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One Of Our 50 Is Missing
Two decades after its launch, the "One of Our Fifty Is Missing" humor column remains the magazine's most popular. To submit your anecdotes, e-mail us at fifty@nmmagazine.com.
Name Tag:
Steven J. Ontiveros says he recently experienced an epiphany and wanted to change his last name to that of his biological grandfather. But this student of the University of Alabama-Birmingham is still a legal resident of Las Cruces, and was in a quandary as to where to legally petition for the change.
Ontiveros phoned the Jefferson County Court, in Alabama, and explained his dilemma to the court clerk, emphasizing that he was still a legal resident of New Mexico, but her answer came out of left field. “You need to petition in Mexico,” she said.
Ontiveros quickly interjected, saying, “Not Mexico, New Mexico.” Unfazed, the clerk continued, “For a name change to be legal, it doesn’t matter if it’s in Mexico, New Mexico, Europe, or Africa, you should do it in your own country.”
By now laughing hysterically, Ontiveros struggled to explain to the clerk that New Mexico is part of the United States. “She began mumbling, ‘Umm, umm, umm,’ and hung up on me,” he says. “I decided to give it an hour before I called back so that maybe I would get someone who seems to know that the United States comprises 50 states, which includes New Mexico.”
Bridging the Gap:
Audrey Hartley, of Las Cruces, says she was in for a real treat when she moved from Las Cruces to Clovis, California, along with her husband, John, and their daughters, Blair and Brock.
“When I was first introduced as the administrator of my new assisted-living community, the regional director of operations told me what excellent English I spoke,” Hartley says. Sensing immediately where this conversation was going as she stood before the crowd of staff, residents, and their family members, Hartley cut the confusion off at the pass with a
geography lesson, but to no avail.
So she went the sporting route.
“A few more of the people understood when I told them that I would be rooting for the [New Mexico State University] Aggies—archrivals of the Fresno State Bulldogs but there were still some puzzled looks about the room,” she says. Clovis is just northeast of Fresno in Fresno County, California.
Not quite getting her point across, Hartley decided to pull out her ace card, and spoke to the gathering in Spanish: “No soy de Méjico Antigua, soy de Nuevo Méjico en los Estados Unidos [I’m not from Old Mexico, I’m from New Mexico in the United States]. I think they finally got it.”
More Green Men In Roswell?
While perusing the July 23, 2008, edition of USA Today, Jerry Bennett, of Merritt Island, Florida, came upon a page featuring “great haunts for seekers of the paranormal.” Much to Bennett’s surprise, one of the items was Area 51, which the article placed in Roswell, New Mexico. The secretive military airfield, used for weapons testing, is actually in northern Nevada.
“Now, I don’t know how large Area 51 is,” mused Bennett, “but it is probably about the size of Rhode Island at the most, but decidedly too large to move, lock, stock, and little green men, from the area of Las Vegas, Nevada (not New Mexico), all the way to Roswell.”
