For sale: A New Mexico community called Pep

Editor's note: This is the first in a two-part series about that time in 1978 when Gray and Sara Wilson bought the Roosevelt County community of Pep.

For a lifetime, I've received my mail in one of the tiniest hometowns around - the community of Pep, located 24 miles south of Portales on NM 206.

During my growing up years, besides the post office, there was a store. In the window of that store - for long enough to become yellowed and dusty - there was a sign that read, "For Sale: City of Pep."

Friends of mine who moved recently from the area shared with me a black three-ring binder they'd somehow inherited that is packed full of old clippings and handwritten notes about Pep and its history.

It didn't take much detective work to figure out this notebook had to have been compiled during the years that Pep was owned and operated by Gray and Sara Wilson.

I've contacted the Wilsons' daughter, Melinda Coslett of Clovis, and it will soon be in her hands, but happily she's letting me hold on to it long enough to copy some of the old clippings for my own cluttered files.

Coslett said this collection of treasures sounds like "something Daddy would do," and must have been overlooked when she cleaned out the store in the early 2000s.

For the record, it was Gray and Sara Wilson - all the way back in 1978 - who saw a two-page article in the Albuquerque Journal that elaborated in a big way on that dusty sign of my youth ... the one offering up a whole "city" for sale.

N.C. and Jessie May Cathey (great-grandparents to Portales Fire Chief T.J. Cathey) had bought the place in 1953 and long toyed with the idea of selling out.

Somehow Albuquerque Journal writer Toby Smith caught wind of the story and came to Pep for a day, writing a piece that (with numerous photos) occupied the entire front page of the Trends Today section for Aug. 20, 1978, before spilling over to fill most of the next page.

According to the piece, the listed $28,000 sale price included "a grocery store with post office attached, two gasoline pumps, a three-bedroom house, a well-house, a two-car garage, and a feed shed, all set on a one-acre plot of ground."

N.C. Cathey also pledged to throw in a 500-gallon propane tank "for nothing."

The Wilsons - living in Albuquerque where Gray was retired at the age of 65 and Sara was still working as a purchasing agent - read the story and jumped at the opportunity, managing to seal the deal for only $25,000.

I was a senior in high school, and remember well when the transaction occurred.

Next Sunday: New life comes to Pep.

Betty Williamson has relished every step of this walk down memory lane. Reach her at:

[email protected]