Hillcrest Zoo: More Animals

It's so hard to get a good picture of the white Bengal tiger

Hillcrest Zoo: Reptiles

Look closely to see the second boa on the left. It's hard to take photosinside the Reptile House.

Hillcrest Zoo: Monkeys

Hillcrest Zoo: The Birds

Black and white; one of my favorite photos ever

Hillcrest Zoo

I don't like zoos, although I do appreciate the trend toward larger, more natural enclosures for zoo animals. I just don't like to see animals in cages; and I feel embarrassed, awkward, and ashamed to be standing and staring at them. If you've read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, you've experienced, along with the character Billy Pilgrim, the feeling of being in a cage at a zoo with your every move under observation.

However, we had company from out of town and the little kids wanted to go to the zoo. Clovis, little Clovis, is actually home to the second largest zoo in New Mexico, after the Rio Grande Zoo in Albuquerque.

The Hillcrest Zoo is set on 22.5 acres within the 140 acre Hillcrest Park. We were surprised at the size of the zoo, as the small entry area just didn't lead us to expect such spacious grounds. It was a perfect place for little children--ours were 2 and 5--uncrowded and not very intimidating. The grounds were quite nice, with lots of shade trees, and grass, and water features. There were plenty of well-placed benches, too, which my knees and I have grown to appreciate.

Here are some photos of Sere and Geti, the young hyenas that were added to the zoo last year. I hope that there are plans for a more spacious enclosure. The local newspaper runs naming contests for the newest zoo animals, and the zoo follows through with a sign indicating which school child came up with the names--a nice touch for a very child-friendly place.

You Know You Are From Clovis

Sometimes the town of Clovis gets a bad rap. Disgruntled young airmen who are stationed at Cannon Air Force Base, or perhaps other young folks, restless and ready to move on, post critical comments online. There are some very ugly views of the town on YouTube, too. I do what I can to provide another point of view, with the My Clovis videos and with this blog. After all, in Clovis you can experience a quiet, laid back lifestyle that is practically stress-free. The sun is almost always shining, and the people are friendly. It's a very pleasant place to live.

I came across a nostalgic website the other day, set up for the sharing of memories and documentation of reunions for the Clovis High School's Class of 1959. After I had browsed through the photos and the memories, I came away with the impression of a group of people who love their town, their roots, and remembering the lives they have lived here.

I would like to share their list of things that make them so fond of Clovis. I did my best to find a way to get permission from the webmaster to quote a few things, but unfortunately there was no contact information on the site. If you know how I could get in touch, I would be grateful for that information. In the meantime, I'll give you the list and hope that they don't mind.

You know you are from Clovis when..........

Rainfall is measured in hundredths of inches.

You can start off the day wearing a coat and by afternoon you're wearing shorts.

An inch of rain causes streets to flood but it takes a foot of snow to close schools.

Friday night high school football is a sell-out and we win the majority of the time.

You think one of the major food groups is enchiladas.

The official town "bird" is an F-16.

You know what a Wildcat is.

You've ever dragged Main Street, made a u-turn and done it again.

You know Foxy & Twin Cronnies are drive-ins.

You think that opening weekend for quail and deer seasons are national holidays.

You find 98 degrees "a little warm," and 60 degrees downright freezing.

You think the only seasons are hot, @#%# hot, and winter.

You know if another person is from out of town, the second he or she walks in the door.

People are happy if a picnic gets rained out, even happier if it gets rained out twice.

You've seen dust, rain, sleet, snow and thunder all in the same storm. You consider trees & grass to be good things.

You prefer to drink tap water rather than buy bottled water.

You tell people you live in the brick house with a tan roof and attached two-car garage, and then realize that describes every house within a 2-mile radius.

You can see a million stars at night from your patio or back yard.

You don't feel out of place wearing a Resistol Cowboy Hat to the ballet.

You know where Ned Houk Park is.

You see more American flags in one residential block than you've seen in any Fourth of July Parade.

You've never seen smog.

You can see the sky from any vantage point in town.

You know the soil temperature on any given day but can't recall what you had for breakfast.

You've had to pull over and remove tumbleweeds from the grill of your car.

You've canceled golf games because of high wind & dust warnings.

Vacation means a weekend trip to Santa Fe or the mountains.

You know that the elevation of the plains is higher than the Hill Country down in central Texas.

You know barbeque! And pinto beans and corn bread.

People in passing cars wave to you--even if you've never met them.

