"Stammie's here! Stammie's here!", Toots and I always jumped up and down and squealed in delight when we knew that Mary and Stan Caufield were coming to visit. We could hardly wait for them to come in from their car.

The Caufields were best friends of our parents who visited often. Almost as often, we would go to their house. Mary was a nurse at the County Hospital, and sometimes wore her white uniform and cap, having just come from work. She always looked cool and neat and pretty, and was very big on giving us hugs and kisses. "Stammie" was a lawyer, who had started out working for the Southern Pacific railroad with Daddy; that's where they met and became good friends.

Usually, but not always, we would let Mary and Stan sit down before we jumped on Stammie's lap, eager to hear one of his great stories.

"Do you know who I saw this morning?", he might ask.

"Who? Who?", Toots and I would beg simultaneously.

"Well sir, it was The Nastyhorse", would be Stan's frequent response. But one time he added, "and you'll never guess who was with him!" We were really puzzled. So we clamored to know who it was he had seen with the nastyhorse.

But our curiosity was not to be satisfied so quickly. He paused to light a cigarette, taking his time painstakingly, and then, with a mysterious grin and a gleam in his eye, Stan went on.

"It was Reddy Kilowatt", he announced triumphantly, and then went on to tell us that Reddy Kilowatt was wearing a long overcoat and a big black hat.

Reddy Kilowatt, as I recall, was the El Paso Light and Power Company's public relations character, whose function it was to sell more electrical power usage, this being before the importance of energy conservation became evident. He was a stick figure of sorts, looking like a red lightning bolt, with white gloves and a light bulb for a head. Toots and I knew what he looked like on their billboard advertisements and were perfectly willing to believe that Reddy Kilowatt was alive and real!

From that time on, Stan always had some really funny story to tell us about these two characters. Sometimes he would say he ran into them at the movies, sometimes it would be at the Old Town Pump, where they liked to go for mugs of icy cold root beer, and once, he said he met them by the alligator pond in the park by the library. We loved to hear the stories. The Nastyhorse and Reddy Kilowatt were a big part of our lives. We hadn't ever seen them, but "Stammie" knew all about them. My mother said that they were crazy stories and I got the feeling that she didn't like for Stan to tell us so many of them.

I did not get around to asking her where The Nastyhorse came from until I was older, and the explanation was typical of Stan. It seems that one time, Mary and Stan had asked if they could take me with them when they went to spend the weekend at the dairy farm in Mesilla Park, New Mexico, which Mary's parents owned and worked. With some reluctance, I gather, my mother consented to allow me to be away from home for the first time in my young life...I was four or five years old, she said. The farm was a wonderful place to visit, I remember from later years; the big old adobe walled house was always cool in the summer and warm in the winter. In the kitchen was a huge black wood stove where Mama Smith cooked all kinds of delectable food. Papa Smith would take me out to the barn to watch him milk the cows, and I can still recall the warm smell of cows and the taste of fresh milk! Mary's brother Bill and sister Margaret always seemed delighted to have me tagging along after them asking questions..."Uncle" Bill used to let me slide down the side of the haystack and then take me into the house with streaming eyes and a stuffy nose. I was allergic to lots of things, but I sure was a happy kid on the farm.

Anyway, on this particular occasion, the drive home in Stan's green Chevrolet was through a rain storm, and at some point Stan hit a horse that had wandered out onto the road. It was not seriously injured, but of course the impact awakened me from my nap on the back seat, and I was frightened by the darkness of the night, the fact that there was a big horse near the car, and we were stopped. I'm sure that I probably started sobbing and wanting to go home! So Stan comforted me with one of his stories, this time about a "nasty horse" that had got in our way. He didn't want to tell my mother the truth about the incident, and it was months before he did so. So whenever I mentioned The Nastyhorse, he would weave ever more complicated and implausible stories about this mythical creature's adventures. I, of course, quickly forgot about being scared on the trip home, and helped weave the fantasies by demanding more and more tales. I seem to remember that Mary always listened to them with a faint smile on her face.

There are many other memories about Mary and Stan, but one that stands out in my mind is the time that Stan's love of practical jokes backfired on him. He had a zany sense of humor, and was especially fond of making prank telephone calls to people he did not even know and asking ridiculous questions. His favorite victim was the hapless owner of a Chinese laundry in town. Stan loved to call and accuse this man of fooling around with his wife, all in a very convincing Chinese dialect. The poor man would become enraged, and Stan would later regale us with his responses. If anyone ever deserved to have the tables turned on him, it was Stan. And it finally happened, right in our living room!

My father had just hooked up a new radio, a console model, with a vast array of knobs all over the front of it. It had all kinds of fancy capabilities, including a microphone on the end of a long cord that could be plugged into the back of the radio. Mary and Stan were expected for dinner that night, and a plot was being hatched by my father and brother. Toots and I were to told to not say anything about the new radio to Stan, and, in fact, we were too young to even be curious about what Dad and Bill were up to.

The evening went very well. After eating fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy and carrots for dinner, we all gathered in the living room to visit. (We kids were always allowed to be part of the company until bedtime, usually playing quietly in a corner.) Stan and my father had not seen each other in quite a while and quickly became engaged in a lively debate on politics or some such thing. The radio was on in the background, at a low volume.

Presently, my brother Bill quietly slipped into the bedroom, and a few minutes later a voice came over the radio, startling in its urgent tones.

"Calling all cars! Calling all cars! This is the chief of police. Be on the lookout for a man driving a green 1936 Chevrolet sedan. The El Paso National Bank has just been robbed and the suspect is driving a car of this description, license plate number 87634. The man is armed and dangerous, about 35 years old, dark wavy hair and a stocky build. Calling all cars! Calling all cars!"