspapers into a daily — the Clovis Evening News Journal at 215 Main — he also created a printing plant to do commercial printing at 313 Main and he called it Clovis Printing Plant. Stanton hired A. W. “Pete” Anderson to run this print shop. Stanton sold the CNJ in 1930 to the J. Lindsay Nunn group. It’s assumed Anderson purchased the print shop from the new owners of the CNJ in order to publish a... Full story
Don McAlavy: Local Columnist Here are some memories from Charlyne Allyn Sisler: “The Santa Fe Railroad and the men who ran it were the most important and dominant aspect of Clovis when I was a child. I loved watching the coming and going of the trains, plus the social atmosphere of the Gran Quivira, or Harvey House, where my mother and father had lived when they first arrived in Clovis. “I was born in Clovis, the only child of Charles Wesley and Edna Merle Allyn. ... They were both natives of West Texas. My father was a teleg...
