How the West Was Won

Like a believer
gripping prayer beads,
reciting what I  had learned
about AC, DC,
propane and plumbing.
Mari and I hitched our
new/used Casita and,
since I was not a young man
and already out west,  drove east,
heading toward New Mexico,
which is only a couple of hours away.




More precisely, we went to Las Cruces,
straddling the Rio Grande
which is not so grande at this time of year.

We had reserved a shady spot

at a shady RV campground
overlooking the river valley.
It did not work out that way.
We were assigned to a tired tree.

South of us, a monster motor home
serving as a kennel to about four dogs
the size of horses seemed to have nothing to do
but to take their dogs down to the dog run.
It was a display of enormous doggie bags.

Next door, a delightful couple from Connecticut
joined us for a drink at the cabana overlooking Las Cruces
at sunset, and we discovered commonalities across the continent.

They had already visited Mesilla,
earlier in the day, as we had done, years ago,
so when they left for Silver City,
we went back in history, to Mesilla.

(Mesilla:  you may say, "meh-SEE-ya".)

For hundreds of years before the Spanish came north in 1598, Native Americans traded where Mesilla is today.  When the West was inundated with white travelers going from San Antonio to San Diego, they almost surely went through Mesilla.

Once Mesilla was the capital of Arizona Territory, and the focus of a dispute between Mexico and the U.S., claimed by both, and settled only when the U.S. made the Gadsden Purchase, a part of America in which we now live.  The agreement was signed in Mesilla; still Native American, still Spanish, still English (if English we be:  I'm not.)

Billy the Kid went to trial for murder in Mesilla
in a building at the corner of the Town Square.
We, on another corner of the Square,
had a most marvelous meal at Josefina's Old Gate Cafe,
around the corner from the church.

We were entranced with Josefina's "Open House"; apparently a term for a traditional gathering place with unbounded hospitality.

After returning to Tucson, I looked up Josefina's online, and silently cursed the clods who had visited there and complained that it had too much Southwest food, and not enough meat and potatoes.

I, in fact had potatoes:  Green Chile Papas under a covering of fluffy eggs.  I do not know what New Mexicans do to their famous green chiles, but whatever it is, they do it magically.

We drifted lazily from Mesilla to Las Cruces,
enjoying the Cultural Center and the Museum downtown, the latter showing a gorgeous display of current Japanese pottery, but as fine as the pottery was, I was still thinking of the Green Chile Papas, perhaps because we were traveling, and like larger armies, I travel on my stomach, too.

Our trial run with our teeny-tiny travel trailer was a success.  It might have been that getting in and out of bed was an adventure in contortion that might have been more fun some decades ago, and that everything fits into place quite like bookmarks fit into a book, but we had a fine time!  We headed for home thinking about how many places there were within a short day's drive that probably had shade trees waiting for us to cozy up to them.

Even when I found myself on the ground, under the prow of our little bubble, trying to find the valve that opened the drain for the shower, I tried to think of it as the kind of learning experience that Best Western does not provide.  Nor, I noticed, did the guy from Houston with the stupendous diesel rig towing a mid-sized car have to crawl under his mobile mansion to open a drain.  Maybe, I concluded, Texans do not shower on Tuesdays.  Maybe he had a guy who came in on Wednesdays to open the shower drain.