Famous people die in threes, as in Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett Majors and Michael Jackson. Important people, not necessarily famous, pass away in pairs.<\/p>\n
Two people who have been close to my family, though probably unacquainted with each other, are Robert W. Johnston and Nea Escudero.<\/p>\n
First Bob.<\/p>\n
The name Johnston in Las Vegas is much less common than Johnson, without the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153t.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Robert K. Johnston, a prolific writer of letters to the editor, for a time was confused with the Robert with a W in his name. I know both.<\/p>\n
Robert W. had a background in journalism and advertising, even having worked briefly for the Optic. He lived two doors from my house at Camp Luna. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d come to my house with his Welsh corgi \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tigger\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and invite me on walks. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d take along my whippets, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Moosa\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Watsita.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Soon, Bob would come to the house and announce, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tigger asked me about Moosa and Watsita and wondered\u00c2\u00a0 if they could come out and play.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\nOnce, Bob called me about a crisis at his house, a trapped bird in his chimney, about to fall into his wood-burning fireplace. It was summer, and the stove hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been lit, but the bird, dancing on a small ledge inside the stovepipe, still needed rescuing. We climbed Bob\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s roof, saw the bird and wondered how it could leave peacefully. Finally, we ran the business end of a hoe down the chimney; the bird hopped on to the makeshift elevator, and we lifted it out.<\/p>\n
About a month later, the same thing \u00e2\u20ac\u201d different bird \u00e2\u20ac\u201d happened and we used the same techniques to free it. Tired of the old-men-on-the-roof routine, we placed chicken wire around the opening of the chimney and never needed to perform a rescue again.<\/p>\n
Now Nea.<\/p>\n
The building that houses Price\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Furniture used to be Newberry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, a 5-and-dime with a snack bar. One could almost set his watch to the punctuality and reliability of two women, Nea and Marie Trujillo, my mother. They had a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sitting\u00e2\u20ac\u009d date to have coffee there every Saturday. Nea, as manager of the former Sorority Shoppe, had hired my mom to do clothing alterations.<\/p>\n
The pair could almost always be seen enjoying their Saturday morning cafecito, and once, when I was about 10, my failure to see Nea and Mom at the Newberry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lunch counter made me wonder if it really were Saturday.<\/p>\n
It would be hard to compute how many cups got consumed during the 50-plus years they ran this coffee klatch. They outlived Newberry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, moved their appointments to the Spic & Span, then to the Hillcrest and other places. Along the way, they picked up a friend, Mary Armijo, and the three were among the most durable of coffee companions anywhere.<\/p>\n
Mom died in 2002, Mary a couple of years later, and Nea in May. I have no doubt they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve reunited \u00e2\u20ac\u0153up there.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And we can all imagine the dialogue taking place:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Let me pay for the coffee.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153No, Hijita, you got it last time.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Quiet, you two. I already took care of it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
That film issue has gotten lots of press. I believe the city made the right decision in going against a moratorium on films being Las Vegas. However, in all the coverage, little is written about the regular guy who lives and shops in town. Almost all the emphasis is on business owners \u00e2\u20ac\u201d one of them even suggesting having the movie companies pay each affected business a thousand dollars a day during filming.<\/p>\n
Sure, we can sympathize with merchants whose business is actually fazed by closings and street blockages, but the local resident also faces inconveniences. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a bother driving several extra blocks on the way to work because of main arteries closed without notice. What if we miss the half-price sale on that coat because we couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t enter that store? What if an important transaction, such as paying a bill, got delayed? Even when companies are not shooting, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s often difficult to scoot around some of the signs and merchandise merchants place on sidewalks.<\/p>\n
As a regular resident, I resent seeing huge vans, trailers and generators parked for weeks in areas we would get a ticket for. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stop thinking about movies solely in terms of how local businesses are affected. Customers are part of that commercial symbiosis as well, and non-business-owners have a voice too.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be interesting to see how city officials go about determining exactly how people get selected to decide whether a movie company gets to come to our city.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Ah, to be among the 15,083 Manny-Mania fans in Isotopes Stadium in Albuquerque to watch Manny Ramirez strike out in an underwhelming poorformance. The Dodger superstar was suspended for 50 games for drug abuse but was allowed to perform penance by playing with a minor league team.<\/p>\n
And of course, a wet playing field on the last day caused management to yank the suspended Dodger for fear of an injury. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not as if the regular Isotopes players play risk-free.<\/p>\n
Baseball players of yesteryear broke records too. And they did it without the benefit of anything even as innocuous as Advil.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Highlands\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 anthropology department ought to consider teaching workshops in Egyptology during the summer session. The students could fly to Egypt to conduct some quite specific research: the plumbing system that was operating inside the pyramids many years before Christ.<\/p>\n
I guess that would make the students Pharaoh Faucet Majors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Famous people die in threes, as in Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett Majors and Michael Jackson. Important people, not necessarily famous, pass away in pairs. Two people who have been close to my family, though probably unacquainted with each other, are Robert W. Johnston and Nea Escudero. First Bob. The name Johnston in Las Vegas is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions\/415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}