Bookstore & Giftshop
Ruby Dallas
$20
Jim Harris, LCM Director
Copyright LCM 2019
“Jim Harris has written a telling piece of literature that encompasses the 50s and 60s, sometimes before those dates and sometimes after, in a low key/high interest method I’ve not encountered before….The story is not linear through the years. It zig zags. One time, he is a child remembering; at another he is a teen and at another he is grown. He is a reader beginning with the reference to Poe. By the end he is a college man familiar with Dos Passos….One character asks of the times ‘What is happening to us?’. The same words are being spoken today, now, another time, another generation. Many of us can share the feeling: ‘Here I am in a place I shouldn’t be.’ “
--Texas Literary Critic, Joyce Roach
“Perfect!…I applauded when I finished reading it the first time….The title has encapsulated the coming-of-age years for the protagonist affected by the political culture hidden while inculcating its dark power on the young man…. I recognize the culture of Texas and how it promotes the light and dark sides, with the dark side growing stronger politically.”
--Texas Writer and Folklorist, Sylvia Mahoney
In the Rear View of an MG Triumph
Ruby Dallas is a coming of age novel. As the title suggests it is set mostly in Dallas, Texas and the surrounding area. Shortly after it begins there is a narrative account of Steve, the protagonist’s chance meeting with Jack Ruby, around closing time, with Ruby the sole patron in the small restaurant where Steve cooks a ribeye steak to Ruby’s liking. Ruby gives Steve some passes to a club Ruby owns. And the adventure begins.
Ruby Dallas is Steve’s quest to understand himself and the city, the world he inhabits. Coinciding with Steve’s psychological, emotional journey, there is a literal, geographical journey Steve takes alone and with others, with friends who go with him to Ruby’s strip club, where things go wrong.
On his journey, Steve goes to Arkansas, Oklahoma, Hollywood, and Nacogdoches, Texas, where his journey ends. The novel ends about a month after the Kennedy assassination, and Ruby’s shooting Oswald. Steve is about to depart from Nacogdoches, where he’s been attending college.
The novel travels in time as well, going from the early 1960’s into a foray of Steve’s childhood, and Steve’s quest to understand his place in his Baptist minister father’s world, the world of his father’s friends and his mother and his younger brother and sister. On this journey, there’s a poignant account of Steve’s father meeting his own father, whom he had not known till he was a grown man, a meeting also of Steve’s grandfather’s second family.
Drag racers, farmers, cowboys, journalists, photographers, struggling actors, and college professors are a few of the people Steve encounters and sometimes befriends on his journey.
It’s a novel of fate, destiny, and self- will, a novel of integrity. Jack Ruby’s tragedy is the tragedy of Dallas. There’s tragedy in Steve’s life as well, but also the joy of striving, and living life on his terms, all the while mindful of those who came before him, and who share his world.
A brief encounter with a desk clerk in a cheap hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas is one of my favorite scenes because it’s so true to life, as is a scene, earlier in Steve’s life, where he’s at a lake in Oklahoma, noticing the physical beauty of his friend’s mother. There are many memorable scenes, some violent, others raucous, solemn, tender, that invite us into Steve’s world of Dallas and points beyond.
-Peter Maldinic
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Falling Awake in Lovington
$20.00
Charles Bohlen and Peter Mladinic
2019
Contemporary poems by two Lea County writers.
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From the Bull Barn to the Bucking Broncs
$10.00
By Jim Harris and David L. Minton
Copyright © 2010 Lea County Museum Press
With antidotes, newspaper articles, association minutes, advertisements and photographs Harris and Minton provide a timeline in Lea County, New Mexico; from the late 1800’s when buffalo hunters settled at Monument Spring and the first ranches were established, through the first rodeos held at local ranches to the establishment of the Lea County Fair and Rodeo and the Open Range Cowboy Association in the 1900’s, and into the new 21st century sharing the stories of the men and women who have contributed to the rich ranching history of southeast New Mexico.
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Love, Death, and the Plains
$15.00
Edited by Peter Mladinic and Joe Byers
Copyright © 2007 Lea County Museum Press
"This book is intended as a tribute and is gratefully dedicated to the authors of the following articles and stories. These are the men and women who took the time to write down their experiences and the experiences of their families and neighbors. It is through them that we know our past. A past unrecorded is soon erased by time. Thanks to these writers, significant fragments of our history have been recorded and are preserved. Through their writings, we can, in our comfortable and ordered lives, vicariously ride the unfenced open range, stake a homestead claim, hear children's voices in a tiny one-room schoolhouse or empathize in the loneliness of an isolated rancher's wife. The writers permit us to feel the pulse of a time when this land was just being settled and thus to know better the place we live today." - The Editors
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Lost in Lea
$15.00
Peter Mladinic
Copyright © 2008 Lea County Museum Press
"These poems of Peter Mladinic lay their fingers on the pulse of Lea County, past and present. Whether he is pondering the gravestones of past inhabitants or wondering about present friends and neighbors, Mladinic is in tune with and an integral part of the history that surrounds him. As a poet who recognizes himself a vital part of where he is, his poems 'light a match in the dark/and spot on the map of grief the spot/where two rivers converge." - Glen Sorestad
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The Light Side of Little Texas
$15.00
Uyless Black
Copyright © 2011 Uyless Black Lea County Museum Press
I once heard a Lea native joke, “Lea County is more like Texas than Texas is like Texas.” Many people refer to Lea County as “Little Texas.” – U.D. Black
The rural country of southeastern New Mexico serves as the backdrop for a young boy’s adventures on his father’s ranch and in his small community. Later years recount his teenage experiences. The book’s concluding chapters tell of his returning to this childhood home as an adult; about how things have changed but have also remained the same.
