Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Sorted by date Results 76 - 100 of 452
I remember a time in grade school when we marked both the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We did it on their actual birthdays and we didn’t get a day off. We were in school learning about each of them and about how they influenced the growth of our nation and its ideals. One of the things I should have been learning, and maybe I did or maybe it was picked up much later on the History Channel, was that Washington was the only president elected u...
It’s Super Sunday and in answer to Bocephus’ question for years — yes, I am ready for some football. I’m a bit of a throwback in that the most important thing about this year’s Super Bowl is that Tom Brady won’t be playing quarterback in it. No, actually that’s the second-most important thing. The most important thing is the game itself — football. While I’m happy that Brady won’t be making an appearance, I’m sad that neither will my Denver Broncos. I’m also sad that it...
I stumbled onto a great story from the 1977 Portales News-Tribune Progress edition about a 1951 coyote hunt in the Elida and Kenna area. The story was a reprint of one of Editor Gordon Greaves’ “By The Way” columns. He started it out with a comparison to the English version of “riding to the hounds.” He explained the hounds, in this case were hybrid greyhounds. The chase started before daylight on the mesa west of Elida with two vehicles, a Jeep and a pickup, with 10 dogs a...
Lots of folks wonder how in the world little towns on the High Plains ever survived and why people stayed on through the dust, drought and lean economic times. I guess we just did it. My hometown of Portales for instance has motored along over the decades of its existence without a lot of change in its fortunes one way or another. We’ve come through depressions and recessions that brought the country to its knees without noticing much change in our quality of life. Sure w...
I’ve been aware of the rise of artificial intelligence, or AI for short, but until I heard a brief story from a tech guru on a television segment that my ears perked up. They were talking about technology called ChatGPT that is able to spit out 500 written words on any subject in a few seconds. Naturally, I immediately began wondering if it could write a small-town newspaper column. Could I put this technology to work for me and land numerous other column gigs across the g...
My favorite poem is Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” This column is about the road not taken, but trust me it isn’t as deep as the poem. I’ve always been a fan of wandering country roads. Since I got wheels it was a favorite thing to do. Over the years I’ve traveled miles and miles with a shotgun, fishing pole or camera. Just longing to see what’s over the hill or around the next bend of the river. I’m surprised I’ve not ended up walking or hitchin’ any more than I hav...
As I came through the door at the groomers, I could see her cute and freshly cropped face looking at me from a kennel. Miss Maggie had her day at the beauty parlor and she was happy to see her daddy. As the owner of the shop handed her over I received rapid-fire puppy kisses and the shop’s help squealed with delight. The shop owner said she got quite a few while she was grooming her. Two things that mystify me were how she was being so good and patient in the kennel and how s...
After 2020 and 2021 turned out to be real stinkers, I had great hopes that 2022 would turn around but it didn’t. After being released from our Covid captivity in the fall, by winter we were locked down again and it continued for the first two months of the year. Hope briefly glimmered in the spring with regular activities but things got tough down the stretch. Multiple situations turned things upside down at work and my wife’s health went downhill requiring more and more of...
Years ago, in a cold, dark pasture, a simple man, a shepherd, settled into his camp with fellow shepherds to keep watch over the flock through the night. These sheep were valuable to those who entrusted him with their care and protection and he took his job seriously even though his masters and most of the rest of the folks in the nearby towns looked down on him and his buddies. They told him he smelled bad, he was uneducated, poor, with thread-bare garments and, worst of...
I was slightly dreading my step back in time to my elementary school. They had just spent a big chunk of change to renovate it and I was afraid I might not recognize it. I was touring the school with our Leadership Portales class and I was relieved that the outside of the building, at least from the original part of the school, looked like the L.L. Brown Elementary that I had attended some 50 years ago. A new annex had been built to the north several years ago but the...
The sounds of Christmas came unexpectedly and caught me by surprise. The choir on the courthouse steps had just finished their first Christmas carol, “Jingle Bells,” when the answer came. Church bells from the First Baptist Church, a block away, opened up in a carol of their own. Ask and ye shall receive I thought. The choir director noticed the bells and held up starting the second song until the song was done. The church bell repertoire was far from complete and so the con...
I think I’m Christmas conflicted. Assaulted all day by music media with Christmas themes and all evening with movie and TV show depictions of the holiday. I’m probably not alone when I say it sinks into your consciousness and maybe begins to get on your nerves a little before it’s all over. On the one hand are the serious traditional offerings such as “Silver Bells,” “White Christmas,” “Holiday Inn” and “Miracle on 45th Street,” on the other hand is “Grandma Got Run Over...
This past week’s rare Thanksgiving storm brought back memories of another storm on that holiday that was a lot more trying. It was way back in 1993 in Colorado. Snow in that part of Colorado is expected by November, even substantial storms, but this one was a little more of a booger for several reasons. It was timed to hit late on Thanksgiving day and bring a foot-and-a-half of powder along with sub-zero temperatures for several days. The arrival of this weather c...
