Just when I thought it was safe to close the chapter on the topic of homeless mendicants in the Meadow City, I received a report that I once thought would happen only in the movies.

And though I’ve admitted in at least two previous columns that I’m one of the biggest offenders with my enabling, sympathizing, empathizing, mealy-mouthing, dollar-giving manner, it’s possible that I’ll come across today as being critical of those who camp near restaurant entrances an gas station to beg for money.

Oh yes, my files show that I’ve had many encounters with beggars at 1) a frontage road near I-25 in Albuquerque; 2) Souper Salad in Santa Fe in an encounter that I feared might lead to fisticuffs; 3) a dozen places in Las Vegas.

Here’s what happened:

My wife and I were entering a restaurant on South Grand when a man, possibly in his 30s, gave us an oh-too-smooth woeful tale of a family emergency necessitating money for gas to enable him to drive to the Mineral Hill area to fix things up. Continue reading →

Getting the results of the latest Boston Marathon convinced me that my son Ben, 37, now living in Albuquerque, who used to run track at Wagon Mound High School, had done all right in the popular race, finishing with a 3:32:47 time for the 26.2-mile event. He came out in the 8,528th place.

I’d been quite naive and uninformed about the marathon, believing that just about anybody with running shoes and an interest could simply show up at Bean Town, get in line and race away.

For the 27,487 entrants, rules for qualifying are complicated. Runners line up in “waves,” about 25 minutes apart. And surprising is that those who want to compete must first qualify.

Since that race, I’ve discovered that several people from Las Vegas have made at least one run.

There are probably a number of people who have been in that grand race; in a previous column, I invited such runners to get in touch with me so I could mention them, and a few did: Joseph McCaffrey, Karen Billingsley, Joe Whiteman. Continue reading →

“Marilyn, what are the positive, comparative and superlative degrees of ‘good’?”

She answered, “Good, better, best.”

“Very good, Marilyn.”

“And Arthur, almost asleep in the corner there: What are the three degrees of ‘high’?”

“Uh, the three degrees of ‘hi’ are ‘hi,’ ‘hello’ and ‘how do you do?’”

So went many lessons in the ‘40s, taught by nuns like Sister Mary Grammatica, our homeroom teacher at Immaculate Conception School. Continue reading →

A recent discovery, which with my luck won’t create even a ripple, deals with added flabbiness in speech and writing.

The culprit has a name: “Like.” We’re not talking about the verb like, which might appear in this sentence: “I really like Katherine Zeta Jones.” That’s a legitimate use of the word.

It’s the flabby part of speech that we make of “like,” when we like overuse it.

My older grandkids have made that word the most popular of all time — but let’s not single them out, as it seems the most over-used word among anyone in school is — like. Being the host parents to two foreign-exchange students, one from Spain, one from Belgium, we’ve socialized, usually in Albuquerque, with dozens of other high schoolers from all over Europe, Asia and South America.

And what do the ones we’ve spoken to have in common? Almost all pepper their speech with “like,” “kinda” and “sorta,” with the zeal that they pepper their fries. And on a short visit to a MacDonald’s restaurant in Prague only last year, we listened in as Czech students succeeded in imitating American teens. Continue reading →

The recent death of Wagon Mound’s admired and beloved basketball coach, Alfred Romero, 93, has caused many folks — especially sports fanatics in New Mexico — to ponder many of his teams’ accomplishments.

This is not intended to duplicate the obituary that appeared in the Optic and other newspapers, nor does it pretend to be an insider’s view of the man’s coaching career.

I never knew — merely knew of — Romero; my job, while still in high school, was to cover high school sports for the Las Vegas Daily Optic, which in those days published every day except Sunday.

That said, as an avid and long-time follower of sports in this part of the state, I marvel at how consistently Romero was able to field hoops teams that went far into tournament play each month of March.

Ben Moffett and Chuck Ferris, who have compiled volumes of information about high school sports in New Mexico, provided some facts for this column.

Obviously, my admiration of Romero started early in life. He’d bring his hard-fighting crew of Wagon Mound Trojans to Las Vegas to battle our local teams, the West Las Vegas Dons, the Las Vegas High School Cardinals and the Immaculate Conception Colts. Continue reading →

Often I appreciate and therefore adopt new words. At a gathering where I ran into a niece, I heard her say, “You’re so avuncular.” The “ular” ending told me the word likely is an adjective, which it is. I’d heard and used the word before, and I’m glad of my specific relationship with Kathy: I’m her uncle, and to her, I’m avuncular, I suppose because I act like an uncle.

