Sidetracked Charley

I live in an unincorporated area of Colfax County. Black Lake is a recognized area of that county and the farthest from the county seat of Raton. In fact I am closer to Taos and Mora. I routinely get summoned for jury duty in Mora and have to deline. I do my grocery shopping in Taos. I have been assigned the Angel Fire Zip Code. And get my mail on my rural route through Ocate which is in Mora. My legal address is Black Lake, NM 87710 and because of that Angel Fire Zip code designation everyone from my short term rental agency to UPS and Google tags me with Angel Fire. That actually works in my favor when it comes to short term rental occupancy because nobody books vacations in Raton. Since the coal mines closed they have been slowly dying. The current population of Raton is now 5734, down from 9000 and still declining. Its current source of income is county offices. We drive two hours to respond to jury duty of apply for licenses. Which is what they want me to do. The whole county ...

On the edge of the plains I live in Colfax County, New Mexico . It and its immediate neighbor to the west, Taos County, was split off from Mora County to the south of me. The county comprises 3,768 square miles of which only 11 square miles is water. Much of the county, the part I live in, is in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Most of the rest is prairie. The largest single city in Colfax County is Raton on the far east side of the state of New Mexico. Or about one and half to two hours drive from where I live. Raton is the county seat. All district court houses are in Raton. If I get called for jury duty I have to make that drive twice a day because the county does not pay for overnight stays for jurors. And I have to drive to Raton to vote early tomorrow. Many of us have come to resent Raton. The county seat was once Elizabeth Town which was a mining center. And then moved to Cimarron which I will pass through on the way to Raton. Cimarron is much more centrally located....