After I graduated from college in 1986 and was living on my own, I received word that Kird was in Germany. I was told he worked in the kitchen at the Air Force base there. I was given a phone number to call him. I had never called overseas before. I was afraid my phone bill would hit $100.
I managed to get in contact with him. We talked on a couple of different occasions, but it wasn't until about the third call that he told me he actually enlisted in the Air Force. His dad pretty much forced him to do that because he was sick of him living like a bohemian and having to call home every other week asking for money. I guess he was sort of embarassed about having to admit that he was in the Air Force because he said the military was the last place he would turn for work. He didn't care much for how he grew up in a military family and didn't want to be subjected to that for the rest of his life.
A few years later, he was stationed at Alamogordo. (This is one thing that irritated a lot of military members that I knew. They grew up in a podunk town that had a base. They joined the Armed Forces and got stationed in some exotic location for a couple of years. Then, they would be re-assigned back to the podunk town they were trying to get away from in the first place.) I was living in Denver at the time and got in contact with him. He told me he had gotten married. I knew he was serious, but I actually laughed at the prospect of him settling down. I said, "The next thing, you're going to tell me you have a child." "Yes, I do, and she the most beautiful little girl in the world!" I was stunned. I never could see Kird as a parent (as much as I could never see myself as one, either).
A few weeks later, I came down to Artesia because my father was getting married. I came over to Alamogordo to visit him. By this time, he and his wife had separated and she had custody of the child. Kird was trying to find a new place to live in Alamogordo. He found this one house, but was concerned because it called for a one-year lease. He was nervous about committing that long a time as he might be re-assigned. Later that night, I met his wife and child. He held his daughter in his arms. It was apparent that he missed her very much.
The next time I saw Kird was a few months later, when I was moving from Denver to San Diego. He had managed to get back together with his wife and they were living in a house they rented. This was October 31st, 1991 and the southern part of the state got pelted with a surprise early snow storm. His wife was concerned about me driving through the mountains to get to Alamogordo, but I found it a breeze after living in Denver for three years.
Kird came out with me to San Diego for a classic road trip. We ran all over the place, but got on each other's nerves after a couple of days. While he was there, we were contemplating driving up to Burbank to see Chud, but he wasn't at home when we called. We left a message on his machine. Chud told me later he never wanted to see Kird again, so I'm glad we didn't try to drive up to see him.
When I came home for Thanksgiving the following year, I drove through Alamogordo and saw Kird. He had completed his tour with the Air Force, but he and his wife had separated again. He was in the process of moving out of the house they were renting. He was also considering re-enlisting with the Air Force. He had a new girlfriend. She came over that night. While she was there, he bragged to me about how he had told her about every woman he had ever slept with. I threw out a few names of girls I knew about in college. He had already told her about them. I started to think if there was someone he may not have told her about. After a few minutes, I shouted out the name Carz (someone I had tried to hook up with before I found out he slept with her and whom I will go into detail in an upcoming post). His girlfriend was aghast. She hadn't heard that name before. Kird covered his face in shame. He explained that he was drunk and stoned and it was the worst sexual experience he had ever had in his life and that's why he didn't tell her about it. (He left out the part in which he did it at a party with other people watching.)
The next time I came out, Kird and his wife had gotten back together and were living with his parents. Kird had started going to grad school at New Mexico State University. He was going to become a social worker.
He eventually finished school and worked with Child Protective Services in Tucumcari, NM. In 1997, I was on vacation in New Mexico with my girlfriend Kez. We were in Clovis, which is close to Tucumcari. We called to see if he was there, but we found out he was actually in Clovis with a couple of twin kids who had been removed from their parents. They had been taken to the hospital there. We went to the hospital, but we never could find him.
In an even more surprising move, Kird went to school and became an attorney. I couldn't believe this was the same person I couldn't get out of bed to go to class in the morning. When I last caught up with him in 2009, he was working as a prosecutor for the District Attorney in Clovis. I met him and his new wife. I never asked about what happened to the old one or his daughter, who was around college age at that time. He invited me to go to the courthouse and see him at work, but since I was in my driving clothes (a t-shirt and jeans), I wouldn't have felt comfortable being in the courtroom. He said I would have looked like one of the defendants.
In the years that followed, Kird accepted my friend request on Facebook, but he never posted anything. He eventually deleted his account. About three years ago, Kird's name appeared in the news as providing an affidavit that he and the District Attorney had engaged in "judge shopping" in order to get a judge accused of bribery convicted. He had to quit his job as a prosecutor.
From what I found on the Internet, it looks like he got a job as an adjunct law professor at Wayland Baptist University (which is really surprising, considering he was an atheist in college). It looks like he then got another job as a prosecutor in Tucumcari about a year ago. Then, a few months ago, he and another attorney set up a private practice in Hobbs, NM. (It must be a really private practice because I can't even find their phone number. I was actually going to call him.)
He also has a law blog (and it's even through Blogger), but he doesn't allow comments on his posts. I've just got no way of getting in touch with him.
But I don't expect that to be a problem for long.
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