From a story in the April issue of @newmexicomag by @jgwheel about Hi-D-Ho Drive In, in @visitalamogordo . @jgwheel writes a beautiful nostalgic look at getting burgers from a classic drive in, where you flash your headlights and a carhop comes out to your car and takes your order. Hi-D-Ho has been around since about 1952 and is a local institution. Mika Myers’ family took over the business in the 1970’s, she remembers cooking burgers there as a kid next to her grandmother, and Mika continues the family legacy running the business (she showed up to work when I was there driving her dad’s 1968 Chevy Camaro). When you visit, be sure to order their world famous Tiger Burger, or other classics, but don’t be in a rush for your food, as @jgwheel recounts a quote from their menu being “not fast but good.” You might even be lucky enough to see some classic cars at this classic drive in.
#foodies #burgers #eatlocal #newmexico #foodtravel
today marks the bittersweet eighth anniversary of ACID WEST. bitter because last week FSG announced they are shuttering the imprint, MCD, that brought this unholy collection into the world. & my editor there, Sean McDonald, was also let go. Sean brought so many great and weird books into the world at @mcdbooks and he took a real flyer on a mangy desert rat from Alamogordo (just look at that old headshot!) who was scribbling in the sand so many obscure rants about the beauties and terrors of New Mexico. the publishing world is less psychedelic without MCD, less smart, less cool. will ACID WEST stay in print? who knows. but i continue to be amazed by how far the book has travelled, how often people come up to me or write to me and tell me it has helped shaped their understanding of our state, our region, our country. thanks to everyone who has picked up the book and taken the trip. MCD is gone and the scruffy kid that wrote this book is mostly grown and going gray but long live desert dirtbags with stories to tell and long live the ACID WEST
some archival pics of NASA history in New Mexico
1- erecting the billboard at White Sands Missile Range (c1950s)/ practicing finding moon rocks at Rio Grande Gorge (1971)
2- crowd at rocket launch for JFK visit to White Sands Missile Range (1963)
4- one of the rhesus monkeys named Albert first shot into space on V2 rockets in New Mexico (1947)
5- first American spacewalk (Astronaut Ed White) while in orbit over New Mexico (1965)/ launch of a V2 rocket at White Sands (c1947)
6 - a model showcasing a firebee drone at Holloman AFB (c1950) / JFK watching a launch at White Sands Missile Range (1963)
7 - Space shuttle Columbia after landing at White Sands (1983) / young girl watches the spaceship land in New Mexico (1983)
8 - Moonrocking at Rio Grande Gorge (1971)
9 - granddaddy with a snake found on the missile range/ granddaddy at the controls of a firebee drone, White Sands (c1958)
10 - Joe Kittinger jumping from a balloon down to New Mexico, testing space suits (1960)
12 - Clint Eastwood wiping blood from his eyes at white sands (Hang Em High 1967)/ Jack Benny riding rocket at White Sands (1951)
13 - HAM the astrochimp, first great ape in space, raised and buried in Alamogordo, NM (1961)
14 - JFK in Mission Control as they study The High Heaven @graywolfpress@nasa
five months of the high heaven. yeehaw. soon i’m headed back into the wide world to spread the gospel of izzy gently. pack your bags. bring your boots and your transistor radio. dust off all your portable televisions. don’t forget to buy the book. it looks good on a shelf. it feels good in your soul. all the cool people are reading it.
see you in Southern New Mexico this weekend! if you are in Cruces, the NMSU event is in the Milton Hall Theater. if you are in Alamo, come on down to Otero Arts for a little Sunday afternoon fellowship. momma will be at the Alamo event and she’ll be more than happy sign your book too😍 (books for sale at both events)
did you know i was wheeled into this world by magic momma in a place called Littlefield, Texas? and it’s a good thing too because it means i qualify for participation in the Texas Book Festival where i will be this very weekend on 11/9 talking moons & cosmic conspiracies with John Scalzi and Christine Bollow. also i wrote much of The High Heaven while riding bikes across Texas in ‘22 chasing the path of totality for a solar eclipse that wouldn’t yet happen for two more years. (see these pics from that trip.) so there’s a lot of Texas in the novel, the kind of Texas you can only get to by drifting far from highways in a wondrous kind of daze chasing future cosmic alignments, etc. there’s a whole big section of the novel called A Texas Picaresque and it’s full of good jokes about Texas but also full of mostly good Texans mostly trying their best because I got a real soft spot for this state where momma wheelered me into existence on her way back to New Mexico. so anyway see yall in ATX real soon?
