Memorial Day weekend was surprisingly busy for the Trujillo family. It included trips to the Veterans Cemetery in Santa Fe to see the burial site of my older brother, Severino, who succumbed to prostate cancer in December. On a separate trip to the same place, I took a friend to visit the place where her husband was laid to rest about 10 years ago.
Here in town, we visited the gravesite of my parents, J.D. and Marie Trujillo, at Pilgrims Rest, near Meadows Home. We also spent a day at Santa Rosa’s Blue Hole, a place where experienced divers train in wetsuits. We took along our foreign exchange students, Phaedra and Ana. And we drove to Holman Hill to see the spectacular views from scenic lookouts.
The walled-off barriers prevent cars from running off the roads, but they don’t prevent pickups from backing up to dump trash.
So here’s a bit of trash talk:
Several of us lined up for photographs at one of the turnoffs. I looked down and noticed trash, strewn over a large area, courtesy of some slob who probably figured he or she could save a few bucks by dumping the stuff down the valley. You know: Out of sight . . .
Totally unsightly! From our vantage point, there were the requisite numbers of disposable diapers (they weren’t meant to be disposed of in quite that manner), heaps of garbage bags, beer cans, broken bottles and other kinds of litter.
I fantasize about the prospect of the violators’ being caught in the act and being made to remain all day (or all week if necessary) to clean up every bit of litter.
Some readers may recall that on several occasions I’ve written about trash simply dumped along roadways in Camp Luna, close to where we live.
The first time, we did our own cleanup and in the process acquired quite a “snapshot” of the dumping family. Seeing legal papers, we surmised that Mr. and Mrs. Dumpers of the Year are divorced. We found photos, broken cassette cases, empty prescription bottles, bills dunning payment for cable service and credit cards, and even a summons to appear in court, something the scofflaws apparently didn’t consider important.
The offending parties were easily identifiable. Accordingly, we took a batch of the junk to county officers, where some hand wringing occurred. The second time we delivered samples of what people had strewn along the road, nothing happened.
But I don’t want this to become a Clean Up, Paint Up, Fix Up type column. I just wish some people weren’t such slobs.
• • •
“Golf War”? he wrote. Ron Querry, who brings the community horse parades and who also has chased many commas in his academic life, sent an email about the skirmish among golfers. That’s all he wrote.
As the longest-serving employee and copy editor at the Optic, I naturally surmised Ron meant me (or, as my English teacher would have it, “meant I”). Having no recollection of the egregious error, I wrote back, insisting on my correctness in a good-natured way: “Yes ‘Golf War’! Haven’t you ever seen a couple of caddies mixing it up on the fairway?”
And I asked when and where the alleged error occurred. He cited a recent issue of the Optic, and worse — said it was in a headline. I’ll search for it, but meanwhile I’ll remind Ron of a phenomenon that occurs in the newspaper field: Sometimes little gremlins enter newspaper offices after closing, and they plant errors. As evidence, if I let “Golf War” get past me, I can always blame the gremlins or claim it was deliberate.
Errors do get past us. The auto-correct feature of many writing applications usually anticipates what the user is about to type, and as a result, we often accept the application’s “suggestion.”
One of the more serious (albeit humorous) errors to appear in the Optic was in an article about someone who’d been in a minor automobile accident in Las Vegas and was transported to the old Northeast Regional Hospital.
The reporter intended to write that the driver was “treated and released.” However, these blasted auto-correcting features sometimes have a mind of their own.
The final version said the man was “threatened and released.” That should teach the motorist to use caution on the highways and to avoid trips to the hospital.
There’s a difference, and I probably never would have known about the error had it not been for alert reader Susan Swan.
• • •
Last week’s column contained a list of actual businesses that advertise their goods and services by using names of famous people, movie titles or common expressions. Alice Chambers filled in and submitted the following words that allude to the businesses’ names:
- Bread Pitt – bakery
- Thai Tanic – Asian food
- Lord of the Rinse – laundromat or car wash
- Life of Pie – bakery
- Pita Pan – bakery
- Back of the Fuchsia – florist
- The Codfather – fish market or restaurant
- Iron Maiden – dry cleaner
- Lord of the Wings – chicken restaurant
- Florist Gump – flower shop
- Pho Real – Vietnamese restaurant
- Bread Zeppelin – bakery
- Sew it Seams – fabric shop
- British Hairways – hair salon
- Indiana Jeans – western wear store
- Jabba the Cutt – hair salon
- Kung Food – Chinese restaurant
- Eye Caramba – optometrist
- Spex in the City – optometrist.