After spending the night in Hobbs in an executive room smokier than the vent flaps of a teepee, I resuscitated in the motel breakfast room by inhaling the fumes off a styrofoam cup of scorched coffee. One brown-skinned banana rested on the buffet nex

After spending the night in Hobbs in an executive room smokier than the vent flaps of a teepee, I resuscitated in the motel breakfast room by inhaling the fumes off a styrofoam cup of scorched coffee. One brown-skinned banana rested on the buffet next to a big bowl of the sugar-coated cereals kids eat in front of TV sets on Sunday mornings. Half the floor space was reserved by a mammoth-sized truck driver dunking a sweet roll in a cup of Coca Cola, resting on a brown plastic-topped table splashed with rivulets of coffee and floating sugar crumbs.

The bill on the executive room came to $59 including tax. I refused the senior citizens discount the night before. Looking over the clients standing in line, I wanted to show strength, not age. But at checkout, the lobby overflowed with a family atmosphere out of old Bombay. Dark-skinned mothers chirped to babies all but hidden in the flowing saris from India.

The male clerk, a swarthy gent presiding over the inn and the clan, promised he would have the microwave, the telephone, the reading light, the handle on the commode, and the security lock in 245 repaired by my return visit. I always leave work orders wherever I stay as a service to help the hapless travelers on the road. I direct maids to move end tables and vacuum dust stratas reaching back to geological time. Do this even though if forced to return, I'd prefer sleeping in the prairie dog town adjoining the city to braving another night at the inn.

Tracing the day's journey on west toward Socorro continued to torment my memory. My friend drove. I was supposed to be the navigator, but instead of watching for road signs, I searched for familiar brands, or names on ranch signs. Herders make inspiring companions commenting on the way the turpentine weed overruns the pasture land, or how many lambs Charlie Waller contracted one fall to run in the mountains on his ranch above Clines Corners 50 years ago. Quick asides arise, too. "Did you see that windmill wheel with the sails rattling loose in the wind?" Or "Looks like there's been more rain here than back down the road."

Our destination was San Antonio, a small outpost on the railroad south of Socorro. The bed and breakfast lady rents rooms in an adobe house she saved from ruin. All around the small townsite is evidence of the extent of her restoration in the form of white plaster walls cracking away from brown clay bricks, melting back into the ground, set in weed beds of wrecked cars and rusty fences. But our room had wall to ceiling shelves filled with books to read on a sun-lighted porch, or to sit propped on a homemade quilt in the bedroom.

Her morning paper confirmed politics was in season. The night before at dinner, we sat in the crowded dining room of an old hotel in Socorro filled with delegates for a county convention. Political parties in New Mexico nominate candidates by the convention method versus the primary election system in Texas. We ate amidst smiling name-tagged folks ready at any moment to start a spirited march. All ages of easygoing people. Had we wanted to join the reception in another room, I'm sure we would have been welcome. (Best way to crash a party for a man is give off a boyish look of uncombed hair and a cow lick. For women — oh, they know all the tricks by age 12.)

However, a front page story in the morning edition of the Albuquerque Journal dispelled being accepted so easy. His honor, a Mr. Chavez, the mayor of Albuquerque, addressing the news of the University of Texas making a bid to run the Sandia private laboratory, said, "We want Texans to spend money — and then we want them to leave." (Sandia laboratory fulfills government contracts for White Sands.)

I contacted the contributing scribes at the Journal to prevail upon Mr. Chavez to show more mercy. Jurisdiction is different in New Mexico than Texas. Like I told the reporter, if the mayor's stroke extends past the city limits, or his philosophy spreads, Tejanos playing the races at Ruidoso or Santa Fe would have to commute from the Texas Panhandle most of the season. Be an end to an old boy from San Angelo sitting on the front porch of his log cabin, rattling odd change in his pockets while reading a racing form, hoping to make a score but happy to be in Cloudcroft or Ruidoso for the summer.

The mayor must be thinking of the fast kill of the casinos. Takes awhile to go broke at the tracks. Sure can't fault his sense of timing, however, wanting us to leave after we run out of money. One thing Mr. Chavez needs to consider is that the University owns two million acres of land, so he may need to evict UT on different grounds.

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