Elephant Butte, NM

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Sunday Joke.



A Dog Named Sex

Everybody I know who has a dog usually calls him "Rover" or "Spot". I call mine Sex. Now, Sex has been very embarrassing to me. When I went to the City Hall to renew the dog's license, I told the clerk that I would like a license for Sex. He said, "I would like to have one too!" Then I said, "But she is a dog!" He said he didn't care what she looked like. I said, "You don't understand. ... I have had Sex since I was nine years old." He replied, "You must have been quite a strong boy." When I decided to get married, I told the minister that I would like to have Sex at the wedding. He told me to wait until after the wedding was over. I said, "But Sex has played a big part in my life and my whole world revolves around Sex." He said he didn't want to hear about my personal life and would not marry us in his church. I told him everyone would enjoy having Sex at the wedding. The next day we were married at the Justice of the Peace. My family is barred from the church from then on.

When my wife and I went on our honeymoon, I took the dog with me. When we checked into the motel, I told the clerk that I wanted a room for me and my wife and a special room for Sex. He said that every room in the motel is a place for sex. I said, "You don't understand. ... Sex keeps me awake at night." The clerk said, "Me too!"

One day I entered Sex in a contest. But before the competition began, the dog ran away. Another contestant asked me why I was just looking around. I told him that I was going to have Sex in the contest. He said that I should have sold my own tickets. "You don't understand," I said, "I hoped to have Sex on TV." He called me a show off.

When my wife and I separated, we went to court to fight for custody of the dog. I said, "Your Honor, I had Sex before I was married but Sex left me after I was married." The Judge said, "Me too!"

Last night Sex ran off again. I spent hours looking all over for her. A cop came over and asked me what I was doing in the alley at 4 o'clock in the morning. I said, "I'm looking for Sex." -- My case comes up next Thursday.

Well now I've been thrown in jail, been divorced and had more damn troubles with that dog than I ever foresaw. Why just the other day when I went for my first session with the psychiatrist, she asked me, "What seems to be the trouble?" I replied, "Sex has been my best friend all my life but now it has left me for ever. I couldn't live any longer so lonely." and the doctor said, "Look mister, you should understand that sex isn't a man's best friend so get yourself a dog."

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Pony Hill Petroglyphs.







The second site on our petroglyph tour was Pony Hills Petroglyphs.

This area is about 16 miles North of Deming, NM, in the Cooke's Peak area. There are two main areas of petroglyphs (Pony Hills and Frying Pan Canyon), along the old Butterfield trail. The petroglyphs date between 600 and 1200 AD. The Butterfield trail was open 6 years, just before the Civil War. It was protected by Fort Cummings, (3 miles away) over Palmer Pass and passing by Massacre Peak.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Sunday Joke.





Cute, little johnny jokes.



Teacher: "Little Johnny, give me a sentence using the word, 'geometry.'"
Little Johnny: "A little acorn grew and grew until it finally awoke one day
and said, 'Gee, I'm a tree.'"



Little Johnny's teacher asks him to make a sentence using the following words: defeat, deduct, defense and detail.
Little Johnny says, "De feet of de duck went over de fence before de tail."



The pastor was talking to a group of young children about being good and going to heaven. At the end of his talk, he asked, "Where do you want to go?"
"Heaven!" Suzy cried out.
"And what do you have to be to get there?" asked the preacher.
"Six feet under!", yelled Little Johnny.



The arithmetic teacher had written 10.9 on the blackboard and had then rubbed out the decimal point to show the effect of multiplying this number by ten.
"Johnny," the teacher asked, "where is the decimal point now?"
"On the eraser!" came back the quick reply.



At Sunday School they were teaching how God created everything, including human beings. Little Johnny seemed especially interested when they told him how Eve was created out of one of Adam's ribs.
Later in the week his mother noticed him lying down as though he were ill, and said, "Johnny what is the matter?"
Little Johnny responded, "I have a pain in my side. I think I'm going to have a wife."



