Missing Chapter: Science Fairs

This is the first in a series of Friday posts that will go into detail about events I forgot to write about when they were chronologically relevant to the blog. I will refer to them as "Missing Chapters."

My son Boyd is about to take part in a Science Fair at his school. This brought back some memories I had involving my participation in science fairs in Artesia, NM during my elementary school years.

I first participated in Artesia's Annual Science Fair during the Spring of 1973 (when I was in 3rd grade). Just a couple of months earlier, the Cub Scouts at Hermosa had held a banquet in the cafeteria. All of the different troops decorated their own tables. My Dad had provided a decoration that was a jar full of vinegar with mothballs in it. We had drawn little smiley-face charicatures of the all the members of our troop on the mothballs. The mothballs would then sporadically go up and down in the vinegar. Dad said something to the effect that we were going to do this for my Science Fair project.

About a month later, I had to set up a display and write a paper about the project. Dad told me what to write. At the end of it, he said I had to write a "big liography." I had no idea what that was and I already felt like I had already written a great deal for the paper. (What? I wasn't finished yet?) I wondered how much I had to write. (I later found out he wanted me to write a bibliography. I still didn't know what that was at the time.) I just did what he said, but this project stopped being fun that that point.

We went to the high school on Friday night and started setting up the display. We poured the vinegar in the jar and then put the mothballs in. (We didn't decorate the mothballs this time.) And they just sat there. We didn't know what was going on. When we set up the decoration for the banquet, the mothballs started moving up and down right away. We didn't have to wait. After about 30 minutes of shaking the jar, Dad gave up and we went home.

The next morning, Dad got up early and turned on the radio to the local news. (He knew from teaching fourth grade classes that was when they announced judging results.) It turned out I had gotten a 2nd Place award. We figured that the mothballs must have started doing their thing before judging started the night before. I was quite pleased that all that effort had paid off.

We went to the Science Fair later that day and checked out my exhibit. The mothballs were indeed moving up and down, like they were supposed to. I was happy to see the 2nd Place Award on my display.

1974 came along and we had to do a different project for the Science Fair that year. The only thing I remember about it was that I had to grow a fern and put it in the display. I remember that I again had to write a paper and bibliography, but I don't recall the actual content of the project. I don't know what I was trying to prove, and I guess the judges didn't know either, because I didn't get an award that year.

For 1975, some other boys in my class were doing a display for dinosaurs. I was very interested in this and they said I could join them. Dad had other ideas. He said I was going to build a boat with a steam engine using a container for canned ham. (And at this point, it should be apparent that these were science projects Dad had either done when he was in high school, or had gathered from previous students. I didn't like that I had NO input on what my project was going to be. It was the Pinewood Derby all over again.) I actually would have preferred to be a part of the dinosaur project. And I did let those boys borrow my large dinosaur model to use. I just didn't get credit for it.

Dad put together the boat and the mechanism for creating the steam that would propel it in a small tub of water. I had written the report, but I really didn't understand how it worked. The steamboat did appear to work when Dad tested it. However, I was not named among those students who had received a ribbon that year. Another student told me he saw my exhibit and someone had pushed the boat under the water. Since any student could have easily wrecked my project without getting caught, we had no way of knowing who did it.

As it turned out, the boys with the dinosaur exhibit were awarded 2nd Place. That helped to overcome the disappointment of my project, but I would have preferred to have had credit for that. (And I wasn't clear if there was a rule that your name couldn't be on more than one project.)

I dreaded what would happen in future Science Fairs. I was not looking forward to Dad commandeering my project again. I wanted to come up with something on my own, or join a group instead. But I never had to worry about the Science Fair ever again. 1975 turned out to be the last Science Fair held in Artesia for the remainder of the years that I attended public school there.

For a long time, I had hoped that there had been other projects that year that had been sabotaged, and it was at a scale that caused the school board to stop the annual tradition. It turned out that was far from the case.

