Weekly Newspaper and Tourism Guide for Ward County Trans Pecos, Big Bend of West Texas

Opinion

Thursday, March 19, 1998

Monahan's Well

By Jerry Curry

Leon Grigry went up North the other day. He didn't say why because the
reason anyone goes North is their own business. I went North myself once
or twice and after I got there, I couldn't tell you why I went North
either so I came back.

Anyway Leon Grigry went North and he returned with a report from the
Ruidoso News as in Ruidoso, N.M..

It seems the people up there are all excited.

It seems, reports a columnist for the scandal sheet, that someone saw a
baby rattler up there way back in 1972 and it caused so much commotion
the people of Ruidoso are still talking about the puny little snake,
even putting it on the Web so people won't forget about it.

Personally, I don't see how anyone could get excited about a baby
rattlesnake. Adult rattlesnakes, you can get excited about. But baby
rattlers, come on!

Leon Grigry feels the same as I do about such goings on which is why he
faxed the column over. Some poor guy named Green writes it and here is
what Green wrote in part:

"The story (in the 1972 editions of the Ruidoso News) reports on the
killing of what was purported to be the world's largest rattlesnake.

"That snake, says the article . . .was killed by Juan Baca about 10
miles northeast of Carrizozo near the malpais in the presence of Mike
Gonzales and they subsequently told the story to Vic Lamb and Bill Hart
at this newspaper (Ruidoso News) . . .Lamb (who owned the Ruidoso News
for a good many years) was quoted as saying, 'I don't believe it but I
saw it . . . It's a Diamondback.' He also said the snake's skin was
about 18 or 20 inches wide at the widest place. Baca and Gonzales
described it as about like a telephone pole in diameter and length,
weighing more than 300 pounds, it's head the diameter of a car steering
wheel, it's tongue a yard long, it's fangs the size of a man's fingers.
There were eight rattles, one the size of a baseball."

That's the story as Leon Grigry sent it to us from the Ruidoso News.

Now you see why they report so many aliens up there in New Mexico.

These people are so deprived for cultural stimulation they think a just
hatched rattler is the biggest in the history of the planet.

They obviously haven't taken a walk through the old Rattlesnake Bomber
base at Pyote where a rattler that little would be eaten by the medium
sized ones hiding from the really big ones that hang out over at the
Rattlesnake Cave just outside Monahans.

I think this poor little 18-foot diameter rattler probably got lost back
there in 1972, wandered up North and decided to settle in because every
where he looked there were New Mexicans who thought he was big.

He might have been one of those that woke me up talking one night while
I was sleeping under my blankets out in the brush the other side of
Wickett. These two rattlers were little ones too but I think they were a
little bigger than New Mexico's world's largest. Their rattles were more
like basketballs than puny little baseballs but they were discussing how
I'd taste wrapped in a taco.

One says to the other, "Let's grab him and have maw fix him up ." The
other one says, "That won't work. We take him home and the big ones'll
take him away from us."

Hospitals and golf

Personalities and rancor threaten reasoned solutions to the problems of
both Ward Memorial Hospital, whose importance to the health of the
community should not be questioned, and the Ward County Golf Course,
whose importance to the psyches of the county's many golfers should not
be questioned.

Both hospitals and golf could well be crippled, perhaps destroyed, in
Ward County unless partisans of all sides in both issues agree to stop
the rancor and begin taking positive steps toward helping seek solutions.

Name calling and unfounded gossip, screaming and threats, to our
knowledge, have never resulted in anything but lynch mobs, either
physical or spiritual.

Members of the County Commissioners' Court have both these burdens on
their backs. County Commissioners are the ones who ultimately must find
the solutions. For better or for worse, it is they who must decide how
the county's money, the taxpayers' money, is to be spent. That is why
the taxpayers of Ward County elected them.

A referendum is to be held in which the voters will decide if leasing or
selling the hospital is to be one of the options available to the
commissioners in their search for an answer to providing health care for
the county. County commissioners are being asked to take steps in
reference to many complaints on operation of the golf course.

We plead for the marshalling of facts and an unemotional presentation of
those facts by those with varied positions on the hospital and golf
issues. We are neighbors here. We do not need nor do we want feuds to
embitter the citizens, feuds that will ravage the county unto the
seventh generation.

Lobo Tennis rules

Snooty country club people at snooty country clubs sit back and wonder
after last weekend in Waco and that screaming ride ahead of the storms
to Abilene for the state championship. Sure we finished second but
that's second in the State of Texas. A Monahans High School athletic
team has not done this well since the 1970s when the track and field
squad and the volleyball team won state championships.

Lobo Team Tennis played the defending state champions in the first round
and stopped them with a thud. It looked easy. Then Loboes rolled and
came within a match or two of taking it all - not bad for an unseeded
team..Team tennis put this little 3A school out of the desert on the
Texas map a country mile in front of the country clubs.

Yeeeeeee-Haaaaaa. Lobo tennis rules.

Christie Kittley's

Spring is coming.

Already things are getting green and flowers are popping up in peoples
yards. I find myself spending less and less time inside on the internet.
It happened last year too. There's just something about a beautiful day
that makes me resent the fact that I have to stay inside to check my
e-mail.

Then the wind starts blowing and I'm glad that I have the inner world of
the net.

The internet is a great resource for gardeners. When that West Texas
wind starts to blow, go inside and plan for the next days gardening.

Just start searching anywhere. You can find free magazines to order,
free planting tips, and you might just be able to catch up with a fellow
gardener or two that decided it was a prettier day on the internet then
in real life.

You learn the best things from other people. I think I'll spend the
rest of today in 'real life' and try to get my yard looking
presentable...I might finish just in time for the freeze we have every
April. :

Net Tip of the Week

Here's just one of the gardening pages I found when I started searching.
It has a lot of links. http://www.evergreen.ca/resgardeningpage.htmlSome
of you already know this, but if you find a web page that you know
you'll want to go back to, go to the top of your browser and click on
the button marked 'Bookmarks'. Then click 'Add Bookmark'. The next time
you want to go there just click on 'Bookmarks' again and go down to
'More Bookmarks' then scroll to the bottom. It will be the last one on
the list. You can use bookmarks to store all your favorite web pages.

E-mail

silvervendetta@hotmail.com