Guest Blogger Mike Smith on My Strange New Mexico

This post was submitted by guest blogger Mike Smith:
My name is Mike Smith, and I write a weekly column of strange New Mexico history and lore, “My Strange New Mexico.” For now, the column appears every Thursday in the New Mexico Daily Lobo, though I do have aspirations for it to someday soon be read by a wider audience. 

I also post all of my columns on a website, www.mystrangenewmexico.com, along with photos and relevant links. 

I’ve been writing the column so far for just over three months and, despite its constant demand for research and time and late-night writing, it has been incredibly rewarding for me. At last, I’ve been able to give my attention to subjects that I’ve been interested in for years but have never had the time or the motivation to check out. I’ve been able to research and write about everything from stories of a dead Santa Rosa SCUBA diver turning up in Lake Michigan, to New Mexico’s role in the development of the space elevator, to New Mexico’s first serial killer—and his alleged killer—and how his killer was killed.

It’s also been a great way for me to find out strange New Mexico stories that I never would have heard before. Because of the strange subject matters of my column, people have come to me with all sorts of bizarre stuff—escaped monkeys living in a cave near Tijeras, Pterodactyl sightings in the Antelope Wells area, strange cases of the bubonic plague, and a cult of marathon runners near Datil, just to name a few of the subjects I haven’t even gotten to yet.

It’s made me love New Mexico even more than I already did, because it’s made it seem like a place where anything is possible.

People have asked me how I come up with a new subject every week, but the state we live in really makes it pretty simple. I have a list of about seventy or so topics that I still haven’t written about, and the list grows almost every day. If any of you reading this have any additional suggestions, e-mail me at antarcticsuburbs@yahoo.com, include a mailing address, and I’ll send you a free “My Strange New Mexico” cabbit button. (Cabbits are legendary half-cat/half-rabbit hybrids said to have been bred by the government near Dulce—see my website for more details.)

I eventually want the column’s subjects to have covered every New Mexico county, the top five or so New Mexico cities, and every 25-year-period since the state’s European history began, with several pieces about before then as well. 

I’ve always been interested in the strange, and I blame it mostly on my family. My older brother Rob had a superhero alter-ego well into his teens, and would often walk across the bottom of our swimming pool in a homemade plastic diving bell. My older brother David, before he was even ten years old, frequently stole my dad’s car.  And my younger brother Jeff had a longtime hobby of badgering Wal-Mart employees and customers while pretending he was mentally handicapped, a hobby that fit well with his other favorite pastime—getting physically removed from Wal-Marts.

Moving to New Mexico as a kid only increased my exposure to strangeness, and I liked that. I’ve walked across America before on a year-long charity hike, I’ve traveled the world, and I don’t think I’ve ever found such an intense concentration of strangeness as I’ve found in New Mexico. Maybe that’s just because I’ve spent more time here, or because I’m more in tune with it, but I like to think that the state—whether because of the landscape or the atomic program or attention from the Roswell Incident—is just a little bit odder than everywhere else.

And if that ever changes…I’m moving.

Check out "Towns of the Sandia Mountains," by Mike Smith, now available from Arcadia Publishing. Or read about New Mexico's strangest history and lore at https://www.mystrangenewmexico.com/.

Editor's Note: This is a guest blog by Mike Smith of Albuquerque. If you'd like to submit a post for consideration as a guest blog, please contact me by clicking on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand corner of our main page.