I actually did a Google search in AI mode to find out what happened. I was surprised to find out there was a substantial amount of detail involved in ending the Fairs. And this seemed to all be gathered from more than 50 years ago:

Historically, the Artesia Public Schools system in New Mexico shifted away from hosting traditional, district-wide science fairs in the mid-1970s primarily due to a broader administrative transition toward standardized curriculums, shifting extracurricular focuses, and regional alignment with agricultural and vocational programs.

While there isn't a singular, highly publicized "crisis" that ended the fairs, several converging factors during the 1975–1976 school year led to their discontinuation:

1. Shifting Focus to the Eddy County Junior Livestock Show and Sale: In the local community, student exhibition energy and school sponsorship heavily favored agricultural and vocational science. Since the late 1940s, Artesia High School and local civic clubs had been co-sponsoring the massive regional livestock and home economics exhibitions. As these grew significantly, they heavily competed with traditional science fairs for school funding, student interest, and faculty time.

2. The "Back to Basics" Curriculum Movement: By 1975, school districts across New Mexico and the broader United States faced immense pressure to return to a "back to basics" educational model. This movement de-emphasized large-scale, mandatory, inquiry-based extracurricular projects (like the standard tri-fold board science fair) in favor of structured, standardized in-classroom testing and instruction.

3. Evolving Science Education Formats: Following the era of the space-race boom (which heavily popularized the traditional 1960s science fair), educators in the 1970s began critiques regarding equity and the competitive nature of fairs. Many regional schools chose to pivot from competitive, district-wide extracurricular science fairs to standard-based classroom labs, or later into team-based alternative events like the Science Olympiad.

I can't help but wonder if Dad had known ahead of time that this was going to be the last Science Fair and that would explain why he was so adamant about doing the steamboat project. I don't know what he was going to do the next year when Loyd was going to be in the third grade and would have to come up with his own project. Was he really going to be in control of two projects at the same time?

So, I am letting Boyd figure out his own Project. I swore I wouldn't repeat the mistakes my Dad made. I will be able to assist him with setting up his display, but for the most part, the work will be ALL his.

Shooting for a Promotion

In my previous work experiences, I found that by putting in a considerable amount of effort, I was able to rise through the ranks at an alarmingly rapid rate. This was certainly the case for Landmark Theatres and NDC/Aradiant. I thought this would be the pattern for the remainder of my life. However, this wasn't the case at Walmart.

But it shouldn't have been that way. There were always opportunities to move up in the store. They seemed to always be looking for Customer Service Managers, Department Managers, Support Managers, etc. But the one position I had my eye on was working in the Cash Office. One of my favorite things to do when managing at Landmark was counting up the cash at the end of the night and making the deposit. I couldn't wait to count the money that Walmart raked in every day. I thought that with my cash handling experience, I would be a shoo-in for the position.

At Walmart, you have to be in your current position for a minimum of six months before applying for another position. After I'd hit my six months, I kept my eye open for a Cash Office position to open. My patience paid off. They posted an opening. I went and applied for it. But I didn't hear anything about it for a month. I finally got called in for an interview. During the interview, I was told that it was a part-time position and I would have to give up my full-time status to work it. I had a lot of questions. Namely, why would this be part-time? I can understand part-time cashiers, door greeters, overnight stockers and floor associates. However, this was something that needed regular staffing and they already had a small staff to start with.

I asked if I could work the Cash Office part-time and cashier the other 20 hours of the week. No, they didn't allow Cash Office associates to work the registers. Okay, how about working the Cash Office and another department where I don't have to handle money? No, that wasn't an option, either. Well, I guess I'm not going to be able to work the Cash Office because I need to work full-time. I would just have to wait for a full-time opening.

In the meantime, I decided that if I wanted to feel like I was moving up in the company, I would need to become a Customer Service Manager. At one point, one of the CSMs told me that at one of their recent meetings, they had discussed the possibility of who could join their ranks and everyone was pretty much in agreement that they felt I would make a good CSM. I have to admit this made me feel good about my performance as a cashier. One time, I was at the podium and the Store Manager was talking to the CSM about something going on at the Front End, and he made some comment about how it would get straightened out if they just made me a CSM. I couldn't imagine a better endorsement.