Little Johnny was heard by his mother reciting his homework: "Two plus two, the son of a bitch is four; four plus four, the son of a bitch is eight; eight plus eight, the son of a bitch...'"
"Johnny !" shouted his mother. "Watch your language! You're not allowed to use the swearwords."
"But, Mom," replied the boy, "that's what the teacher taught us, and she said to recite it out loud till we learned it."
Next day Johnny's mother went right into the classroom to complain. "Oh, heavens !" said the teacher. "That's not what I taught them. They're supposed to say, 'Two plus two, the sum of which is four.' "



A grade school teacher in Tennessee asked her students to use the word "fascinate" in a sentence. Molly put up her hand and said, "My family went to my granddad's farm, and we all saw his sheep. It was fascinating."
The teacher said, "That was good, but I wanted you to use the word fascinate, not fascinating."
Sally raised her hand. She said, "My family went to Graceland and I was fascinated."
The teacher said, "Well, that was good Sally, but I wanted you to use the word fascinate, not fascinated."
Little Johnny raised his hand. The teacher hesitated because she had been burned by Little Johnny before. She finally decided there was no way he could damage the word 'fascinate', so she called on him.
Little Johnny said, "My Aunt Gina has a shirt with ten buttons, but her boobs are so big she can only fasten eight."
The teacher cried.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Cream Can Dinner











Cliff & Karen, from Kearney NE, had a successful cream can dinner this Saturday. You may remember that the last one blew up leaving sausages in the patio gutter. Nobody was hurt but the memories are priceless! I was really looking forward to being a part of the action. What is a cream can dinner? Well all the food gets prepared and then cooked in an old fashioned cream can. Yummmm.....
1st: the cooks, Cliff & Karen 2nd: the food: sausage, onions, cabbage, corn on the cob, potatoes, carrots, celery and the magic ingredient...1 quart of beer and 3rd: we eat! 60 people enjoyed the great food!
(because of the last explosion, Cliff had a pressure relief valve put in the top of the lid)

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Sunday Joke.







First baby news. Aedan was born 2:22pm on Wednesday. The decision was made to get him to Denver. He was flown to Denver, from Gillette, WY, last night. He was born with pneumonia and then his lung collapsed. With a great tailwind and a lear jet the trip took 45 minutes. He is stable. However it sounds like the whole support crew is in dire need of sleep. Good luck, little one!

Today's joke is a Mars & Venus sample. The media will probably make it a political issue and send the FBI to my door. Good grief..........

We had a womens luncheon Wed. and these are Claire's 2 jokes.
This is my favorite new joke.


What did the elephant say to the naked man?

How can you breathe out of that little thing!




and




Old men go to a brothel.

Two elderly gentlemen who have been out at the pub all night decide to stop at a brothel on the way home. They stumble in and the Madame takes one look at them and says to one of her girls, "Go put an inflatable doll in each of their bedrooms; these guys are too old and drunk to notice. The men pay their money, go in and leave half an hour later.

During the walk home the first man says,"I think my girl was dead, she didn't move or make a sound at all." The second man says, "Well I think mine was a bloody witch!"

"A witch!? Why the hell would you say that?"

"Well I gave her one little bite on the boob and she farted and flew out the window."

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Sewing project.






We have excitement here! Whitney had her baby boy (Dr. Phil & Ken's daughter.)
Last week Sue came over to get us started on our winter sewing project, Swedish Embroidery. It is fun. Billie, here at the park, has done over 40 afghans.
Sue and Billie have been great teachers.

Swedish Weaving
Swedish Weaving is also called "Huck Embroidery," named after the cloth used to create this easy to learn and quick to stitch technique.

Similar in concept to "couching," the embroidery threads are woven through loops on the surface of the fabric, which hold the threads in place and create the unique patterns.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Frying Pan Petroglyphs



As I was doing some research for this blog I discovered the name of the first petro. site is known as Frying Pan. UNM students have researched the site. Here's some interesting info. This guy, on this rock is famous!


Rain god or Tlaloc petroglyph near Cook's peak, New Mexico. The goggled-eyed figure, so prevalent in the rock art of the Jornada region, is depicted in abbreviated form at the Mimbres sites. His presence is signified by the eyes along or eyes attached to striking blanket motifs. This figure is believed to be a northern version of the Meso-american rain god, Tlaloc.