today is pub day! today we launch The High Heaven into bookstores across the country. i’m so grateful for everywhere the book has already arrived—in the past, present, and future. and i’m especially grateful to all the early readers who have shared their kind words. at long last, you too can hold The High Heaven in your hands 🙏 thanks to everyone @graywolfpress for giving this book life🐺 see you tonight @octaviabooks 6pm 🌕 author photo by 📷 @adriennebattistella
we’re less than a week from the publication of The High Heaven and I wanted to share some of the stuff from the piles of research i did for the book. there are a lot of televisions in the novel and even ads for televisions get discussed and these are a few of the ads i collected that really helped me to see the novel and the strange world in which it begins. i believe we don’t create stories so much as find them and here you can tell The High Heaven was already out there glowing just waiting for me (and now you) to look
Mark your calendars! Joshua Wheeler is taking his debut novel THE HIGH HEAVEN on tour 🐎🌗🛸
🖇️ Link in bio for details!
In 1967, on the night of the first Apollo mission, a child named Izzy is orphaned when the doomsday cult she was born into clashes with the sheriff in the high desert of New Mexico. She’s taken in by a struggling rancher who is trying to keep his mind from falling apart as NASA rocket tests encroach on his outer range. Inspired by the true story of a UFO cult in a village near White Sands, this novel traces Izzy Gently’s whole life: from tragedy on the ranch, through addiction and a rich cast of eccentrics in Texas, to New Orleans, where Izzy is haunted by her past even as she uses lessons from childhood to counsel people who have lost the ability to see the moon.
some scenes from my seven years as a transplant in the big easy, a place that is neither big nor easy but manages somehow to earn the name by being extremely cool even when the temps are extremely not. i saw a headline today that was asking, as the twentieth anniversary of hurricane katrina rolls around, why america continues to subsidize the rebuilding of a city like new orleans that is doomed to sink. to that i say well fuck off you soulless bastard. this city is buoyant even as it is broken and that is a spirit worth holding onto and learning from and cherishing forever and ever amen
finished copies of the novel have landed. the good folks at @graywolfpress called down the heavens to make a little miracle of a book with a silvery spine and end papers of azure and a jacket of many moons. the paper is acid-free 100% recycled wastepaper which means they’ve literally turned another man’s trash into your treasure. there are like a dozen fonts. it weighs about the same as a newborn puppy and feels just as happy to hold. there are four brilliant writers whose nice words are beamed in from the distant reaches of the cosmos (@f.a.flores@kimberlykingparsons@brandon.hobson.7 and Claire Vaye Watkins). i think it is unlikely you will find a prettier book to preorder right now today. i promise it is full of good words arranged in memorable ways. it is the story of one extraordinary woman’s whole life. it is available to read in the near-future but has also been spotted in the distant past, like in the hand of a hippy hitchhiker trying to get to a Willie Nelson show, an event chronicled in the very book he uses to hitch a ride. maybe one day soon this novel will be a part of your past too. i hope so. you can read it or use it to hitch a ride anywhere you like so long as it’s somewhere good.
today marks the 80th anniversary of the Trinity Test, the world’s first atomic bomb blast, in New Mexico. you can read much of my writing about Trinity (for @scihistoryorg@nytopinion@republikmagazin@wepresent ) at the link in my bio or in Acid West. check out @searchlightnm for an update on the new RECA expansion. you can watch a film about the Trinity downwinders @firstwebombednmfilm . if you think you or a deceased family member may be eligible for RECA, follow @trinity_downwinders and subscribe to their newsletter for the most accurate info on when and how to apply. photos are from a hike I took with downwinders, overlooking the Trinity Site. diptychs are by @retosterchi . see all our portraits/profiles of Trinity downwinders at Distillations Magazine (link in story)
