Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
The celebration didn’t have a name back then, but there was barbecue. Underwood’s of Lubbock fed the hungry at Farwell’s city park.
The American Junior Rodeo Association inspired the gathering, attracting hundreds of cowboys and cowgirls from throughout the region, in addition to Oklahoma, El Paso and elsewhere.
They competed Aug. 2-4, 1967.
The Texas-New Mexico state line was a happening place that weekend.
More than 200 people were counted eating the catered barbecue lunch. That was on a Saturday.
A “gigantic parade” was held on a Thursday. The parade went from Texico, across the railroad tracks, into Farwell. The Bovina Roping Club participated, in a chuckwagon. Farwell Country Club employees paraded in a golf cart.
The festivities highlighted the week, but there was plenty of small-town life going on as usual at the time.
The Fighting Football Steers were getting ready for two-a-day practices. Coach Toby Booth was expecting 45 boys to suit up.
Texico school board members were looking to fill three open positions — a coach, a band instructor and a science teacher who could also handle driver-training classes.
Dedication dates were in the works for the Texico city park and the swimming pool and bathhouse at Farwell Country Club. The pool would not open, officials cautioned, until a “qualified lifeguard” could be secured.
Not all the news was good. Farmer Bill Moss and Rev. J. L. Bass were smarting from accidents that cost them both a tip of a finger. Moss got his finger caught in a tractor he was helping “unstick.” The preacher suffered his injury when the hood on a tractor lawn mower he was repairing slammed down on him. (Bonus trivia: Bass had hurt the same finger exactly one year earlier.)
But mostly history remembers that week as fun.
The population of the Twin Cities — Farwell and Texico — pretty much doubled those three days, 53 years ago. The fun ended with a promise: “Next year will be better,” State Line Tribune newspaper Editor John Getz promised.
And it was. In 1968, the communities held another barbecue lunch in the park, another three-day rodeo, another parade, and they added a Minnie Pearl hat contest, hog and cow calling contests, whittlers, and country crooners.
They also gave the gathering a name: Border Town Days.
Over the next five decades, it evolved into one of the larger annual family/community reunions known to the Texas Panhandle/eastern New Mexico. Singers Amy Grant and Vince Gill have made appearances. Lawmakers show up all the time. One year, Bill Richardson gave a campaign speech in his run for governor — perhaps the only time a New Mexico politician has asked for votes in Texas.
The coronavirus prevented the gathering this year for the first time since Lyndon Johnson was president. But the residents had barbecue anyway. The Texico-Farwell Rotary Club sold 700 pounds of it and delivered it to the park for pickup.
Once a tradition gets started, not even a worldwide pandemic can stop small-town friends and family from their annual barbecue feast.
David Stevens writes about regional history for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him:
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