Plenty of people in all that emptiness

I had to go to Roswell for a fancy eye appointment. 

I always wanted to be a traveler. It didn’t work out as well as I’d dreamed so I listen to travelers’ tales from other travelers, shoot the breeze with folks lots of times.

Talking to some of the staff I learned some commuted from Albuquerque to Roswell to work there, and some of the Roswell folks working there had to go to Albuquerque from time to time.

They had something in common: They didn’t like the vast emptiness between Roswell and Vaughn.

“There’s nothing out there,” they told me.

Well, there seems to be a whole lot of nothing out there.

Or is there?

I lived in Roswell more than 30 years ago. I worked in radio.

I used to get phone calls from folks on ranches “out there,” cattle ranches, sheep ranches and a lot of Bureau of Land Management range.

Look at a map.

It’s wide-open rangeland, grassland, with pronghorn antelope, mule deer, shortgrass prairie, mesquite, cholla, juniper.

The vast emptiness was striking when I went to the north slope of the Capitan Mountain Range west of Roswell and looked north … it’s really impressive at twilight. 

As the night starts to spread from east to west you look out over a vast sea of dark land that spreads from horizon to horizon and to the north until it flows into the sky. 

There’s a dot of light there, probably a ranch house. 

There’s another speck of light that seems to be moving, probably a car or 18-wheeler headed south to Roswell on U.S. 285, miles away from the mountain slopes.

If I wanted to go to Albuquerque for something I’d hop a bus. I figured my old car might break down in the middle of really nowhere.

This was back when the TNM&O bus line was still around … TNM&O stood for “Texas, New Mexico & Oklahoma,” a subsidiary of Greyhound.

To me, there’s a certain luxury to hopping on a bus and letting someone else drive.

So it was that I paid my money … $9 or $19 … and took my seat.

I’d stare out the window and watch the land roll by: A gas station and pay phone at Mesa, an abandoned store and a pay phone at Ramon, some cattle here, pronghorn there.

And then an hour-and-a-half later we rolled into Vaughn.

“We’ll be stopping here for 20 minutes folks,” said the bus driver over the intercom.

The driver pulled off the highway right up to the restaurant on the west side of the town.

Us passengers, maybe 12 of us, filed off the bus.

I ordered a bag of fries and a soda.

I took my snack, strolled outside and stood by the bus. The driver was standing a few feet away enjoying a smoke.

“So what do you think about this run from Roswell?” I asked the driver.

The driver took a drag off his smoke and let it out.

“Buddy, that run from Roswell to here is about the most boring run I’ve ever done. But I do like that there ain’t much traffic,” he said.

I smiled and nodded and put another fistful of fries in my mouth.

Soon we all were back on the bus heading on in to Albuquerque.

Driving it or looking at it on the map, it looks like there’s a whole lot of nothing between Roswell and I-40, but there really is life out there.

Grant McGee writes for The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact him:

[email protected]