Serving Eastern New Mexico and West Texas
CNJ staff photo: Liliana Castillo Marilyn Belcher prefers reading to watching television. Marilyn Belcher, Clovis-Carver Public Library director, has been working in libraries since high school. She grew up helping her mother run the Elida Public Library. Then, in high school and college, she worked at both those libraries. Working in libraries is the only […]
Dunn Marilyn A. Dunn of Clovis celebrated her 80th birthday Nov. 2 in Clovis. The celebration was hosted by Vera Christensen, Linda Ruby, Tricia West and Mari Amacher. Dunn was born Nov. 4, 1927, in Sioux City, Iowa. She has four children, 10 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.
By Karl Terry: Freedom Newspapers He liked a laugh and a good cigar. He enjoyed plenty of both. Robert “Bob” E. Huber, journalist, freelance writer and newspaper columnist, died early Friday morning at his home in Portales. He was best known in Portales and Clovis for his weekly humor column that ran in the Portales […]
By Bob Huber: Local Columnist I’m convinced that influenza is the curse of great men. It was undoubtedly the root cause of Napoleon’s Waterloo, Noah Webster’s misspellings and Custer’s — well, the Little Big Horn was no place to sneeze, because Sioux Indians in those days could hear an antelope sniffle five miles away. Anyway, […]
By Bob Huber: Local Columnist First they shut down daylight-saving time. Two days later they celebrate Halloween. Is that a conspiracy or what? The mystery is, who’s behind it? Here at the Academy for Thorny Plots I’ve researched that question, coming quickly to the conclusion that in both cases I need a government grant for […]
By Bob Huber: Local Columnist Now that summer’s over, we can all give thanks for seasonal changes. In other words, no more steaming days, sweltering nights, grass clippings and asparagus sprouts. The asparagus liturgy at our house began one day years ago when my wife, Marilyn, came home with a sack of roots. She’d paid […]
By Bob Huber: Local Columnist Here at the Appalling Malady Institute, we’re studying really important stuff about human behavior, such as why folks say bizarre things when they wake up at night to answer the phone. For a moment they’re not themselves but lost souls lingering in a la-la land between George W. Bushisms and […]
By Bob Huber: Local Columnist Here at the Old Reporters’ Retirement Home, I’m spicing up each day by writing a horror story. It’s a TV documentary inspired by an actual event. Hollywood will love it. It’ll star Arnold Schwarzenegger. I call it “Gnaws.” The actual event went like this: We remodeled our house one time, […]
By Bob Huber: Local Columnist Today’s lesson is: How to Stop Smoking and Go on Living. My wife, Marilyn, badgered me for years to stop smoking. She also said I should eat at least five vegetables before the sun sets each day. I wondered at the time why she was so eager to keep me […]
By Bob Huber, Local Columnist During the Dark Ages of my married life, I bought a prehistoric Volkswagen camper and spent the national debt fixing it up. I named it “The Titanic.” It had all the necessary gismos for modern camping — a gas stove, electric ice box, a sink, a bed, a radio, a […]
By Bob Huber: Local columnist You can’t buy bitters anymore. They were all the rage during the Civil War, but their popularity petered out. You see, armies of the North were to a large extent financed by a special wartime tax on booze, and so bitters were born. Bitters were an alleged medicine containing alcohol, […]
By Bob Huber: Local columnist Mother’s Day always reminds me of a time when I supported a family, a dog pack, an ancient Ford, a cigar addiction and the federal government on $400 a month. In those days I put all our bills in a hat each month and drew one out to pay. If […]
By Leonard Pitts: Syndicated columnist The car glides to a stop in front of the hotel. Light splashes off gleaming black metal as the valet gets out. He hands the keys to my wife. Marilyn says, “These aren’t my keys.” The valet says, “Yes, they are.” Marilyn says, a little more forcefully, “These aren’t my […]
By Bob Huber: Local columnist Just when I was beginning to enjoy my twilight years, our youngest offspring ran out of money in her quest for a Guinness record for years in college. Her husband, once removed, pressured me into tiding them over by temporarily buying his overpriced motorcycle — a Kamikaze 500 or something […]
By Bob Huber: Local columnist When spring rears its ugly head in these dusty parts, I always get claustrophobia — a fear of being trapped in a 1957 Chevy with a polecat. I caught that terminal ailment when our kids were small, and our family drove through a rain storm. What happened was, we went […]
Bob Huber: Local Columnist Let’s take a look at Sasquatch in New Mexico, because October is Halloween Month. And that’s just the tip of the frightberg. Ghostly sounds can be heard, such as owls hooting, bones rattling, trees swaying and slurping water like vampires. To make matters worse, whenever Halloween rears it monstrous head, up […]
By Bob Huber: CNJ columnist Throughout my longtime marriage to Marilyn, she often asked, “Why do these things happen to us? Why? Why?” I always replied with a shrug, because I didn’t know. (Secretly I thought our adventures probably happened to everyone, but they just didn’t talk about them. I wanted to mutter, “We’re just […]
By Bob Huber: Local Columnist When I was bringing home $90 a week to feed a family of five, I experienced an illuminating event in my life. It should be noted that I also supported a pack of five dogs, a cigar addiction, and an ancient Chevrolet that came over on the Mayflower. If anyone […]
By Bob Huber: Local Columnist Is Social Security safe? We’re told that unless meaningful reform is implemented, the system will be bankrupt by the year 2050, which will plunge us into chaos, despair, and extreme whining. I don’t care, because I plan to be dead by then. So let’s forget about THAT problem. Instead, on […]
By Bob Huber: CNJ columnist When we lived in the boondocks outside Santa Fe, I woke one morning to the sound of a whining dog. That wasn’t unusual, because we had half a dozen semi-literate canines at the time, stray animals that showed up each day for breakfast. But I peered out the window anyway […]
