Of my nearly ninety years of life living in over a dozen places throughout the nation and the world, eleven of those years were in New Mexico. As head of New Mexico State University’s Agricultural Economics Department, I had the opportunity to get across that scenic historic state and work with many colleagues and friends. I remain in contact with some of them. I still have the attractive adobe that I acquired in historic old Mesilla. It is now rented by a tenant who loves that adobe as much as I do. It’s just another reason to make the occasional trip to New Mexico and meet with longtime friends. More on this below.

I had intended all summer to make that journey, first in early June to cross Kansas during its wheat harvest. A couple of incidents prevented that. In July I had a couple accordion gigs that I didn’t want to miss, including performing at a Saturday Farmers Market on the Square. A second gig was exceptionally interesting. It was for an Austrian family reunion over in Darlington for the Taschek family. To my surprise, one of the attendees was the son of Sonny Taschek, a physicist on Robert Oppenheimer’s team that worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico. At the reunion they had on display many pictures of the personnel on that project, including Taschek and Oppenheimer himself. Of particular interest was a photo of a document signed by the top scientists, including Taschek, affirming that Oppenheimer was indeed not a Communist as some critics had alleged.

You never know where the accordion will bring you. But I digress.

In August, I finally have a window where I can make that brief trip to New Mexico. I don’t like crowded airports and am not fond of flying. I prefer tossing some gear into my GMC pickup and heading west.

Thanks to recent much-needed rains, crops across southwest Wisconsin look good. I cross the Mississippi at Dubuque and head southwest on US 151. West of the town of Anamosa it’s Iowa Route 1 south, through the small town of Mt. Vernon, home of Cornell College, and on to Interstate 80. From there it’s past Iowa City, home of the Iowa Hawkeyes, and about 90 miles to Des Moines. From there, it’s I-35 south to Kansas City, and west into Kansas for another 100 miles to Emporia where I spend the night.

I have a light breakfast at Braums. It’s basically an ice-cream chain in that area, but they have a lot of other good stuff too. I can’t resist their sundaes and banana splits, but it’s too early for that. I’ll make sure I time my route so I can enjoy some of that on the way back.

I depart from I-35 and take highway 50 west, and angle southwest to route 150 and US 56 at the eastern edge of the Scenic Flint Hills. Those grassy hills dotted with water ponds and grazing cattle are a pleasant, peaceful sight. I can’t imagine that those herds of cattle peacefully grazing on that lush grass can possibly realize how good they have it compared to the thousands of cattle packed into those giant feedlots that exist elsewhere — no grass, doped up with antibiotics, limited freedom to wander compared to the cattle on those scenic Flint Hills enjoying that lush grass and fresh water.

Across the Flint Hills, the terrain is flat again, less colorful now that the wheat harvest is over. But the other crops are looking good. Like many other parts of the nation, Kansas is having weather that is even hotter than a normal Kansas summer. The temperature is 100 to 105 with strong winds out of the south. I reach McPherson, a neat looking Midwestern small city that once had a coffee shop with excellent pastries and a huge reading room where people could visit and relax. Much to my disappointment, that place no longer exists, probably another casualty of the pandemic.

I continue along the flat terrain to Great Bend, and on to Larned. Many people find traveling across the Great Plains to be boring; “There’s nothing to see,” they say. What they miss is that it’s not what you see or don’t see. It’s about what you experience — the openness, the broad skies, and the subtle changes from the plains to the high plains.

Past Larned there is a detour that takes me near Jetmore that was hometown of one of the Marines that was in the same unit as I through Boot Camp, Infantry training, and Radio School that combined for the greater part of my first year in the Corps. On a previous trip some years ago I went through Jetmore just to see if by some very slim chance he might be there, or maybe a relative by the name of “Koontz” might know, or have known him. But with no success — I really didn’t expect it.

Once through the detour to Kinsley, its west to Dodge City, the temperature continuing around 105. Then it’s southwest through a string of similarly looking small towns, Ensign, Montezuma, Copeland, Sublette, Satanta, and Moscow.

After Moscow, it’s Hugoton. I stop at the very same taco truck I have visited several times. The marinated pork taco served there can’t be beat. Then its west to Elkhart in the southwest corner of Kansas, and into the Panhandle of Oklahoma to Boise City. After a couple miles from there it’s US 385 south across to Texas and the Rita Blanca National Grassland to Dalhart. From Dalhart it’s only a few more miles diagonally across the corner of the Panhandle to New Mexico and another 52 miles to Tucumcari where I spend the night.

My once favorite place for breakfast, the Pow Wow Inn and their huevos rancheros, no longer exists. I take I-40 to Santa Rosa, then US 54 south through Carrizozo, where two more of my once favorite places no longer exist. The Inn that once served great chile cheeseburgers has long been gone, as has Roy’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor. Roy died and it was likely hard for any successor able to sell enough ice cream sodas and sundaes to keep the lights on.

A couple of hours later, I would be at my destination in Las Cruces where I’ll meet with friend and house manager Jacque, my tenant and friend Steve, and friends and former colleagues Willie, Jim and Kathy.

Shortly after I arrived at NMSU as Ag Econ Department head in 1990, the Dean of Agriculture asked if I would like to work with a committee that included members of the Economics Department and the Business College on a project regarding taxation in New Mexico. I jumped at the chance; that’s how I met Jim and Kathy and we became friends from then on.

There was another member of that committee, one Karen Becklin, who I lost track of. Her former husband, Bill Becklin, had been a member of the Economics Department, but had since left NMSU. I never met him, and had no reason to believe I ever would.

Fast forward to 2006, I had retired to Monroe. One evening I was running an errand in New Glarus. While there, I decided to have dinner at the New Glarus Hotel. I was sitting in a booth facing the entrance and some guy I had never met walked in, looked my direction and said, “Hey, are you John Waelti?” As I replied affirmatively, he said, “I’m Bill Becklin.”

I was astounded — the former husband of the Karen Becklin that was on that NMSU Committee back in 1991. Though we had never met, he recognized me from the picture that accompanies my column in the Monroe Times. The only thing we had in common was ties to NMSU 1,400 miles away, many years ago and at different times. Both he and I could have been anywhere else at this instant in this wide world, but our paths crossed briefly at that one very instant at the New Glarus Hotel.

We all have some small world stories, and this is but one of several that I have related to New Mexico. And on this trip I’ll meet with the other members of that long ago committee that brought us together.

— John Waelti’s column appears monthly in the Times. He can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.