Wait, There's Another Vegas?
Richard Rindone found a 1984 paperback of Zane Grey’s The Shepherd of Guadaloupe (1930) in one of his Santa Fe neighborhood’s Little Free Libraries. The synopsis on the back cover said it was about a World War I vet returning to his ranch in Nevada, and indeed there’s a Las Vegas named in the book. But on page 5, when the veteran is asked, “Where is your home?” he answers “New Mexico.” Later in the book, he gets off the train in our state’s Las Vegas, right by the Castañeda Hotel. It’s probably news to the synopsis writer, but our Vegas is the right Vegas.
No Ship, Sherlock
While helping his daughter relocate from Florida to New Mexico, Santa Fean Reagan Burkholder took on the task of shipping some large boxes. He carted them to a UPS franchise store, where the clerk warned him that shipping would be very expensive. “Why?” he asked. “UPS considers the shipment to be international,” the clerk said. “Happily,” Burkholder said, “when we used the UPS online application, we found that—at the corporate level, at least—UPS realizes that New Mexico is actually one of the United States and charges accordingly.”
Shhh ... Don't Tell Santa Fe
Donna Musselman, of Emmaus, Pennsylvania, was reading the May/June issue of her region’s AAA magazine when an ad caught her eye. It touted a “Trail of the Ancients in the Southwest” group tour and said the trip would include a visit to “Albuquerque, capital city of New Mexico.” “I was stunned,” she said, “that the capital of New Mexico has been moved!”
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Illustration by Chris Philpot.