Cowboy Creates Drive-By Laughter

Half a dozen cowboys are gathered in the kitchen of an Hidalgo County ranch house, where J.D. Hughey is the man of the hour.

Hughey is the fellow, it finally has been revealed, who quietly began adding humorous postscripts to official traffic signs along a certain hinterland highway.

Painted on an old board and wired beneath a “Do Not Pass” warning are the words, “If You Are In Front.”

And elsewhere along the way:

“Running Water . . . But No Electricity or Phone.”

“Dip . . . But Don’t Drool.”

“A Cowboy Is A . . . Cattle Guard.”

“Do Not Pass . . . Gas.”

Hughey doesn’t want to say which of his creations is his favorite. Instead, he finds it quite funny that some signs on the highway warn of running water.

“Running water?” he scoffs. “Why, it hardly ever rains here. That’s the funniest sign on the whole highway, and it’s not even mine.”

He is momentarily perplexed, perhaps offended, when asked what “J.D.” stands for--an impolite question in a part of the country where personal business is personal. Apparently, no one has ever asked him. “Jack Daniels,” he finally replies.

The cowboys laugh. “J.D.” remains a mystery.

Hughey is going on 81 in April, but could pass for a weather-beaten 70. Thin as a rail, he stands straight and can still ride a horse for the better part of a day.

In any conversation, he doesn’t talk much; he has battled cancer for a while and wears a nose guard to conceal the aftereffects of surgery two years ago.

Hughey is none too clear about exactly when he started painting and putting up the postscripts, except to guess that it was “three or four years ago.”

The impetus, he says, was a set of skid marks on the highway, about seven dirt-road miles from his ranch house. “Looked like somebody put on the brakes because they saw a deer or a javelina,” he says. “After I saw those tracks, I figured if I put up some funny signs, traffic would slow down a little.”

Actually, traffic is light on this highway.

Running south from Interstate 10 west of Lordsburg, the highway dissects the flat Animas Valley and connects with the town of Animas.

It crosses a cattle guard, keeps going 35 miles south toward the Mexican border, and comes to an abrupt end at the defunct town of Cloverdale--six miles short of the international boundary. The only way to get back is to travel the same highway.

It is along this lonely stretch that Hughey has placed his signs, and they are confined to a 13-mile stretch south of the entrance to his ranch road.

The road was once known as N.M. 338, a state highway to its southern end. In 1992, maintenance and ownership of the section south from Animas was transferred to Hidalgo County. The numerical designation was retained, and it is now County Road 338.

The state decided to leave its traffic control signs on the highway, said Patricia May, an area maintenance supervisor for the state Highway and Transportation Department at Animas.

“If the [Hughey] signs had been there when it was a state highway, I would have had to report it as vandalism,” she says.

“The state wouldn’t allow something that would be a distraction, that could cause a driver to miss a turn or hit a cow and have a wreck. If that happened, we could be sued.”

The county apparently has no problem with the signs.

A few years after the county took over the highway, Hughey’s first signs appeared: “Do Not Pass . . . Out Wino,” “Do Not Pass . . . Gravy to Fatso.”

No one professed to know who was responsible. “It still was a lot of secrecy,” says Bill Cavaliere, an Hidalgo County deputy sheriff. “As much as I patrol these roads, I never caught him in the act.”

Not that Cavaliere was out to arrest Hughey. “There’s never been any kind of legal question,” Cavaliere says. “We’ve never gotten a call from anybody complaining about it.

“The signs are attached to the post, not to the sign itself,” Cavaliere says. “I don’t think what he does could be called defacing a sign.”

People who travel the road regularly--mostly area ranchers--say they see no problem with the signs. Not many strangers come down the highway, since it doesn’t lead to another town.

The signs provided several snickers along the otherwise featureless highway, traveled mostly by employees and visitors to the giant Gray Ranch deep in New Mexico’s Bootheel.

“It was several years before I knew who was putting them up,” says County Commissioner Johnny Hatch, who represents the district. “I don’t see that it’s hurting anything, personally.”