Goats: Lucero, NM

Just down the road is the metropolitan area of Lucero, New Mexico, where there are more goats than people.

Quilty Pleasures Wednesday-Thread Bear, My Local Quilt Shop and Soon To Be Television Personality

I love to visit Las Vegas, New Mexico because many parts of town remind me of movies. It's like I'm in a movie set! Wait! Las Vegas IS a movie set, and has been for a long time, since the early silent films starring cowboy star Tom Mix.

No Country For Old Men was filmed here more recently and the freeway overpass stood in for a Mexico border crossing in the movie Due Date. The Plaza Hotel has seen its share of filming, as well.

Last year the cast of True Grit stayed at the Plaza Hotel. While having a drink in the hotel bar a few weeks later, I found myself sitting exactly where Matt Damon had parked himself after a hard day of filming.  Jeff Bridges browsed the books at Tome on the Range, the local independent book store.

Plaza Hotel

Here's another shot of the hotel and a glimpse of the shady park square across the street.

Just kitty corner and to your right as you step out of the Plaza Hotel is Thread Bear, my local quilt shop. The store recently moved to its new digs on the Plaza and it's bigger than the previous location, with lots of room to display quilts and a classroom at the back for group sewing.

The assortment of fabric runs from traditional to modern, including an extensive selection of southwest style fabric which makes me a happy camper. In the next few months Thread Bear will have its website up and running, ready to make internet sales in addition to its (actual) brick and mortar business.

Ann Siewert, the proprietor of Thread Bear, is both a quilter and a knitter with an excellent sense of color and design.

Ann Siewert, Proprietor

The store displays many quilts, not just samples, but ones made by local groups. The Tea Time Quilters had a show recently and the store's high ceilings and air ducts accommodated an amazing array of quilts. Click on the photos below for a closer look.

This is a One block Wonder Quilt machine pieced and quilted by Laura Cole.

This very traditional patchwork style quilt uses untraditional focus fabric.It was pieced by Sarah Aragon and machine quilted by her mom, Cathy Aragon.

In addition to fabric, Ann has skeins and skeins of yummy yarn and offers knitting classes from beginner to advanced. She taught me how to make a hat and I only had to rip it out four times! It wasn't Ann's fault, just my ADD kicking in at odd moments.

 

On Thursdays a group of knitters hangs out in the comfortable seating area.

 

Thread Bear also offers sewing and quilting classes, including an upcoming Christmas Tree Skirt class.  Special showings and events make this a destination for many quilters in the area who need their local quilting fix.

This fall you might catch a glimpse of Thread Bear and the rest of the plaza in a pilot on A and E channel, in a show called Longmire. Just above Thread Bear was the set for the sheriff's office. Outside, cameras shot exterior scenes.

It was a little bit of Hollywood in Las Vegas. New Mexico, that is.

Billy the Kid, Buddy Holly, and Don't Forget The Vixens

 On the way to the Dimmit, TX quilt show we drove the meandering Hwy 84 and ended up eating lunch at the Rodeo Grill in Ft. Sumner, New Mexico, served by a friendly cowgirl in hotpants and false eyelashes. We were perplexed by a headline in the local paper: “Coaches Honor Vixens.” What the heck was going on here? After reading further, we were relieved to learn that the local girls’ high school basketball team were known as “Vixens” (the boys are called Foxes). It's always good to read beyond the headline.

A stop at the Billy the Kid Museum gives the story of the Lincoln County War and the death of Billy the Kid, right there in Fort Sumner in 1881. Not wanting to take the time to stop at his nearby grave, Tom had to settle for “Billy the Kid’s Gun,” a Winchester 73, displayed behind glass, that Billy gave to a friend . 

Tom found more guns displayed, too, which made his day.  There were also old wagons and even a hearse! 

  Billy the Kid Museum was definitely worth the stop. Tom, of course, had a field day and took too long while I stayed out in the car with Miss Pearl.

Not far was Clovis, New Mexico, where famed Rock and Roll star Buddy Holly first recorded his hits in the 1950's. A recreation of the Norman Petty Studio, where Holly recorded, commemorates the “Clovis Sound” of the late 50s and early 60s. Easy to find, it's right downtown, across from the Mesa Theatre.   

Maybe Buddy Holly saw The Searchers there in 1956.  In the movie,John Wayne said “That’ll Be the Day”  several times, the inspiration for one of Holly’s biggest hits.

It turns out that Holly wasn’t the only one recorded by Petty, and the list of hit makers puts the “Clovis Sound” right up there with the “Memphis Sound” and the “Motown Sound." Not bad for a little metropolis of around 38,000 today--which must have been far fewer in the 1950s.     

  

Crossing the border into Texas, we drove toward Dimmit looking for a campground. Dimmit is in the middle of the “Llano Estacado”-----the “Staked” Plains of Texas. Four hundred miles long and 150 miles wide, flat, there is nary a bump on the horizon any way you look except for the occasional granary each tiny community seems to have.   