But why doesn’t the word have a feminine counterpart? Why can’t a woman who acts like an aunt be considered avauntular? Let’s decide right now to coin that word.

The Medina side of my family, at one time comprising 16 siblings, produced numerous aunts. Even those who married my uncles (some more than once) also became aunts, and therefore avauntular.

I like the Merriam-Webster definition best: “Like an uncle; kind or friendly like an uncle.”

Why doesn’t the English language have the counterpart? It’s true that we can find “avauntular” in a dictionary, but it’ll be there only as a contrast, a word that would have been legitimized had dictionarians gotten around to including it there. Continue reading →

When two languages bump into each other, they borrow stuff.

English: “Hey, Español! I need a word for these flying pests. Can I borrow ‘mosquito’?”

Español: “No problemo. While we are on the topic, I could use ‘boycott’ (though I might spell it ‘boicot’).”

Ahora voy a typiar mi column. Come on now! You had no trouble getting el gisto of that sentence. And in the near future, you’re likely to be seeing much more of this kind of linguistic mélange.

At issue is a recent conference of Royal Spanish Academy, one outcome of which was the fear of English (or slightly modified) words that make it into Spanish. That was one concern of attendees of the parley in Puerto Rico.

Simply, many of the planet’s half-billion speakers of Spanish have noticed a tendency to Spanishize many English words.

A Los Angeles Times article by Caroline A. Miranda provides words like “drone,” which becomes “dron” and even “Botox” and “selfie” as among the newcomers. The tug-of-words over “selfie” could result in a compromise, in which we call it an “auto-foto” instead. Continue reading →

When my siblings and I were younger, the summer highlight was a “picinic” (Mom always added a syllable to that word, assuming that somehow the extra vowel would pique our pleasure) around Mora, Holman Hill or Tres Ritos, where we children waded and climbed.

Close to where Mom spread out her picinic blanket, my brother Severino, sister Evangeline and I got our fill of thrills as we tested our climbing skills in the hills.

But Mom hovered over us, warning us of loose rocks, poison ivy, wild bears and rattlers, but we were fearless. Severino would dance atop a loose rock, imitating Tarzan, then jumping off as the rock began to slip. That did not amuse our parents.

What gave us that derring-do? Simply, it was our youth. Most kids can’t fathom breaking a limb after tumbling down Holman Hill. The oldest siblings, Dolores and Dorothy, weren’t interested in meeting their Maker — not yet, and that left the three youngest to attempt incredible feats.

Once, possibly in preparation for a mini-Everest trek, I climbed atop our backyard “casita,” a coal shed for our Railroad Avenue home. I jumped off the highest point. No problem. Climbed back up but this time with a dozen stacked asbestos shingles. Still no appreciable difference. After several trips, I’d added almost two feet of height, but the darn roof extension I’d contrived slid off, sending me downward, with my using entirely different body parts to break the fall. Continue reading →

As I answered the phone three evenings ago, I detected a bit of hesitation on the caller’s part.

She and I had worked in the same building at Highlands for years, until my retirement in 2000. The message came haltingly: “I hope you don’t resent me for this, but I disagree with you and need to get this off my mind.”

Of course there was no getting mad; I welcome calls, even those from people telling me to grow a brain. In this case, the woman (who asked me not to identify her) was referring to the column I wrote last week about panhandlers in Las Vegas. Her point was that I somehow aggravate the panhandling situation by throwing money at the problem.

It’s true that I don’t vet each mendicant who recognizes me and asks for a handout. I don’t question the veracity of their request or situation. However, I believe that people’s current lot in life can’t be too good if they need to beg. Continue reading →

Somebody needs to stop me. My modest generosity is going to get me into trouble.

If “modest generosity” seems like a contradiction of terms, I apologize. What I’m trying to get across is that I’m an easy touch, but apparently my touching doesn’t do a whale of a lot of good.

Let me explain:

There’s an army of people in Las Vegas who get their sustenance by putting a hand out. They’re inescapable and unavoidable, at almost every Allsup’s convenience store in town; Better Stop generally has a few chronic beggars at the ready; some stand guard in front of Charlie’s Restaurant, Traveler’s Cafe, and other places with walking traffic.

Two nights ago, I went to gas up our car, in preparation for an early-morning trip to Santa Fe. Yes, I could have waited until morning but I realized something would prevent us from getting our foreign exchange students to the Santa Fe Railrunner station on time. Continue reading →