Sidetracked Charley

  When I was in college at University of New Mexico in Albuquerque there was an incident at the Tierra Amarilla court house in Rio Arriba County, NM. The court house raid by Alianza Federal de Mercedes  led by Reies Tijerina in 1967 attempted to make a citizen's arrest of the district attorney to "bring attention to the unscrupulous means by which government and Anglo settlers had usurped Hispanic land grant properties." For reasons which escape me it made national news. And my Aunt Louise wrote me from Kansas City, Missouri and asked if I might want to come back to the United States until the revolution was resolved. I remember being shocked Aunt Louise had my address, and that the envelope had international postage on it.   That is just one incident on the whole line of separation, which was military or location based. The Hildebrand and Binford families were Midwesterners. Dad came back from service in Guam during the Korean war and was based in Roswell, New...

I was in my senior year of high school when Russia parked missiles in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis also known as the Crisis de Octobre  or just the Missile Scare was 13 days in October of 1962, the 16th through the 28th. Thirteen months later the President who stared down the Russians would be dead in Dallas. Shot by a man connected with Russia. My first conspiracy theory was that Russia was responsible because of those missiles President Kennedy made them take out of Cuba. The building of a personal bomb shelter was a big conversation topic on Bellamah Street in Albuquerque in 1962 and 1963. The city nobody could spell was on the top ten hit list for missiles from Russia. We had two Air Force Bases and a mountain in the Manzano mountains to the immediate east which was hallowed out to stockpile our nuclear arsenal. And air raid sirens were tested every day. Duck and Cover made a return into my life. I was in the second grade in Roswell, NM going to a Walker Air Forc...

Ripples in the Pond by J. Binford-Bell Turned 67 yesterday. Birthdays are not like those of my youth. Of note was turning 21 twice. It was easier to fake ID's in those days. I made the mistake of celebrating my 21st birthdays at the same bar and the bartender remembered. "Happy 21st Birthday Again," he said. Most bars in Albuquerque during those days gave you a free drink on your legal age birthday. The key was to hit as many of them with your friends as possible. Central Avenue was lined with bars. No way could you get to them all. So you picked a side - north or south. And a direction - east to west or west to east. I obviously picked the same side and the same direction twice. Hell, my 21st birthdays were a couple of years apart. Maybe three. This birthday it was ice tea (not the Long Island kind) with dinner at Calamity Jane's in Eagle Nest. It only has two bars. One on each side of the street. The big gift of the evening was a fishing license. I now qual...