Saturday, October 02, 2004
A travelogue. Like many towns in the Southwest or the Great Plains, Willcox is dying. The downtown strip has numerous boarded up stores, the homes are rundown, the town is too poor to afford street signs. I was there Friday as part of our roadshow seeking Spanish artifacts. A small crowd, one nice artifact (a Mexican spur). Afterwards a dreadful meal at a skuzzy diner. Then the night spent at a bed and breakfast at Cochise that started out as a hotel built in 1882. The best part was the orange tomcat Bingo who liked to be held. The worst part was the water- Willcox is located on the salt flats and the water was sooo nasty. It tasted like someone had dumped baking soda into it, and the texture was about the same. This morning for breakfast (for me a lovely frozen bagel!) Sally served up a glass of that water with two ice cubes. One sip and I was horrified- how could anyone get used to it?
We got to Lordsburg, New Mexico at around noon. If anything, this town was worse off. Our event was held at the Civic Center where a recent leaking roof had resulted in an obnoxious moldy smell. You got used to it after a while. We were kinda not expecting anyone to show up and all of a sudden a crowd arrived, with many bringing really cool artifacts. My favorite was a genuine Spanish musket (an escopeta or fowling piece) with beautiful ornamentation on the wooden portions. It dated to 1750 to 1800 and at some time apparently fell into the hands of an Apache, who later left it standing upright in a crack in a cliff face, where a ranchhand found it in the 1940s.
On the way back tonight we stopped at a diner in Benson and I had a grilled cheese and lemon meringue pie. Tasty!
I saw a cute cowboy in here.
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We got to Lordsburg, New Mexico at around noon. If anything, this town was worse off. Our event was held at the Civic Center where a recent leaking roof had resulted in an obnoxious moldy smell. You got used to it after a while. We were kinda not expecting anyone to show up and all of a sudden a crowd arrived, with many bringing really cool artifacts. My favorite was a genuine Spanish musket (an escopeta or fowling piece) with beautiful ornamentation on the wooden portions. It dated to 1750 to 1800 and at some time apparently fell into the hands of an Apache, who later left it standing upright in a crack in a cliff face, where a ranchhand found it in the 1940s.
On the way back tonight we stopped at a diner in Benson and I had a grilled cheese and lemon meringue pie. Tasty!
I saw a cute cowboy in here.