  

   We finally camped at Palo Duro Canyon, on the eastern escarpment of the Plains. 

     Sometimes called the “Grand Canyon of Texas,” it is, in fact, the second largest canyon in the US. The climactic battle of the Red River War with the Comanche nation was fought here in 1874, so the Canyon has historical significance. A trip to the Panhandle Plains Museum at Canyon, Texas, 12 miles to the west, exhibits relics of that war, as well as other displays of the area’s rich history.  

A couple of days spent here allowed Tom and Miss Pearl to play Comanche while I went to the quilt show at Dimmit, 70 or so miles away.

When we finally left the Canyon, we headed south to Lubbock. Hungry for breakfast, we turned off at the sign for Happy, Texas, looking for a café. We vaguely remembered a movie named after the town.

Happy, Texas, doesn’t seem too happy; it looks like it is dying. Population is posted as 645, but we could not find one restaurant, despite the fact that a freeway sign had advertised one. Driving around the town showed us a clean, well ordered town but with lots of shuttered buildings along Main Street. Few people were to be seen----Tom complained that it was like a town in some Twilight Zone episode, but it was Sunday, so maybe everybody was at church.    Interestingly, another early Rockabilly star of the "Clovis Sound," Buddy Knox, who had a hit with "Party Doll" in 1957, was born in Happy.

            Happy and towns like it on the Llano Estacado are sitting on a huge underground pool of water, the Ogalala Aquifer, extending from Texas to South Dakota.

 Discovered in 1906, water dating from the Pleistocene era proved to be plentiful and attracted thousands of settlers to the Plains to grow wheat and other crops. Serious pumping began in the 30s, faster than the replacement rate, lowering the water table drastically. Some predict only a few decades more before it will be no more. Hmmm...another Dust Bowl, anyone?

             

By the time we got to Lubbock, that is exactly what it felt like as we drove through 30 miles of wind and dust to get to the town. We learned later it was caused by a big brush fire southeast of the city.

            

 Lubbock was the home of Buddy Holly, so a stop at the Buddy Holly Museum seemed mandatory. A bit disappointing, however, especially compared to the Norman Petty museum in Clovis. And, the famous statue of Buddy that is supposed to be in downtown Lubbock has been removed for refurbishing.

Ms. Pearl found Buddy's glasses, though.

             

Leaving the next morning, we were happy to find we were only about six hours from home. Enough time for a stop at Clovis to go antiquing, and then home.

Who Lives Here?

Our neighbors are a diverse bunch, but the anchors here are the people descended from Spanish settlers who received land grants from the Governor of the New Mexican Territories in the 1830's.  Vigil, Montoya, Martinez, Trujillo, Chacon, Lucero, Pacheco are names you see on the business signs, political banners, and in the government offices.  When people say, "He's not from around here," they might mean that the guy came here in the 1970's. Forty years living in one place does not make you an insider around here. It's kind of like New England in that way, insular and not always amenable to change.

Spanish American residents of Mora, New Mexico, way back when

Most of the full time residents in our area seem to be land rich and cash poor. Because it's so isolated, it is hard to make a living, the kind of living where you make lots of money. It has been described as like Appalachia in some ways, with poverty being the biggest similarity. A few people commute to work in Taos, a 100 mile round trip, or have jobs working for the county of Mora. A significant number of these local people have college degrees and returned here because they like a quiet, safe atmosphere. When you listen to people around here talk, there's a bit of a Spanish accent which I heard someone describe as the Northern New Mexico lilt.

So who else lives here? Old hippies who home school their kids, eat vegan and do odd carpentry jobs to make a living are our closest neighbors. They have no running water and haul it from a neighbor's well.  When the girls hit their teens, his water hauling increased enormously. Teen-aged girls require lots of water, you know.  Their oldest daughter is attending college, the next one was just accepted and will go in the fall. The two youngest daughters are home schooled. They are our closest full time neighbors, about a half mile away.

A retired police officer and his wife live a bit farther. He recently retired again-from raising yaks, when a mean one tossed him out of a corral. He was lucky to be wearing layers of clothing and overalls. Have you seen those yak horns?

About five miles away is David, a local who raises goats.  Mr. Cordova, in his 70's, raises cattle, and wonders if he is ready to hang up his cowboy had and move to town.

That's about it for full time residents.

Our adjacent neighbors on each side are entrepreneurs, oilmen, doctors, and the guy who designed the new Spaceport America.

It's an interesting mix. We were told that if we didn't take anyone's jobs, didn't want to change everything, and were good neighbors, we would be in good shape.

We buy eggs, cattle, produce, honey and soon, chickens to eat, from our neighbors. I figure why the heck not? Every village needs an economy.