Probing Desert Skies

The A.B. HaBoob Observatory sits high atop "A" Mountain, groping the desert sky for celestial objects. The observatory is named for Professor HaBoob, known as Abie to friends and colleagues, who left Saudi Arabia to come to America in his quest to discover heavenly bodies. Unable to reach his ultimate destination--Hollywood--he settled for El Paso, Texas, where he had an unfortunate encounter with the lawman Pat Garrett. One night in the Acme Saloon, Abie attempted to spit chewing tobacco--something he had never attempted before--into a brass spittoon at the edge of the bar's foot rail. Unfortunately, he missed and hit Garrett's newly-polished black leather boot instead. The lawman drew down on HaBoob, but the wily professor distracted Garrett by citing a little-known fact about the ancient Greeks: they used to test their eyesight by seeing if they could spot a dim star directly beside one of the main stars in the handle of the Big Dipper. Outside in the street, while Garrett tried to see the minor star, Abie slipped into a back alley, eventually fleeing up the Rio Grande to Mesilla, New Mexico, where a realtor told him about the vacant land on "A" Mountain. The professor bought the land for the site of his new observatory, and the rest is history.