Bourbon Cowboy

The adventures of an urbane bar-hopping transplant to New York.

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Location: New York, New York, United States

I'm a storyteller in the New York area who is a regular on NPR's "This American Life" and at shows around the city. Moved to New York in 2006 and am working on selling a memoir of my years as a greeting card writer, and (as a personal, noncommercial obsession) a nonfiction book called "How to Love God Without Being a Jerk." My agent is Adam Chromy at Artists and Artisans. If you came here after hearing about my book on "This American Life" and Googling my name, the "How to Love God" book itself isn't in print yet, and may not even see print in its current form (I'm focusing on humorous memoir), but here's a sample I've posted in case you're curious anyway: Sample How To Love God Introduction, Pt. 1 of 3. Or just look through the archives for September 18, 2007.) The book you should be expecting is the greeting card book, about which more information is pending. Keep checking back!

Monday, May 05, 2008

Where In The World Is (Or Was) Two Forks, New Mexico?

I was writing today about a horrible evening that I spent with my then-fiancee in a town called Two Forks, New Mexico. We were stranded there in a snowstorm, and when we arrived the only hotel in town was full up. It was too dangerous to drive on to Albuquerque, so we simply slept in my station wagon--with the back seat down, so we were sleeping on a hard metal cargo area--buffeted by wind, windows fogged to opacity, and we had to wake up every ninety minutes or so to turn the engine on and get the heat going again. It was absolutely miserable; number one on my worst road trip moments ever.

Today, however, as I realized that I needed to flesh out the details, I went online and discovered that Two Forks doesn't seem to exist. I know it existed at one time, and that it was actually called Two Forks--because I made a joke at the time about how much less interesting it sounded than 29 Palms, and that they were probably trying to distinguish themselves from those arrogant bastards in TWIN Forks, Idaho. Since I know I was there--the name was scarred into my memory--the only thing I can think is that this tiny town, which existed in 1995, stopped existing some time between 1995 and the advent of Wikipedia.

I know that it would have been along I-10, somewhere just east or just west of Albuquerque. But my usual sources have failed me. Any of you research-minded readers know what to do next? For that matter, does anyone have a good--and possibly decade-old--map of New Mexico? It's not essential for what I'm writing, but now I'm awfully curious what happened.

1 Comments:

Blogger Ellen said...

The USGS place names site shows a Three Forks and a Four Forks, NM. Maybe they've added some forks since you were there?

5/05/2008 11:38 PM  

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