ROAM, ROAM ON THE RANGE
The one time you shouldn’t have to worry about racking up cell-phone roaming charges? When you’re arriving in your home state. Santa Fe native Edward Salazar turned on his phone after landing at the Albuquerque Sunport only to see this not-so-warm welcome from T-Mobile. Sorry, guys. Wrong numbers.

GOOD OLD “NEW” MEXICO
Painful bursts of cluelessness about the Land of Enchantment can come from just about anyone—even those we know and love. Las Cruces resident LaNette Tomten learned this the hard way. Her cousin, who lives in Washington State, told Tomten she hoped to visit her soon—she just needed to get her passport renewed. The Evergreen State cousin noted that she was certain she’d need the passport, because Tomten lives in the “new” part of Mexico. Looks like someone’s cousin needs a gift subscription to a certain magazine!

TICKETS, PLEASE!
Eleven years after he retired to New Mexico, Owen Ball finally got his own “Missing” moment. Ball and his wife, Shirley, were at the Detroit airport, checking their bags for a flight home, when a young ticket agent looked at their baggage stickers. She asked pleasantly if they were going to Albuquerque. Ball said yes. And then it happened. “May I see your passports, please?” she asked. Ball told the truth: They didn’t have passports.

“From the stricken expression that appeared on her face, I could see that she thought this was a problem,” Ball says. Fortunately, another agent intervened and assured the first that Albuquerque was, in fact, a domestic destination. With a mixture of uncertainty and relief, the ticket agent replied, “Oh, okay.”

NOT SO WAY OUT WEST
Ruth Schofield was catching up with an old friend about travel when the friend—who once lived in Colorado—seemed to lose her compass bearings. “I’ve never gone as far west as you are in New Mexico, though I did once travel to Phoenix,” she mused. “Funny,” Schofield says, “my geography lessons locate Phoenix west of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, where I live.”

WE ARE NOT ALONE
Vermonter Howard Daily and his wife were driving the River Road, between Las Cruces and Hatch, when they stopped at a Border Patrol checkpoint. They got the standard question: “Are you U.S. citizens?” “Wanting to have some fun, I replied that we were from New England,” Daily says. Sure enough, the agent asked for their passports. Embarrassed, he waved them through. 

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. Thanks!