I decided to take the opportunity to ask how much of an increase a CSM got. The CSM I spoke to said, "Oh, that's between you and the Store Manager." What? I need to negotiate this? That doesn't sound right!

Something unusual happened after this. Ms. E, the Front End Supervisor, decided they needed a little assistance among the CSMs. She asked another cashier, Leenz, to become a fill-in CSM. There was no announcement for the position. They just started training her. This wouldn't have been a problem, but Leenz started working for Walmart after I had. I'll admit that yes, she was very smart and friendly and was definitely CSM material, but I couldn't help but wonder why I hadn't been approached.

So, the next time they had a position for CSM, I went ahead and applied. They had two full-time slots available. I figured that Leenz would get officially promoted to one of the slots and I would get the other one. I felt the interview went fairly smoothly because I was able to draw on my previous supervisory experience. About a week later, I was informed that I did not get the position. I found out that they selected Leenz and a woman named Barrd who had worked in Electronics. Barrd was a real surprise. She was capable of working the register in Electronics, but she did not appear to be someone who you would expect to be upwardly mobile.

I did not express any kind of discontent regarding the results of the promotions. I also did not mention to any of my co-workers that I had applied for the position. But I'm pretty certain that everyone had been expecting that I was aiming to be a CSM. When Barrd was being trained, I came up to her in Customer Service at the end of a shift and asked for a 3 Action. (This would produce a printout of what my till balance was supposed to be.) She said, "Oh, I don't have my supervisor access yet." I told her, "You don't need supervisor access to do a 3 Action!" I grabbed the 52 key out of her hand, stuck it in the register, hit "3", then "Action Code," followed by my employee number. The printout came up. "THAT'S ALL YOU HAVE TO DO!"

Barrd just stood there kind of stunned. All the other cashiers in the area appeared to be working hard to stifle their laughter. I got the idea they knew exactly what was going on. However, no one mentioned this incident ever again.

A few months later, there was a posting for both CSM and Cash Office. Each department had one opening. This was great! I thought I should be able to land one of these. I applied for both. I wound up being interviewed for both positions at the same time. This time, the Cash Office slot was going to be full-time. However, the CSM was part-time, but I'd be able to work as a regular cashier those times when I wasn't being a CSM. I would still get paid the same amount of money. I asked what the increase was going to be and I was told each position would be 50 cents an hour. Finally, a straight answer.

A week later, I was told that I was being promoted to the Cash Office. HOORAY! I would be starting my training within the next week. I looked forward to not having to work the cash register anymore.

I told Leenz about the promotion. She asked me how much my wage was going to be in the Cash Office. I didn't give an exact figure, but I told her that I would have been making the same amount if I'd become a CSM. I think she was kind of disappointed in her experience as a CSM and wished she had held out for the Cash Office. (As it turns out, Leenz later went to the Philippines for a month. When she came back, she stepped down as CSM and worked in the Jewelry department.)

But I found out that working in the Cash Office resulted in a whole host of other problems I had never considered.

I'll get into that in Monday's post.

Walmart - The Layaway and Return Desks

In my last post, I described a few more things I didn't like about working at Walmart. Here are a couple more to list, but they deserve their own post.

I got to the point that I actualy enjoyed working as a cashier. I was kept busy all day and didn't have as many problems moving the customers and ensuring I could do as much as possible without the involvement of the CSMs. I noticed other cashiers had issues with resolutions on their own and their lines were constantly getting backed up. This resulted in me generally exceeding my performance goals on a daily basis.

I enjoyed regular cashiering so much that it really bugged me to be sent to work the outlying registers, like the Layaway or the Return Desks.

Layaway wasn't really an issue when it came to ringing up the items the customers wanted to pay for later. I would enter in the customer's personal information, enter in the merchandise and create labels so we could identify them. They would then be taken to the storage area and catalogued so we could locate them later. It was also fine when customers just wanted to make a payment without retrieving their merchandise.

