My wife and I left Kansas by mutual harassment.  She worked for the IRS in Wichita, was working toward being an "agent", and was fired for refusing to give to the United Fund.  There was great competition among agencies and businesses to have 100% participation, and her dismissal for "inappropriate attitude" was the IRS's way of reaching that goal.  I was sympathetic and supportive.

For my part, I was creamed by a station wagon while riding BMW motorcycle with a passenger.  The guy turned left across my path.  The police report showed the accident was the other guy's fault, but he withheld signing a release from liability until I agreed to pay for his car damage.  That's extortion!  Kansas had nothing to say about it except, go to court or lose your driver's license.  We had another idea, to seek our fortune elsewhere.  We left town with everything we owned in a '51 Ford.  The choice of American Southwest was a coin toss.  That was just before Christmas 1960.

We declined a job near Mesa, Arizona because there was no place to live for love nor money.  Mesa is where we discovered our new tires were shot.  the Ford's front end was knocked out of alignment from cutting cat's asses on icy streets and hitting a curb in Wichita.  That made a big dent in our resources.

Back tracking to El Paso, Texas, we found a run-down adobe, in the Lower Valley near Zaragosa, Mexico, that we could afford on unemployment benefits.  We ate lots of soup beans.  This is where we found out we were pregnant with Heather.  Our only recreation was shooting because I had lots of reloading supplies.  A trip to Burden collected this stuff and one of the motorcycles.  We would ride the bike to the desert and take turns busting beer cans rolling down sand dunes.  Another diversion was shooting at beer bottles across the Rio Grande.  Little Mexican kids would set them up about 50 yards away, and I would blow them away (the bottles, not the kids) with my 44 pistol.

That was the best three month vacation I ever had.  But Unemployment cut me off for lack of effort to find work, our money was running out, and we were worried about advancing pregnancy.  I made a pilgrimage to Alamogordo, without much hope of finding work suitable for a high-class electronic technician.  Son-of-a-gun if a job wasn't open at Sac Peak Solar Observatory, in the Sacramento Mountains!  That was in April or May of '61.  Here was my impression of the area :

I thought I'd never seen such a flat place when Alamogordo, New Mexico came into view the first time, barely taller than the surrounding chaparral of stunted mesquite and rabbit bush.  The Tularosa Basin seemed colorless; the whole world was a low-contrast beige.  As I started into the mountains from the 4500' basin toward the 9000' observatory, where I was to have a job interview, I passed a sign ENTERING THE LINCOLN NATIONAL FOREST.  Now, "forest" means trees to me.  I noticed the cloud of alkali dust in my wake, scanned the hills for anything taller than creosote bush, and began to laugh.  I quit laughing when the scrub turned to juniper and I nearly clobbered a mule deer doe, one of a small bunch with their young ones.  Prickly pear cactus gave way to the piñon belt, to Ponderosa pine, and finally to fir forest — five ecological life zones, Sonoran to Alpine, within 16 miles.

That pretty much explains how I got here.  Here is why I stayed :

I didn’t know if I could adjust to southern New Mexico and decided the way to find out was to take a canteen and sit in it awhile.  The sun burned down, and I took shelter in a dry wash in the shade.  A jack rabbit came loping down the ditch toward me.  He saw me, his bent ear came to attention, and he froze for a few seconds before ambling back the way he’d come.  Everyone (except Walt Disney and Jim Henson) knows rabbits can’t talk, but I imagined the bunny had delivered a message.  He told me to stay — nowhere is perfect and this place is right peaceful.  That’s why I didn’t blow him away with my 44.  It is bad karma to hurt a friendly spirit  . . .  anyway, jack rabbits are to stringy to eat.