I wonder how many of you guys have ever cooked a full-on gourmet meal for your wife? How many of you were brave enough to do it before you were ever married? Yes, I was that crazy. It’s not like I had a lot of experience cooking way back then, I just wanted to try something different that I was pretty sure she would never fix and had never had. I also wanted to give her a positive experience with wild game since that hadn’t been a regular thing at her house. I was duck hunting...
My eye doctor tells me my cataract surgeries are holding up well 3-4 years later and my prescription is still fine. I wanted to argue with him but didn’t think I would win. I think my reading problems have more to do with sinus issues than they do correction. He did tell me I could use artificial tears to keep things lubricated. He was more interested in how closely I was following diabetes issues. Something he has in common with my primary care doctor. I was due back to s...
I have a little page in the notes app of my phone where I enter column ideas as they come up because the hardest part of this whole deal is having a topic. Last week I knew I had something written in there but I couldn’t recall what it was so I opened it up to find the words “time capsule” as the last entries. Something came up somewhere in an email, a TV show, a story someone was telling or a Facebook post that made me write that down, but a little over a week later I can’t...
Remember when the price for a barrel of oil was actually below zero? Remember when interest rates were real close to zero? It wasn’t really that long ago, but it seems so distant. These fellers that call themselves the Fed are working hard to make me relive my youth. They’re doing a pretty good job. According to a New York Times story on Thursday, mortgage rates had stormed past 7% for the first time since 2002. That meant that the national median mortgage payment had ris...
My wife and I have been binge watching a new show on YouTube. Kent Rollins Cowboy Cooking has apparently been around a long while, but we’ve just stumbled onto his videos in the last few months. I put it on the tube one night before either of us had slumbered off to siesta time in our recliners and three or four episodes later we were still both awake and hooked on this Oklahoma cowboy named Kent Rollins and his chuck wagon and outdoor cooking. He hams it up in high cowboy sty...
A conversation-starter question at a meeting I was at last week asked those at the table to describe their first paid job. It was right down my alley and those at my table had to suffer through my long story of paperboy to publisher. We moved to Portales in 1970 and I turned 11 that spring. I saw an ad needing kids for newspaper routes, so I inquired about the opportunity. Circulation Manager Lewis Toland listened to my spiel and told me he was sorry but the minimum age to...
One of the fun things about my job is that folks expect the local chamber of commerce to know everything. Including, very frequently, local history. That might include someone trying to figure out where great-grandpa's homestead was or where the business granddad started in the 1930s might have been located. I get a lot of calls from confused people who have an old Portales address that dated before all the street names got a change. They'll get to looking at present day maps...
Briefly last week I thought I might have an identity crisis, but it turns out I’m just becoming more unique. The man on the radio asked me if I’d ever searched my name on the internet and if I needed to repair what’s out there. So naturally, with the World Wide Web as close as my cell phone, I did as I was told. It seems the most popular Karl Terry out there seems to be an old dude at least 20 years my senior who is a long-time rock and roll singer in Liverpool, Engla...
Recently I managed to combine two pieces of heirloom jewelry and I’ve gone back to wearing a wristwatch again. Nearly 20 years ago my wife bought me a nice Bulova watch with both yellow and white gold accents and a rim around the crystal with tiny diamonds. Very classy and I wore it all the time until the clasp on the band quit closing and the watch repairman I went to school with moved off to Santa Fe. Recently some of my late dad’s jewelry came out of the safe and I was aske...
I’ve never been squeamish at the sight of blood, but the Good Lord has been testing me out on that claim to fame lately. I’ve never had stitches other than for my appendectomy when I was in high school. That didn’t go so well, as I developed an abscess below the surgery incision and had grown something about grapefruit size on my tummy by the time we went to the doctor to see about it. He took matters into his own hands or more precisely a scalpel and opened up the incis...
Country life is hard, rough and tumble, then Youtube bans your channel. My latest binge-watch on Youtube was about a ranching family with like nine children from age 16 down to 2. The ranch house was something like 17 miles off the pavement and the ranch itself was bordered with or nearby the famed Area 51 where the government is supposedly hiding alien beings and testing alien aircraft and the like. At the turnoff to the ranch was a famed “black mailbox” where Area 51 fan...
I’ve been to a lot of places but I’ve never been in Cahoots. Apparently you can’t go alone, you have to be in Cahoots with someone. I’ve also never been in Cognito either. I hear no one recognizes you there. I have been in Sane. They don’t have an airport, you have to be driven there. I have made several trips. I know, I know, that’s an old Facebook groaner there but it describes just about how lost folks get these days without a map. I had a good friend drift through the...
