A few years ago, before caller ID, I got a call from a young woman seeking donations to Highlands University for scholarships. Why was I suspicious? Well, for starters, she asked to speak to Mr. True-Jill- oh. I’ve pointed out in previous columns that the unusual Anglicizing of my name has its benefits, as it provides reasonable assurance that the caller is up to selling something or asking for a donation to some charity.

She reminded me of the fun times I’d had as an undergraduate in the sixties. She was right about my dates of enrollment, but who ever told her about the fun times? No, I never belonged to a fraternity, hardly ever partied, didn’t live in a dorm and for the most part eschewed clubs and organizations. The key lasting memory is having met the coed whose last name I changed, in a literature class called, appropriately, “The Romantic Period.”

The woman on the phone — obviously located a half dozen states away from New Mexico — listened to some memories of those hallowed halls. As long as she broached the subject of fun, frat parties, finals, failing classes, fancy dress balls and football games, I decided to keep her on the line to hear my side. I told her that one of my friends still views his time at Highlands, 40 years later, as an unrecoverable yearbook-signing party. He once told me that as a freshman he was on the verge of leaving HU because, “I understand too many men and women matriculate together.” Also offensive to him has the fact that “both sexes are required to share the same curriculum.” And when he discovered that graduate students are required to show their theses to committees comprising both sexes, well, he contemplated withdrawal from the university.

But back to Madame Telemarketer. I donated a modest amount. As I rattled off my credit card number, she repeated the information and she located me in … Nevada. (Now raise your hand if that hasn’t happened to you at least 50 times.)

When I insisted that this tiny, original hamlet resides in New Mexico, she asked how far we are from Mexico City. Well, Senorita, it’s a fair distance. And at least she didn’t ask me to compute the distance from Nevada to Mexico City.

It may be time to stop trying to convince others that our Las Vegas predates the other Las Vegas by 26 years, the newcomer being established in 1905 and claiming to be the nation’s largest city established in the 20th century. Our Meadow City was incorporated in 1879, although it existed long before that. Early residents frequented the area because of its beauty, water and proximity to the mountains. Pioneers with Spanish surnames followed in the wake of a Mexican land grant, naming the place, and it soon became a way station along the Santa Fe Trail.

With the coming of the railroad, around 1879, our Las Vegas boomed, becoming home to 10,000 residents. Fascination with a quick buck brings 2,000 residents a month to the other Las Vegas. In a fact sheet sent by reader Klare Schmidt, describing the way things were a mere 100 years ago, our Nevada counterpart is reported to have had only 30 people.

And why hasn’t our Las Vegas grown as much as Lost Wages, whose metro area has about a million? But regardless of the universal name recognition of the younger namesake, the Vegases have plenty in common.

They have UNLV, we have Highlands; they have the Sahara, we have the El Fidel; they have the MGM Grand, we have Grand Avenue; they have the Plaza Hotel, so do we; they have widespread gambling, we gamble every time we get on a bicycle or look for a job.

The other Vegas has the Boulevard Mall that locals naively assume rivals Minnesota’s Mall of America, the nation’s biggest shopping center; in this Las Vegas, we have Hot Springs Boulevard, Wal-Mart and three dollar stores; what happens in the other Las Vegas stays there; what happens here also stays here, or at least until the snow melts or the snow plows fire up.

The Nevada city features high-stakes gambling; in our town, we have bingo every weekend and San Felipe only 80 minutes south. The 2000 per capita income in this Las Vegas was $12,619 whereas the average Vegan loses that amount in the slots at Caesar’s Palace each night. Vegas has Lake Mead, but we have Lake Storrie and Lake McAlister. The tinsel-and-glitter town has Circus Circus, but we can top that: we have a bevy of politicians who are have mastered circumlocutions.

Given the number of matching features this historic city possess, one wonders why anyone from here would desire to travel to the other Vegas. And how could any telemarketer or teetotaler ever get the two places confused?

Imagine there being residents of the Nevada city who receive a call from a telemarketer who asks to speak to a Mr. Esquibel (modified to Es-KWEE-bull). Imagine the person on the phone saying, “It’s Las Vegas, New Mexico. Right? Nevada? Never heard of that place.”

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