My Strange New Mexico

Heist in Los Alamos

Posted on Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 03:06PM by Mike Smith in Daily Strange | Post a Comment | Email | Print

The city of Los Alamos is New Mexico’s best-educated community, with more than 62% of its adults over the age of twenty-five holding at least a bachelor’s degree, according to the 2000 census. Los Alamos is the north central New Mexico birthplace of the atomic bomb, and home to the world-renowned Los Alamos National Laboratories.

The city of Los Alamos was, until recent decades, so private that it required a security clearance just to drive through, and even today it is tightlipped enough that its married pairs of scientists often have little to no idea what their spouses may be working on. It’s a city no stranger to big ideas—to big risks—and to big crime.

Spies and accusations of spying, as well as treasonous thefts and allegations of theft, have been a recurring part of life on The Hill, ever since the Manhattan Project and the bomb, ever since the first scientists arrived in the 1940s. Big ideas often inspire big risks, and sometimes those risks are illegal.

The city’s latest such relatively epic criminal happening occurred on Tuesday, May 6, 2008, when a team of two anonymous individuals found themselves seized by just such an idea, inspired perhaps by a primal need of which only they will ever know the actual depths.

With their devious plans in mind, these silent plotters advanced to one of the many boxy, nondescript, almost featureless buildings for which high-security towns such as Los Alamos are often known. The conspirators somehow managed to invade the structure’s premises, evidently casually but cautiously eluding any security that would have been stationed near the building’s entrance.

The pair then made their way to a temperature-controlled area of the largely sterile complex, where the synthetically engineered objects they decided to steal were were stored.

The two must have known that their exposure to these items could very likely have unhealthy effects, to say nothing of what might happen to them if they were caught removing them illegally. They must have known that repeated exposure to such things had, in the past, caused the limbs and torsos of other area residents to swell up grotesquely. And they must have been aware that once the objects' various components were removed from the airless vacuums in which they were stored, there would be only a limited amount of time available to them before what they had taken became completely worthless.

And yet, they acted.

They acted, but without success. Within minutes, the theft had been noticed, and the alarm went out. Within minutes, they were confronted, forced to yield up the stolen property, and made to flee the compound empty-handed.

To date, they are still at large, and it seems that a brief mention in the May 9, 2008 Los Alamos Monitor—in the “LAPD Police Beat”—is so far the only printed mention of this attempted theft and its aftermath. It reads:

May 6…
7 p.m. - Smith’s Food and Drug Center, 535 Central Ave., reported that two boys attempted to steal Lunchables. Upon confrontation by store clerks they returned the Lunchables and ran from the scene.

Tucumcari Childhood

Posted on Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 01:29AM by Mike Smith in Daily Strange | Post a Comment | Email | Print

Around the earliest part of this month, the always fascinating and atmospheric Tucumcari Police blotter, printed in the Quay County Sun, strongly suggested that the eastern New Mexico town of Tucumcari might be a pretty bizarre place to be a kid.

Here are a few extracts, collated from the police blotters of May 3 and May 7:

Tuesday [April 29, 2008]

At 11:37 a.m., a female called to report a child, running north in the alley between Jackson and Monroe, who was screaming and being chased by a dog.

At 8:10 a.m., a Union Pacific Officer reported a juvenile walking along the railroad tracks and almost getting hit by a passing train.

Friday [May 2, 2008]

At 4:25 p.m., an anonymous caller reported an 8-year-old boy walking barefoot on the East bound off ramp of I-40. The officer located the child and requested that CYFD [Children, Youth and Families Department] be contacted.

Saturday [May 3, 2008]

At 6:13 p.m., an anonymous caller reported a naked child running around outside on South Third Street.

These excerpts also suggest Tucumcari might be a pretty bizarre place to be any age. 

After all, someone had to see and report all of these.

