I'm awakened at 5 in the morning by the sound of gunfire. No, it's not some gang bangers blasting away in the dark, nor even hunters harrying doves; it's something entirely different, my neighbors in nearby Tortugas pueblo beginning their dawn ceremony in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

You wouldn't expect to find a world-class air museum in tiny Santa Teresa, just outside El Paso, Texas, but there it sits. The War Eagles Museum is an eye-opening find for nostalgia buffs such as Lt. Col. (Retired) Lloyd Mettes of Oxford, Indiana, who said, "I flew seventy P-38 missions during World War Two - reconnaissance mostly, but a few combat missions." Looking at the black beauty (one of only seven left in the world) sitting on the hangar floor, he said, "This is really an early version of the P-38."

Johnson's New Military Map of the United States, a replica of a map printed for the United States War Department in the year 1861, places all the Forts, Military Posts, etc., and shows Ft. Fillmore, Arizona Territory, positioned aside the Rio Grande, just above Ft. Bliss, Texas and below Ft. Thorn, Arizona. My modern-day H.M.Gousha map of New Mexico shows a Point of Interest symbol for the "Ft. Fillmore Ruins" just below Las Cruces between State Road 478 and Interstate 10.

La Mesilla, New Mexico, has changed little since Billy the Kid and Jesse Evans died at the end of its lusty frontier atmosphere. Thick-walled adobe buildings erected by the remarkable men who trekked the heels of Don Rafael Rules from the heart of Old Mexico to settle in the spawning Rio Grande Valley are much the same as they were when 10-year-old Mary Maxwell, the daughter of one of La Mesilla’s forthright citizens, was carted off by a hungry mountain lion while gathering wildberries.

One of the photos often seen in World War II literature is of General Douglas MacArthur wading ashore at Leyte in the Phillipines in 1944, honoring his “I Shall Return” promise to help liberate the islands from the Japanese. As a young boy 60 years earlier, the future General of the Army might well have waded barefoot in the muddy Rio Grande River in Southern New Mexico.

Chile is surely not going to go away in tiny Hatch, New Mexico. As a matter of fact, there's a bit of a frenzy this time of year. It's just the annual Chile Festival in Hatch, a forty-minute drive along the Rio Grande from Las Cruces. The madness happens on Labor Day weekend, with folks driving in from as far away as Tucson, Albuquerque and Fort Worth to load up their trunks with genuine Hatch chiles (that's the New Mexico spelling as decreed by the state legislature).

To usher in the chile season, Hatch hosts the Labor Day Chile Festival. The venue is split between downtown and the airstrip, two miles west on Highway 26. The lively festival draws thousands of tourists from around the world and features a chili cook-off, arts and crafts galore, two-steppin' music, sidewalk sales, chile eats and products, and a parade led by the newly crowned Ms. Chile.

Last spring, our second in Southern New Mexico, my wife and I discovered that this part of the country has the most shameless bunch of birds we have ever seen. I mean, it's disgraceful! They sing all day, sometimes even into the night, and they want us to think they are a charming delight, but we know what they're really up to. It's caboodling. That's what they're really up to. Birds can't outsmart us!

Does Sunland Park, just outside El Paso, Texas bring to mind horse racing? It is much more than that. It is not in Texas, either, but in New Mexico. Until 1960 this area was known as Anapra, where Don Juan de Onate crossed from the east side of the Rio Grande into New Mexico in the 1500s. Robert Julyan in The Place Names of New Mexico states, "Despite the complexity of postal dates and postal names, this longtime inhabited community . . . has preserved its separate identity despite its proximity to an industrial area of El Paso and to the Sunland Park complex . . ." Located just west of the junction of NM 273 and NM 498, the name is explained as meaning "this side of the river."

Santa Teresa is a young community at the junction of New Mexico Highways 278 and 9. It is about four miles north of the Mexico border, practically adjacent to Sunland Park, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas. It consists primarily of residences in a gated community, although there are three or four churches nearby.

Some of the 1,136 residents of Hatch might say "Chile Capital of the World." And of course, they are sure to point out that New Mexicans spell their chili with an e on the end instead of an i. According to the Roadside History of New Mexico, in 1988 the New Mexico State Legislature passed a facetious memorial threatening to deport to Texas any New Mexican caught using the word "chili."

Few cities, towns, villages or individuals, without moving, find their address and even their country has changed. The towns named above are some of those few, because that is what happened to them. In 1853, the Gadsden Purchase changed the southern boundary of the U.S.

Located on the east bank of the Rio Grande, one mile southeast of Radium Springs, (Exit 18 off I-25) Fort Selden's post office was known as Fort Selden from 1866-1877, and again from 1881-1891 (the missing years from 1877 to 1881 indicate the Fort was temporarily abandoned, then permanently in 1990 when the railroad was built). Next it was known as Leasburg from 1891-1898, as Selden from 1911-1913, and as Fort Selden from 1913-1923. No post office exists there now.

Organ is fifty-two miles southwest of Alamogordo on US 70/82, another isolated stretch of highway. With a population of about 500, it is also eleven miles northeast of Las Cruces. Listed as “Old and New,” The Place Names of New Mexico by Robert Julan indicates it had a post office from 1881-1895, then again from 1896 to the present. Millions of dollars worth of lead, copper and silver were mined in the camp at the foothills of the Organ Mountains, where as many as 1,800 people lived. The older ranching residents did not take part in the mining operations because they did not have the capital or inclination to mine. Eventually the mines played out, and “old” Organ died. Later “new” Organ was born, and is today a living community. Many of its residents work in Las Cruces or on the White Sands Missile Range. On February 29, 1908, the infamous Pat Garrett was murdered on the road between Organ and Las Cruces. The circumstances surrounding his death remain a mystery.

Tucked into the southern Rio Grande Valley, with the jagged Organ Mountains rising to the east, Las Cruces is the second largest city in New Mexico, the seat of Doña Ana County, and home to the nation's only Chile Institute. This clean, modern metropolis with a population of 72,000 bears many architectural reminders of its rich Spanish heritage.