You stop to watch the sunsets which are awesome.

You can lose your purse or wallet and a total stranger will return it.

When the sirens go off, you know it's a signal to go outside and look for the tornado or it's 4 o'clock on Wednesday afternoon.

You know that Hillcrest Park isn't on a real hill.

You know what a lion roaring sounds like from the city zoo.

You can go to the band concert and a country & western concert or fiddling contest in one weekend.

You've had several friends move off and move back within a couple of years.

You remember where the old high school was on Main Street.

Most of the vehicles on the city streets are pickup trucks, SUVs, tractors and the occasional horse.

Your folks know what you did before you get home.

Friday nite--dragging main street--you could find your kids--and KNOW for sure where they were.

You can stand on "Clovis Mountain" -- the railroad overpass--and view the entire town.

You want to go to Amarillo or Lubbock, but can't remember if you need to leave one hour earlier or later than your appointment.

The majority of the city streets are now 4 or 5 lanes--without the pavement width having been increased.

You know that Oasis Park has 2 trees.

21st Street is re-paved and four different utility providers dig it full of holes the next week looking for their lines.

A couple of teenagers don't need a ticket to ride the train to Amarillo. (thanks Lee)

You know you’re from Clovis if you know Bell Park isn’t a real park and there’s no bell there.

Blackwater Draw

Right near Clovis is an incredible archeological site, where you can hike the trails up and down through time, stop at digs that are still in progress, and sit under a shady tree and picture the ancients going about their hunting and gathering. It's a place where mammoth bones have been found together with spear points within the mammoth's body cavity, indicating that almost 11,500 years ago prehistoric men hunted and brought down these huge creatures.

Blackwater Draw, located between Clovis and Portales, New Mexico, is a National Historic Landmark and is considered to be one of the most important archeological sites in the world. As with many archeological discoveries, it came to the attention of archeologists through a series of almost accidental events.

In 1929, a young man named Ridgely Whiteman found an arrowhead and a piece of mammoth bone there and sent them off to the Smithsonian Insitute with a letter. There wasn't much of a response, but the Smithsonian filed his contributions away. It wasn't until much later that he was recognized as the original discoverer of the Clovis Man site.

In 1932, when the highway between Clovis and Portales was being built, an articles on SouthernNewMexico.com tells us: The State of New Mexico had secured a portion of privately owned property as a right of way and as a location for its material pit. The sand and gravel at this spot were quarried with a horse-pulled scraper and screened by hand. Many prehistoric bones were uncovered. They were displayed in the windows of Ed J. Neer's store in Portales, according to the Portales Valley News of Thursday, October 20, 1932, but were not considered an earth-shaking event but rather a curiosity.

Finally, later in 1932, archeological excavation began and it continues today. At the site of the gravel quarry, now owned by Eastern New Mexico University, you can travel down through time from the present to 9500 B.C. It's an exciting place to be--the next stone you see could be part of a wonderful new prehistoric find. There are at least 20 archaic wells on the site with, no doubt, more to be discovered. Current digs are protected with roofs; you can visit them to see down through the layers of time. The self-guided walking trail takes you to an area where the peoples of the past camped--a spot that has yielded thousands of artifacts and prehistoric bones.

Curiously, no human bones have yet been discovered at the site, although all kinds of human-made artifacts have been dug up. There are a number of theories as to why the bones haven't been found--one being that bodies were taken elsewhere to be buried; another that the discovery simply has yet to be made.

A few miles away from the Blackwater Draw Site itself you can visit the Blackwater Draw Museum, which contains displays that show the amazingly exquisite Clovis points made of colored chert, chalcedony, jasper, and agate; and that illustrate how the finds fit into the prehistoric timeline.

For more information, see About.com's Blackwater Draw Locality 1 and Minnesota State University's page on Blackwater Draw, which includes some photos of Clovis points. The Eastern New Mexico University's web page for the Blackwater Draw Museum gives its location, admission information, and hours of operation; the page for Blackwater Draw Locality No. 1 gives the information for the archeological site.

Myth of You and Me

The Myth of You and Me, by Leah Stewart. New York: Shaye Areheart Books, 2005.


I found this book on a list of “books you can’t put down,” so I was sure to have it nearby for my knee surgery recovery. Imagine my surprise when, on p. 19, I read:

When I was fourteen we moved to Clovis, New Mexico. My father was in the air force. It was the sixth time I had moved since birth, and this time I was angry. We had left Fairfax County, Virginia, with its proximity to malls and monuments, where everybody’s parents drove the beltway to play some part in the large and mysterious doings of government, for this cow town, dusty brown and flat, like an old postcard. While my friends went on to high school together, I was set adrift again with no one but my family, three passengers afloat on a dirt sea.

