Whiting Brothers Gas Station

Whiting Bros., Route 66, Tucumcari, NM 

Selected Letters of Willa Cather

 

(NYTBR) ... The great turning point for Cather came in 1912, when she traveled to the Southwest and realized that the region she had tried so desperately to flee as a young woman was, for better or worse, the place that had the deepest hold on her imagination: “The West always paralyzes me a little. When I am away from it I remember only the tang on the tongue. But when I come back [I] always feel a little of the fright I felt when I was a child. I always feel afraid of losing something, and I don’t in the least know what it is.” A few months later, when she returned to Red Cloud, Neb., all of her ambivalence was gone. The sense of homecoming struck her with the force of an epiphany — “The whole great wheat country fairly glows, and you can smell the ripe wheat as if it were bread baking” — and filled her with artistic purpose, a sense that she’d finally found her subject. Within months, she’d completed “O Pioneers!” — the book she considered her true first novel — and launched a meteoric career that would bring her enormous fame; countless honors, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1923; and an enduring place in our literary pantheon. Continued

Old House 15

This house is on the grounds of the old La Nora Courts, now apartments, along Route 66 in Tucumcari. The house was owned and occupied by the motel's owners, way back when. I'd put the construction date at circa 1940. Most, if not all, of the motel is intact, but the old Conoco station, which sat out front, has been replaced by a laundromat.
The motel was named after my great aunt, Nora, who opened it with her husband Fred, after the bottom fell out of ranching during the Great Depression or thereabouts. Previously, he had a homestead north of town, next to his father's place. They both homesteaded there around 1906.
I never met them, and the only thing I remember my mom saying about the place was, "The customers would steal anything that wasn't nailed down. When TV became popular, they bought TV's for each room, and the next day, they were all gone."

The Passion of Lew Wallace

(Slate) ... Wallace’s unlikely journey from disgraced general to celebrated author is as thrilling as any story of his era, and his fame in his own lifetime surpassed that of all but a handful of his comrades in arms. Few men participated so completely in the postbellum American experience. Wallace had a Zelig-like knack for insinuating himself into the defining moments of his day. A lawyer by training, he served on the tribunal that tried the Lincoln assassination conspirators and presided over the one that convicted Henry Wirz, the commandant of the notorious prison camp at Andersonville, Ga., and the only Confederate executed for war crimes. During the disputed election of 1876, the Republican Party sent Wallace to oversee the original Florida recount. For his role in delivering the White House to Rutherford B. Hayes, he was rewarded with the governorship of the New Mexico territory. The duties of office included putting down a range war in Lincoln County; among the combatants was William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid. Initially charmed by the young gunslinger, Wallace once asked him for a demonstration of his marksmanship and was impressed by his handling of both six-shooter and rifle. He soon tired of the Kid’s homicidal antics, however, and put a $500 bounty on his head. Continued

Abandoned Building Tucumcari

I don't know what this building was for, but it may have been the Crescent Creamery.

Country Churches: Church of God in Christ Mennonite

 

Tucumcari, NM (vicinity).

A Small Monument to a Job Well Done

 

If you walk around Tucumcari, New Mexico, you'll probably come across a sidewalk inscribed like the one above: "WPA 1939." These sidewalks were constructed by the WPA (Works Progress Administration), a New Deal jobs program instituted during the Great Depression.
There were people, back then, who criticized the program as being a worthless program that paid bums to "lean on shovels." But here we have evidence to the contrary, sidewalks installed almost 3/4 of a century ago that are still intact, and still in use today. History is all around us - truth too.