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...

Aftermath of Ruskin Heights Tornado May 20, 1957 We were settled into Albuquerque by then. It was just beginning to dawn on me we were not moving anytime soon. All my aunts and uncles (but one), my father's mother and stepfather, and those cousins I knew were still in the Kansas City area. My baby sister still very much a baby. There were three networks on TV. One was not CNN. There was no 24/7 news coverage. NBC, CBS and ABC had sign off times and sign on times with test patterns. And between test patterns just snow. Mother found me in front of the test pattern that May 21st, 1957 when she woke up to get the day going for the family. "Turn that off," she said handing me my baby sister nodding off in my arms. "Help me with breakfast. What are you watching that for anyway." "I am waiting for the news," I said, as I put my sister down in the play pen. I had just that year, as part of social studies, developed an interest in the news. We...