We all grew up in Clovis and here's what some of us remember.

    You know which way the wind is blowing from if you can smell the "dairy" air (from the stockyards).

    You remember where the railroad 'round house' was.

    You know you're from Clovis when the change in the wind reminds you of the stock yards.

    You're from Clovis if you remember you didn't remember to slow down for the dips at the intersections and nearly took the bottom of your car out and your head hit on the roof of the car.

    Could sweep sand out of your house after a sand storm.

    Step outside during a "windy day " and your circular skirt goes up over your head.

    You know you're in Clovis, when you stop to help someone who has had car trouble
    and you went to school with them or one of their family.

    You ever swam down into the dressing room to get your football uniform.

    You remember the Ringling Brothers- Barnum & Bailey Circus
    setting up their tent where Hobby- Lobby and Albertsons are now located.

    You remember that there was a high power rifle range where the Norris & 14th.St. fire station is now.

    There is a photograph in the lobby of the Court House (in the front door, to the right, I think)
    of a sandstorm cloud blowing up from the South that is four times as high
    as the Clovis Hotel.
    Certainly, it is one of my most vivid memories.

    I remember a hamburger place right across from Jr High. I believe it was "Johnnies" and Tommy/Chuck Townsend's dad owned it. And the senior class took over KCLV for a day or part of a day and everyone tried to play DJ. None as good as Bill Sego but we tried. Could have helped that the Echols family owned the station! And you could be from Clovis if you remember the junior class walkout. Or thinking nothing of driving to El Paso for a football game on Friday night. And track meets in the spring being cancelled due to snow and sleet.

    Walking between buildings to change classes and having the wind grab your skirt and all those cancans. You just grabbed for your skirt and forgot the other stuff you were carrying. And along the same line, teachers accepting "My homework blew away" as a valid excuse for not having your homework for the day.

    The train trip we took to Roswell (Maybe Carlsbad?) for the football game.
    Lotsa people went and had lotsa fun!

    Watermelon feasts and weenie roasts at the sand hills.

    Dragging Main when I wasn't suppose to, honking the horn and having my dad hear it
    and recognize it at home. Got me in trouble a couple of times!

    You see old ladies wearing scarfs either just got out of the beauty shop or WIND is up.

    You can remember when your phone number was 531-J,
    and you had to have the operator connect any call you made.

    You know you're from Clovis when you go outside when it rains and it smells like you're in a cow pen
    (everyone should remember the stockyards smell)
    --------when your only football field is 8 ft under water from rain.
    -----------when you are pulled over by the police for speeding when draggin main at 20 mph.

        don`t ask

    You gather the family to tape the windows because the 'Sand Storm Is A Comin'.
    You just out ran a cop - he was driving a 1959 Rambler and you are in a 1949 Chevy.
    You know that the 'Mr. Wildcat" is Norman Vohs.
    You are driving to the new High School on a dirt road.
    Mrs. Rogers and Mrs. Jones looked you in the eye and said "Yes you can".
    You survived Algebra and Mrs. Jenkins.
    You scuba dived to save football equipment from the flooded Jr. High field.
    You shot bottle rockets from the top of Sears.
    You climbed the water tower and painted your name for posterity.

    Even when the wind was blowing from the West you still didn't notice the smell of the stockyards.
    The Pleasant Hill highway was the nearest drag strip.
    You know that Twin Cronies is not a reference to two identical geezers,
    and you remember buying 21 shrimp with fries there for a dollar, and it might have been a silver dollar.
    You know that Dog and Suds had nothing to do with canines or soap,
    and remember when it opened just down the street from the high school.
    You remember when Al's Drive Inn, future site on 7th street of the relocated Foxy,
    was closed by the IRS because of income tax evasion.
    You remember when Red and Riley Brewer made front page Clovis News Journal news,
    and national news with the big shoot out at Riley's Shamrock Gas Station on the Texaco highway.
    You remember the shoot out at the Busy Bee Cafe which resulted in the owner of Coney Island having to walk with a cane the remainder of his life.
    You remember when the Spudnut shop opened and the traffic backlog that resulted.
    You recall the times when the largest lake in Clovis was the underpass on the Portales highway.
    You remember buying milk at Humphrey's Diary.
    You bought tamales from the street vendor pushing a cart along 7th Street.
    You remember when people rented rooms in The Hotel Clovis, the only skyscraper.
    You rememberwhen the basement of the old High School on Main St. flooded.
    You remember when your school bus driver was in high school.
    You remember when you wrote in "Slam Books" on your lunch hour.
    You remember when the Texico Highway was made four-lane.
    You know what business replaced the old high school.
    Your daddy worked for Santa Fe Railroad.

    ****************************************************************************

    The following is a copy of a newspaper article from the Clovis News Journal written the summer before our 45th reunion in Albuquerque.
    It was written by Don McAlavy, Local Columnist and Historian

    Mykell Jackman Brewer, a Clovis High School graduate who now lives in Virginia, wrote recently to report the CHS class of 1959 will hold it’s 45th reunion at the Downtown Sheraton Hotel in Albuquerque, September 17-19.

    She was looking for any good stories that I might know from that era.

    I never went to the new Clovis High School which opened in 1956 at 21st and Thornton.

    I graduated in 1950 from the old high school where Clovis-Carver
    Public Library is now located at 7th and Main.

    Some of us cried when they tore down our old high school.

    I do recall a tragic accident at the new high school when it first opened. A student, Darlene Nolen, was so excited about the new school that she ran across the lobby intending to go out the west door and ran through the big plate glass window instead. She suffered severe cuts on her arm and leg and nearly bled to death.
    Fortunately, she did survive. Her mother still lives in Clovis.

    One incident that occurred in the class of ‘59 junior year was the “walkout” of nearly the whole class.
    One class member, Jon Pressley, said it was caused by “bad blood” between class members and an assistant principal.
    I have never learned exactly why the students were unhappy with the assistant principal.
    I do know that Gary Bennett borrowed one of his dad’s moving trucks and loaded up his unhappy classmates
    to parade up and down Main Street. They also went out to Hillcrest Park and who knows where else protesting their unhappiness.

    Everyone that walked out of school that day was expelled from school the next day.
    They had to bring their parents to school so they could be reinstated.
    A big percent of the class took part in that walkout, I was told.

    A rather funny incident occurred one evening in the Fall of that year when three students, all boys, were dragging Main and two decided it was their destinay to hop a freight train in the railroad yards of Clovis and ride all the way to Texico. The third boy in the automobile would follow the train to Texico and bring the boys back.

    Well, the train did not stop in Texico like the two boys had figured. They clung to the ladder on one of the freight cars all the way to Amarillo. One said they nearly froze their hands off.
    Their parents had to go to Amarillo and bring those two boys back arriving back in Clovis after midnight.

    Such were the lives of some of the students of the class of ‘59.

    WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER?

    P.S. Darlene Nolen is alive and well. Here's a note from her:

    "I feel so lucky to have survived that accident, as I almost bled to death also, before they could get me to the hospital. I will always be grateful to George Fajardo who picked me up and carried me to the office, and stayed with me through all my surgeries.
    May God bless him where ever he is. "

    Darlene

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