Quay County Sun - Serving the High Plains

Several random observations recently have tickled my funny bone (starting with the struggle whether to spell funny bone, funnybone, funny-bone or funniebone). Here they are in random order. A...

You do one story on an old cemetery and before you know it you're labeled as the guy who writes about old cemeteries. That's what I was thinking recently when the phone rang and the lady on the other...

Fall was asserting itself on the High Plains as I drove to Lubbock early in the morning. Dead calm when I left with an obvious frontline painted across the sky to the northeast, it didn't stay that...

My wife is hooked on the alphabet police dramas. What are alphabet police dramas, you ask? CSI (Crime Scene Investigators) and Law and Order SVU (Special Victims Unit) are two examples. She also...

We got our first blast of winter last weekend and I had to attend two different events that were outdoors. After talking to one young lady with her hoodie up and teeth chattering I shortly spotted a y...

No doubt Satan probably got a kick out of the headlines in the newspaper in Portales last week. "Prayer ruling upheld" relating to a ban on coach led prayer in City League sports. Hopefully the devil...

Some days I make this columnist business look easy. Other days I wonder what I was thinking when I decided writing my thoughts down for a public consumption on a weekly basis would be a good thing to...

Just when I was beginning to think it was safe to go out on the front porch again — they're back. Several years ago I wrote about the barn swallows nesting on my front porch and how I put up with...

It had been awhile since we'd all been to "Texas" and a recent trip to Palo Duro Canyon didn't disappoint. We had great weather, if anything it was a little too hot in the amphitheatre with its cozy,...

Portales lost one of the most kind and gentle men it has ever known this past week and heaven has inherited a wonderful grade school principal with the passing of Morris Wood. He was my grade school...

It's truly amazing to me with all the wildland fires across the West this spring and summer that there has been very little loss of human life. We've had some truly huge fires this year with the...

In my young imagination I used to hunt tigers in the sandhills of eastern New Mexico. I'm pretty sure I never got out of my mother's sight but I still came back from my adventures telling all that...

Many people whose father has passed on can tell wonderful stories of all the places their dad took the family on vacation. I would say our family only took one traditional vacation while I was...

I'm happy to report my wife and I are now a two iPad family. Her iPad just doesn't happen to work. You can use an iPad for nearly anything, well actually, we learned (the hard way) they're not much...

Most people don't know this, but I actually have a photographic memory. The only problem is I ran out of film somewhere back around 1993. My immediate family didn't take a lot of snapshots when my bro...

Things my mom actually did in her adventurous life ... Sewed shirts from a pattern. Invented the dookie bar. Changed irrigation tubes from a Chevy station wagon. Shot a bull snake out of our...

The roots of my Maxwell ancestors won't leave me alone and that's a pretty cool thing. I don't actually believe in ghosts but on a trip to the heart of Texas to help my uncle celebrate his 80th birthd...

I stirred slowly from sleep when I felt her soft velvet touch on my shoulder. With the sheet thrown back to my knees because of the hot night, my mind followed her willowy touch as she traced a...

You won't catch me out in the pasture grazing for nutrients when there's a bovine that can do it for me. That's right, when that little old lady in the Wendy's commercial uttered "Where's the beef,"...

I try hard to remain on the cutting edge of communication technology or at least keep the edge somewhere within my sight. However, my skills at texting are really bad. Once when I asked a coworker...

I've got to say I've always been a little creeped out by the Easter Bunny. Santa Claus might be a little scary to little kids but at least his looks make a little bit of sense. A six-foot rabbit...