You’ve already heard of the “Better Used Cars” sold by a company my dad used to work for. Werley Auto Company, which sold Ford, Mercury and Lincoln products, also had a used car line.

We didn’t own a car until I was in my teens. On the RARE occasions when we traveled out of town, Dad would borrow one of the B.U.C.’s. Mom had her own descriptions of such cars, one of which is that the Better Used Cars “take you out of town and bring you back.” Another category of cars consisted of the “A-1” fleet, which, Mom swore, “took you out of town and left you there — stranded.

I remember when the seven of us piled into a B.U.C. for a trip to Albuquerque and watching, puzzled, as Dad went gas station shopping. After driving into and out of three sets of stations, Dad explained, “The gas is two cents cheaper here.”

And in those days, when a 15-gallon tank would cost about $3, a few pennies made a big difference. Continue reading →

“What time is it? No! I mean, what time is it — really?”

That question I’ve needed to answer twice a year for 48 years. The query from my wife, Bonnie, occurs 1) when Daylight Saving Time begins and 2) when Standard Time begins and DST ends. And it takes her about six months to get used to the new time.

And she asks me the same questions twice a year without any regard to what suffering I endure. After all, it’s not easy resetting some 30 clocks. If you count the number of battery-operated wall clocks and add the dozens of electronic gadgets around the house, such as computers, iPads and cell phones, then reset the car clocks, that becomes a full-time job.

But let me go on the record as favoring the two biennial time changes. I like long summer days, where the sun remains up and out long enough for us to complete our barbecue party. And I like Standard Time too, when it gets dark early, meaning it’s time to get to work on reading, grading papers, writing articles, doing paper work.

Continue reading →

Have you noticed how much vitriol fills virtually every TV and radio commercial as a prelude to Tuesday’s midterm election? It’s everywhere. And notice how often the name of Bill Richardson, our former U.S. representative and two-term governor, is invoked.

I wonder whether such attack ads make a difference. Quite popular are those that accuse the opponent of having engaged in a secret deal that enriched that person. Otherwise, campaign managers portray the candidate as incompetent.

It must be the seedier part of human nature that makes people believe denigrating someone else elevates the status of the slanderer.

All of that makes me — and I’m sure many others — wonder whether such advertising techniques make any difference. For my part, I feel the urge to vote against any candidate who airs particularly noxious advertisements. Continue reading →

It’s hard to imagine that the staff of Dr. Cordell Halverson’s office will ever forgive (or at least forget) my deception. Halverson, a long-time Ob/Gyn, had my wife, Bonnie, as one of his patients. His office was at Eighth and University, close to Highlands.

At the time, Bonnie was teaching school in Anton Chico. I received a call from her (in that pre-cell phone era), at my office, in Mortimer Hall, telling me she’d forgotten to deliver a certain specimen to Halverson’s office, on her way to work that morning.

Apparently, in those days, a urine specimen was used to determine whether the woman was pregnant. As I had a full morning of classes, I pondered whether I’d have time to make the delivery. We had only one vehicle at the time. Bonnie carpooled, and it was her day to drive.

I hitched a ride, and a short time later entered Halverson’s office and announced, “Bonnie forgot the specimen, so I decided to provide my own.” That caused a bit of consternation among the staff, who told me — redundantly — that my idea simply would not work. My announcement also drew scattered tee-hees. Continue reading →

Necessity is the mother of invention. Or is it the other way around? Doesn’t it happen that a new gadget we’d never dreamed of suddenly becomes a necessity we can’t be without?

Let me explain:

Not a tekkie by any means, I nevertheless felt stranded, branded, abandoned and empty-handed by the cell phone I forgot to take to my meeting Monday morning. And as evidence of my non-tekkieness, I didn’t join the gadget generation until later in the game. We didn’t get our cell phone until eight years ago.

What was life like without it? I recall driving to the International Sunport to pick up my sister, Dolores. A friend told us we ought not dare leave town without a phone. She loaned us hers, a rather large contraption that fit in a packing crate that could still accommodate a pony.

Bonnie thought it was silly, two grownups taking a jaunt to Albuquerque and needing a phone. Unheard of! But yet, guess who managed to place a half dozen calls, making sure contact knew, “We’re calling from a cell phone. It’s neat!” Continue reading →

Probably for the rest of my life I will carry a certain amount of guiltfor things I thought and did in my childhood. Twelve years in a parochial school made a believer out of me.

