Trivia question: What was the original name of the New Mexico town that changed its name to Truth Or Consequences?
Residents of this town of 7,000 are just as quirky as they were in the early 1950s when they voted to rename their village after a popular television show of the time.
The difference is they are thinking big time. I mean really out-of-the-box-to-the-moon big time.
In 2008, voters in Truth or Consequences and others in Serra County approved a 1/2-cent sales tax by a 66% margin to help build their share of a $225 million Spaceport America project scheduled to open in 2011.
This followed Gov. Bill Richardson’s wheeling and dealing in 2002 by securing state funding for the enterprise. He wooed billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic to be the anchor tenant.
The facility, to consist of hangars, a terminal and the runway, may garner additional tenants if commercial space travel proves popular. The project is under the jurisdiction of the Spaceport Commission, a state agency.
Nicholas Riccardi of the Los Angeles Times writes a delightful article on the transformation of the Truth Or Consequences residents.
It seems reality set in when trucks carrying gravel rumbled through town en route to the Spaceport. They protested the noise, dust and rocking the stores along the business district to near collapse from their sandy foundations.
Leigh Lily Throckmorton, a home healthcare aide who joined a protest of people who walked across downtown streets to snarl truck traffic, was later arrested by sheriff’s deputies for crossing in front of a truck. (She said she was shopping.) She spent three days in jail.
The trucks slowed down.
“The spaceport is an excellent fit for T or C,” said local bookstore owner Rhonda Brittan, using the local shorthand for the town, “because it’s so wacky.”
The town is unremarkable at first glance — a collection of gas stations, ranch houses and trailer parks nestled in the bends of the Rio Grande.
Only on closer inspection do its eccentricities come to light: shops with names like Energy Art and Little Sprout Market & Juice Bar line its 1950s-era downtown.
Throckmorton and other activists have been banned from speaking at city commission meetings.
Gary Whitehead, a member of the Spaceport Commission and former county commissioner, says those critics are wary of the looming transformation of their sleepy town. “We’re really changing who we are as a community,” he said. “We’re a pretty small town; it’s been pretty simple here for a while.”
Whitehead dismissed the critics as relentlessly negative. “I’m on the hospital board, and they oppose everything we do there too,” he said.
The median household income is $23,000, well below the state’s $41,000. Ranching and tourism are among the few ways to make a living.
On a recent day, Whitehead drove down the winding desert road to the spaceport site, pointing out new bridges and paved roads along the way that benefit residents. He paused by a trailer on the construction site housing workers from a local company. “Fifty local jobs,” he said.
Answer to trivia question — The town about 150 south of Albuquerque and near the nuclear testing grounds of White Sands was named after its natural resource, Hot Springs.
Jerry Remmers worked 26 years in the newspaper business. His last 23 years was with the Evening Tribune in San Diego where assignments included reporter, assistant city editor, county and politics editor.