Cocoposts

River Curves

The big westward curve of the river - the top of the Valley. That's where the big floods used to start. The Camino Arroyo, named for the road up to the mountain, swept into the valley up there from time to time, depositing muddy water and trees and boulders too sometimes. They "tamed it," along with all the other arroyos and the Rio itself.

Some of the cottonwoods have a curve like the river. 

Up there's also where Edward Abbey began the tale of The Brave Cowboy, later made into the movie Lonely Are the Brave.  When Kirk Douglas rides his Palamino mare Whiskey into town, he crosses both the Rio and Second Street. The Big Chief Truck Stop is in the background along with decent sized clusters of cottonwoods. 

These twisted trees were probably stomped on as seedlings. This place was a park. And a dump. We thought it all belonged to us as kids. It magically morphed into private hands after construction of the drainage canals and ditches and began sprouting houses after that. 

In at least one 60s neighborhood, free-range children roamed widely and climbed the biggest trees. They urged each other on, nailing up short pieces of scrap lumber as footholds for the scariest straight parts. High trees seemed to go on forever like our high hopes. In some places you can still see steps in the tall trees. 

 

 

Who Owns the Game

Without mentioning the unsolved Cricket Coogler murder, William Keleher decribes the scene in New Mexico around 1949 in his memoirs.* Pressure had come to bear on Governor Mabry about "wide-open" illegal gambling in several  New Mexico counties, including Dona Ana County at Anapra and Sierra County, at Hot Springs.

Keleher says a witness testified before a Sierra County grand jury investigation about the slot machine pay-off scale.

Forty percent went to the owner of the location in which the machine was installed, forty percent to the owner of the machine, and twenty percent to the politicians.

On the eve of the big parade celebrating the name change of Hot Springs to Truth or Consequences, Judge James B. McGhee, accompanied by a bodyguard and contingent of the State police, ended gambling in the downtown bars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*William A. Keleher, Memoirs: 1892-1969 A New Mexico Item. The Rydal Press, Santa Fe, NM, 1969.

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.

Turtleback Mountain Diary 5

Picnicking on the dead shores of Elephant Butte Lake in the winter is not as depressing as it sounds. At least it never really got cold.  Warmth for achy bones is why a lot of people come here. 

Looking on the bright side of the drought, there's a lot more lake shore. Big dog and I enjoy hikes down to the water and back, a considerable distance in some places.  We were spooked by rustling in the bushes near the water a few weeks ago. Wild pigs are making inroads locally - snagging habitat and being opportunistic with water holes.  Big could smell tasty piglet.

There are plenty of reasons to be watchful beyond big pig tusks. Spooked even. David Parker Ray disposed of the bodies in Elephant Butte Lake. Who knows if he had help. And those bones are decidedly not why I came here. (I never should of read that book.)

There used to be a ferry across the Rio before the lake.  It's demise was the subject of a poem, Engle Ferry, by Eugene Manlove Rhodes published in the Saturday Evening Post August 10, 1929 and excerpted in Keleher's Fabulous Frontier.

The ferry is narrow and deep... the current is strong and the banks are steep ... a winding road up either hand, between black lava and yellow sand, between red water and close blue sky...angry echoes from hill to hill mutter and clamor and threaten still... Engle ferry is gone... never again shall moon or star kiss the hill where their camp-fires are... the passionless waters are deep and still on golden mesas and dreaming hill.

Maybe not as deep anymore.

When a proposal was made to change the name of nearby Engle to Engel, U.S. then Senator Bronson Cutting intervened at Rhodes's request and the proposal was nixed. There's a connection!

Turtleback Mountain Diary 4

These days enlightened professionals in government stand out like big bass in a shrinking desert lake - leaping out of the water because they can't take the pond full of stupid anymore.

This is one quirky-ass little town.

One of the latest movidas involves a city vote to shorten the municipal runway to benefit a developer named Greg Neal who says he'll build a truck stop there any day now.

