Bigger Rattler Reunion crowds seen

Crowds for the 51st annual Rattler Reunion appeared to be significantly higher overall during the entire three-day event around Tucumcari.

Kathy Segura, treasurer of the Tucumcari Rattler Alumni that organizes the reunion, reported that a total of 438 people paid to get in to the varying events.

"It was way up" compared to the previous year, she said Monday. "We were extremely happy with it, and everyone seemed to have a good time."

Last year, inflation and a local flare-up of COVID-19 cases prompted a substantial number of THS alumni to stay home. Instead of a hoped-for attendance of about 500, 250 to 300 attended the 2022 event.

Segura said a total of 283 people attended the big Saturday night event at the Tucumcari Convention Center - close to the 300 people planned for the caterer.

"The crowd was good," she said. "There weren't many empty seats."

About 175 people had signed up for the Friday barbecue by 7 p.m., according to a volunteer for the catering Tucumcari Elks Lodge collecting money for tickets.

Loud cheers erupted from Friday night attendees when the THS cheerleaders did a routine when they weren't bring beverages to attendees.

Segura said about 75 people attended the Golden Rattler luncheon.

Next year's Rattler Reunion will be on Aug. 1-4. The Class of 1994 will plan the event, and the Class of 1969 will organize the Golden Rattler Luncheon.

Because of its ability to fill the city's restaurants and motels, Rattler Reunion annually receives funding assistance from the city's lodgers tax board.

One of the oldest attendees this year at the Reunion was Goldie Bogard, now of Clovis, from the Class of 1951, who has attended the event annually.

"I lived here (in Tucumcari) for a long, long time, and I've only been gone for 35 years," she said, laughing. "My kids all graduated from here, and my mother even graduated from here. My grandparents lived on Fourth Street forever."

Albuquerque residents Brian Priddy and Dennis Crespin, classmates from the Class of 1973, swapped observations and memories Friday over plates of barbecue in the convention center's Nara Visa Room.

Crespin said the last time he'd been in Tucumcari was in 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic. The last time Priddy had been in town was for the 40th reunion in 2013.

Asked about Tucumcari after a decade away, Priddy replied: "It sure has changed - not all for the better. Buildings falling down; they don't keep their yards up. Lack of maintenance."

"One house is beautiful, but the next-door neighbor doesn't care, I guess," Crespin observed. "Some of them are falling down."

They also expressed their disappointment in the dilapidated condition of the pool at Five Mile Park. Their class was among the last to use it before it was closed in the mid-1970s.

"It was a beautiful pool," Crespin said.

"One of the nicest in the Southwest," Priddy said.

Priddy recalled the pool's manager, Ray Paulson, having to kill rattlesnakes with a hoe at the facility.

"For a small town, there was a lot going on," Crespin recalled of his teen years.

"It was busy, busy," Priddy agreed. "You couldn't get a motel room in this town, and they were lined up all the way down Tucumcari Boulevard."

"Us kids, we would drag (our cars) up and down the highway," Crespin said. "We'd waste tanks of gas up and down 66."

"We'd check the tourists and see whether they had any daughters we could pick up on," Priddy said, laughing.

The memories from childhood weren't always good.

Crespin's father was a Tucumcari police officer. In 1966, Bobby Gene Garcia killed TPD Sgt. Jerry Wignall and a sister-in-law during a rampage, took a dispatcher hostage, and blasted Crespin's dad twice with a shotgun.

The elder Crispin survived, as his glasses shielded his eyes and kept him from being blinded. A badge on his police hat also stopped other pellets.

"You could see the shotgun blast pattern on the wall where he got shot," his son said. "He was pulling shotgun pellets out of his body until the day he died."

Garcia committed suicide in prison in 1980.

It was a tumultuous era for local law enforcement. Tucumcari District Attorney Victor Breen was assassinated in 1971, and a Clayton police officer was slain less than two years later.