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Sunday, March 21, 2010
Clovis Confronts Blights Versus Rights
By Leslie Linthicum
Journal Staff Writer
CLOVIS — Those of us who make tracks across New Mexico for work and pleasure know there is a lot of pretty out there and that there is also plenty of ugly.
Nature has made most of the pretty; we creative humans are responsible for most of the ugly.
How do we junk up our places? We collect old vehicles like mad. We pile pallets around old appliances that sit next to wheel-less wheelbarrows that are filled with rusted tools and pieces of broken concrete.
Why do we have this stuff? It was there when we moved in. The dump seems a long way away, and it's too hot anyway. You never know when you'll need parts from that second and third broken lawn mower to fix the first broken lawn mower.
As we enter the city of Clovis from each of the cardinal directions on one brisk, clear day, we see fine examples of roadside junk. From the east, a boarded-up motel, an abandoned fireworks stand and piles of broken concrete. From the south, automobile graveyards, piles of rusted metal and stacks of tires. From the west, a sagging abandoned mobile home, a burned-out building and a collection of amputated pickup truck beds. And from the north, a large, lovely "Welcome to Clovis" sign — with an old school bus, a pile of broken concrete and a marooned motorboat sitting near it.
As we drive past these rummage yards and rubbish piles, my companions Rose Riley and Patsy Delk simmer and occasionally boil over.
Riley: "This is the impression people get as they come into Clovis. Look at this crap."
Delk: "It's horrible. I just want to sit here and bawl like a baby."
Neither Riley nor Delk is crying like a baby. But they are making a lot of noise. And they have been joined by the local newspaper, the Clovis News Journal, which took on the junky approaches to town in a special report called "Blight Battle." It adopted the direct approach of posting on its Web site photographs of the messy yards and businesses Riley has targeted, along with addresses and the names of their owners.
It was "Blight Battle" and a recurring attempt by the Curry County Commission to enact a blight ordinance that drew me out to Clovis to look at junk.
Truth be told, Clovis and its outskirts are populated by plenty of attractive homes and farms that are neat as a pin. The junk is definitely junky, but I've seen as bad and worse elsewhere in my travels.
When I gingerly suggest this to Riley, she bristles. "Do we want to be as bad as everybody else?" she asks. "Don't we want to set a better example?"
Riley sits on the Keep Clovis Beautiful board. Delk has applied pressure to the County Commission to enact a nuisance or blight ordinance.
Delk is a Clovis native, and Riley is from Portales. They're not clueless outsiders who think Clovis should look like Shaker Heights, Ohio. But they have come up against one of the core principles of the West, which is "you mind your business and I'll mind mine."
And that credo runs strongest in the country. The issue of county beautification has been the subject of County Commission committee meetings, public hearings and revisions for two years now. The commission, bowing to the realities of public sentiment, has eliminated all language having to do with "beautification" from its proposed ordinance and is concentrating now on "health and safety."
"Nobody likes change, and nobody likes new laws," says Lance Pyle, the Curry County manager. "That's the sum of it. They don't want to be told what to do."
Riley says that's not her intent. "We're not telling them how to live their lives or manage their property," she tells me. "We're trying to get everyone to grow up and be responsible."
As we've toured the city and county looking at some colossal collections of junk, I've wondered how it must feel to be on the other side of the fence, to have your home held up as an example of blight.
So after Riley, Delk and I say our goodbyes, I drive south of town and turn into the muddy driveway of Jerry and James Priest, who are among those who have been outed in the newspaper. They operate an auction business and collect a lot of stuff on their 75 acres. There are trucks and trailers, big piles of broken concrete and prodigious collections of metal things I could not begin to identify.
Jerry, 71, is sitting inside, watching a gospel choir on the Inspiration Network with her Boston terrier on her lap.
She smiles sweetly, locks her eyes to mine and says, "We feel that what is on our property no one else should be concerned about. We feel like it's nobody's business but ours. We feel the people in town need to butt out."
UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. You can reach Leslie at 823-3914 or llinthicum@abqjournal.com.
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