A day in Deming

It’s Deming Day for us…

We were going to walk downtown today, but after researching how far it was and noticing how hard the wind was blowing, we drove the car there instead.  The downtown area took us about 15 minutes to explore.  We don’t know whether the downtown took a hit when Wal-mart moved in or whether the economy the last few years has reduced the number of merchants, but there wasn’t much there…

So, we headed over to the “Deming Luna Mimbres Museum and Custom House” instead.  The name apparently was derived from the town (Deming), county (Luna) and river (Mimbres).  We never made it across the street to the Custom House, but the museum was wonderful!  It probably has the most varied exhibits of any museum we’ve ever been to: furniture & dishes, dolls & toys, area family historical photographs, quilts & laces, bells, whiskey bottles, ranching & old store items, military & music, gems & minerals, art gallery, old clothing, nutcrackers, fire engines, tools, and a Hispanic section.  And, we’re not talking about just a few items of each: the whiskey bottle collection probably numbered over 1,000; the dolls at least that many including some from the mid-1800s and one with clothing from the Civil War; too many geodes to count – I could go on and on…  There were even Roman coins from 364 B.C. to 395 A.D. and an Alexander the Great silver coin from 364 B.C.  Amazing!

But, the best part (for me, anyway) was the collection of Mimbres pottery.  The Mimbres Indians lived along this river about 1,000 years ago and were very gifted potters.  They created very geometric patterns of black & white, plus some with reddish browns, using brushes made from Yucca cactus leaf fibers chewed to a fine point.  The ones of animals were very stylized – similar to petro glyphs found in this area.  Many of the pots were buried with people and so were preserved.  Most of the buried pots had a hole punched in the bottom – it is believed by some that this was to let the spirit escape.

Sorry, no pictures today – not even of flowers!

We had a mid-afternoon meal of spaghetti and then followed up with DQ ice cream sundaes around 6.  Yum, yum!!!

We’re getting ready to move up to the Truth or Consequences area tomorrow for a couple of days.  New turf to explore!