Billy the Kid

The town of Lincoln, New Mexico, looks very much today the way it did in 1876 when the Lincoln County War flared up. On one hand were Dolan and Murphy, who ran a store on the main drag, when another store operated by Tunstall and McSween opened up down the street. One of the key figures in the conflict between the two sides was a young man who has come to be known as Billy the Kid. He was known to be handy with a gun and was blamed for several murders.

He tried to exonerate himself, but the governor of the territory at the time, General Lew Wallace (author of Ben-Hur), weaseled out of his promise to support him. Billy was holed up in the courthouse which had been the Dolan store and held for trial.

The Lincoln Courthouse, Formerly the Dolan Store

Billy managed to get a gun and shoot the two deputies who were guarding him, J. W. Bell and Bob Ollinger. He managed to escape from Lincoln, but was finally gunned down in Fort Sumner by Sheriff Pat Garrett. (We didn’t make it to Fort Sumner, but I’m saving it for a future trip.)

Below is a bullet hole supposedly from Billy’s gun while he was trying to escape from the Lincoln Courthouse.

A Bullet Hole from Billy’s Gun?

Martine and I enjoyed Lincoln. The whole town is more or less devoted to the legend of Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War.

At the Roswell UFO Museum

One of the highlights of our recent New Mexico trip was a visit to the Roswell UFO Museum, where Martine and I cavorted with certain other out-of-state visitors. We had been there briefly in 2003, but we had to be in Albuquerque before nightfall, and it was several hundred miles of hard driving. This time, we spent more time and were royally entertained.

Whether or not UFOs landed in Roswell on a July night seventy years ago almost doesn’t matter. There are so many millions and billions and trillions of stars that there must be life of some sort out there. Whether we will ever see it is a matter of conjecture. Martine believes it really happened and that the military put a lid on it. But then, she was a civilian military employee in New Jersey and California for some eighteen years and would not put such behavior past them.

Martine Carefully Reading the Displays

There is plenty to read in the numerous displays about the Roswell incident—enough to fill a 500-page thickly packed volume. Much of the information is from the next door neighbor of the guy who witnessed it, or his nephew seven times removed. It doesn’t altogether invalidate the information, but it does make my antennae twitch a bit.

I myself have never seen any UFOs or constructed any sculpture out of mashed potatoes. Still, I can take a tolerant view of all this—if for no other reason that it is enjoyable. I regularly read science fiction (I am now reading Harry Harrison’s Deathworld 3), and am an aficionado of sci-fi movies. I’m even a bit of a Trekkie, though I prefer the original series and its sequel with Jean-Luc Picard. Let me loose in a place like the UFO Museum, and I will have a good time, irrespective of any assaults on my credibility.

Will Trumpf’s Wall Keep These Aliens Out? I Fear Not

If you find yourself in the wilds of Southeastern New Mexico, you could do worse than visit Roswell. And you can justify it by attaching to it a visit to nearby Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

It Was a Fortuitous Coincidence

In May 2016, two things occurred that greatly affected my life. For starters, I was requested to work part time—just two days a week rather than the full five. Right around the same time, the MTA Expo Line opened, connecting Santa Monica and West LA with Downtown. As I get closer to full retirement, I suddenly find myself with places to go and things to do.

Oh, I could have taken my car, but I would have had to pay a fortune to park it in some narrow lot where it would get badly dented. With a Senior TAP card, I can now go downtown for thirty-five cents (seventy-five cents during rush hour). The train takes me to the 7th Street Metro Center, from where I could take other trains to Long Beach, Pasadena, North Hollywood, and East Los Angeles.

Most important, it let me off just two blocks south of the Central Library with its eight floors of books and its cozy nooks for reading. Then, I found out that I could even take out books that were marked reference only, if I could convince a librarian that I was serious (and I can).

Final Destination of the Expo Line: The 7th Street Metro Center

If I had stayed at home instead, even with my face buried in a book, I would only have gotten on Martine’s nerves. Instead, I started the mindfulness meditation classes held on Thursdays at 12:30 pm. I was able to explore Chinatown and Little Tokyo as well as Universal City Walk and South Pasadena; and I have filed away several interesting destinations for possible future trips.

I know many people who not only know nothing about Los Angeles’s public transportation system, but are afraid to try. They are afraid of getting lost or being forced to sit next to a snooling bum.

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Field of California Poppies

After a wet winter, such as this has been, there is a brief explosion of bright orange for a few weeks in the Spring. Don’t worry: It’s not Donald J. Trumpf. It is the California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica) in all its glory. Today, my friend Bill Korn and I went to the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve in the high desert valley running east and west between I-5 and California 14. We took separate routes and arrived there within fifteen minutes of each other.

The California Poppy is the official state flower of California: It is considered an offense to pick any of them. They are truly lovely, though, and the Poppy Preserve was crawling with thousands of people who came out to wander in fields of flowers. There were one-hour lines outside the bathrooms and the portable toilets.

We took several trails and saw the pointillist dots of bright orange extending in several directions.

Poppy Fields with San Gabriel Mountains in Background

I’m happy that I was able to work only half a day doing taxes before making my getaway. It was a good day!

The Cloud Forest Around Bellavista

All through this horrible tax season Easter Week, my mind has been floating free, dreaming of the things I want to see on my next vacation. I have already written about Quito, the Quechua crafts market at Otavalo, and the tourist railroads of Ecuador. Today my dreams are turning toward the high cloud forests of the Andes, over a mile in altitude, with their exotic birds such as the lemon-spectacled tanager, the pale-browed tinamou, the fasciated tiger-heron, and thousands more.

If my brother agrees, I’d like to spend a few days at a lodge in the cloud forest, perhaps such as the Tandayapa Bird Lodge west of Quito. A few days hiking in the misty forests and looking for exotic multi-colored birds would be soothing to my soul.

Mountain Tanager

There are several patches of cloud forest in the Ecuadorian Andes. It would be fun to choose from among them. The trip is months away, but it is at times like this, when otherwise I would be under heavy stress, that I let my thoughts fly south.