Kathleen chats with Jim Rosenthal in his Las Cruces, New Mexico home Saturday. Jim was Stan's editor of the Chaska Herald five years ago. His wife designed a terrific house in a wonderful Southwest motif. We got the Home and Garden tour and a nice lunch. Hoover initiated their cat and the back yard. (Abby had never seen a dog and the backyard has never known, until now, what a dog does after traveling for a long time.)
The Las Cruces stop was a Godsend after Oklahoma and Texas. Stan got bawled out in an Oklahoma rest stop by a maintenance man who may have been Timothy McVeigh's cousin. Stan was told that he should have dumped the remains of his coffee on the ground before tossing it into the barrel because doing so makes the garbage bag lighter for the state employee to lift.
You can't make this stuff up, folks. I would have gotten his picture by his trash can, but I was laughing too hard.
Later, we learned the best thing about West Texas: sometimes they let you drive through it at 75 miles an hour.
