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A Las Cruces Resident Shares Memories Of Being A Radio Host And Truck Driver

Anthony Moreno

From the being a radio announcer to driving a truck across North America, one Las Cruces resident stays busy, and enjoys life to the fullest.

Every week, 86-year old Lois Jones performs for an hour on the organ with Marietta Holmes on the piano.  The duo perform tunes from the 1920s-1950s before an audience at the Good Samaritan Society, Las Cruces Village Auditorium.

Jones says she spends hours prepping the playlist each week, so that they keep their set fresh. She says she remembers being a child in Las Cruces, when there were only two paved roads in the city, and her parents owned and a Café on Main and Picacho during the mid-1930s.

“It was the Polar Bear Root Beer Café; my mother was the carhop. She had tables and of course the counter and they had one helper, a waitress that helped them.”

After leaving Las Cruces in her youth, Jones later married her high school sweetheart, and they later raised a family together. Jones recalls what her husband suggested to her when they first moved to Las Cruces together bringing Jones back to her childhood hometown.  

Credit Lois Jones
Lena Matthews in the Polar Bear Root Beer Cafe in Las Cruces. Lois Jones' parents Lena and Argus Matthews operated the Cafe in the mid 1930s.

After returning to the Mesilla Valley, Jones says she found work as a radio announcer at a local radio station after a woman at an unemployment office had her read a local advertisement for a grocery store.

“She flicked her little finger…she said they need a radio announcer at radio station KOBE,” Jones said.

While working at the radio station, Lois Jones says she helped out with on-air weekend birthday celebrations with Gene Savage on guitar and herself on the piano.

“We did what they called the birthday party in Las Cruces. The local ice cream parlor would furnish ice cream, one of the bakeries would furnish the beautiful cakes, and F.W. Woolworth gave a cute little prize, five-center I’m sure, and we did that all of those years,” says Jones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xVJk-rTVtU&feature=youtu.be

Lois Jones and her husband later moved to Missouri, and they became pilots and they also started a trucking company where they began hauling for the US government, and major companies. Jones remembers life on the road. 

“Our first load to haul for the U.S. government was an atomic activator for the scorpion submarine, and the value of it was tremendous, and if we weren’t busy with them we hauled for Walt Disney,” says Jones.

Credit Anthony Moreno
Lois Jones and Marietta Holmes performing at Good Samaritan Society-Las Cruces Village. The duo perform Thursdays at 2pm.

Jones says that she and her husband also became friends with iconic businessman Sam Walton, who parked his plane near theirs in Missouri. Jones and her husband hauled freight for Walton’s company for some time.

“And then he (Walton) got big enough to buy his own trucks,” says Jones (laughing).  

As Lois Jones reflects on her life, she says she has fond memories, just like the ones she and Marietta Holmes bring back to folks each Thursday afternoon when they perform. 

Anthony Moreno serves as the Director of Content at KRWG Public Media. He also is host and executive producer for "Fronteras-A Changing America" and "Your Legislators" on KRWG-TV.