Land Rush

This is the surveyor's medallion that marks the northwest corner of the smallish lot across the street from the even smaller lot where we're now watching the finishing touches being put on our little cabin in Ruidoso NM.

We oriented our place along an east-west axis that points the west end of our place directly at Sierra Blanca, the stately mountain that looms over the village and is the object most worth looking at for many miles around.

The vacant lot sits directly between us and an inspirational view across Brady Canyon, the terrain rising steadily over some 10 miles of pine forest to the tree line where alpine meadow takes over the rest of the vista and caps the 12,000-foot peak.

For years we never thought of it as a "lot" at all, because it was so steep it didn't seem reasonable that anybody would try to build on it. It looked more like a cliff.

But then somebody did build a house on a lot just as difficult right next door. Extending that roof line in our minds' eyes across the space facing ours, we realized that the days of our unobstructed view of the mountain could be numbered.

We told ourselves we'd enjoy it while we could.

Then last year in Puerto Vallarta, somebody bought the small brick structure on the south side of our condo. As I write this, two additional floors are rising there. Last January we watched preparation for that construction begin from our bedroom window, which looks out on the iconic bell tower of the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, framed by the Bahia de Banderas and the palm-forested Cabo de Corrientes in the distance. Within weeks, that romantic view will be gone forever.

So when a "for sale" sign sprouted on that empty lot in Ruidoso not long ago, we called the number. This week we signed a purchase agreement.

When we were placing our cabin, local people who know informed us that our mountain view would add value to our home in an amount roughly $10,000 higher than what we paid for our new hillside property. But that's not why we now feel we've enriched ourselves and our children and grandchildren.

Thank you, Pam.

Back to School

I'm submitting columns now and then to the local semi-weekly newspaper. Here's the latest:

Our youngest daughter is 32 years old, so it’s been a while since we worried much about the quality of our local public schools. But we just adopted our granddaughter and moved to Ruidoso to raise her, so now we’re worrying a lot.

We’ve been keeping up with the ongoing coverage of the dysfunctional school board and its superintendent-in-exile, sent home on paid leave for reasons that vary depending on who you ask.

We’ve also come into random social contact with a large number of people who say they have insider information and strong feelings about how the school district leadership may have gotten itself into its present fix. 

Some blame the board, especially recall targets Devin Marshall and Curt Temple. Others blame Superintendent Bea Harris.

I’m not yet sure where the lion’s share of the fault lies. But regardless, there are two things that are painfully obvious to anybody trying in spite of everything to feel good about sending their children to back to classes in Ruidoso schools this week.

The first is that the real reasons behind the controversy haven’t been publicly disclosed. Ruidoso taxpayers, including yours truly, don’t have more than a few clues that would help us understand what the fuss is actually about.

When Ms. Marshall and Mr. Temple first announced they were suspending Ms. Harris, they gave no grounds at all. They said only that her performance was under investigation. Newspaper readers like me were left to wonder what sort of terrible misconduct might have prompted such a drastic decision. It sounded as if it might lead to lawsuits or even criminal charges.

When the two board members finally made public statements to defend themselves against the widespread outrage from Ms. Harris’s supporters, the mystery only deepened. 

There were vague claims about violations of board policy, questionable personnel decisions, errors in handling of certain business matters. But there weren’t many facts, and what facts there were seemed to have been been spun to Ms. Harris’s disadvantage. 

Most puzzling of all, it appeared the board wasn’t investigating anything, that it had already concluded that Ms. Harris had done things that warranted removal. If that was the case, why was she still getting paid? She was their employee but no longer had their confidence. When would they just fire her? 

For her part, Ms. Harris hasn’t said a word. Silence may be the smart play for her personally. But it has helped keep the public in the dark about a corrosive dispute that has divided the community and left its school administration in serious disarray just when teachers need decisions and support as they prepare for the new school year.

The second and far more important obvious truth, one of the few things that all parties and their supporters agree on, is that the state of public education in Ruidoso is deplorable, and in the present impasse little is being done to fix it.

In the latest state reports, Ruidoso schools are among the lowest ranked in New Mexico, and of course New Mexico is near the bottom of the national heap. You can quibble over how fair or accurate such ranking systems are, but it would take a margin of error the size of Sierra Blanca for any reasonable person to believe Ruidoso schools might really not be that bad.

Reading between the lines, it’s starting to look as if this situation really boils down to a personal grudge between Ms. Harris and one or more board members, which none of them can talk about in public because Ms. Harris has a contract with the school district.

A board majority appears to want to fire Ms. Harris but may be afraid to because they can’t satisfy the contract requirements for termination. Ms. Harris can’t defend herself either because she still wants to try to save her job, Lord knows why, or at least to preserve her severance rights under her contract.

All of this is more than a little heartbreaking for us. We love Ruidoso, but we love our granddaughter more. Fortunately she’s just two years old, so we have a couple of years to decide whether we need to spend our school years somewhere else. 

I hope that’s enough time for real leaders to emerge at RMSD.

