Monthly Archives: October 2021

Gasoline:  $2.97, Albuquerque.  $3.09, Deming.

Traffic:  Truck traffic light.  Lots of deadheads moving, other traffic mostly tankers, UPS, FEDEX, Walmart.  Automotive traffic relatively light also, except lots of brand spanking new government vehicles on the road.  Lots.  New.

Roadkill:  Not much.  Three fresh coyotes and a badger, one mangled skunk and a mangled rabbit.  Number of coyotes high, especially with such light traffic.  Probably an epizootic, probably rabies or other distemper in the coyote population.

Behind the visor in the rental car:

Short people who ride in automobiles might want to keep this in mind.

Overheard in La Cochina Restaurant, TorC:

Middle aged waitress to younger waitress on smoke break talking about hurricane victim refugees:

“It’s sad when people don’t use any common sense and end up costing the rest of us so much money.”

Gas Station between Deming and Columbus:

Old guy about my age, eccentric looking with underside of hat brim painted black to keep out the sun glare, face furniture’s a handlebar about like mine.  He’s driving a recent, small Toyota, bragging he got 400 miles on 8 gallons.  Says on flat highway driving he’s gotten 78 miles to the gallon a couple of times.  Says he doesn’t care how high they go with gasoline prices.

That’s about all for the moment, folks.

Jack

I figured on blogging tonight to tell you blog readers a few anecdotes about some interesting things happening in Palomas, Mexico, Columbus, New Mexico, Deming, and points northward…. gas prices, talk overheard in restaurants about hurricane victims, border guard stuff, all manner of scintillating monologue to excite opinion and pondering.

But now I see I’m gonna have to say a few words about Communists, instead.

From May, 1917, until 1990, the US spent unimaginable treasure, countless lives, stupendous energy ‘saving the world’ from Communism, seeing them behind every tree and bush.  Meanwhile, the Communists collapsed under their own weight, packed their tents and went home.

In America, the Communists of Marx and Engels today call themselves Democrats and Republicans.  Not Greens.

That dog won’t hunt anymore.  At least not with me.  If someone else wants to fret about pinkos, someone else will have to.

For me, here’s the great Communist threat to America:

Cataclysmic Doggerel

A schoolmarmish lady in Zuni

Had canines subversive and loony;

Her Communist felines

Made neighborhood beelines

With doctrines both outworn and puny.

The KGB cat was a lean

And speckled-nosed beauty serene

In appearance alone

For her countenance shown

Multi-faceted plots as she preened.
Her Weathercat history was tops:

She sprayed on dozens of cops

With a Commie aroma

But joined Sertoma

Cavorting with phonies and fops.
The ringleader hound was a red

And curly haired rascal it.s said

Whose Trotskyish leanings

And Maoish gleanings

Were pondered curled up on the bed.
Princess Redfeather, they tells

Of this curly red bitch of the cells,

Forsook her fine lineage

To sip of the vintage

of Lenin, and Gulags and hells.
The worst of the felines, Bearboy:

Striped and cross-eyed and coy;

Politically weak,

Had claws that could tweak

Bourgeois carpet, and bedspread, with joy.

The Uncle-Tom dog of the hut

Was Ernie, the gray-bearded mutt;

Dog-tired, and dogmatic,

He thought,.Problematic:

dog-eared dialectic and glut..
The Uncle-Tom dog she called Ernie

Began as a dog-pound attorney

Commuted from gassing

He pondered in passing

Discretion.s demand for a journey.
A calico hound lying dormant,

Most likely a police informant:

A capitalist clown

Took his food lying down

Resisting the commie allurement.
The Stalinish kittenish spies

Spread foment and torment and lies

To Indian curs

And mutts that were hers

And War-Gods high up on the rise.
Princess and Ernie and, Spot,

And Chester, the narc-dog; the lot:

For half a piaster

Would bring a disaster

To Zuni, once called Camelot

From Poems of the New Old West

Copyright 2002, Jack Purcell

Let this be a lesson.  Don’t try to get me talking about Communists.

Jack

Every few months I make a trip to Mexico for some medications I take daily, because they’re dirt cheap down there compared to getting them in a pharmacy here. Prislosec use to run me $3 per tablet here and I was taking a couple per day. In Palomas, Mexico, they cost about 75 cents per tab. Now that it’s over-the-counter here they’re about a quarter per tab, compared to a buck here.

So it’s time to run down there again. I like Palomas because it’s a tiny burg, mostly pharmacies with lines of US oldsters stocking up on medications. It’s like the Powerplay option in reverse, stepping across the International Border into Mexico to buy prescription meds.

So, you parks the car at the border, walks across a couple of blocks, pays in gringo dollars, and walks back to the Border to be questioned and sometimes searched and hassled by US Border guards. They worry a person will pick up some antibiotic for a friend, or anti-inflammatory for a rheumatoid arthritic acquaintance. So they like to ask what condition you’re taking the medication for while they thumb through the book and see if they can catch you out.

I’ve never had the body-cavity search, probably because I’m not female, but maybe just because I’ve never caught them on a boring day.

Sometime I’ll tell you an amusing story about a Japanese Jew pharmacist I used to buy from in Juarez who had an Israeli flag on the wall behind him, didn’t speak English. But it’s a long story.

Anyway, I go down through Deming to Columbus, the US town Pancho Villa raided in 1912, and got the US Army chasing him all over Mexico. That’s where General Blackjack Pershing won his fame. There’s still a lot of ruin from the raid all over Columbus, so it’s worth poking around the bear grass, usually.

(Pictures below are all that remains of the bank vault of the town after Villa’s raid).

I like to stop at this little shrine in Columbus, also. I’d guess the folks who built it in the 60s have grown old… I’ve never seen them there, but when I first saw it during the early 90s someone was still taking care of it, putting out palm branches every day. Now the place is showing a bit worse for the wear.

I also usually stop and scrutineer a little airstrip north of town with a windsock model of the airplane Pershing’s troops used to help chase Villa.

Everything goes well I ought to be back tomorrow night.

Jack

Jack wrote this in September, 2005. It had several photos interspersed, but I don’t know which ones, sorry.

We’ve got to generate more tax revenues, or think of something else.  Americans probably aren’t ready for this.

So a national lottery would be a good place to start.

First game is a clone of Euro Millions, twin sister who walks like it, talks like it, pays off tax-free like it, lump sum only.

Revenues go entirely for a National Disaster Relief Fund, and to the US Veteran Hospitals.

Tickets sold in post offices and at every Federal Office Building in America, Indian Reservations, anywhere the Feds have a toe-hold outside State jurisdiction.

Lots of potential here.

Later games can be provided to allow war lovers to vote with their pocket books to fund whatever war we happen to be fighting at any given time.  When the fund runs out, the troops come home, so the war lovers and patriots can pay for the war themselves, and when they get tired of paying, they’ll quit buying tickets.

Gives new meaning to the word, ‘fair’.  The people who don’t support the war, but haven’t been asked, don’t have to support it.  Those citizens who just love it to death can have their war and maybe win a big prize, besides.

Remember where you heard it first.

Jack