One Of Our 50 Is Missing - September 2011
After more than two decades, thousands of you have shared their experiences of lost New Mexico in the "One of Our 50 is Missing" humor column, compiled by managing editor Walter K. Lopez.
Tell us your experiences at fifty@nmmagazine.com.
Border Disorder: Albuquerque native Raphael Clancy says his brief stay with the Library of Congress, in Washington, D.C., was bearable despite the frenzied pace of the East Coast. But it was an encounter with another venerable U.S. institution—the U.S. Postal Service—that had him shaking his head.
Clancy says that after graduating from the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, he went to work for the Library of Congress in the nation’s capital. “I stuck it out for a while, but eventually decided that the frenetic pace of East Coast living wasn’t for me,” Clancy says. “So, I quit my job and moved back to Albuquerque.”
That’s when the weirdness began. Clancy says his former employer promised to mail his final paycheck to New Mexico, but it never arrived. When Clancy followed up on the matter, his employer confirmed that the check had been mailed. After haggling back and forth over the delivery—or non-delivery—Clancy says he gave up and forgot about it.
Then more weirdness. “About six months later, I received a large manila envelope from a rural post office in Mexico,” Clancy says. “I opened it up and found my missing check. The Library of Congress—our country’s official storehouse of knowledge—had mailed my check to ‘Albuquerque, Mexico,’ and it had bounced around the Mexican postal system for months until someone recognized the mistake and forwarded it on to me.”
Can You Hear Me Now? Vannetta Perry, of San Antonio, New Mexico, was having a tough time explaining a mysterious text message on her cell phone during her recent day-trip to the Alamo Navajo Indian Reservation.
Perry says that once on the reservation, which is less than 60 miles from San Antonio, she received an unexpected text message that read: “In St. Kitts/Nevis to call US dial 1-area code-number. Calls: $1.99/min, Txt sent: $0.50 recvd: $0.05.” At the same time, Perry says, her phone clock automatically changed to the St. Kitts/Nevis time zone.
“I was amused when I received the text,” Perry says. “If you know where the Alamo Navajo Indian Reservation is, you will understand. It is in a beautiful, but quite remote, part of New Mexico. Some may feel as though they are in another part of the world out there, as remote and different as it is. The text message confirmed that even technology, as advanced as it has become, has ‘lost’ a wonderful part of New Mexico.”
Charged Up: Margaret Kohler’s recent clash with the local post office in her hometown of Mineral Wells, Texas, left her searching for answers.
Kohler says she recently mailed a package by parcel post to her daughter Brenda Bixler, in Aztec, but was thrown off guard by the high postage amount. “I felt the charge of $7 seemed high for a one-pound package,” Kohler says.
But she quickly solved the puzzle when she glanced at the sales receipt from the Mineral Wells Post Office. It read: “The timeliness of service to destinations outside the contiguous U.S. may be affected by the limited availability of transportation.”
Kohler enjoyed a chuckle over the statement, but fortunately, she says, the package arrived in Aztec without any delay.