Symbols on Stone

The Desert Archaic Indians left both representational and abstract figures on stone – the oldest known rock art in western North American – including many which pointed to a now enigmatic spiritual quest. They painted some of the images onto stone, rendering them with colored minerals and liquid binding agents applied, for example, with yucca-leaf brushes or their fingertips and hands. Painted images are often called "pictographs" or simply "rock paintings." The Indians pecked, chiseled or incised other images into stone, producing them with blunt and with flaked stone tools. These are called "petroglyphs," and they are far more common than pictographs.

Typically, the Desert Archaic artists produced rock art near encampments, springs, streams, playas, trade routes, game feeding ranges and watering sites, and isolated, presumably sacred, sites. They seem to have preferred light-colored surfaces in secreted caves, alcoves, protected overhangs and rock shelters for pictographs, typically painted with red, yellow, black or white pigments. They favored darkly patinated basalt or sandstone rock outcrops or boulders for petroglyphs, often fully exposed, occasionally sequestered.

They produced representational images of such subjects as hunting scenes, hunters, game, weapons, shamans (presumably), horned masks, mythological figures, hand prints, foot prints, and reptiles and insects. "Obviously," says Kay Sutherland, a knowledgeable researcher in the rock art of the deserts of the Southwest and northern Mexico, "we have no direct oral or written records of the desert hunter/gather’s [sic] world view, but we can see shadowy vestiges of their beliefs?

"…we see hunting scenes of men wearing horned headdresses and carrying spears, mountain sheep and deer wounded by spears… We see, at Alamo Canyon in western Texas and Frying Pan Canyon in southwestern New Mexico, for instance, an anthropomorphization of spear, or dart, points, suggesting a spiritual relationship between the hunter and his weapon. We see associations between the death of an animal and the life of the hunter; the spear as a weapon and abundance for the hunters; the horns of big game animals and abundance for the hunters."

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

We finally got to the petroglyphs.










Frying Pan Canyon

The Frying Pan Canyon rock art site looks like it has not been long abandoned, though centuries must have passed since the petroglyphs there were pecked into the huge boulders. There are several rock shelters with fire-blackened ceilings and many deep grinding pits in altar-like arrays. The petroglyphs, thickly clustered around the shelters, include both representational and abstract designs with a large number of portrayals of human and animal foot prints.

The petroglyphs date between 600 and 1200 AD. The Butterfield trail was open 6 years, just before the Civil War. It was protected by Fort Cummings, (3 miles away) over Palmer Pass and passing by Massacre Peak. How long ago was AD? It takes simple arithmetic 2011 - 600 = 1411 years ago. Can you believe it? We were standing in the
same place 1411 years later? How much history do we pass by everyday?

Monday, January 10, 2011

Oh what a day, part 3.









More excitement on the way to the petroglyphs. There were a few stone walls still standing where the corral used to be. We had a few rough spots in the road. We came across a few cows. We also had to make a call. Do we turn left or right? We guessed right and right was right! We finally found the other folks who were 2 hours ahead of us and had already explored the petro's. Hank is standing at the bottom of the hill where all the petro's were. Newell and Linda head up to check the place out!

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Sunday Joke.




An 85-year-old couple, after being married for almost 60 years, died in a car crash. They had been in good health the last ten years, mainly due to the wife's interest in health food and exercising. When they reached the Pearly Gates, St. Peter took them to their mansion, which was decked out with a beautiful kitchen, master bath suite and a Jacuzzi. As they looked around, the old man asked St. Peter how much all this was going to cost. "It's free," St. Peter replied. "This is Heaven."

Next, they went out in the back yard to survey the championship-style golf course that the home bordered. They would have golfing privileges every day and each week, the course changed to a new one representing the great golf courses on earth. The old man asked, "What are the greens fees?" St. Peter replied, "This is heaven, you play for free." Next, they went to the club house and saw the lavish buffet lunch with the cuisines of the world laid out. "How much to eat?" asked the old man. "Don't you understand yet? This is Heaven, it is free!" St. Peter replied, with some exasperation. "Well, where are the low fat and low cholesterol tables?" the old man asked timidly.

