“Ah git ten fer ‘em if you want one” cowboy poet Curly told us as we listened to his poem about an outhouse. We were pulled over with a dozen or so other cars on a road through eastern New Mexico.

We’d finished a shoot of White Sands Monument and were headed north on 54 from Alamogordo (strange place – more on that in another post) where we’d spent the night. We turned off on 380 and headed west to Socorro and beyond to The Very Large Array.

Apparently, around there, the military likes to do missile testing. Since they don’t want any missiles hitting drivers on the road, the state police pull them over until the missile testing is over. About an hour or so.

It was there, pulled over with a dozen other cars we met Curly. Near seventy, chain smoking, drinking a beer, he pulled up and stopped next to us in his truck. Our windows were down and when we told him we didn’t mind his playing a country CD recorded in the back of a truck he turned the volume up. Soon he popped in his own CD of outhouse poetry. Not our style but lots of fun and he did “git ten fer it”. Sweet guy. Good salesman. And a few hours later down the road, we got some decent New Mexico stock footage. Gotta love the road.