Titanic Post

Hope, New Mexico: In the early 1980s, I saw a black and white version of the above photo over the bar of a pension on the outskirts of Biarritz, France on the Golfe de Gascogne. I blurted, “That looks like Hope, New Mexico!” The bartender smiled and said in only slightly accented English: “Yes I lived there for almost twenty years.”

Now Hope, NM is and always has been a small community on Highway 82 about 20 miles west of Artesia, which is on the Pecos River. Traditionally Hope has been a ranching area, think John Chisum whose ranch was to the North, now there are signs of oil drilling nearby. The story is that Hope got its name from two cowboys and a coin-toss. One of them said, “I hope you lose.” Anyhow the chances of running into someone in France who has lived in Hope are minute and the bartender, who was also the owner of the pension, had worked there as a sheepherder. He was a Basque, by the way.

I had met a second person from Hope, NM several years earlier in Sachsenhausen, Germany. Her name was Roberta and she was studying to become a pharmacist at the Frankfurt University. She was born in Hope and probably still has relatives there. I should have played the lottery after meeting the second Hopeian, because I was turning the laws of probability upside down.