I started living in Clovis, NM after graduating from Eastern New Mexico University in 1986. It was considered a step up on the population scale after living in Artesia and Portales. With a population of around 39,000 (ca. 2010), it's the seventh largest city in New Mexico. The majority of its economy is based on the presence of Cannon Air Force Base, which is located about five miles west of the end of town.
Sometimes, it felt like Clovis was the basis for the small town in "Blue Velvet." One of the things that took some adjusting to was the diversity of actual class systems in Clovis. In Artesia, I only ever had contact with middle class and poor people. Even though there were rich people there, I never really saw much of them or their children.
So in Clovis, you had rich, middle class, poor and Air Force families. This made for bizarre dating situations. Mostly, these affected the high school, but it spread out into the rest of the community.
I'll start with the rich boys. They had a tendency to date the trashy girls. They basically used them to get what they wanted. It was really bad because they actually gave those girls and their families some hope that they would always be there to support them in a manner of comfort that had alluded them, but then they would go away to college and never call the girls again.
Of course, this would cause a problem for the rich girls, because it more or less left them with no one to date. Their fathers only wanted them to go out with boys who shared the same social status level as them. So, what happened? The poor and middle class boys started dressing up in nice clothes and claiming they were rich. They were hoping they could hook up with the rich girls, marry them and then they would just sponge off the parents and never have to work a day in their lives. You're probably wondering how they were able to perpetuate this myth once the girl met the boy's family. "Oh, it's my grandfather who's wealthy. He and my Dad had a falling out and he cut him off. But he promised I'd be in his will when he passes away."
As I mentioned with Branz, the children of the Air Force families had a tendency to hook up with each other. It was just easier when you didn't have to drive all the way across town to see your significant other. That leaves us with the middle class girls. They essentially got together with the young soldiers from the Air Force base. You may recall that I wrote about an issue with high school boys and the scary punks from the refinery trolling for girlfriends at Park Junior High School. It was the same thing at Clovis High School. There would be lots of the soldiers coming around the campus at lunchtime hoping to bring someone back to their dorm at the base. And the parents actually encouraged this. If the daughter wasn't very smart, but was decent-enough looking, it was all they could do to get them out of the house by the time they turned 18. And they didn't always have to get pregnant.
All of this is my way of explaining that there was just no real opportunity for me to date someone my own age when I was in my early 20s. I guess the main thing was to go to the bars, but I had little interest in getting together with women who drank on a regular basis. We didn't have the Internet back then, so my options were pretty limited. Since I didn't have any experience picking up women in social settings, I really didn't have a clue on how to approach this. But when I had women calling up at the station wanting to talk to me because they liked the sound of my voice, I had no choice but to make this my main venue for trying to meet women.
As I've written before, and as you'll see in upcoming posts, it didn't always work out the way I wanted.
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