I grew up in Farmington and lived in Las Cruces and Albuquerque. Spent some time in Ruidoso as well, as my uncle is a pipefitter and helped redo the Inn.
It's still hard to explain to people what living in a place like Roswell or Farmington is like. Both places swing up and down according to oil prices. both are big enough to have just barely what you might want or need, but not much more. More importantly, they are their own big cities. And that's the thing that people don't get: When the nearest (modest) cultural mass is at least three hours away, you don't live anywhere near an interstate, and every other town is an order of magnitude smaller, everybody tends to stay put and things get insular (not necessarily in a bad way though) and weird.
I've gotten in arguments about this before from people who claimed they grew up in smaller towns, but the key difference is those small towns aren't their own isolated islands. I liked growing up there as a kid, but I'd take a small town of 2000 people an hour away from a major city over the Ruidosos and Farmingtons in a heartbeat.
On the other hand, the desert was literally our playground as a kid, and that's an amazing thing to grow up with.
BTW: Lots of great astronomy still happens around Cloudcroft if you ever get up there.
Great summation. Especially the island part. That is exactly what it's like. Living on an island. The surrounding desert is the ocean. Three hours to get anywhere (and it's not much of anywhere when you get there). 8 hours to a real cultural center like Denver, Dallas or Phoenix.
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I grew up in Farmington and lived in Las Cruces and Albuquerque. Spent some time in Ruidoso as well, as my uncle is a pipefitter and helped redo the Inn.
It's still hard to explain to people what living in a place like Roswell or Farmington is like. Both places swing up and down according to oil prices. both are big enough to have just barely what you might want or need, but not much more. More importantly, they are their own big cities. And that's the thing that people don't get: When the nearest (modest) cultural mass is at least three hours away, you don't live anywhere near an interstate, and every other town is an order of magnitude smaller, everybody tends to stay put and things get insular (not necessarily in a bad way though) and weird.
I've gotten in arguments about this before from people who claimed they grew up in smaller towns, but the key difference is those small towns aren't their own isolated islands. I liked growing up there as a kid, but I'd take a small town of 2000 people an hour away from a major city over the Ruidosos and Farmingtons in a heartbeat.
On the other hand, the desert was literally our playground as a kid, and that's an amazing thing to grow up with.
BTW: Lots of great astronomy still happens around Cloudcroft if you ever get up there.
Great summation. Especially the island part. That is exactly what it's like. Living on an island. The surrounding desert is the ocean. Three hours to get anywhere (and it's not much of anywhere when you get there). 8 hours to a real cultural center like Denver, Dallas or Phoenix.