Sierra County - 7,500 People, Two Newspapers

This place is like the rest of New Mexico only a little more so - poorer, hotter, drier. It's awfully nice if you like cactus, mesquite, sunshine, old trailers, desert mountain views and hot springs. Its other charms are not as obvious.


There is nothing nothing nothing like a spring wind to remind you of what's hard to love about southern New Mexico. It puts everyone in a mood.   Crazy Arizona dirt (it might infect you with the conservatism they suffer) blows in and collects on the window sills. It isn't merely a nuisance, it closes interstates.

Soil loss is impressive these days but the problem of erosion has apparently fallen out of the lexicon, like elsewhere. It's just accepted. Screwing around in bulldozers is very popular as is screwing around in off-road vehicles and with chain-saws. These tools are applied in the landscape to great affect.

Poverty bites especially hard into rural New Mexico. Mobile homes represent the upscale housing through sad swaths of places like Williamsburg where sheds and RVs line the streets and you don't know how they just don't blow away. Old cars and men on bicycles who don't shave fit right in. Wal-Mart's unflattering light is a good place to observe meth addiction's effect on skin tone.

Count 'em. Two newspapers. They need them both because there is so much news in Truth or Consequences, Williamsburg, Elephant Butte, Hillsboro and Monticello. Don't get them mixed up and be sure to remember which one the serial killer was from. I'm not really kidding.

The Herald recently reported that the City of T or C voted to shorten their airport runway to make room for a semi-notorious developer's truck stop. A City Commissioner then had to explain the vote to the Sierra County Commissioners who felt a little out of the loop. Also out of the loop was the Air Force who uses the long dirt runway for training, at night from the sound of it. Details, details.

But for a region setting it's sights mighty high up in the pie-filled sky with the Spaceport boondoggle waste of fuel-and-atmosphere, shortening a runway for a truck stop seems a little short-sighted. Afterall, the developer got thousands of acres in that sweet state land trade deal with former State Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons. You'd think with all that land.... Whatever.  He didn't pay me to site plan for him.

Sierra County's economic development eggs are in the Spaceport and truck-stop baskets. Or those projects might be laying eggs - not sure of the future.  But I think Sierra County's economic development folks should promote feral pig hunts!  Local shooting club events and gun shows are wildly popular, the pigs are a pain in the ass and licenses are no problem. Permission from a couple big ranches, logistics and promotion would about do it. Who knows, Ashton Kutcher might be into hunting. Ted Nugent would come for sure.

Comments

[Inky]

I dunno know about anybody else, but it just doesn't sound like a particularly good idea to have a truck stop close to either end of a runway, long or short. And you say 'men on bicycles who don't shave' like it's a bad thing. I resemble that remark!

[Coco la Boca]

The men, the bicycles and the beards are at least a decade older than yours.

[suz]

Yikes! Perhaps better to stay in TorC and have a quiet coffee at the White Coyote while waiting for the opening of the farmer's market over in the shady park.

And why am I the last to find out about the ABQ Baths on Broadway? Not that I won't go to Riverbend, but the Baths are a close alternative for sore bones.

[Inky]

Alright, in 10 years I'll resemble that remark!

[Mary]

Thank you for your posts and for what you are doing here ! Admirable work and much success in your business dealings