Clowns of Enchantment, Part III

Posted on Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 12:54AM by Mike Smith in Daily Strange | Post a Comment | Email | Print

This is part three in a three-part series.  (For parts one and two, click here and here, or just scroll down.) 

One by one, the clowns emerge into the open air.

There’s one, staggering beneath a sack of onions.

There’s—watch out!—there’s one, no, two more!

There’s another, doing the chicken dance. Be quiet or he’ll see us.

And there’s—oh, please be a mirage.

They’re—they must be multiplying. They can’t— They’re— There’s too many. This can’t be, this can’t be right! Oh no. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no, they’re coming closer! They’re coming closer. They’re—oh please, no—they’re—they're—they’re going to perform!

In Portales, near New Mexico’s east-central edge, something both tragic and terrifying is afoot. In Portales, there is a children’s home—the New Mexico Baptist Children’s Home—where a group of approximately twelve children and teenagers are being led to do things no truly sane or loving guardian would ever suggest their children consider doing.

Technically, no laws are being broken, yet the feelings of terror and revulsion invoked by the actions of these children and their sadistic guardian suggest that what is wrong here is wrong on a much deeper, much more primal level.

According to objectively challenged writer Janet Bresenham, in the May 8, 2008 Portales News-Tribune:

When Toni K. wants to share God’s love, she puts her hands and heart into her musical message.

The 15-year-old, ninth-grade student is a member of a new clown/mime ministry troupe made up of about a dozen children and teenagers who live at the New Mexico Baptist Children’s Home in Portales.

“With me, I’m kind of shy, but when I put on the mime makeup, it’s good because no one knows it’s you,” Toni K. said. “So it’s like this isn’t my face up there, it’s God’s face. I really, really love music, too, but I don’t sing, so when I sign and act out the songs, that’s my way of singing.”

Using a combination of sign language gestures, dramatic interpretive movements and passionate emotion, the young people communicate God’s messages set to various Christian worship songs.

If a more terrifying combination of words exists in the English language than “new clown/mime ministry troupe,” please refrain from saying it. If a worse idea for a performing group could possibly come to your mind, please stop yourself from telling anyone, ever.

The article is prefaced by an editor’s note, stating that the Children’s Home tells the media only the first names and last initial of the children who live there—a precaution the children will no doubt be grateful for when they inevitably run away and begin frantically trying to erase every shred of their unfortunate pasts.

The article continues:

Dressed in big white hats, white gloves, white socks, white face paint, black slacks and black and white tuxedo-style, long-sleeved shirts, the group of young people range in age from 7 to 16.

Members of the older group call themselves “Fire Fighters” because they are “fighting back the fires of hell” by sharing God’s message of love and forgiveness, Toni K. said.

The younger group, known as the “Silent Knights,” are “warriors of God, but they don’t speak with their words; they speak with their hands,” she said.

“Clowning is about more than makeup, more than the signs, more than songs,” Alexis W. said. “It’s about what you feel. You’re putting your own emotions and passions into your interpretation of the songs.”
The clown/mime troupe travels to minister throughout the state.

“Clowning is a way for you to really get in touch with God,” Toni K. said. “It’s also a really good way to witness to other people and share God’s love.”

Did you catch that detail about three sentences back, folks? They travel throughout the state. They could be coming to your town. They could be there right now, right outside your house. You might be walking your dog in a park, and come face to face with a tiny black-and-white mime aping scenes from the New Testament. You might stop to buy a newspaper, and be confronted by a dozen silent mime-clowns reenacting the fall of the Tower of Babel.

You really might. The danger is remote, but it is very, very real.

They exist—they are a weapon that fires pure, distilled creepiness—and they are evidently wielded by a madwoman with no connection to reality, and no conscience when it comes to inflicting humiliating, warping horrors upon still-innocent hearts and minds.

One final quote, from the News-Tribune:

They hope to minister in more churches, schools, parks and other locations, said Frances Moore, director of the clown/mime ministry and one of the house parents at the children's home.

