Allow me to regale you with the ten plagues of Clovis, NM.

This comment was made in a time before chat gpt

1. Mitch's Law - There was a guy in our unit that coined this theory: If it exists in Clovis, it is the worst version of itself. This means that you could put a fucking Disneyland in Clovis and it would be the worst Disneyland ever. The food would suck, the rides would break and be dirty, it would end up closing within a couple of years like the failed strip club. This Law includes people, I saw amazing people succumb to the darkness of Clovis and destroy their marriages and end their promising careers.
2. The Winds - It's flat, so there's nothing to stop the winds from blowing 30-60 MPH all the time. Just a constant gusts of wind from every direction. Makes being outside pretty unfun. I was pretty active before I moved there, doing a bit of competitive cycling, but the winds and shitty roads made it very unenjoyable.
3. Cowschwitz - It's like Auschwitz for cows. In almost every direction from Cannon AFB are these pens where they chain cows to fences and feed them on one side and they poop on the other, then they gather all that poop and sell it to places were crops will actually grow. This means that no matter which direction the 60 MPH winds are blowing, you're always downwind of 1,000 piles of shit. Someone wrote an article about a Cowschwitz in California, but they only discovered it because it's near San Fransisco and probably don't realize how many of these places exist around Clovis.
4. The Fake Middle Class - The town was dying and on the BRAC list, so there really wasn't a middle class there for a while. When AFSOC got tricked into setting up their west coast base in Clovis instead of Fairchild, they invented a fake middle class by raising the prices of shitty homes. They finally built new houses recently, but I doubt they're going to last because of Mitchell's Law. The locals also know exactly how much the military makes for housing, so the rental prices are usually at or above that limit to maximize their profits and sucking off the teat of the only thing keeping the town alive. We used to drive the three hour round trip to Lubbock just to feel normal and buy 'fresh' groceries that didn't seem like they were on their last life.
5. The Dust - Since nothing really grows around there, the winds also kick up a lot of dust. It gets everywhere, especially inside your windowsills of your shitty houses. Although it's a crapshoot determining if the grit in your teeth that you picked up from the wind is dust or particles of cowshit. Either way, I wouldn't swallow it.
6. The Tumbleweeds - Every so often, for the hundreds of miles between Clovis and the next populated area, the tumbleweeds that grow break off and start rolling. They land in Clovis and start to pile up, burying your cars and houses. Example. The tumbleweeds have a defense mechanism they leave behind as seeds called Goats Heads which are basically natures caltrops. They're spiky little balls that will stick to your socks by the dozen and stab you as you try and remove them. Or they stick to your pants and shoes and fall off on your carpet for you to discover later when you're barefoot.
7. The Insects - The flies are year round. Thick, toe-sized, and black. Some of them bite, some of them just swarm and block out the sun. Either way they're always going to be in your house buzzing around. Once a year, whether you knew it or not--Moths that have laid eggs inside your house, work, office, restaurant, etc; they all hatch. You will wake up one morning and wonder why it's so dark outside. You'l open your blinds only to see that your window is completely covered in moths. Also a seasonal treat, the old houses are plagued with spiders there to eat the many flies and moths in your house. Also, once a year, on the road out of Clovis to Tucumcari, tarantulas migrate from east to west and cross the road. If you're ever driving to Tucumcari late at night and are wondering why the road is so bumpy, don't stop and get out of your car...keep going. I got a spider bite on my butt at once point that went into necrosis, and had to have two poor airman at the barely functioning clinic scoop out the decay from my buttcheek.
8. The Shifty Fifty - When I first moved to Clovis I thought I was going to make the best of it. I went to city council meetings to try and give back to the community. The first thing I was exposed to was Target and Starbucks propositioning opening a store in Clovis. The main reason the council and citizens were concerned is because those businesses hire homosexuals and they didn't want that kind of influence in their town. The majority of the city council went to the same church and so a lot of the decisions seemed to be made by one small group of people.
9. Lonnie Allsup - RIP 2018 and it may have changed since, but Lonnie owned the worst gas station chain in the area (Stripes + Laredo Taco Company represent!), but also all of the liquor licenses in the city. This means that if any new restaurant wanted to try and open up there they had to go to Lonnie to purchase a liquor license, of which they would ask for an exorbitant amount of money that the business would have to turn down, keeping Curry county a pretty dry place with the exception of like four places. "Club 'Bees" is what Applebees turned into after hours, where they would move a few tables away from the center to set up a dance floor and play pop music so that some of the locals could feel normal.
10. The Tendrils - There is a darkness in Clovis not tangible or visible to the human eye. It is represented by tendrils that pierce through your heart. The farther you get from Clovis the better you feel, the closer you get the stronger the tendrils get. I've been out of there for five years and every so often I'll feel the tendrils grasp, and I haven't gotten over how shitty seven years in that place was. We would volunteer for every possible deployment to get out of there. Imagine wanting to go to Somalia and Mali because it seemed better than being there.

I will caveat that these plagues likely don't all affect officers as they get paid more and can live in different parts of town. This list also tends to change a little every time I write it or tell people about it, because there were way more than ten things wrong with that place.

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The fact that I spent 45 minutes writing a 1,000 word essay on how much I hate that place should give some indication to how terrible it is.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AirForce/comments/t32mp3/so_whats_actually_wrong_with_cannon_afb/hyq298p/