Follow the Dirt Road in Your Soul to Humbug Mountain

Lester Holt In My Living Room

By Carol Mell, 3-03-08

	Lester Holt and the Today Show staff munched on celery and cookies at our house awhile back. Lester seemed like a real regular kind of guy. He even likes dogs.

“I’m so jealous Lester Holt is coming to your house,” my grown daughter said. “Of course, I’d be more jealous if it were Matt Lauer.”

In one of those strange, almost surreal things that can happen around Taos, Lester Holt, host of the weekend NBC “Today” show, was coming to our house to investigate the Taos Hum and to talk to my husband, a Hum hearer.

Five years ago, I wrote a column about how poor Wayne heard the Hum. (http://www.newwest.net/main/article/taos_hum_or_gods_call_annoying_either_way/)Wayne He would get up and wander the house checking the refrigerator, hot water heater, looking for the low rumbling “hmmmmm” that was keeping him awake most nights. I made fun of the fact that he’s a minister and listens for voices from the spheres but once he’d finally heard one he couldn’t turn it off. Poor guy, he’s not the kind to seek attention, but he and my children often served as fodder for my columns. It’s a wonder they are still speaking to me.

We solved the problem by putting a hissing humidifier in the bedroom. That’s the story, the whole thing.

Our state newspaper revisited the issue in December and Lester found it.

“What’ll we do with the dogs,” Wayne asked me a few days before we were to receive the New Yorkers. He didn’t have to clarify. Our peke-a-poo-a-terry-hauhau curls herself cutely on the back of the couch, hour after hour just like a cat staring out the window. Then one bird lands, where the birds have been landing all day, on an unauthorized twig, or someone across the arroyo goes into their back yard, or a car backfires and she erupts into ear-splitting shrieks.

“We’ll put her in the car,” I said. I was more worried about my big German Shepherdish dog doing the big Spring shedding thing. I figured the New Yorkers would be wearing black as New Yorkers always do.

What with being overdue for a paint job, a new leak in the living room since that last big snow, broken kitchen tiles from my daughter’s flamenco practice and a smudgy rug, I am nervous when people visit my house, especially New York national television kind of people.

So, I dusted and vacuumed, picked up the books and magazines and hung up some of my own photographs, the ones for sale in a gallery. National exposure, I reasoned, might bring me a sale.

The day got off to a poor start when the big dog threw up on the rug but I needn’t of worried, Lester, it turns out, is a dog lover. He was fresh off the Westminster Dog Show and on a first name basis with Uno, the first beagle to take the top prize. We stood in the dining room by the sliding glass door where my big mutt, Otto Galumph, was sitting outside wondering why he wasn’t invited to the party.

“Did you ever have a beagle,” he asked.

“I did,” I said, “the only pure bred dog I ever had. Now, I keep mutts.”

So does Lester. He’s down to one now, but he takes him to a park for runs and keeps plastic bags in his pockets to comply with New York’s pooper-scooper law.

What a regular guy!

“So, how’d you find Wayne,” I asked.

“Well,” Lester replied, as he munched on a cookie, “we do this unresolved mystery story now and then, like Jack the Ripper. I googled unresolved mystery and the Taos Hum just popped up.”

As Wayne hummed in the living room with Lester, the cameraman pointed a light at my leaky ceiling, captured none of my photographs and later took a clear shot of my refrigerator covered with kids’ art and broken magnets. He was wrapping up when Lester asked if Otto could come in. The dog sat prettily while Lester kneeled down to scratch his ears. Lester never knew about the screaming mimi in the car and didn’t seem to mind the dog hairs in his jacket.

On Sunday, we watched the Today Show with Lester on that New York street with the usual crowds pushing against the barriers waving and shouting.

“Why do people do that?” Wayne asked.

“So they can be on TV,” I answered.

“You mean they wait around in the cold on the chance that they might be on for a second?”

“That’s right, and here all you had to do was stay home and wait for the TV to come to you.”

Later that morning at church, someone said, “Boy, was I relieved to see that your refrigerator looks as messy as mine.”

I guess she just wanted to know that, despite our national television debut, Wayne and I are still just regular guys.

A video clip of the “Today” show in Taos can be found at http://abqmedia.com/griffin.

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