This is a book about friendship and families and opportunities, both lost and found. It's a book of keen observations that had me nodding, with tears in my eyes, and reaching for my notebook. To top it all off, much of it took place in Clovis and it helped me know my town a bit better.

When I volunteered in an elementary school this past year, some of my fellow volunteers walked over from the neighboring high school every week. Little did they know how curious this older volunteer was about their lives. Here's what Stewart had to say about being a kid in Clovis, and I suspect she got it right on:

I thought of what I could tell him about Clovis—that the fundamentalists signed yearbooks “In His Name” and considered Mormonism a cult, that the kids who wore Megadeth T-shirts and smoked on the edge of school property were called thrashers, that people of Mexican descent were called Spanish, that Spanish kids hung out with white kids or black kids, but usually not with both, that when the fire alarm went off at school early one morning all the girls you otherwise never saw came out of the nursery, cradling their babies close. That after you suffered through the unbearable heat of summer days, you got as a reward a warm and crisp night, that the flatness of the land, the way nothing blocked your view of the sky, made you feel open and expansive, like a deep breath. “It’s okay,” I said.

Now, I'm not much good at writing book reviews that don't sound like those little quotes on the back of the book jacket (astounding! couldn't put it down!) but I want to tell you that I was constantly touched as Stewart told about the lives of these friends. Here are a few more quotes to give you the flavor of the book.

To belong nowhere is a blessing and a curse, like any kind of freedom.

A person is not a suitcase, with a finite number of items to unpack. A person is a world. Look at any photograph—of a stranger, your father, your very best friend. Sometimes the mystery is all you can see.

Maybe I did live an old story, but I couldn’t help but live it as though for the first time. The first time you fall in love, it’s like you’ve created the first love in the universe, and the first time someone you love dies, you grieve the universe’s first death. What does it help to be told that what you feel is nothing new? You want your father’s respect, not a pale copy of all the children who have ever wanted their fathers’ respect, but fiercely, because he’s the only father you’ll ever have.

Okay, reading this book was an astounding experience, and I couldn't put it down.

Clovis Murals

Towns in the southwest seem to have a lot of murals. Las Cruces has them on water towers, I took some photos of some in Fort Sumner, and there are many over in Muleshoe, Texas that I need to get photographed. Here are some of the murals around Clovis.

Blankets for Newborns

I've always loved working together with other women for a common cause. I met with a knitting group in New Hampshire whenever I could over the 20+ years we lived there, even though I worked full time and the scheduling was often tricky. Sitting in a room with those women, I would marvel over the many years of knowledge and experience we shared with each other. As we worked, we talked and listened and helped each other through whatever problems came our way.

I missed that fellowship when we moved to New Mexico. I finally decided one morning to go out and either find a knitting group or start one, and was lucky enough to find The Needle Gang at the Baxter-Curren Senior Center. These women have been meeting together for at least a couple of decades, making blankets and hats for newborn babies in the community, which are distributed by the local Foster Grandparents program.

I still make sweaters for needy children through the Knit for Kids program, but I am glad to enjoy the friendship of these wonderful women while contributing to local families by making baby afghans. My first few efforts are pictured above.

My Clovis video returns

I am trying to toughen up. When I posted my very first video, My Clovis, on YouTube the negative comments got me down and I removed the video after a week or so. It had gotten 135 views, but it just didn't seem worth it to have to read harsh comments about the town every day from the same kind of bitter people who had posted the video Boycott Clovis, New Mexico.

I sent an email to the editor of the newspaper to ask why some people seemed so angry at Clovis, and if he thought there were any Clovis fans out there. And then the fun began. The editor, David Stevens, made my question his "question of the week" in the newspaper (scroll down to the Editors' Notebook on the March 28 edition) and on his blog, Falling with Style. You can see some of the great answers he received on the March 26 and March 27 posts.

This morning an op-ed piece by local media personality Grant McGee appeared on the editorial page of the Clovis News Journal print edition. You can read it online here. He talked about My Clovis and I scrambled to get the video back online. You can see it here and on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqX81erwpYQ.

Please feel free to comment here or on YouTube. I promise to try to be less tenderhearted this time.

~Clair Z.