Between January and October, this wasn't too much of a hassle, as long as the storage location was properly entered in, along with the number of boxes the items were stored in. If all the information was accurate, it was easy to locate the customer's merchandise and bring it out when they were ready to pay the total amount and receive it. We would have a few hiccups from time to time, but I never had an incident in which we could not locate the merchandise.

However, for November and December, a LOT of customers were putting items into Layaway for Christmas. It exceeded our storage capacity in the back and we had to put the items in storage trailers outside. This was when we would encounter all kinds of problems with the documentation and storage of merchandise.

I was told that I was supposed to take the customer's final payment and then go look for their stuff. I had a few incidents in which I couldn't immediately find everything outside in the trailers. Sometimes, there would be a box that was put in a separate location or the item was moved since it was first put away to make room for larger items without changing the documentation. After this happened a few times, I waited until I came back to the desk with the item before I took the customer's payment.

One time, I went out to the trailer because there were supposed to be two boxes. I found one, but not the other. Another cashier came out and scolded me because I hadn't taken the payment. I told her I wanted to make sure I had the items because of the history of documentation not being accurate. I looked in the one box and found all the items on the ticket were in that one box, not two boxes. I showed this as exactly why I wouldn't take the final payment first.

I was working Layaway close to Christmastime when I wound up working more than six hours without a lunch break. The Assistant Manager wouldn't let me take my lunch. It didn't matter that there were about 20 customers waiting in Layaway, I started screaming at him that I needed to take my lunch. He still wouldn't let me go. (He was one of those First in Line twerps who had no awareness of California labor laws.)

But I didn't have to work Layaway that often. It was mostly unbearable before Christmas. I was surprised at how much I had to work the Return Desk.

People had to come see us if they wanted to return or exchange an item. If the customer had a receipt, it wasn't a problem most of the time. However, if you work the Return Desk on a regular basis, it starts to feel like everything you rang up at the front end was coming back to the Return Desk. It honestly felt like we weren't really making any money.

Not to mention that the Return Desks at the two Walmart locations I worked were consistently busy. There was ALWAYS a line! We had one cashier who transferred to San Diego from a store in Texas. She was flabbergasted that the staff just could not catch a break, even with four cashiers working the desk at once. She said that at her old store, there would be a few busy times, but they frequently had downtime to take care of all the go-backs and claims.

Once, I was asked to give a cashier at the Return Desk a break. I thought I was just going to be there 15 minutes. When she came back, I got ready to go. However, another cashier said I needed to stay so that ALL the Return cashiers could take their breaks. I got mad because the CSM did not indicate I was going to have to stay that long. So, I had to keep working the Returns for more than an hour until the other three had taken their breaks. (That's right. They didn't adhere to the 15 minute break they were supposed to take.) I got ready to go and the first cashier I had been sent to relieve said,"Oh, no! You can't go yet! It's time for my lunch!" I took my till and walked away. (Ugh! It was time for MY break!)

When a cashier works the Return Desk, they system won't account for your performance stats for that day, even if you just work Returns for 15 minutes. This could create a problem when it came to the annual performance review. I had one month in which I had no stats whatsoever because I had been sent to work in Returns at some point during every single shift.

And I'm not even going to get into the stories in which people tried to rip us off by returning items in exchange for cash or gift cards. I may revisit that topic sometime in the future.

I preferred the structured mayhem of the front end checkstands.

A few more things I didn't like about Walmart

I had previously posted a list of things that made working at Walmart a little less desirable compared to other jobs I'd had in the past. Here are a few more things to gripe about.