Most of my scrapes came as the result of inappropriate laughter. Why was it permissible — and even encouraged — for elementary school kids to laugh, even to guffaw, when the teacher attempted humor, but never OK for me to try instigating some laughter on my own?

True, her humor was polished and refined; mine, banal. Our homeroom teacher at Immaculate Conception School, Sister Mary Sans L’Humour, never let a spurious giggle go unnoticed or unpunished.

And it’s the nature of the beast finally to catch the punch line to yesterday’s joke, while in church today or engaged in some other form of reverence. Continue reading →

It started as a pleasant but intense discussion on the future of cursive writing. But before we get into it, let me pre-sanitize all implications of the word. You see, even though I’d used it most of my life, I’d never even heard the term, until much later in life.

Disclosure: It has nothing to do with profane language; no, it’s not akin to cursing. Strange that as a person in education for a third of a century, I’d either never come across “cursive” or hadn’t been aware of it. Then when I met the woman I later married, a woman who’s taught elementary school much longer than my shorter tenure, I became familiar with “cursive,” also thinking initially it dealt with offensive language.

OK, so cursive is the writing that links letters together. Ostensibly, it was created centuries ago as a means of speeding up written communication. In theory, printing one’s words is neater: When I write my email address for others, I don’t trust my cursiveness and also always need to print the address, as I’ve lost the ability to make an “a” look different from an “o” in cursive. And the “r” and the “v” — well, let’s not discuss them. Continue reading →

Maybe it’s time to give up the struggle. My temptation is to say, “All right, all you people on loudspeakers in big box stores, and all of you behind a microphone: It’s alright to call it ‘jew-lery.”

It seems easier that way. We hear it on radio commercials: jew-lery; even jewelers, who make a living selling jewel-ry, still insist on putting the “l” in front of the “r.”

A language cop from way back, I’ve harped on the subject often. Strange that people seem to spell it right, even if they can’t pronounce it. The key element is “jewel.” So why is it so difficult to simply add “ry” to “jewel”?

We often pick up pronunciation through analogy, the letter combinations of other words. We say “celery” and “cutlery,” two words that might lead us to say “jew-lery.” But when do people use even these words except at a salad bar or kitchen? Continue reading →

When God created zucchini, was He was playing a monumental joke on humankind in giving us a bland, tasteless, mushy-feeling omni-present veggie?

I believe the creator hoped to watch our expressions as we attempt to down that slick food that’s so prolific it ought to be named “rabbit.” Someone should write a book and title it, “How to Stop Growing Zucchini and Rabbits.”

Last week, a friend offered me a pair of those mystery squashes. I was on my way to a Lobo football game just then and placed the zucchinis on the dashboard of my car as we headed for Albuquerque.

My friend and I left the squash on the dashboard, along with our two Lobo tickets, our admission to the game. We were at the entrance when we discovered our error and ran back to the car, parked in Lot No. 6721 or 6722 — I don’t exactly remember.

In the time that we were gone, someone broke into our car. We found that two more zucchinis and two more Lobo tickets had been placed inside our car. That should teach us to be more careful. Continue reading →

A number of years and columns ago, I promised I wouldn’t be writing any more on the overuse of “like.” But like a traitor to the cause, I’m preparing just one more, hoping that by being nauseatingly whining, I can help cure the problem.

However, before writing such a column, let me explain that in the past, I’ve written columns based on a single word: Once, I became fascinated by how a guide on AMTRAK ended every sentence with “so” as he narrated our trip through Indian Country in western New Mexico.

Another time I wrote an entire column on “la jura,” a term that refers to cops, but only when they’re on the move. And we’ve already exhausted all the uses of “sapo,” a Spanish word that describes a lucky shot, usually in basketball. And of course, I’ve picked on “ya know,” “I mean,” “let’s see,” and other words and expressions that serve only as fillers.

In previous columns I’ve asked readers for their opinion on whether terms like “conflate,” “irregardless” and “comprised of” have always been around, to be resurrected in the heat of political season, or whether these words have simply sprung up for the occasion. Continue reading →