Commentary:
This one’s for Ray Bernal and ‘cause it’s August.
I met Ray playing basketball at Meerscheidt, fifty years ago. He was a native Las Crucen and city official. I was a reporter. We became friends and stayed that way. He died recently.
When I returned to live here, Ray thought I should be writing a Sunday column. He introduced me to Jim Lawitz, then the Sun-News editor, who asked for a couple of writing samples and hired me. (I say “hired,” but the money was trivial, and was never the point.” My first column was dated 21 August 2011.
It’s been a hell of a ride! I figured to write folksy old-man columns, maybe goofy human-interest stuff. But old friends and enemies, recalling me as the young firebrand publishing what I thought was right, plus new friends presenting me with injustices and problems, torpedoed that idea.
Some columns have been controversial. Some even led friends to worry about our safety. Two successive county sheriffs got so enamored of the wrong people that they made deputies’ lives miserable. People bravely told me their stories, and we shined enough light into dark corners to help facilitate change.
It’s incredibly rewarding to hear a powerless person who’s been abused, or sees a wrong being done by our political representatives, investigate, listening to all sides, and write the fairest, truest column I can on something the public should know.
Meanwhile, I’ve tried to advocate on issues, but more to articulate a feeling: that men, including me, are too damned self-absorbed; that nature, poor folks, underlings, and ethnic minorities get unfairly short shrift; that discussing stuff collegially – speaking frankly but listening closely – often actually works. Also that none of us – surely not I! – knows the whole truth. And that, even in tough times, we’re all just folks, with more in common than we realize.
Particularly during the first several years, some folks showered me with the vilest possible insults. Others liked the column. Strangers sometimes called me up or approached me in public to agree or disagree, or to thank me for putting into words stuff they were thinking. Sometimes what they said, or their tone, moves me deeply. If not for those heartfelt thanks, I’d have given up the column long ago.
A gentleman in the Farmers Market said he owed me a big debt of gratitude. How come? “Well, when my son was younger, he was turning really rightist. He lived with his mother’s family, who are more conservative. When we’d hear you on the radio, he’d say, ‘That guy is completely full of ____!’ He took your name in vain a lot. But then he’d research what you were talking about, and say later, ‘You know, that guy was actually right.’”
I ran into a man at a City Council meeting. He asked if I recognized him. I didn’t. He was a man who’d been wrongly accused, years earlier, of a particularly vile crime. After investigating, I’d concluded the charge was bogus, and wrote why. The police soon reached the same conclusion. Whole incident was tragic. No one ever fully recovers from such a situation. It gave me joy to find him working again, doing good again, and still with his loyal family.
So, thanks, Ray. Thanks for the platform, Sun-News. Thanks to friends and strangers who’ve read these columns and reflected on them. Thanks, Las Cruces!
I love this place.
Peter Goodman's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of KRWG Public Media or NMSU.