In New Mexico: A Local Voice

By Gregory Jaynes

This was some time back, Betty Jane Curry was explaining, "back in the hippie days." A long-haired transient blew through town--the little town of Cuba in the mountains of northwestern New Mexico--and made the fatal mistake of sexually assaulting one of Cuba's young women. Betty Jane and her colleagues on the local paper, the Cuba News thought this worthy of note, especially after a knot of vengeful Cubans had their way with the vagrant. Trouble followed publication. As Betty Jane put it: "The local fellows didn't like it at all that we printed their names."

It was one of the few times in the 22 years and six months since the first issue of the News was birthed that it found itself at the center of controversy. "They gave Marrietta a hard time over that one," Betty Jane said. Betty Jane is the monthly publication's typist.

"I guess from the very beginning we decided we didn't want to get in any trouble," said Editor Marrietta Standridge. "In a town this size you can't afford to lose half your business," said Peggy Ohler, who is the paper's artist and Betty Jane's daughter.

"So that's always been our policy," said Marrietta.

"But there was the time some guys broke into the forest service office, and we printed their names, and everybody got incensed," Betty Jane said.

"Right," said Marrietta.

"Then some guy jumped off a bridge, and his parents were outraged that we printed it. He was strange when he jumped off, and he didn't get any better."

"We like to be definite in what we think," said Harriet Hernandez, assistant editor, "but we don't always print it."

"We can sit in here and mutter about it though," said Peggy, whose five-month-old, Jason, rode his mother's hip as easy as any other good Western lad ever sat a pinto. Jason is the only male connected with the paper, which draws its management and work pool from the 24-member Penistaja Homemaker's Extension Club. It was called the Penistaja Woman's Club when the first issue came out on April 6, 1964, with a front-page dedication to "faith in God and country, hope for our future and charity to all," an admirable aim that has appeared in each succeeding issue. Somewhere along the line, "Woman's" inexplicably got changed to "Homemaker's." No one seems to remember why the switch, but, in any event, small potatoes; the newspaper has always been very much a homemade affair. It has been known to get put together on various kitchen tables.

Cuba is one of those low-slung New Mexican adobe towns, a wide spot in the road, really, up on the Colorado Plateau, insight of the Jemez and the Nacimiento ranges of the Rockies. This time of year the country is golden with rabbit weed and chamiza (when the Spaniards first crossed these parts, they called it tierra amarilla, or yellow land), and the deep blue sky above it has no ceiling. In the first issue of the Cuba News--"the first edition of the first newspaper ever printed in this area"--an editorial declared that "we believe by letting the outside world know what is in 'them thar hills' that interest in this corner of God's Country will be born." Today the paper goes to 650 subscribers, including, according to Homemaking Editor Marie Stohr, "a woman that lives in Canada someplace, the sister of the lady that works at the cafe."

Autumn generally visits Cuba early, and Harriet had lighted a fire against the chill by the time the women arrived at her place to nail down September's issue. From 1915 until it closed four years ago, Harriet's place was called Young's Hotel. Built by her father John Young, it is hand-hewn pine and stucco, rough planks, notched banisters, Navajo blankets and deer heads on the walls--a set for any movie that goes by the name of Stagecoach. It had 16 rooms to let upstairs above the dusty front desk, rooms you let yourself into. "Our guests just went in the rooms and paid the next day," Harriet said. "Well, those days of leaving your door unlocked are gone." And so are the days of the hotel. Now it serves as a Trailways Bus stop (not a station; Harriet does not want the bother). A GO BIG RED sign out front announces the 7:15 a.m. to Albuquerque, the 8 a.m. to Farmington, the 8 p.m. to Albuquerque and the 11:55 p.m. to Farmington, with connections to Salt Lake City.

On the third Tuesday night of each month, the Cuba News pages are put on the 11:55 bus and transported to Cortez, Colo., where the printer picks them up. Harriet will not stay up to meet the 11:55 bus anymore, so the women take the pages to a clerk at a local convenience store who gives them to the bus driver.

"Harriet was the second editor of the News," Marrietta, the present editor, said proudly as they settled into Young's Hotel to get the latest paper out.

"Now I don't even speak to them," Harriet said. She looked tickled with this biteless bark.

"Now, now," said Marrietta. "She helps in many ways."

Harriet: "Oh, I have a box here, and when people bring news in, I put it in the box."

The big news on this day, however, did not come from the box. A light plane that left Cuba for Taos a week before had disappeared. Also, Cuba had just voted, 84 to 68, to approve Sunday liquor sales. "Somebody was saying that you used to be able to buy enough on Saturday to carry you through," said Betty Jane, "and he doesn't see why they still can't do it that way." She added, "But the most exciting thing in the paper will be that if you won a blue ribbon at the county fair, your name will be in it."

Marie came in and announced that she had baked a German apple-pie cake this morning, and it tasted good enough to publish the recipe. She remembered that her first recipe, in 1964, was a guide to making your own bath salts. Since then, she fretted, she has used up all the recipes she can create as well as plagiarize. Nonetheless, she said, "I would hate to give this newspaper up. I had a birthday Saturday. I was 79. I've had two open-heart surgeries. I'm not about to stop doing anything I like to do."

On that last statement, so say all the other newspaper hands, all of them unpaid. It costs about $300 a month to publish the Cuba News. Any moneys above that go into the community, band uniforms for the high school and whatnot. With the exception of a rough period about three years ago, Cuba's merchants, whose immediate market numbers but a scant 1,500 citizens, have kept the News in the black with their advertising (full page, $50; half, $25; quarter, $12.50; want ad, $2). And even during that lean spot, when word got around that the paper might go under, advertisers who could ill afford it simply dug deeper and set things right.

Just as they should have. Remote, satellite dish-dotted America deserves its local news. Save for the gender of its staff (and undue attention to that nowadays is ground for flogging), not much distinguishes the Cuba paper from countless little presses in the land. It does its job. Its audience is grateful. People everywhere, with the possible exception of felons, like to be recognized: "Brett and Tammie Schultz Kelly are the proud parents of a baby daughter, and her name is Amber Marie. Congratulations!" Month after month it tells who visited whom, who was hospitalized, who died, who was born, who won the blue ribbons, the football game or election to the honor society.

The paper is not without philosophy: "Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all"; reminiscences: "In the old days when things got rough, what we did was without"; or advice: "Did you know that parsley, mint or orange peeling when chewed after eating raw garlic helps eliminate the odor? This is offered to those who eat raw garlic for its medicinal value." Nor does it shirk its responsibility to give the local government decisions, dates of meetings, subjects to be discussed--all the prosaic duties of journalism that are intended to make for an informed public.

More than anything, though, the Cuba News is a companion, unvarnished as a buckboard but just as sweet as certain aunts. It is also, however forgivably, a hair short on controversy. --By Gregory Jaynes