This is what's become of the "premier commercial and industrial zone" anchored by a "motorplex" promised in the 7,388 acre State land swap completed by former State Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons with chest-thumping pride in 2008.  Then NASCAR said they'd never heard of Greg Neal.

Now the Airport Director and somebody else has resigned.

Economic development: they'll say it's about jobs but it's all about real estate speculation.

Turtleback Mountain Diary 3

Fiesta Dresses are a distant topic from sex torture and murderous pitbulls.  Given the continuing notoriety of the David Parker Ray case and Sierra County's apparent desperation for economic stimulation, I'm greatly relieved and a little surprised no one has had the idea of re-creating the "Toy Box" as a museum piece - at least that we know of.
 
Lessons from that horrifying history seem limited to: A) Gosh, we sure hope that's history; and B) "Let this serve as a warning to girls." 

It's infuriatingly common to hear that this is what happens when girls do X, Y or Z.  Such victim-blaming is blazingly evident in the justice system and the Ray trials.*

The focus on the victim and her part in sex crimes doesn't change behavior - least of all men's behavior toward women and girls.  But it does evoke generalized fear and suspicion on the part of one-half the population toward the other. This is hardly the basis for a healthy community but it's great for gun sales. 

Pleasant and un-prurient interests abound in Sierra County, as fiesta dresses remind me.  The Geronimo Springs Museum also has a most fabulous pottery collection, including a Mimbres Black-on-White pot with an exquisite crossword puzzle-like design - as if the artist was tripping and picturing a New York Times of the future. But the fiesta dresses are my personal favorite.

My Mother, Aunts and every other female I knew had a fiesta dress or three during the day.  These particular rick-rack on-net artifacts of the 50's home sewing era were winners of T or C's annual Fiesta Dress competition. They're kept lovingly dusted and displayed in the "Barbara and Ralph Edwards Suite" along with fifty plus years worth of parade and pagent memorabilia - walls full of B-movie stars' signed photos and smiling fifty faces of Miss Fiestas.

Ralph Edwards died in 2005 and in the 2006 parade the Sierra County Sheriff's Posse honored him with a riderless horse. The Fiesta event has cooled as the town struggles with finances in the absence of Edwards's largesse. But they're still crowning "Miss Fiesta" every year.

 

*For a detailed account see Consequences: The Criminal Case of David Parker Ray, by J.E. Sparks.  But better yet, don't.  Take a picnic or go to the museum where you won't see a thing about it.

Turtleback Mountain Diary Vol.1 Dam Walking

I dreamed Governor Susana Martinez was on a broomstick flying above all the little people on Elephant Butte Dam. 

The Albuquerque Journal was at the Elephant Butte Dam Walk and so was I. Their thoroughly unsnarky and factual account begs amendment.

The weather was wonderful which is a big reason there are a lot of people in this part of Sierra County, if you can call 7,500 a lot.  Turn out for the event was tremendous. Possibly all 7,500 people were there. Paranoia Security meant restricting access to the dam after 9/11 and restricting access to anything makes it more desirable. 

Volunteers did a great job but there were shuttle buses involved.  The first shuttle for non-VIPs was from parking to the restaurant and recreation area for ceremonies, including a stirring rendition of all thirty three verses of Oh Fair New Mexico. The second was a shuttle to the dam itself.  Again, for all but VIPs and invalids, there was a long disorganized wait.  A meaner crowd might have mutinied. But this is New Mexico and mostly everyone was relaxed. Many, including those for whom the buses invoked painful childhood memories of bullying, walked to the dam.

It was one shuttle too many for at least a couple of impatient yankees disappointed they didn't get to see the Governor  - not that she was expected, but whatever.  They didn't want to walk or wait and didn't make it to the dam.  Instead they drove to the overlook to burn one and watch people, like tiny ants, moving back and forth across the top of the giant structure.