snappy gas closed up lordsburg new mexico

He sometimes rereads a letter he got from the city, saying they’ll revisit the topic of whether to keep the museum closed in October. He fills his time reading and thinking about the museum.

“Who knows what the future holds,” he said. Link’s last day was two weeks ago and, although he tries to stretch his disability aid as far as he can, he said he has dropped by the food bank a few times. Outside the single-level museum, which was converted from a National Guard office in the early 1990s, sits a small tank and a rusted, 20-foot-tall windmill donated by a rancher who lived 25 miles from town. “These were people searching for answers,” he said.

In more recent years, Link said, Japanese American tourists were among the most frequent visitors to the museum. government housed prisoners of war from Italy and Germany here in Lordsburg. It is home to the first airport in New Mexico, a dirt strip southeast of town, where Charles Lindbergh landed in 1927 on his transcontinental air tour.įor a year during World War II, it was the site of a Japanese incarceration camp. whose histories are unknown to most who drive past. Lordsburg is one of many dusty towns across the Southwestern U.S. “The museum allowed me to be an ambassador of sorts to people passing through town,” he said. In the early days of the pandemic, the town had to dip into its general fund, which hovers around $1 million, to pay for personal protective equipment for its 36 employees and to cover sick time for a few employees, who contracted the virus. The lodgers’ tax revenue brought in between March and July of this year declined 33% from what the city had received during the same time period last year, and money from gas taxes brought in between March and June of this year declined 32% compared to the same period last year. The city relies heavily on income from gas and lodgers’ taxes, both of which have plummeted during the pandemic. And these days, even those passersby have dwindled. If visitors are in town, it is usually only for as long as it takes to fill up their gas tank, grab something from McDonald’s or catch a few hours of sleep before barreling on. It’s mostly a passing-through place, where the expanse is so vast that neither storm nor soul could sneak in unnoticed. The only other constant noise is the sound of wind gusting so fast that it whirls into dust devils, bending the towering yuccas that dot the high-desert terrain. Go anywhere in Lordsburg, a town of 2,400, and you can hear the roar of semi-trucks shuttling along Interstate 10 between Tucson and El Paso. It is the same across the nation from borough to hamlet to city, the virus’ toll has exacted the kind of pain that has torn through families, upended budgets, forced evictions and left people like Link to contemplate unexpected misfortune. Similar budget deficits in Arizona and Texas have led to concerns about important education and healthcare programs losing funding for years to come. In neighboring Colorado, lawmakers facing a $3-billion hole in the budget cut a handful of mental health programs - a move that critics say will amount to only minimal savings, but could significantly impact people who rely on the programs. “An umbrella is not enough protection in a hurricane,” she said. Even those across-the-board cuts will not be enough “to weather the storm,” Lujan Grisham told a congressional panel this month.

Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration has urged state agencies to cut spending by 5% through next year. In New Mexico - where economists have projected a nearly $1-billion budget deficit - Democratic Gov. “In life, I try not to harp on the bad things,” the 61-year-old said on a recent afternoon, while standing outside the A-framed museum, which now has a chain-link fence blocking the driveway. But it was serving as the gatekeeper to the deep and at times uneasy history of this town - home to both a Japanese incarceration camp and a landmark aviation mission - that gave him true purpose. The museum’s only paid employee, Link, a gregarious man with a drawl that immediately gives away his Southern roots, appreciated the paycheck from the $9-an-hour gig. In that moment, Link joined the growing ranks of some 20 million other Americans - many employed by corporations, industries and mom-and-pop shops, but also, like him, in the public sector - who have lost their livelihoods during the punishing economy wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. “You will be laid off effective September 7, 2020,” stated the letter from the mayor of Lordsburg informing Link that his part-time job at the local history museum was over. Dean Link had a hunch about what was to come, but when the mail arrived in August, despair overwhelmed him. Something felt off, even here in this windswept crossroads far from most troubles. The whispers around town started this spring during the early days of the shutdown.

Snappy gas closed up lordsburg new mexico