An article in the New Yorker once told of competition among purveyors of steaks along the tollways.<\/p>\n
My first experience with tollways \u00e2\u20ac\u201d long before the Interstate network developed \u00e2\u20ac\u201d was getting on the Turner Turnpike in Oklahoma, which in those days, the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc60s, was the only way to drive across the state in less than a week.<\/p>\n
The article stressed that wherever privately owned tollways exist, that gives states an excuse to neglect the free highways. But what impressed me the most was the number of billboards advertising quickie steaks. The first billboard promised a sizzling sirloin steak on your plate in a mere 10 minutes. Farther along, some restaurateur peddled an 8-minute, 8-ounce steak.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, as restaurants and gas stations at the time had a monopoly of food and services, the need to compete seemed strange. The New Yorker writer concluded that had there been real competing restaurants, diners\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 intestinal tracts would suffer considerably. Ever taste a 90-second sirloin?<\/p>\n
Something like that goes on during election cycles. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always enjoyable to see what candidates come up with to get their message and sometimes facts before the public.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve grown accustomed to seeing a campaign poster for Nicolas Leger, who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s running for re-election as a county commissioner. Nicolas virtually has a reserved place on a stationary bike at the City Recreation Center. One knows he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s there because he picks the parking space farthest away from the entrance, lowers the tailgate to his pickup and displays his campaign sign.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to miss.<\/p>\n
Just as hard to miss is the early-50s Ford often parked downtown and bearing campaign signs for long-time State Sen. Pete Campos. That classic car \u00e2\u20ac\u201d for which I would give my eye-teeth \u00e2\u20ac\u201d certainly draws attention. And the signs are mobile: wherever the car goes, so do the posters.<\/p>\n
But not so mobile is the highly imaginative device used to hoist the election chances of Bertha C. Bustamante, a candidate for county treasurer. Her sign, a 4×8 piece of plywood, is visible in various high places. Using an industrial-strength device that shoots the sign up 30 feet, the candidate certainly knows how to project her message.<\/p>\n
One day we spotted Bustamante\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sign in the parking lot that houses O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Reilley’s, Bealls, Dollar Tree, etc. Another time it was parked (and raised) on South Grand, and over the weekend, it appeared near the train on Grand and Mills.<\/p>\n
A regular-sized piece of plywood probably doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t weigh more than 40 pounds, but raising it to the height of a three-story building takes a massive amount of machinery. The \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cat\u00e2\u20ac\u009d machine contains telescoping sections that support some kind of hydraulic forklift. The tires are so massive that one wonders whether the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdozer-type vehicle is even allowed on public streets.<\/p>\n
Does it require a behemoth trailer to transport the lift? Regardless, that has to be the most imaginative of all campaign strategies this election.<\/p>\n
We drove many streets of Las Vegas, noticing a number of large free-standing signs or those adorning fences and house fronts. The largest signs we spotted announce the candidacies of Tom\u00c3\u00a1s Salazar, Jennifer LaFebre, Richard Vigil, Ben Ray Lujan and Mark Guerin.<\/p>\n
What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s next? Between now and the early-June election, will a candidate come up with anything even more imaginative than the sign-on-the pickup, the classic-Ford arrangement or the plywood-poster-on-a-stick?<\/p>\n
Well, such a question takes me back to the days when every military recruit was sent on endless errands. At summer encampment with the National Guard in Fort Bliss, some NCO often would complain that the solution he was using to clean the equipment wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sufficient and thereby would send the rawest recruit to the next battery \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to borrow some blue steam.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Of course, the neighboring unit, familiar with the ruse, would claim they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d just that minute run out of the blue steam, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but the guys in the next battery probably has some.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
It was amusing watching the kid making the same request of a couple of dozen National Guard units, especially after people like Elias Monroe, Robert Ortiz and I had been selected for that honor the year before.<\/p>\n
Oh yes, the first year we also got to visit other guard stations to request a mythical \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ham stretchers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when on KP, we ran low on meat for the mess hall. And we mustn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forget the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sky hooks\u00e2\u20ac\u009d we were sent to borrow when our own equipment was insufficient to raise certain instruments.<\/p>\n
I believe the most innovative use of campaign strategy \u00e2\u20ac\u201d a technique that didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t require a diesel-guzzling piece of machinery \u00e2\u20ac\u201d came when Alfred Nelson, running for re-election as state senator, discovered vandalism to his signs; usually the vandals defaced Nelson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s visage on posters throughout town.<\/p>\n
Since Nelson had pin-on buttons with the same message and image, he once showed up at KFUN, sporting a button with his face effaced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An article in the New Yorker once told of competition among purveyors of steaks along the tollways. My first experience with tollways \u00e2\u20ac\u201d long before the Interstate network developed \u00e2\u20ac\u201d was getting on the Turner Turnpike in Oklahoma, which in those days, the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc60s, was the only way to drive across the state in less […]<\/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\/912"}],"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=912"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":913,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912\/revisions\/913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}