Billy the Kid: the museum Posted on June 20th, 2009 by Lisa Heldke

WILKERSON’S WORLD (Summer 1999)

Editor’s note: Technical difficulties prevent us from presenting you with the entire Summer, 1999 issue of Phil on Hol. However, a recent conversation with Abby Wilkerson, whose column “Wilkerson’s World”  appears as regularly as anything appears in this irregular publication, got us to reminiscing about the Billy the Kid museum she discussed in that issue; I dug it out, and here it is for your (re)reading pleasure.

When traveling to an unfamiliar city, travelers are often inquisitive about the safety and comfort of the public transit system.  The Washington, DC area (where I live-yes, I am a Beltway insider, that’s a geographical fact) is known for its safe, clean, and convenient Metro system.

Here, even the eccentrics try to comport themselves in a manner befitting the dignity of the nation’s capital.  Well, everyone who’s not President, at least.  Or holding basically any kind of elected office. But I digress.  Recently my friend Cindy was headed downtown one weekday morning, surrounded by suits and running shoes as usual, when she began to hear someone singing at the other end of the train.  The singer turned out to be a man in a suit, clutching a pole in one hand and a briefcase in the other-not an unusual sight, except for the satin¹ cape flowing over his conservative suit.  That, and the fact that he was singing a slow dirgelike tune that went like this: “Saaa-tan/Is part of God’s creaaaaa-tion/He should not be me-et/With condemnaaa-tion.”

So DC.  Even our freaks are buttoned down and presentable here.  In Chicago, on the El, people sing, dance, solicit gambling, make out and do all sorts of things without a second glance from anyone.  On the Metro, troublemakers who should know better are ejected from the train for eating a bagel. Propriety is big business here.  We don’t have Satan-worshippers, we have K street lawyer-type liberals pleading for tolerance for Satan.² When we speak of the devil’s advocate it’s not just a figure of speech.

Welcome to Washington.

1.  Satin: see ” Our Fate Was In Her Hands,” Philosophers on Holiday, vol II no.3. Coincidence? I think not!

2.  Not to be confused with “Sympathy for the Devil.”

TRAVELS WITH CHRIS

My big travel adventure this summer was with my brother Chris.¹ We spent some time in Albuquerque and Santa Fe with the editors of this publication (we have to hold our staff meetings somewhere-where do you think your subscription money goes?), and then took a couple of days to drive to Dallas, where he lives on a ranch.  I was in Albuquerque for the National Women’s Studies Association, where Chris astutely observed that there were many attractive women, and hardly any other men, and yet somehow he might have a lot of competition.

We all engaged in some playful world traveling,² including Mecke Nagel, who went to the plaza with us one afternoon.  She took one look at the gun rack in Chris’s truck and asked, “Chris, do you really use this to store guns?”  “Yes,” he said.  What else does one do with a gun rack in a pickup?

Image by Dr. Warner at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwwmd/2100130152/

If you take the drive from Albuquerque to Lubbock, don’t pass up the opportunity to stop in at the Billy the Kid Museum in Fort Sumner, right on Highway 84.  My only disappointment was that the gift shop had no postcards of any of the museum’s Carlos C. Clancy paintings of the Kid, in which Billy always sports an appropriately deranged expression, and his legendary tiny feet are always depicted as well (although I should note that the gift shop is well-stocked with copies of The Good Side of Billy the Kid).   For those whose tastes run in other directions, there is always something of interest, such as the collection of commemorative coins and Charles and Di memorabilia right across from the gun that killed Billy.  Who could resist a place like this?  On your way out of town, be sure to stop at Sprouts Cafe (named for the owner, not the food, I can assure you).  Sprout is famous for his sourdough biscuits, which were fresh, hot, and tasty, even late in the afternoon when we showed up, although they are not actually made of sourdough, nor are they really biscuits.  During the winter they save up the leftover biscuits, observing the arrival of spring with the annual Biscuit Toss.  They don’t let them harden to the lethal stage, in case any children or small animals are in tossing range.

Be sure to stop at All Booked Up, Larry McMurtry’s bookstore in Archer City, Texas, which is not that far out of your way on the Lubbock³ to Dallas⁴ leg of the trip.  We saw Larry himself unpacking boxes of books.  Miraculously, there were the Kate Bornstein, Sapphire, and Nancy Mairs titles I’d been looking for, as well as all the J. Frank Dobies that Chris could want, and more.

But the best part of the trip, which may have to become a ritual element in future trips we take together, was the Exchange of Matchbooks.  After we left the Museum and partook of Sprout’s biscuits, Chris solemnly said, “I have something for you.  Keep this and never forget the Billy the Kid Museum.”  He handed me a matchbook, hot pink and emblazoned, of course, with the likeness of Billy.  He could not have expected what would transpire the next day at the Four Sixes Trading Post, where you can stock up on everything from spurs to Twinkies even if you don’t live on the ranch.  He stops there because he favors a particular kind of official Four Sixes tube socks, available only there, and yes, because he loves all things Texas.  My moment came when we were leaving and I spotted a plastic jug filled with matchbooks.  “Never forget the Four Sixes Trading Post,” I said, and handed him his Sojourner Truth matchbook.

1.  A.k.a. Christine Hollywood, but that’s another story.

2.  Maria Lugones, “Playfulness, ‘World’-Traveling, and Loving Perception” (in Making Face, Making Soul, ed. Gloria Anzaldua).

3.  “One of the best sights I’ve ever seen/Is Lubbock in my rearview mirror.”  Mac Davis

4.  “If you’ve ever seen Dallas from a DC9 at night”–or a pickup headed in from Lubbock–“Well, Dallas is a jewel, Dallas is a beautiful sight.”  Joe Ely