After more than two decades, thousands of you have shared their experiences of lost New Mexico in the "One of Our 50 is Missing" humor column. Tell us your experiences at fifty@nmmagazine.com.
Illegal Emigrant
In 1929, when A. H. McLeod graduated from law school in Virginia, he was excited to read an advertisement for a lawyer wanted by a firm in Albuquerque—several years previously, he had fallen in love with New Mexico. He was hired for the job, and packed up his car for the move west. Unfortunately, the night before leaving, he came down with the flu. He hired a man to drive him while he rested in the back of the car. They drove as far as the New Mexico border, where the man suddenly braked. “What’s wrong?” asked McLeod. “Why’d you stop?” “I can’t go any farther,” answered the young man. “I don’t have a passport.”
And Billy the Kid was My Best Friend
In 1953, when Ed Trujillo was 13 years old, he and his mother went to spend some time with his sister in Owasso, Michigan, where he was enrolled in the eighth grade. The other kids asked Trujillo where he’d attended school before, and he told them, “In New Mexico.” The kids were very impressed that Ed came from such a foreign land, and asked if there were Indians where he lived. “Yes,” he told them, “and oftentimes I must outrun them on my pony on my way to school, with arrows raining down all around me.” It was too good to last. One day, while embellishing a story, Ed noticed that one boy kept smiling as he listened. When Ed asked why he was smiling, the boy said, “My parents have a home in Santa Fe.”
Colonial Customer Care
Last year, Margie Green called a number in New York to place an order. When she gave her address, the clerk told Green that they did not ship internationally. Margie told the clerk that New Mexico had become a U.S. state in 1912. “That’s not possible,” the New Yorker said. “All the states were set in 1776!”