St. Peter lectured, "That's the best part, you can eat as much as you like of whatever you like and you never get fat and you never get sick either. This is, after all, Heaven." With that, the old man went into a fit of anger, throwing down his hat and stomping on it, and screaming wildly. St. Peter and his wife both tried to calm him down, asking him what was wrong. The old man looked at his wife and said, "This is all your fault! If it weren't for your blasted bran muffins, I could have been here ten years ago!

Friday, January 7, 2011

Oh what a day, part 2.









The history that remains today can be seen as mud/rock walls, a few crosses at the cemetery and also a few walls of the corral. The Spring House still stands very much in tack today. As you walk along what is left of the past you just can't help but wonder what it must have been like. Our main goal was to see the petrogylphs. We had 2 groups of people that came in from 2 different ways. We chose to stop at Ft. Cummings on the way. You saw a bit from the last entry. Here are some more pictures and some history gathered from the net. Yes, there was enough snow for Dave to make a snowball!


Butterfield Overland Stage Route

By Todd Underwood

In March of 1857, realizing the need for an overland mail route from the east that serviced the west, congress passed a Post Office Appropriations Bill. While nine bids were being considered for this new contract, James E. Birch began carrying mail and passengers from San Antonio, Texas to San Diego, California. The first trip was in August 1857 and took a route that required passengers to be transported on mules over the Oriflamme Mountains. The route became known as the "Jackass Mail" and lasted only a short period until Birch drowned when his ship sank off Cape Hatteras while enroute from Washington D.C.


Robber's Roost at Virginia Dale, a well known stage station of the Overland Route from 1862 to the opening of the railroad. At one time the home of Slade, a notorious character of the times. Larimer County, Colorado.

Then, on September 15, 1857, one of the nine bidders, 56 year old John Butterfield of the John Butterfield Company was awarded the mail contract by congress. The Southern Postmaster General required the route that John’s company was to take be similar to the Birch route. This route, which was generally not accepted, was called the Ox Bow Route and had to go through El Paso, Texas and Fort Yuma, California. It added 600 miles over the more northern routes and required extra relay stations and frontier forts to be built. The total length of the new route was 2812 miles and had to be run twice a week. It was also required that the trips be completed within 25 days.

"The overland stage road between Ogden and Helena crossing the Beaver Head River at Point of Rocks ... by means of a plank bridge." By Jackson, 1871

It took a year for John and his company to secure sites for stage stations, buy equipment, obtain horses and mules, and find men to work for him. Bridges had to be built over rivers and streams, large rocks had to be removed from trails, wells had to be dug, and passes through mountains had to be cleared. Finally, on September 16, 1858, the first trip was launched from Tipton, Missouri. Butterfield’s son drove the first leg along with a reporter from the New York Herald named Waterman L. Ormsby. Their trip is recorded in a book called The Butterfield Overland Mail, ; published 1942 by the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, San Marino, California.

The cost for one way fare was $200 or $.15 per mile for shorter trips and usually took 22 days as opposed to the contracted 25. The Concord stagecoaches carrying the passengers averaged 5-9 miles per hour and were fairly comfortable by the days standards. Only when the trail was very rough did the passengers have to switch to a more uncomfortable but rugged Celerity stagecoach. There were 139 relay stations and forts, 1800 head of stock, and 250 Concord and Celerity Overland Stage Coaches used by the 800 men that Butterfield employed.

Butterfields men were rough tough frontiersman as no other men could handle the hardships that Butterfield would put them through. He gave them instructions such as ,"drivers and conductors to be armed but to shoot only when lives of passengers are endangered" and "no shipments of gold or silver to be carried to cut down on attacks by highwaymen." Each driver had a 60 mile route and then a return for a total of 120 miles.