Too Much On My Plate

I nearly cried when the clerk at the local DMV handed over this plate and my freshly printed New Mexico title, and not because the package cost me nearly 500 bucks.

It was at least my sixth visit to the little office with its waiting room full of dispirited and grumbling patrons and the nonstop food channel everyone was apparently afraid to change.

None of this will surprise anyone who's had to license a car in a new state lately, but it's been many years since I owned a car in this country at all, and I was appalled at what government cutbacks and passive aggressive clerical behavior have done to the process.

We bought our car from a dealer in Alamogordo, about 45 miles from here. The salesman said the dealership would charge me a service fee of about $350 to title and register, and I'd be smart to just do it myself. Okay, I shouldn't have said, but did.

When I got to the DMV the clerk informed me on inspecting the dealer documents that I didn't have the car's former title. I had to return to Alamogordo and ask for it. It turned out the car's last owner was in Alaska.

Back at the DMV, I learned that a newly arrived taxpayer with an out-of-state car needs to prove his own identity and his New Mexico residency before anybody will even look at his vehicle particulars.

Identity wasn't a problem, but I had to go home to look for my Medicare and Social Security cards, and also a birth certificate. I needed Pam's papers too. Residency was tougher, because as Ruidoso newbies we haven't got much documentation with both our names on it, addressed to us in New Mexico.

I failed again at the DMV because the rental contract on our temporary residence didn't match with our actual new mailing address, and yet again when I arrived with an electric bill on which only Pam's name appeared. (Each take-a-number visit required at least an hour's wait, sometimes more.)

Once the identity and residency hurdles were behind me, I encountered VIN issues. An out-of-state car requires a physical inspection of the vehicle to verify that its ID number matches the paperwork. The number on the dash did indeed match, but when the clerk looked for the "nader sticker" on the driver's door she found it had been ripped off.

The number is also embossed above the radiator, first thing you see when you lift the hood. But the clerk maintained it was above her pay grade to look at it. Only a state trooper would do for that.

There's a Highway Patrol office here, but the guy who does VIN inspections only shows up by appointment once a month, and oops we had just missed his July date. But my temp registration was about to expire, so that meant another trip to Alamogordo to shame the dealer into issuing me a new one.

My VIN appointment finally came on Wednesday, and after making sure my vehicle wasn't stolen and shaking his head over the fecklessness of DMV clerks, the trooper gave me an affidavit stating that he had located the VIN number in two places.

I went back to the DMV the next day, but the line was so long I gave up. Yesterday, with my second temp expiration date looming, I went back determined to finish the job. But when I got to the window, the clerk shook her head mournfully and informed me that the trooper had transcribed an "L" in my VIN number with a bare vertical line that could also have been an "I" or a "1". It was above her pay grade to speculate as to what he meant, she said with ersatz regret. Only the trooper himself could clarify this.

Seething, I crumpled my take-a-number slip and left the office, considering whether to go home and modify the affidavit myself. But we did the right thing and drove back to Patrol office, where a different trooper had the time and humanity to inscribe the short horizontal line that removed all doubt.

So yes, I nearly cried when we returned to the office, waited another hour, and got our plate. I paid extra for a two-year registration so I don't have to darken DMV's door again any time soon.

This New House

This is a picture of a kitchen cabinet knob, and if you peer closely at it you'll see that it's imprinted with the miniature paw print of a bear.

It's a cute accessory for the little house we hope to move into soon in a neighborhood where a real bear makes an appearance from time to time.

Bears have it all going on. They're endearing but also menacing if they get too close, and thanks to these qualities they've been fetishized in our mountain community, subject of hundreds of crude chainsaw sculptures all over town.

We're not interested in those, much as we like bears. To our way of thinking, the embossed kitchen knobs is a more nuanced homage. It's only one example of the countless items I've been asked to consider lately that I never would have expected to.

I've never paid a nanosecond's attention to any kitchen knob that didn't come off in my hand, so it was a revelation to me to learn that there are many different styles to choose from. That's actually an understatement. There are many thousands, and when you're done with style you still have size and color to deal with. You're not done yet. You need to decide where to place the knob on the cabinet door.

Once you graduate from knobs, you move along to drawer pulls. You're not overwhelmed by all this decision making because by now you have already chosen the cabinets and drawers themselves and have long since mastered the art of producing opinions out of thin air.

It's better to have a round toilet than one of those long oval ones. Or is it? Glass on a shower door should be clear, not beaded or misted. Or should it? A pine ceiling looks tacky and cliched with anything more than a clear coat of varnish over it. Or does it?

I've moved in and out of dozens of dwelling places without knowing or caring how this sort of thing got decided. The rooms and their appurtenances were what they were, which for the most part was just fine, or at least serviceable.

But the day we started our little house from scratch, acceptance became a luxury I could no longer afford.

Resting in Peace

Last month as the forest fire blazed and we were fleeing east to Dallas, we found ourselves in little Brownfield, Texas. Pam suddenly realized we were just a few miles south of even tinier Meadow, Texas, where her mother's family farmed for several generations.

