Magdalena Old Timers Fiesta

Good week with the hawk and with guest Annie Hocker; bad week with my right hip, and not very productive. But once a year, local patriotism demands I pay some attention to Magdalena's only event that brings out of towners in. Yeah, it's hokey and country and so what? We missed it when water worries  cancelled it last year, and I always see unexpected people, especially but not always from the ranches.  As always right or double click to enlarge.

A cowboy bunch-- Wade Dixon, Vida Trujillo (widow of Viejo, who you can search up), Shonda and Darryl Welty. The Welty ranch is 60 plus dirt road miles away, and Wade works in Catron county, so we don't see them every day.

... in our bar

We have a parade- candidates...

Anniversaries...

...  unclassifiable New Mexican oddities...

Dead animals (yes, that oryx has one horn pointing up and one down)

The mayor (in the back, playing)

Wonderful old cars (I long for when they drove wild cows through town ahead of the cars, but I am beginning to sound like I was born in 18 not 1950)

Our  reporter (and beer maker) John Larson, and him shooting the float with Paul Pino's band, who in one incarnation or other have provided a soundtrack for my last, what, 34 years? Paul's stepson Rudy was one of the dedicatees of my pigeon book Aloft.

Dogs enjoy OT in their own way

I'm backing my friend Ed for sheriff. There is a persistent rumor that a popular TV series mined a period in his life for its first season. I'll never tell...

Two women I love: Sylvia Troy and Hilda Kelly, Tom's wife. Hilda: "Take those three and call it three Magdalena hookers!" Me: "No Hilda, not unless you get in too." She did, immediately. Unfortunately that one didn't come out. She has been married to Tom, below, with Jeannie and Tita, who makes an appearance in Hibben's Hunting American Lions as a "young cowboy",  for longer than I have been alive or than there has been a paved road to Magdalena. He is 86. I won't presume to ask a lady her age.