Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
On this date ...
1951: Portales was days away from the grand opening of the new Cal Boykin Hotel.
A luncheon was set for the upcoming Saturday, with tickets $1.50. A banquet that night would cost $15 per ticket.
Eastern New Mexico University coeds were acting as hotel tour guides.
1956: Floyd Golden, president of Eastern New Mexico University, was preparing to leave for an education workshop in Ann Arbor, Mich.
The five-day seminar was to be held on the campus of the University of Michigan.
1956: An 8-year-old Clovis boy was hospitalized after falling from a bleacher at a softball game.
Michael Boyd was released the next day. He suffered a broken right arm, just above the wrist.
1960: The raincoats disappeared and “the shorts and halters blossomed out in Clovis” as “Old Sol finally broke through and shined down for the first time in a week,” the Clovis News-Journal reported.
“What he saw, was a water-laden town swamped by the all-time record July rainfall. Since last Sunday a grand total of 11.54 inches of rain has fallen, surpassing the previous July record of 8.96, set in 1950.
“And only nine days of the month have passed.”
1960: Gambles, which promoted itself as “The Friendly Store” at 304 S. Main in Portales, carried everything from deer rifles to ironing boards.
Toilet seats were on sale for $3.33. House paint was $3.88 per gallon. A Farmcrest rotary tiller was on sale for $99.88.
1967: The Prince Street Lounge in Clovis was the place to enjoy live music by The Fireballs. The rockers were lined up for a three-night run at Clovis’ hot spot.
The Fireballs had multiple Top 40 hits during the 1950s and 1960s, including “Bottle of Wine,” which came out in 1967.
The group’s biggest hit was “Sugar Shack” recorded at Norman Petty Studios in Clovis in 1961.
Formed in Raton in 1957, they selected their name after receiving a standing ovation while playing “Great Balls of Fire” at the Raton High School PTA talent contest. That’s according to group founders George Tomsco and Stan Lark.
Prince Street Lounge, located at Second and Prince streets in Clovis, offered “dancing nightly,” according to a newspaper ad, and regularly hosted the day’s top musical talent.
1969: Eastern New Mexico was celebrating the “alpha and omega” of flight, according to a pair of photos in the Clovis News-Journal.
One file photo featured pioneer aviator Charles Lindbergh, a frequent visitor to the region in 1929 “when it was thought that Clovis might become an air capital,” the newspaper reported.
The other photo showed an F-111A fighter jet scheduled to arrive at Cannon Air Force Base late in the day.
Ten F-111s were slated to be “the forerunners of a fleet of 84 planes” based at Cannon.
Cannon officials said 1,800 personnel would be coming to Cannon as support crew for the planes.
1975: Clovis News-Journal Managing Editor Bill Southard offered the following view after a public-meetings dispute with the Eastern New Mexico University Board of Regents:
“In our humble opinion, executive sessions are usually employed by public bodies not so much to protect the reputation of personnel but to cover up embarrassing or incriminating activities.”
Pages Past is compiled by David Stevens and Betty Williamson. Contact:
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