Some of those ancestors lie buried in Terry County Memorial Cemetery just outside Brownfield. Pam decided we should pause and pay respects.

So we fired up the iPad and Mapquested our way to the place, which proved easy to find because it was one of the few substantial stands of trees anywhere in or near the town, or for that matter between us and the horizon in any direction.

Pam had been to at least one funeral there many years ago, but she had no recollection of where in the park it had taken place. So we began cruising the quiet lanes and scanning the markers for the family name, which was Waters.

After a few minutes I realized a curious thing. All the names on the headstones were Hispanic. At first we thought we might have blundered into the Catholic cemetery. But then I had the idea that since we had turned left from the center road to start our search, we might find Anglo names if we went back and turned right instead.

Sure enough, we found that the other half of the cemetery was populated with Osborns, Baggetts, Haywoods, Paddacks, Andresses, and, presently, several Waters.

Otherwise, the two halves of the burial ground were indistinguishable. Same good perpetual care. Same handsome stones. Same lovingly placed flowers here and there. Just across the county road to the south was Zion Cemetery, just as well groomed. We didn't go in to see what sort of folks lay there, but we didn't really have to.

Every soul in all three parcels lived and died in what was and remains for the most part a segregated community. But there they all are, peaceably sharing the only shade for miles around, separate but indisputably equal at last.

You Can't Go Home Again

Is there anybody left out there who still doesn't think the Tomlins are dodging hostile thunderbolts from somewhere on high? Well, get a load of this.

The photo above was shot yesterday outside our former Manhattan home at East 56th and Lexington. An underground transformer overheated and exploded, blowing its cast iron manhole cover into the air.

Under normal circumstances, they say if New Yorkers notice these flipping disks at all they only interrupt their sidewalk conversations long enough to call heads or tails.

But in this case there were flames, and they were hot enough to ignite a minivan parked at the curb. The minivan burned long enough to spark a second explosion in its gas tank, which set off some construction scaffolding overhead.

The blaze gutted the corner salon where I used to get my hair trimmed, along with the 2nd and 3rd floor condos above it, and blackened the 16-story building facade all the way to the roof.

Elizabeth's best buddy Parker fled the building in the arms of his daddy. His mommy was just ahead of them. They all plunged around a wall of fire and smoke across the building entrance and spent the night in a hotel.

Our dear friend and next door neighbor Mignon wisely chose not to trust the elevators and wasn't prepared to trust her knees either for 14 flights of stairs. On the doorman's advice she stayed where she was and monitored the situation on the news channels.

One of the elevators did fail, trapping a less prudent resident between floors for the better part of an hour. Smoke rolled into the basement, forcing another to barricade herself in the laundry room until FDNY cleared the air.

Well, we're sorry our former neighbors were frightened and inconvenienced. But I'm quite sure that once again this was all about us and our recent string of mini-calamities and brushes with disaster. We were just there LAST WEEK! I almost got a haircut!

Wild Kingdom

No need any more to sit wondering what that pretty bird in the tree is, not in the age of wifi and Google. Here's Steller's Jay, a common site around the place we're living these days.

The real thing is prettier, if anything, than its close-up. The tail, back and wing tips are flashing lapis lazuli, fading to charcoal around the head and shoulders, or whatever birds call them.

With help from our visiting friend Doreen, who likes birds more than we do, we've also become familiar with the Western Peewee, which seems to have a nest under our eaves and sits staring in at us from wires in front of our picture windows.

We've seen a couple of varieties of woodpecker, including the Acorn with its little scarlet beanie. And the hummingbird feeder is back up outside the kitchen window. They feed and harass each other like fighter pilots almost full time, and one bird actually flew into the house. It took a five minute game of gentle broom badminton to send him back outside.

But maybe you're wondering about our bear. We left town for New York the day after the Game and Fish guy put the trap trailer out for him. The trap was gone when we got back last week, so we emailed to see if it worked.

"I did not catch the bear," Ranger Mark replied. "Call me if you have any other problems with it."

There's a responsive public servant for you. But knowing now that Game and Fish runs a gas chamber, we decided we'd lose that phone number and consider taking our Albuquerque friends' advise to get a pellet gun and plink Smokey in his fat butt if he bothers us.

But we didn't see the bear again. Until yesterday, when he wandered back into the neighborhood, looking as untroubled and saucy as ever. We immediately checked our locks and latches and discovered that the french doors from the deck to our bedroom no longer lock or even latch. A gentle nose bump is all a bear or even a raccoon would need to pay us a midnight visit.

The carpenter is supposed to be on his way this morning. We slept restlessly last night behind a stack of patio furniture.

But our most satisfying wildlife event in the past week was an elk sighting. Actually there were four of them, browsing in the woods about 100 yards up the steep slope behind the house. They are majestic creatures at this time of year, much larger than deer and heavily muscled, with their enormous antler racks extending half the length of their bodies.

Elizabeth is as interested in the fauna as we are. But whenever we see a wild thing near the house, her first move is to get Baby off the deck.