1. The bonus program

Every Walmart store had a profit sharing program. All the employees would get a year bonus based on the profits generated by the store. At the stores I worked at, it was generally about $600. But there were things that could affect the bonus, like if there were injuries to customers or staff. Those would reduce the amount significantly. This wasn't necessarily the problem. (We have to work hard to ensure a safe shopping and working experience.) The issue I had was the timing. Those bonuses would generally come out in March. In order to qualify for the bonus, you had to have been working for about the full year before. If you were hired for the holiday season, you wouldn't qualify for the bonus until the next year. However, if it was too early for you to get the bonus, you still benefited because they brought in a catered lunch for everyone the day the bonus checks were distributed. BUT, if you were hired between the end of January and March, you wouldn't qualify for TWO YEARS! So, this means that if they hired you in February, you had to watch everyone else get bonuses that first year. When the next March rolled around, you STILL didn't get a bonus. That free meal was not going to suffice. I don't know why the store didn't just put a freeze on hiring between the beginning of February and the time the bonuses were distributed. I had to field a call from an employee who had to watch everyone else wave their checks around two years in a row without getting anything. If they couldn't freeze hiring, they should have been able to at least give those employees left out some gift cards or something.

2. Revolving Assistant Managers

It was very common for Assistant Managers to be put in charge of different departments and eventually move around from store to store. I mentioned how we would frequently get Assistant Managers from other parts of the country to straighten up our stores' operations, which was really having to clean up the messes left by the previous Assistants. The really irritating thing about this is that we got very little heads up when an Assistant was going to be moving to another store. An announcement would be made during the daily store meetings (which cashiers were generally left out of). That announcement would come on the last day that Assistant Manager would be working at the store. This means that if you had some unfinished business with an Assistant Manager, it needed to be addressed that day. This would be difficult because the Assistant would typically have a lot of details to attend to before leaving for the next store. And if you happened to have the day off or were unable to attend that meeting, that meant you didn't find out about the departure until it was too late and you would have to start all over with your new Assistant Manager, who may be someone coming from a different part of the store, or a different part of the country. Why couldn't they give us more advance notice of these changes? What's even worse is that the Assistant Managers must know WEEKS in advance regarding their transfers and they should be sharing this with their Department Managers to avoid these hassles.

3. The Garden Center

Most Walmart stores have check out stations at their Garden Centers. This is supposed to make things easier for people buying plants and bags of soil and seeds to be able to buy their merchandise and quickly go out of the store. However, a large number of customers decide to use the Garden Center as an express check out (because the lines are typically shorter) without buying anything related to gardening. It's not a problem when we're not busy, but you'd think that if customers approached the check stand and see there's a line all the way to the back wall of the Garden Center for the two cashiers who are currently working, they would change their mind and go through the main check out. Once, I was working the Garden Center and needed a CSM to do an override and we couldn't make any progress for a full half hour because we could not get anyone to come all the way to the Garden Center.

4. Some of the Assistant Managers didn't seem to know the rules

When working as a cashier, we were told to not leave the check stand under almost any circumstances. If I needed to quickly assist a customer with something that didn't take me too far away, I would get yelled at for leaving the check stand. Sometimes, I would get an Assistant Manager who needed assistance with customers (because they didn't know how to resolve the issue themselves) and ask me to leave the check stand for an undetermined amount of time to attend to them. If I told the Assistant Manager I wasn't allowed to leave the check stand, they would yell at me for not doing what they asked. Yeah, you just couldn't win.

5. Sometimes, Assistant Managers could be helpful, but most of the time, they weren't

When I worked as a cashier in San Diego, it was not uncommon for an Assistant Manager to come to your station if you turned on the flashing light for assistance. If you needed an override, they had a 52 key and could resolve the issue. (They couldn't help with change.) However, I remember at the San Jose store, I saw a couple of Assistant Managers standing and chatting at the front end while all the cashier stations were going off like Christmas lights. And they just continued to stand there and chat while the CSMs were running around trying to take care of everybody.

As you will find out later, there was some other garbage that took place during my employment with Walmart that caused me to kind of burn my bridges with them. Those will be discussed later on in the blog.

Back to the Blog

You may have noticed that this blog hasn't been very active during the past few years. I mostly just posted stuff around Christmas, just so I had at least one blog post a year. (Last year, I had three because of a personal situation arose and I wanted to document it right away. I had planned on doing more of those, but they just didn't happen.)

Essentially, what happened was that I was very bogged down with my work responsibilities and could not find time to concentrate on blogging on a regular basis. I was able to write a few articles, but I couldn't find time to produce a large number of them so that I could get ahead of the daily posting.