Moore said she remembers joining a similar ministry at her church when she was a young girl.

“White faces? White gloves? Sign language? Music and God? Wow! What a curious and interesting way God used to bring me closer to him,” Moore said. “Little did I know that God would use what I was taught over 20 years ago to again reach shy, hurting children today.”

To reach them...and then give them a valid reason to remain shy forever.

Clowns of Enchantment, Part II

Posted on Monday, May 12, 2008 at 11:44PM by Mike Smith in Daily Strange | Post a Comment | Email | Print

Our three-part exploration of the horror of New Mexico's nascent clowns continues.

(To read part one, click here.)

With winter finished in New Mexico, very little remains to keep the clowns indoors.

They seem to sense the warming temperatures, to hear the increase in foot traffic, and to find excitement in the fear and annoyance of our state’s largely non-clown population.

In Artesia, in eastern New Mexico, Shriner clown “Pa Pal” emerged from a winter of anonymity, carrying sacks of salable onions, his actions no doubt soundtracked in his own mind by the eerie notes of an off-key calliope.

In Capitan, in southeastern New Mexico, two members of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Posse milled about during a festival, their faces smeared with demonically fixed grins, their gloved hands waggling floppy stuffed bears at passersby.

And in Truth or Consequences, in south-central New Mexico’s Sierra County, an ominous figure made an appearance at the 2008 Truth or Consequences Fiesta, an annual fiesta that began in 1950 when the town first changed its name from Hot Springs.

Photographs of the May 2, 3, and 4, 2008 event—printed in the May 7 Truth or Consequences Herald—depict a festive happening, with costumed event-goers, some sort of bonnet competition, women dancing to live music, a high school band enlivening a parade, and a teenage boy eying a pretty cheerleader as she throws a ball at a policeman in a dunk tank.

The fiesta’s official website, TorCFiesta.com, adds accounts of outdoor karaoke, on Friday, May 2.  It tells of the parade, a motorcycle rodeo, an office chair race, the dunking booth, a duck race, stilt walkers in giant puppet heads, live music (including legendary singer-songwriter Dan Bern), a boat race on Elephant Butte Reservoir, and a rodeo, on Saturday, May 3.  And it continued with more of the same, on Sunday, May 4.

Overall, the Herald's photos and the event’s website suggest the fiesta was a happy one, a fun one. They imply that most of the people who attended had a genuinely good time.

But the fiesta had a darker side as well—a side with a painted-on grin, a side that all the worried looks of all its attendants could do nothing to erase.

No matter how much spirit the Hot Springs High Tiger Marching Band played with during the Saturday morning parade, the knowledge must have loomed almost tangibly that that afternoon a clown—a rodeo clown—would come out to the Sheriff’s Posse Arena, just east of the city limits, to perform goofy antics involving horses, bulls, sheep, a greased pig, and some kind of yellow pom-pom.

No matter how hard the New World Drummers played that Saturday night, there was still the likelihood of there being someone in the very crowd they were playing to who had spent his afternoon hiding under face paint and sunglasses, his neck swathed in a flag bandanna, his legs draped in baggy pants held up by suspenders. 

No matter how much the fiesta-goers must have tried not to dwell on the thought, the possibility must have always been in the backs of their minds that they might run into this clown at any time, without warning. He had been at both rodeos—so why not at the refreshment stands? In line for the bathroom? Or walking through a parking lot?

At any moment, someone might have thought, he could step out from behind a sign, and pull a coin from my ear. No, wait...  Maybe he’s not that kind of clown. Or is he? Oh, I hope not....

The tension must have been unbearable. 

The clown in question was Wyoming-based professional rodeo clown Timber Tuckness, a nationally-known traveling entertainer, with a truly impressive career as a Hollywood stunt man and bullfighting champion.  On both May 3 and 4, at the arena near Truth or Consequences, Tuckness performed as part of the two days of the Fiesta Rodeo.

