When we first started the planning of our trip, we frequently looked at maps of the area to see what things, areas, and towns we wanted to see. In retrospect we accomplished about everything we set out to do. Desert sunset, check. White Sands, check. Ruidoso, check. Cloudcroft, check. Green Chile Cheese Burger, check *drools some more*. All were more than we had hoped for in terms of things to do, see and experience. Except one – Alamogordo.
Alamogordo is such a nice sounding name. Wiki tell us that “The city of Alamogordo was founded in June 1898, when the El Paso and Northeastern Railroad, headed by Charles Bishop Eddy, extended the railway to the town. Eddy influenced the design of the community, which included large wide thoroughfares and tree-lined irrigation canals. Charles Eddy's brother John Arthur Eddy named the new city Alamogordo ("large cottonwood" in Spanish) after a grove of fat cottonwoods he remembered from the Pecos River area.”
Sweet and almost romantic. That is until you get there. Look I’m used to seeing depressed areas but this one just slaps you up-side the head. Most disturbing is the fact that they plopped this silly strip mall model right smack in the middle of the desert scenery. On the main road thru town, you come across “Fast Food Freakin’ City,” a stretch of about a mile with EVERY conceivable fast food place on the planet. Like McDonalds, they got three. Like Sonic, you can go to two. Looking for fried chicken, at least 4 different options. Want pizza? Here you go times at least 5. It is like Colonel Harland Sanders died and went to fast food heaven. But for me, it was depressing (except for Sonic, which I will address in a later post.).
This could have been a good visit. This town could have been a contender. But it comes up way short. It has so much going for it but just ends up lacking. NASA has a big connection to it. White Sands and Holloman AFB are close by. The big hot air balloon festival flies over the city. Alamogordo is small (35,000 people) but is known for TWO iconic examples of American culture at work – it briefly made international news in late 2001 when Christ Community Church held a public book burning of books in the Harry Potter series, as well as novels by J. R. R. Tolkien and Stephen King, Star Wars material, and the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. The Bard, THE BARD? You got to be kidding me.
The other important cultural happening is best described again by Wikipedia – “In September 1983, the Alamogordo Daily News of Alamogordo, New Mexico reported in a series of articles, that between ten and twenty semi-trailer truckloads of Atari boxes, cartridges, and systems from an Atari storehouse in El Paso were crushed and buried at the landfill within the city. It was Atari's first dealings with the landfill, which was chosen because no scavenging was allowed and its garbage was crushed and buried nightly. Atari's stated reason for the burial was that it was changing from Atari 2600 to Atari 5200 games, but this was later contradicted by a worker who claimed that this was not the case. Atari official Bruce Enten stated that Atari was mostly sending broken and returned cartridges to the Alamogordo dump and that it was "by-and-large inoperable stuff." On September 28, 1983, The New York Times reported on the story of Atari's dumping in New Mexico. An Atari representative confirmed the story for the newspaper, stating that the discarded inventory came from Atari's plant in El Paso, Texas, which was being closed and converted to a recycling facility. The Times article did not suggest any of the specific game titles being destroyed, but subsequent reports have generally linked the story of the dumping to the well-known failure of E.T. Additionally, the headline "City to Atari: 'E.T.' trash go home" in one edition of the Alamogordo News implies that the cartridges were E.T. As a result, it is widely speculated that most of Atari's millions of unsold copies of E.T. ultimately wound up in this landfill, crushed and encased in cement. Starting on September 29, 1983, a layer of concrete was poured on top of the crushed materials, a rare occurrence in waste disposal. An anonymous workman's stated reason for the concrete was: "There are dead animals down there. We wouldn't want any children to get hurt digging in the dump." Eventually, the city began to protest the large amount of dumping Atari was doing; a sentiment summed up by one commissioner with, "We don't want to be an industrial waste dump for El Paso." The local manager ordered the dumping to be ended shortly afterwards. Due to Atari's unpopular dumping, Alamogordo later passed an Emergency Management Act and created the Emergency Management Task Force to limit the future flexibility of the garbage contractor to secure outside business for the landfill for monetary purposes. Alamogordo's then mayor, Henry Pacelli, commented that, "We do not want to see something like this happen again."
One other worthy note to make. They built a bypass road around the center of Alamogordo. This can’t be a good sign, when they divert traffic AROUND the businesses in your city, right? I took that road every one of the 12 trips through this area through except for two times – the first trip to say we saw it and our Sonic adventure. But there is something a bit strange about this situation. A bypass road like this is supposed to get you out of the stop and go of driving thru the fast food wasteland with all the stopping for traffic lights and turns into establishments. That part makes sense but what doesn’t make sense is the fact that they are beginning to develop along the bypass road creating stops for traffic lights and turns into establishments. One night we had lots of traffic because one of the multiplex’s movies had just let out and the damn light kept allowing people to exit the theater parking area, at my expense.
Get real Alamogorians! You blew it on this one. FAIL!
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