FOUL BALL
Back in 1980, the University of New Mexico men’s basketball team had an academic and gambling scandal that became a national story. “I can remember coach Norm Ellenberger telling Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes that recruiting to New Mexico is extremely difficult,” Indianapolis resident PHILLIP WEISBERGER recalls. “A prospect was allowed three official visits: The first two entailed trying to convince the player that New Mexico was a state in the United States. The third visit was trying to convince the parents.”
GREEN CARD
Roswell’s LORRAINE WILBY recently returned to her native Rhode Island for a visit. Popping into a local cannabis dispensary, she handed the young man at the door her ID, only to be told she needed “a legitimate ID, one from this country.” After a few minutes spent explaining New Mexico’s whereabouts and its admission into the union in 1912, the skeptical gentleman let her in. For folks from “the colonies,” she says, “if you haven’t been around for a few hundred years, you don’t exist.”
MAP QUEST
It seems multiple sources have been cartographically challenged lately. In April, eagle-eyed JAMES CARROLL of Albuquerque and PAUL ASMAN from Metuchen, New Jersey, noticed that not only was New Mexico missing in a map published by the New York Times on Medicaid expansion, it had become Nevada! Meanwhile, both RAMONA GAULT of Shoreline, Washington, and KAREN CARTER of Chama questioned a map making the rounds on Facebook listing each state’s largest employer: In our case, the University of Mexico. Hopefully, whoever goes there takes a few classes in geography.
have a “missing” moment?
Send it to fifty@nmmagazine.com, or Fifty, New Mexico Magazine, 495 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87501. Include your name, hometown, and state. ¡Gracias!