So, something has changed recently that will now allow me to produce a bank of articles so I shouldn't have gaps going into the future. I have retired from my most recent job. I am experiencing some major health issues (of which I will go into detail later on). These started to affect my ability to do my job at the level I expected to keep up with. I was also fed up with things I was required to do at work and had no heart to keep doing the same thing every day until I die. I had enough money in my retirement fund to support me the next few years, and hopefully, the removal of that stress will be better for me in the long run.

I will be picking up where I last left off on the regular blog posts, at the beginning of my relationship with Myz and my employment with Walmart.

I'm probably going to focus on my life's main story line and not delve so much into side quests, as I had in the past. This blog's style is probably going to be significantly different in the upcoming months.

I hope you enjoy it as much as you did before.

My First Viral Video

I'm not doing a Christmas post this year. I thought I'd share something that happened recently.

I've been posting videos on YouTube for more than 13 years. I post videos on a number of different topics, some of which related to this blog and my experiences with neurodiversity (although I haven't posted on that subject in years). Sometimes, they can consist of little jokes and observances. I was basically making YouTube Shorts in landscape mode.

I wasn't expecting much at first, but I was hoping that my audience would grow as I developed more content and I would get a clearer idea of the direction my channel was going to take. If I started getting a lot of followers, I could consider monetizing my channel. However, very few of my videos ever got more than a few dozen views. It looked like this was just going to remain a hobby.

One day, I shared a video that became my first actual YouTube Short. I was astonished at how quickly it racked up 14,000 views. In addition, it was getting more likes and comments than all my previous videos combined.

I started producing more Shorts. But I didn't get anywhere near as many views as I had on that first one. But they were averaging about a thousand views each, so I still saw this as an improvement over my previous posts. Eventually, I produced a Short that garnered 25,000 views on YouTube.

A few weeks ago, I was driving home from work on Southbound Highway 85 before the Union Avenue exit. There is a bridge overhead that frequently sees demonstrations over various policital issues. They were there before the recent 2025 California General Election. But this time, their signs said, "Honk if you're not in the Epstein Files." I quickly thought of a joke and recorded it. I then posted it on YouTube. After I got home, I posted it on my Facebook page, and it was simultaneousy posted on Instagram.

I managed to rack up 7,000 views within 24 hours on YouTube. That was way better than average. But I didn't really pay attention to it for a couple of days. I later went on Instagram and was shocked beyond belief that it had acquired more than 400,000 views! Not to mention that it had thousands of likes and more than 100 comments. In addition, I'd gotten about 30 additional followers because of this video. And the number continued to increase above 765,000 views. It's pretty much slowed down, but I continue to slowly get more views and likes.

All of a sudden, the pressure was on to create more content. I couldn't think of anything new that I could immediately post, so I would find some of my old short videos and redo them for the YouTube Shorts format. I also made sure these would post on Instagram. Sadly, nothing else is hitting like the Epstein video. I am getting more views than average, but I don't think I'll get another viral hit like this right away.

And that really burns me up. I've often heard stories about artists (music and otherwise) who would work really hard on their craft, but find that their most popular and enduring work is the stuff they basically slapped together in a short amount of time without a lot of thought. For me, this was just a joke on the fly. But I guess that the combination of politics, sex and crime created a perfect storm that was hard for everyone to ignore. It is rather irritating that the social media projects I put a lot of thought and planning behind don't get much traction. This would apply to the "A Liberal Christian" project (which was all done before YouTube Shorts became a thing) and my efforts to get Democrats to temporarily change their registration so they could vote against Trump in the primary (which were ALL YouTube Shorts). If 700,000 people saw those videos, I could have really made a difference.

So, I don't know when I'll get lucky like this again.

The Bully That Wasn't, Part Two

In yesterday's post, I went into detail about how a boy named Shad, whom I had known since the 5th grade, wound up getting involved in an armed robbery and murder when he was 16 years old. Today, I'm going to focus on what happened after he went to prison.

