TUCUMCARI APRIL 25TH-28TH!
Mike Smith
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Tucumcari, New Mexico seems to be a place known more for the billboards leading up to it—“TUCUMCARI TONITE! 240 Miles. 2000 Motel Rooms”—than for Tucumcari itself.
A glance at its basic stats shows it as a town with a population of fewer than 6,000, as the county seat of northeastern New Mexico’s Quay County, and as the self-proclaimed “Gateway to New Mexico.” A look at its role in popular culture reveals it has been immortalized in numerous songs, used as a backdrop for several films and TV shows, and included in a line of dialogue in Truman Capote’s classic In Cold Blood. A little time spent studying the town’s history tells of train robber Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum robbing a nearby store and post office, of hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages done to the town by the epic dust storms of the 1930s, of the town’s once-noted role as a prominent stop along old Route 66, and of a tragic 1951 water-tower collapse that killed four people.
There are all sorts of ways to form an interesting mental picture of Tucumcari—as anyone, or at least anyone who has ever passed through the town on a Greyhound bus during the middle of a late-night lightning storm while a sad-eyed prostitute (who says she’s not really a prostitute because she only has a few select clients and they pay her a lot) sings Patsy Cline songs to the hurtling bus full of awestruck passengers as passing headlights and the occasional violent flashes of light illuminate the black and boxy outlines of the sleeping city through the rain-streaked windows, could probably tell you—but one of the best ways might be to read the town’s police blotter.
That, at least, is the opinion of “The Daily Strange.” Not, most likely, of any regional board of tourism.
From the April 30, 2008 Quay County Sun, here is the recorded police blotter, in its entirety. Read it, and just try not to picture the vivid, day-lit dustiness of life in modern-day Tucumcari; it seems almost straight out of a Cormac McCarthy novel, or an episode of Twin Peaks, or like a perfectly realized and unconventional short story. It paints a scene and creates an atmosphere. Here it is:
The following is a sample of calls received during the last few days by the central dispatch office for Quay County, based at the Tucumcari Police Department.
According to reports:
Friday [April 25, 2008]
● At 10:54 a.m., a female requested to speak to a Quay County Sheriff’s deputy regarding a break in. The deputy advised that the residence had a weapons cabinet and that some weapons were missing. The incident is under investigation.
● At 11:02 a.m., New Mexico State Police paged Amistad Fire Department to the intersection of state highways 402 and 420 because of a vehicle fire.
● At 5:26 p.m., an anonymous caller reported a black Chevy Impala and a black Chevy truck racing on East Tucumcari Boulevard.
● At 8:16 p.m., an anonymous caller reported a possible domestic dispute on East McGee. The subjects are known to have a pit bull dog.
● At 8:49 p.m., a male reported a fight in the middle of South Fifth Street. The caller was driving down Fifth Street and flashed his lights and the subjects went into a house nearby.
Saturday [April 26, 2008]
● At 9:49 a.m., a clerk at a convenience store requested an officer in reference to an unwanted subject. The officer advised he could not locate the subject.
● At 2:17 p.m., a male called for a deputy from the Quay County Sheriff’s Department because of a dispute between neighbors about a fence line.
● At 7:52 p.m., a male called to report an accident that had occurred around the 320 mile marker near Palomas.
● At 9:06 p.m., a female at a motel on East Tucumcari Boulevard called to report a male subject banging on a room door with a rock.
Sunday [April 27, 2008]
● At 12:34 a.m., a male called regarding a subject, who has a restraining order against him, hitting him and his car with a baseball bat.
● At 8:36 a.m., a male at a business on West Tucumcari Boulevard reported vandalism to property. The officer advised that there was spray paint and a couple of holes in the wall.
● At 12:05 p.m., a female called the Logan Police Department and requested an officer at her house because her dog had been bitten by her neighbor’s dog.
● At 12:07 p.m., a female called to report two pit bulls in her backyard on South Third Street. The officer located the owners and had them come get the dogs.
● At 9:16 p.m., an anonymous caller reported a domestic fight that had escalated into the street in the area of Charles Avenue and Fourth Street.
Monday [April 28, 2008]
● At 3:45 p.m., a female called to report a bat in the Team Builders building.
● At 4:51 p.m., a female called to report a juvenile throwing rocks at passing vehicles. Officer advised that he will talk to parents and juvenile.
● At 8:41 p.m., a male reported his license plate had been stolen from his vehicle while parked at a hotel on East Tucumcari Boulevard.
With the almost post-apocalyptic feel of the above report—with mysterious fights in the streets; drag racing; an empty car in flames; a motel stay interrupted by a man with a rock; a bat-wielding neighbor attacking a car; uncontrolled dogs; a dispute over a fence-line; drifters and restless youths; eerily pointless thefts; arguments spilling out of doors and into the streets; and, pervading everything, a stifling and casually violent atmosphere born of boredom and restlessness—Tucumcari has perhaps never sounded more real, more unusual, or more intriguing.
Big, exciting changes are currently in store for Mystrangenewmexico.com, including a functional redesign and the addition of a number of new columns and features, and perhaps the Tucumcari police blotter should be one of them.
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Reader Comments (4)
Some of them might even top a few select past items from Lordsburg:
● 11:06 p.m. A vandalism to property was reported by a male at an establishment on RR Boulevard. The officer advised that white-out had been used to enhance the naked lady emblems on the victim's vehicle.
● 11:31 p.m. A male called to report a habitually loose donkey, who was rubbing against his truck in an unwanted way, and setting off the alarm.
(Was it "enhanced naked lady emblems" that attracted the wanton burro? And what, dare we ask, might constitute, "rubbing against his truck in", a "wanted", way?)
● 12:05 a.m. A female called to report that some kind of unknown animals were mating in her fenced-in yard. When the officer arrived, the animals had disappeared.
("Disappearing, unknown animals". This calls for a cryptozoologist.)
● 12:47 a.m. A female on "B" Street called to report a domestic fight that involved a number of pit bulls. The officer located the owner, and had him restrain all of the dogs that could be located.
(Mandatory canine family counseling would be in order here.)
● 5:37 a.m. An anonymous caller reported strange "monster" sounds coming from behind the motels. The investigating Hidalgo County Sheriff's Deputy proclaimed it to be a lonely bull.
(Was that lonely bull possibly calling out to that "habitually loose" donkey?)
Those are from a Lordsburg paper? From when? And which paper?
I really like the idea of putting together a statewide police blotter, of all the strangest news from across the state. Once a week.... Hmm.
I guess the first thing to do would be to determine which papers have police blotters.... I know the Tucumcari paper does, and the Socorro Mountain Mail, and the Portales one, and I'm sure there are others.
That would be an amazing feature. Thanks for the suggestion.
The Sun is published weekly on Wednesday and the online edition that I read is up on Thursday. Espanola is small enough for me to recognize names like my sister's brother-in-law and other business owners that I have known since the 60's and I live in Texas now.
I just read the latest one over there, and I have to say it's as weird, if not much weirder, as/than many of Tucumcari's.
I might get a Daily Strange out of it today, and it made me feel even more certain that I want to put together a comprehensive weekly or maybe monthly police report of the strange, incorporating all of New Mexico's police and sheriff's blotters.
First, I need to put together a complete list of all the New Mexico police blotters there are, both online and otherwise.