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Growing up in historic Silver City, New Mexico
with Billy the Kid, Geronimo, and Roy Rogers

An old cover takes me home — Part 1

© 2008 by Bob Ingraham

During a serendipitous internet search a few years ago, my monitor screen filled with the image of an old envelope (a cover to us stamp collectors) carrying a Silver City, New Mexico circle date stamp (CDS) cancellations from 1895. Other collectors might have granted the cover only a glance, but I grew up in Silver City, so I bought it.

For me, this cover evoked strong childhood memories of a region rich in the history of the Old West. Silver City, in southwestern New Mexico, is saturated with the kind of history that fired the imagination of the little boy that I was in the early 1950s. It was a world of cowboys and Indians and desperadoes.

For the first few years my family, who had moved from New York State to New Mexico in 1949, lived not in Silver City, but in Arenas Valley, six miles to the east, a tiny rural community that was mostly brown, except during the rainy season that always started in early July, when it become verdant. Today, our place would be called a hobby farm: We had chickens, bantams, rabbits, horses, white rats, and horses, and once even took in a stray donkey. We had various dogs and cats, and at times we briefly held captive local bullsnakes, horned lizards (which we innocently called "horny toads"), and once even raised a baby jackrabbit to plump adulthood before releasing it, no doubt to become dinner for a hungry coyote.

Behind my home, unbroken prairie rose gently to the foothills of the Gila National Forest, which stretched for scores of miles to the north. In my own backyard, I often unearthed shards of Anasazi pottery. Once, after a thunderstorm, I found a white stone arrowhead. My friends and I could hike to an old army rifle range near Fort Bayard, home of the famous "Buffalo Soldiers," and dig from the warm earth heavy lead bullets used by the U.S. Cavalry during the so-called "Indian Wars."

Today, Silver City is known as a retirement community and arts centre, but in the late 1800s mining was king, and the area was peopled by miners and their camp followers — and by such notorious characters as Billy the Kid and Geronimo.

Billy the Kid

The historical record on Billy the Kid is less than clear. His birth name, apparently, was Henry McCarty. He moved with his parents to Silver City as a young boy; his mother was a washerwoman at the Southern Hotel. Billy was arrested at age 12 for stealing clothing from a Chinese laundry, escaped from jail, and pursued a brief career as a gunman. Read more information on the back of the postcard.

Popular myth portrays Billy as the slayer of 21 men, but historical evidence shows that he killed four or possibly five men, perhaps in self defense. Billy was himself gunned down by Sheriff Pat Garrett in 1881.

Postcard from Bob Ingraham's collection

Geronimo

Geronimo was an Apache leader born in 1829. It was his misfortune to participate in the last chapters of his people's history before they were overwhelmed by their own Holocaust — the westward migration of American society.

The U.S. Army attempted to confine Geronimo and other Apaches to reservations, but he escaped and led a series of bloody raids that did not end until he and his warriors surrendered for the last time in 1886. Some of those raids had taken near Silver City area.

In 1894, he was taken to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he lived for the rest of his life and was a popular attraction at many fairs. Geronimo died in 1908.

National Archives photo

I was probably more familiar with this period of early Southwest history than most of my peers. My father was editor of a weekly newspaper, the Silver City Enterprise, which had been published since 1882. His office walls were lined with thick, brown binders containing back issues of the paper, and I often spent time browsing through them.

Youthful dramatics

The drama of those early pioneer days insinuated itself into my fantasies. In our play, my friends and I easily assumed the personas of Billy the Kid or of Pat Garrett. We engaged in many make-believe shootouts and weren't fussy about historical accuracy: "Billy" gunned down "Pat" at least as often as "Pat" ambushed "Billy." And, of course, the imaginary bullets caused no pain, and our often-heroic "deaths" were immediately followed by "resurrections". (Years later in Vietnam, I would learn from personal experience that bullets do indeed hurt, and the death is a permanent condition, but that's another story.)

Sometimes our singing-cowboy movie heroes would join the fun. We learned about them mostly through comic books, which we collected and traded by the dozen, or sometimes at the movies.

BOYHOOD HEROES — At the right, Roy Rogers and Gene Autrey comic-book covers. I probably read both of them.

I preferred being "Roy Rogers," but I could cope with assuming the role of "Gene Autry," at least for a short time.

Silver City Bonanza

Roy lost my allegiance for a time when another singing cowboy, Rex Allen (see photo, below left), visited Silver City in person, probably to promote his 1951 film, Silver City Bonanza, which is set in Silver City, Arizona (despite the fact that there is no Silver City, Arizona!) and was filmed at two locations in California.

Imagine my boundless joy when, during his appearance in front of City Hall on Bullard Street, Rex Allen suddenly drew and fired his pair of Colt six-guns into the air, no doubt using blanks, but very impressive blanks they were. However, I doubt that Rex could ever have beaten Roy, or Gene, or even Billy the Kid in a fast-draw contest, because he crossed his arms to draw, grabbing the pistol on his left hip with his right hand, and vice versa. Now in terms of human mechanics, that just can't be an efficient way to grab a holstered pistol! In the Old West, that fancy move in a gunfight would have guaranteed the gunfighter a short trip to Boot Hill. Nevertheless, I started wearing my own toy Colts backwards too, and became adept at my own "Rex Allen fast draw," at least in my mind. Could I have outgunned Billy the Kid? You bet, pardner!

In wandering the hills and valleys of the area, we easily imagined that the ghosts of Geronimo and his warriors lurked behind every yucca and stone outcropping. But sometimes, dressed in loin cloths (towels held up by a belts) and adorned with warpaint (Mom's red lipstick), we took the role of the Apache warrriors. Our "Apache" weapons were spears made of yucca stalks, often tipped with steel spikes, the points of which we hammered flat and filed to murderous points and edges, and bows and arrows made from whatever materials were handy, and packed hunting knives which today would get you arrested on any urban street. We often carried our Daisy BB guns, too, and make no mistake: they were dangerous weapons which we used with care, but not with any particular concern for birds and lizards, which we murdered with abandon.

Part 2 — An old cover takes me home