Back in the olden days, before Storrie Lake became a state park and when entry was free, I once took a couple of neighbor-acquaintances swimming. I call them acquaintances because they were not exactly my friends.

Without getting into the semantics of what a friend is, let me explain that they were simply young men my age whom I saw regularly but who weren’t part of my circle.

I had a car, in a manner of speaking; they didn’t. In the early ‘60s, when the Optic had a genuine weekend paper with a tabloid Sunday supplement, “Omnibus,” I’d leave work at midnight. On my way home one time, the acquaintances, Henry and Don, flagged me down as they were stepping out of one of several bars on East Lincoln, a block from my work. Continue reading →

“Don’t forget ‘truchas,’” Joseph P. Santillanes yelled at me as I parked on Douglas and he crossed the street.

Was the personable candidate for San Miguel County Sheriff inviting me to have trout with him at Charlie’s Restaurant or at Dick’s?

Hardly. Santillanes was reminding me that in my frequent attacks in my columns on words we use around here I’d omitted “truchas.”

“Why don’t you write about truchas?” he asked.

It’s true: I’ve written entire columns on words like “like,” “so,” “whatever” and “sapo” but never “truchas.”

Let me explain: Continue reading →

The construction that made Grand Avenue a true four-lane highway took place in the early ‘50s. Traffic got routed through Railroad Avenue and even New Mexico Avenue during the several months that improvements took place.

This month, a $4.4 million project began on the same stretch of road. The news of the project has sparked memories about the major job some 60 years ago.

Before the ‘50s project, the pavement covered only two lanes, the rest being dirt and gravel, and even the slightest sprinkle of rain managed to get cars stuck. Continue reading →

Eighty teams competed in the just-concluded New Mexico high school basketball tournaments for boys and girls. Eighty teams.

Let’s do the math: There are five classes, AAAAA for the behemoth schools, down to class A, for those quintets whose players need to lead cheers, collect tickets and man the concession stand when they’re not on the hardwood.

An Albuquerque Journal sportswriter, James Yodice, recently wrote a piece about having a super championship. The winners of the four smaller classifications would slug it out for the honor of taking on the AAAAA champ.

Sound like a good idea? It’s not original, having been proposed many times, but it’s flawed by the a priori notion that bigger is better: “You smaller teams have to compete for a chance to meet us, the big dawgs in the neighborhood.” Continue reading →

Jack Van Horn, the designated liturgist at church Sunday, reminded all of us parishioners to “meet and greet the person in your pew,” then added, “if there is someone there to greet.”

Clearly he was referring to the paucity of congregants, the bulk of whom blame the time change. Some of us lost an hour of sleep Sunday when we converted to Daylight Saving Time; some went ahead and re-found that hour and wondered where everybody had gone when they arrived at church, or some other function.

Naturally, people blame their lateness on the time change, but do those people who show up an hour late for work ever appear an hour early at the other end of the calendar?

Daylight Saving (note: there’s no “s” at the end of “saving” — it’s not like a savings bank) Time is a great innovation for as long as it lasts. I like it, as it gives us a chance to ride bikes, fire up our barbecue pits and generally socialize more. I wish retail stores would adjust to the time change as well, perhaps opening an hour later and staying open a while longer. Continue reading →

‘What’s happened to Lee?” my friend Susan Swan straight-facedly asked me this week, and I fidgeted while attempting an answer.

“Well, Lee, our erstwhile features editor at the Optic, isn’t with us any longer,” I think I answered. Susan responded, “I don’t mean that Lee.”

But let’s back up a little. We’ll get to the other Lee in a few graphs.
Language is what people say it is, which is why you won’t ever find me criticizing its usage.

Yeah, right. Continue reading →

Ever had chills up and down your spine? I used to think it was a myth — until I saw the famous pea-soup scene in “The Exorcist,” when Regan, the possessed child, decorated Father Damien Karras’s face with it.

That was in the early ‘70s, long before VCRs or DVDs, when we needed to go to a movie house, rather than view the film at home. Well, the second time, many years later, I enjoyed it at home, with selected members of the family — never my wife, who refuses to watch anything violent. With remote in hand, I prepped myself: “Self, you know what’s coming, and besides, you’ve got it on a small screen.”

Did that bit of homespun psychology work? Absolutely not! If anything, the shock I felt in my spine was more intense than the first time. Continue reading →

“You must’ve been such a happy family. All your movies prove it.”

That often came from people who sat through our home movies that showed us opening Christmas gifts sometime back in the ‘40s. Movies don’t lie, but they do exaggerate and can be manipulated.

Need proof? Well, all of the movies of us Trujillos show us much mirthier, earthier and girthier than we really were. Back then. But now, if we take the time to view those pre-historic flicks, we appear quite slim. See? The exaggeration works both ways.

The “Leave-It-To-Beaver” image of us was partly an illusion. Of course, love and warmth abounded, but when you have just minutes to make a good impression, things change. Continue reading →

The news that Community First Bank plans to move part of its operation to the Crocket Building has drawn attention.

Will the move itself revitalize downtown Las Vegas? We can hope. Irrespective of that, it’s great the bank’s owners, Ray and Joyce Litherland, chose to keep the bank downtown.

To many of us, the Crocket Building means a lot. For the uninitiated, we’re referring to the Murphey’s Building. For many years, that was the center of New Town. Ernie Thwaites, the original manager of KFUN, used to run a live radio spot: “Douglas at Sixth Street, where Las Vegans meet.”

So it was. That was the downtown I knew while growing up.

Let me explain: Continue reading →

Several people commented on the piece about the demolition of Mortimer Hall, the Highlands building at Eighth and National that was cleared to make room for a new student center. In that building, as mentioned in a previous column, was “The Door.” On it I kept humorous headlines from various newspapers.

In one move around Mortimer Hall, it was easier to move the entire door to a new location than to apply an Exacto knife to remove the clippings. But let’s be clear: The door was of the standard institutional variety, and it held up pounds of profundity.

One headline that I overlooked last time read simply, “Babies are what mothers eat.”

One reader, Cathy Stauber, mentioned rolling on the floor after reading some of the strange headlines in that column. Stauber, a naturopathic physician, ought to know more than anyone the benefits of a good belly laugh, one in which the laugher rolls on the floor. Continue reading →