Despite the $600,000 per year grant Butterfield was awarded by congress, he still ran up large debts with the Wells Fargo company. In March of 1860, John Butterfield was forced out and Wells Fargo took over the stage route. When the Civil war was begun, the Ox Bow Route could no longer be used and the Wells Fargo company had to switch to the Central Overland Trail instead. By 1866, Wells Fargo had gained a monopoly over long distance overland stage coach routes and mail service and used both the original Butterfield Overland Trail and others. In 1869, the first transcontinental railroad was finished and the need for transcontinental passenger and mail travel by stagecoach was to be no more.


----------------------More history---------------------------


History of Butterfield Trail

The History of Butterfield Trail dates back to 1858 when the Butterfield Overland Mail Company operated for three years carrying mail and passengers across country from Missouri to San Francisco. More than 700 miles of the almost 2,800 mile mail route ran across the state of Texas. Part of the original trail used still runs through the Butterfield Trail golf course property today, thus providing the perfect name for our emerald gem designed by world-renown golf course architect, Tom Fazio.

Modern travelers can still view some of the same landscapes in West Texas, and follow exact segments of the route, reaching historical markers, all while feeling some nostalgia for the historic Texas frontier.

When playing golf, you can still view remnants of the original Butterfield Trail adjacent to Hole #8 on the Butterfield Trail Golf Course.

For more information on the history of the Butterfield Overland Mail Company, we invite you to pick up a copy of Historic Texas Tours, A Guide for Tracing Early Routes and Trails by William J. Sheffield, Jr. Copyright 2001.

------------------more history----------------------------

BUTTERFIELD OVERLAND MAIL

When California was admitted to the Union in 1850, slavery was the most divisive issue facing our nation? California was admitted as a "free" state, with no slavery permitted, but much of Southern California was inhabited by pro-slavery southerners. In 1856, the state was already a fabulously wealthy one, but far removed from our country's capital, and there was a movement afoot to the state to form a separate nation. Rapid transportation west to California was essential to maintain close communication. Pro-slavery senators wanted a southern route to California, via Texas. Antislavery forces wanted the North to have access to Upper California where nearly all the gold had been discovered. The central overland route from St. Joseph, Missouri, through Nebraska, Southern Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada to Sacramento, California, was the shortest and fastest way, but it was politically unsatisfactory to Southern sympathizers. John Butterfield won a government contract to transport mail from the Mississippi River to San Francisco in 1857. He chose a route that would offend neither the North nor the South. It ran from St. Louis to Tipton, Missouri, by rail, then by Stagecoach or wagon to Springfield, Missouri, to Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Sherman and EL Paso, Texas, thence to Tucson and Yuma, Arizona, to Los Angeles, California and terminating in San Francisco.

The route had the advantage of being snow free most of the year. Much of the route ran through wild and semi-arid territory, but it was open prairie and desert and not particularly difficult for wheeled vehicles.

Watterman Ormsby, who traveled on the first westbound trip, had this to say about one night's travel. "To see the heavy mail wagon whizzing and whirling over the jagged rock, through such a labyrinth, in comparative darkness, and to feel oneself bounding--now on the hard seat, now against the roof, and now against the side of the wagon--was no joke."

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Oh what a day!










Our adventure started today at Fort Cummings, NM. NO not Nebraska, Donna!

Fort Cummings

Captain Valentine Dresher halted his Company B, 1st Infantry, California Volunteers, at Cooke's Spring, New Mexico, on October 2, 1863. Their march had been easterly from Fort West. The Captain chose this location for a new Fort. The location was about 20 miles northeast of present-day Deming, New Mexico. The site of Fort Cummings is located on BLM and private ranch lands approximately 30 miles southwest of Hatch off of Highway 26.

Cooke's Peak rises about 8 miles north of the fort's ruins. The Peak, the Spring, and a Canyon were all named for Colonel Philip St. George Cooke who led the Mormon Battalion from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to California in 1846. From 1863 over the next 10 years, soldiers built barracks, a hospital, several other buildings and a high adobe wall around the Fort.

We continued on to see many wonders today. There is so much history in New Mexico to explore. It is one of the many things that keeps calling us back here. There will be more photo's to follow from today. But tomorrow it is on to Palomas, Mexico. We cross south of Deming, NM.