“Black’s ‘Confessions of a Southern Baptist’ was hilarious. I practically spilt hot chocolate all over my office when I read the story.” – Pat, Carlsbad, NM
“I laughed ‘til the tears ran, read it again the next day, and laughed again.” – From email reader
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Lea County Pioneer Profiles
$15.00
David Minton
Copyright ©2010 Lea County Museum Press
“David Minton has done yeoman’s work in collecting the family histories and individual stories of Lea County [New Mexico] residents. Often these are narratives of men and women whose names would not be found in history books, but they are individuals who had some impact on the history and development of Lea County.” – Peter Mladinic, Director, Lea County Museum Press
“What the members of a group remember of someone’s life, often called the family saga, is an important part of the history and folklore of a region. It’s unfortunate that the lives of many individuals are not readily found in written records. Those people often slip through the cracks of time and are lost to current residents of a particular place. Minton has done the extensive research and the laborious fieldwork to ensure that many former residents of Lea County will not be forgotten. His stories help fill in the picture that is Lea County history,” – Jim Harris, Lea County Museum Director
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The Grandma Hobbs Affair
$15.00
Joe Byers
Copyright © 2007 Joe Byers Lea County Museum Press
“I was born in Hobbs, New Mexico, when it consisted of only a school, a store and a few widely separated homesteads; so I have a child’s recollection of the periods both before and after the discovery of oil. This narrative is about my grandmother, Frances Mooring Hobbs, and it comes from personal memories and from stories related by my mother, Minnie Hobbs Byers, and by other relatives and friends, most now deceased. The re-creation of dialogue from many decades ago permits no claim of verbatim accuracy, but I have attempted to convey the spirit and meaning of what was actually said.” – Joe Byers
In the year 1929, on the empty prairies of southeast New Mexico, a city appeared almost overnight, as though dropped from space. That bit of earth’s surface had waited in silence and solitude from time’s beginning, and in a heartbeat, it was changed. The land’s perennial peace was assaulted by the cacophony of human enterprise, and its solitude fled before the tumult of human migrations.
Just that abruptly, the boomtown of Hobbs was born, and a witness to its birth was the lady whose family name would christen the city. It was as if Fannie Hobbs had been waiting for this arrival. She loved the newborn from its birth, a love beyond explanation or justification because boomtown Hobbs was not something loveable. A mother’s baby is beautiful to the mother, no matter the evidence, and Hobbs, that ugly, noisy, smelly infestation of clutter and chaos that happened around her once peaceful home was beautiful to Grandma Hobbs. Perhaps as with new mothers, she saw not with her eyes but with her heart. She saw the future.
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Frontier Land, Pioneer Spirit
$7.00
Jim Harris
Copyright © 2005 Jim Harris
This is a collection of essays which appeared in the Lovington Daily Leader column Lea County Museum History Notebook between 2002 and 2004 written by museum director, Jim Harris.
Titles include:
The Music of History
Ciboleros: Llano Pioneers form the West
Longhorns Helped Shape History
Carson/Graham Roots Run Deep in Lea
Haradas Brought a Pioneer Spirit
1882: Buffalo Hunter Causey Enters New Mexico
Grandfather Folsom Man
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Ethnic Lea
$15.00
Editors Peter Mladinic, Tueredia McBride, Amy Perales and Jim Harris
Copyright © 2011 Lea County Museum Press
“Lea’s ethnic groups have had a huge impact on the quality of life in the county, affecting the economy, politics, culture, recreation, and religion in the area often referred to as ‘Little Texas’.
In contributing to our art, the quality of our lives, and ultimately our happiness, all of our citizens have something to offer us for the future and for the present.
By some standards, Lea’s history is not very long. The county is not yet a century old. However, the brevity of our county narrative has been more than adequately made up for with the quality of life that Lea now offers those who live within its boundaries.
The change in this land has been rapid, and the editors of this book offer the following stories as a celebration of all of our rational changes that make life good.” – Jim Harris
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Crude Oil Stories, This AIN’T No Bull!
$15.00
By Armondo “Mondo” Arenivas
Copyright © 2009 by Armondo & Sylvia Arenivas Lea County Museum Press
“Hello, hope your Kelly is high! My name is Mondo Arenivas, and I have been working in the oilfields a lot of years, seen good times and bad. I have been fortunate to stay working: hard work and dedication have made that possible.
You will find many roughnecks that tell exaggerated stories – the more they talk, the deeper the wells (stories) get. In fact, there is not much difference between a fairytale and an oilfield story, except that a fairytale starts “Once Upon A Time” and an oilfield story starts “This Ain’t No Bull”. All you have to do is get a roughneck started on a rumor and everybody adds a little to it; before long it becomes a full-fledged oilfield story.
I will tell some of these stories in the book, roughneck that I am, I may have to add a little to them.” – Mondo
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LCM Store
The Lea County Museum Press has released a reprint of the most important and comprehensive history book on Lea County, a book first published in 1976, “Lea, New Mexico's Last Frontier,” has been reprinted with a new cover and an additional preface to go with the book that is otherwise just like the original work, including many historic photographs, maps, and a complete index.
This is the 12th book published by the LCM which issues works related to the history, folklore, and cultural heritage of the county. Full article here.
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