One thing I didn't mention yesterday was how brutal the incident was. The restaurant owner was shot five times when he was killed. The wife suffered from four gunshot wounds. So, this was not a case of "Oops! My gun accidentally went off!" or "I fired a warning shot and it hit you!" What happened next shouldn't come as a surprise.

I would imagine that Shad was counting down the days until he hit the 15-year mark and he would get released. During this time, there were reportedly several incidents of him getting his hands on drugs and getting high in prison. Around the 13-year mark, he may have realized that he wasn't going to be released after all. He filed a motion claiming that his public defender didn't properly explain the consequences of the sentencing and that he wouldn't have agreed to the plea bargain if he'd understood that he wouldn't actually get out in 15 years. There was a transcript of Shad's appearance during the plea, in which the judge at the time asked him if he understood that the 15-year release was no guarantee. Shad appeared to agree with everything during the proceeding. The motion was denied.

(And I would imagine that the public defender really didn't want to represent Shad at trial, considering the nature of the crime. The public defender was just doing what could be done to avoid the death penalty and probably misconstrued the truth about early release in order to get Shad to accept the plea agreement.)

After this point, Shad became more of a model prisoner and took measures to improve himself by taking courses and helping other inmates. After he had served 30 years, he was eligible for parole. But he was denied. The surviving wife testified to the parole board. (And I should mention that #2 was also eligible for parole at the same time.) I saw an article in which the wife stated she would show up and speak to the parole board every time the two of them were up for consideration. Parole was denied four more times over the course of the next few years.

The ACLU got involved in Shad's case to work toward keeping offenders under 18 from getting life in prison. I couldn't confirm this, but it would appear that the wife passed away before Shad's sixth parole hearing took place. Parole was approved for Shad and #2. Shad had spent 40 years in prison up to this point and was released.

In an interview following his release, Shad complained about the attitude of the parole board during the earlier proceedings and that they just weren't paying attention to him while he was making his case. Did anyone explain to him that the wife testified? Was the board not supposed to take her pain and suffering into account when considering parole for Shad?

That's the real issue. In everything I read and watched about Shad's case, I don't see him taking responsibility for what happened or showing any regret over his past. He just appears to blame peer pressure for his situation. You'd think after 40 years, he'd say something like, "I'm sorry for what I did. That was a big mistake and I should have known better. I blame myself."

Another thing came up during Shad's release. He claims to have moved around and gone to 12 different schools in the five years after he turned 10. So, four of those would have been Central Elementary, Zia Intermediate, Park Junior High and Artesia High School. But I don't know what the other eight schools would have been. Like I said yesterday, I wasn't aware of there being a time in which he wasn't in school in Artesia. But I wasn't tracking his attendance every day. And his father's obituary seems to indicate that he never left Artesia after moving there. Unless Shad was constantly being passed around to different relatives during this time, I don't see how he could have possibly been enrolled in that many schools.

Now, Shad's path to freedom doesn't end here. About six months after being on the outside, Shad became friends with a 19-year-old woman. The nature of the friendship isn't clear, but he was with her when she was arrested for armed robbery. Since Shad was not supposed to associate with criminals, he was also arrested for a parole violation.

Shad was supposedly not aware the woman had been involved in an armed robbery. Shad was denied representation and there was no appeals process for parole violation arrests. He wound up going back to prison (the same prison he had been released from) and was there for at least six months. The ACLU was able to step in and help, but there were a lot of roadblocks to getting him released.

(And it wouldn't surprise me to find out that the only reason the woman became friends with him was that she was planning to blame the robbery on him. I'll bet she actually attempted this and investigators probably laughed in her face.)

It looks like Shad eventually settled into a normal life. I see he had set up Facebook and Instagram accounts. (And #2 is one of his friends.)

And I recently saw online that people in the community where the murder took place still talk about it 40 years later. It had that kind of impact.

I was kind of worried that Shad would try to reach out to me to make amends (like you're required to do in a 12-step program). I was more concerned about having to pretend I didn't know he was in prison for 40 years. But I came to realize that Shad was likely the kind of person who would not make amends.

I seriously doubt I will ever hear from him.