Perhaps some of the people in attendance—those with coulrophobia, a.k.a. fear of clowns, or just that majority of  Americans who tend to feel uneasy around adult men wearing lots of makeup—felt a bit more accepting of watching a rodeo clown such as Tuckness than they would of sitting through the bike-horn-and-seltzer-bottle antics of the more conventional sort. 

This tendency may well be because such people might feel a bit more willing to endure this sort of clown’s performances, A) because rodeo clowns at least do some brave and dangerous stunts, and B) because the experience of watching a rodeo clown carries with it the implicit possibility of seeing a clown gored by a bull, trampled by an angry steer, or dragged by one foot back and forth across an arena behind a panicking horse.

Clowns of Enchantment

Posted on Friday, May 9, 2008 at 09:46PM by Mike Smith in Daily Strange | 2 Comments | Email | Print

Springtime in New Mexico can be beautiful—a time when the cottonwoods unfurl their leaves, when shades of green begin to lace the desert, and when the cantinas resume seating on their patios and the sun finally rolls away the winter.

In New Mexico, though, spring can also be a time of fear—a time when the too-bright, sun-choked air shrouds everything in a feeling of overexposed unreality, when muddy footprints give kitchens and living rooms the look of crime scenes, and when an alarming number of grown men and women intentionally put on face paint, rainbow wigs, and red rubber noses.

Spring: is when the clowns come out.

All across the state, from north to south and from west to east, New Mexicans—men and women, adults and children, people from every class and walk of life—make the conscious yet inexplicable decision to go outdoors while dressed as clowns.

According to the May 6, 2008 Artesia Daily Press, residents of Artesia, in southeastern New Mexico’s Eddy County, recently found themselves faced by the all-too-real specter of “Pa Pal,” the concocted alter ego of local man David Romine. This brightly cadaverous ambassador of cheer—dressed in Ronald McDonald-style shoes, a polka-dotted bodysuit, a poinsettia-colored boa, and a patriotic wig—stood on the corner of Artesia’s Ninth and Main Streets on Monday, May 5, spinning a multi-colored umbrella and flanked by two fez-wearing Shrine Club members, Ken Dickson and Don May. These three costumed men began their eager vigil with 250 ten-pound bags of Vidalia onions, and have threatened to remain at the same location all week, until every $11 bag of onions has been sold.

The Shriners are a charitably-minded branch of Freemasonry—Shriners are also known as the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine—and their Artesia-based membership plans to use whatever the onion-peddling clown earns them to help the children in their community, to fund their local organization, and to support the Shriners’ Temple, a.k.a. the Ballut Abyad Shrine Center, in Albuquerque.

Other clowns are lurking out there as well. According to the May 9, 2008 Ruidoso News, in the community of Capitan, in Lincoln County, in south-central New Mexico, two members of the local “Sheriff’s Posse”— Kathy Carey and Dick Sundt —dressed up as a pair of the most terrifying clowns the world has ever beheld, to celebrate Capitan’s annual Smokey Bear Days, on May 2 and 3, 2008.

Capitan’s most famous resident was the scorched bear cub that, after being rescued from a nearby forest fire in 1950 and initially dubbed Hotfoot Teddy, became the living counterpart of Smokey Bear, or Smokey the Bear, the Forest Service’s already extant mascot. What that furry icon of campfire safety has anything to do with dressing up in rainbow suspenders, neon lemon wigs, and ghoulish face paint, would be hard to say for certain, but hey, whatever, man—it’s spring—clown time! Clown season...

In George A. Romero’s classic 1968 zombie film, Night of the Living Dead, the zombies don’t all arrive at once. The story starts in a cemetery, with only one. Then, there’s another, and another, and the next thing people know, the survivors are boarded up in an old house, as hundreds of the rotting undead mill all around them outside, hungry for brains.

On Monday, this column’s subject will be continued. Tonight, there was one clown. Then, there were others. Soon, there will be even more.