August history warns: Beware of robbers

I collect historical tidbits that interest me from area newspapers. Here are a few from the first week of Augusts past:

• Aug. 1, 1901: The first Portales newspaper, The Progress, began weekly publication. The Portales Herald followed in 1902, just before the Portales Times launched and eventually merged with the Herald.

• Aug. 1, 1923: The U.S Post Office announced it would begin providing city mail delivery in Clovis. The city’s population had grown to more than 5,000 in fewer than two decades.

• Aug. 1, 1967: A Tucumcari man was listed in critical condition after being struck by lightning while hoeing on a Grady farm. Camilio Sandoval, 60, died from his injuries about two weeks later.

• Aug. 1, 1955: Five New Mexico cities, including Portales, were to be honored for their 1954 traffic safety records. Plaques were given cities that had no vehicle fatalities in the city limits.

• Aug. 2, 1937: The Clovis Evening News-Journal reported farmer A.G. Kenyon had a well pumping 90,000 gallons of water an hour. Kenyon, whose crops east of Clovis included peanuts, wheat and sweet potatoes, said his well ran 11 hours a day.

• Aug. 2, 1939: President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Hatch Act, named for its author, Sen. Carl Hatch, of Clovis. The act, still in force today, prohibits civil service employees from taking an active part in political campaigns.

• Aug. 2, 1962: The Corral Playhouse in Portales was hosting the final night of “Smilin’ Through.” The love story centered around a family feud characterized as a “delightfully done tear-jerker,” by Clovis News-Journal writer Frank Smith.

• Aug. 3, 1947: The bodies of two Clovis men were found in the cabin of their chartered plane, which crashed about 20 miles from their destination of Eagle Nest Lake. Jimmie Gressett and John Hardisty, both 21-year-old pilots, were planning to go fishing. Officials said their plane crashed into the side of a narrow canyon near the top of a mountain.

• Aug. 3, 1951: The Herb Baker store in Ranchvale was robbed while its owner attended a church revival service about a block away. Officials reported the thief unlatched a screen at the back of the store, rang up the 2 cents sign on the cash register and walked out the front door with $26. About $20 in change was left behind.

• Aug. 3, 1960: Officials were investigating the overnight theft of $1,300 from a safe at Howe’s Drug Store in Fort Sumner. While all the cash in the safe was gone, the thieves left narcotics untouched.

• Aug. 4, 1964: Burglars got away with $50 from the Plains Hotel at First and Connelly streets in Clovis. The hotel manager said the money was taken from a juke box. Police reported thieves also stole spare tires, wheels and hubcaps from three different locations around Clovis.

• Aug. 4, 1994: Selena Quintanilla-Perez, the biggest name in Tejano music, sang at Clovis’ Boot Hill saloon. More than 800 people saw her perform in black jeans and a red, sequined blouse. Less than eight months later, she was shot to death by the president of her fan club. Billboard magazine estimated Selena sold more than 18 million albums in the 1990s.

• Aug. 5, 1953: A Santa Fe Heights resident complained to Clovis police about a large number of unlicensed dogs in his neighborhood. He said about 40 dogs were roaming the area and they “bark and howl all night.”

• Aug. 6, 1943: Two young women accused of “suspicious actions in suspicious places,” were arrested by Clovis police and railroad officers and sent to a venereal disease clinic for examinations. “This brings the total number arrested since July 23 to 32 and of this number at least 10 were found to be infected … according to the Sheriff’s office,” the Clovis News-Journal reported. City and Army officials spurred the “war on social diseases.” When soldiers were involved, they were taken to their commanding officers, who ensured the men also received testing for VD, the paper reported.

• Aug. 6, 1959: Officials were drawing up an ordinance to prohibit “the carrying and firing of BB guns, pellet guns and 22s in the Texico limits,” the Clovis News-Journal reported. The action was in response to complaints about broken street lights and windows. Otis Huggins, manager of the Texico-Farwell Southwestern Public Service office, said more than $40 worth of light bulbs had been broken since the beginning of summer.

• Aug. 7, 1961: Roads were the hot topic at the Curry County Commission meeting. A road leading to Retirement Ranch was nearly paved and plans to pave a road from State Highway 18 to the Lawnhaven cemetery were scheduled for the “near future,” commissioners were told.

• Aug. 7, 1940: More than 6,000 New Mexico farms were being serviced with electricity. “This means that nearly 15 percent of the farms of the state or about one farm out of seven is now receiving high-line service,” a New Mexico Extension Service spokesman said.

David Stevens writes about regional history for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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