Memories of New Mexico

Bill Ward

Having a rather yucky afternoon I watched John Wayne in one of his cavalry movies, Rio Grande. John Wayne, to me, was the one actor that could play a cavalryman and do it well. I liked him and Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and all the other cowboy and soldier actors of my youth. I felt then and still do that the era of the horse soldier was one of the most romantic of our country’s history. I loved Saturday afternoon. I was given a 50-cent-a-week allowance. With that 50 cents I could go to the Castle and then the Princess Theaters. And at one of them I would have enough left to buy a bag of popcorn.

The Castle was not air-conditioned, the Princess was. Castle would play serials then, usually a cowboy epic of some sort. The youngest of the county went there if nowhere else on Saturday. The Princess was air-conditioned so the older crowd went there. And the Princess also usually had the A movies of the day where the Castle was usually B or C in reality. Both theaters were owned and operated by the same family and I felt they did a good job at it.

I have always like John Wayne and his Army and cowboy movies. I never cared too much for his non-western movies but went just because it was John Wayne. Life was hard on the frontier in those days, many lives were lost fighting the Indians of the Plains as well as those up north. But to me life in the Cavalry would have been the epitome of life during this time.

I liked soldier movies when I was young, both the western type and the World War II movies that Hollywood put out by the dozens during the war. When I went to New Mexico for my last three years of college I found I was in the very best place to live my lifelong dream. Western New Mexico University was in Silver City, N.M. Silver City had at least one claim to fame in that Billy The Kid was born there. His mother was not necessarily a pillar of society in town and at the ripe age of 14 he knifed and killed his first victim who had called his mother a name he did not like. That, and I found an older gentleman who remembered Indian attacks on his house when he was young and reveled in telling us all about it. I loved every word of his stories.

Fort Bayard was an Army hospital base and had a lot of veterans who needed hospitalization, usually for respiratory problems. They had a very old cemetery there and a caretaker who was very happy to tell stories and allow outsiders to look at the book of burials there. It was also a National Cemetery so many veterans found their last resting place in the New Mexico sand. I would wander the old section and read the head stones. Many were Unknown, Or Unknown Civilian Red Canyon Massacre, Trooper Smith 7th US Cavalry, even an English Lord who came out to see the Indians but they seem to have seen him first. His family sent a huge head stone over for his grave and it is still there in all its glory.

The west of my college years was not all that far removed from the west I loved in the movies. There were still certain aspects of the old west around. Everyone had a rifle and shotgun hanging from the back window of their truck. A few still wore sidearms in plain view when in town. There were few robberies or burglaries in Silver City when I was there. Those who got into trouble with firearms were usually those idiots who went to the University and came from the East Coast, mostly New Jersey. Boy, were those New Jersey characters stupid about guns.

Jessie’s was a restaurant where Billy The Kid was supposed to have knifed his first victim. And I will always remember Jessie’s hot sauce. Hot was a mild word for it. It would turn the silverware black if left in it overnight. One did not use much of it on anything. It was HOT, as hot as anything I have ever had or care to have.

There were many things around Silver City that reminded many of the “good old days.” Grant County was a huge area compared to counties in Indiana. They had several ghost towns around and they were always great for an afternoon outing. Many mines and open pit copper mines were around too. It was what I would have felt the real old west would have been. I really enjoyed my three years there and would love to go back sometime before I am unable to travel. Maybe I just may make it some day.



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