My Haunting: A Ghost Town

[CeeCee]

Everyone needs a Hillsboro. A place that lives in them. A place and time where they can instantly touch their childhood. These are my memories of a place and time. I can always withdraw into these memories and find my innocence.

I could make-up stories with Hillsboro as the backdrop, but I don’t need to. When I think about that place at 5:00 am, the memories flow and seem larger than life with little in the way of conscious embellishment required.

Hillsboro is dust, horn toads, cow patties, bars, and the friendly postmaster. The sleepy creek that is either bone dry or a raging flash flood carrying old tires and young calves in its wake. It is cottonwood trees. It is my widowed grandmothers. It is apple orchards and ranches. It is the general store. It is the ancient Black Hills museum which just seems to keep getting older. It is Pula, operating the “blade” and keeping highway 90 to Silver City clear while collecting stray hubcaps to tack up in his barn. It is stuck in the silver boom of the 1890’s. It is courthouse ruins complete with rusting cell doors. It has a one-room schoolhouse, still in use. It is the soft coo of mourning doves. It is compounds with wrought iron fences and shale lined gardens. It is scorpions. It is loose, barking dogs chasing me as I walk. It is swimming in the rusty water tank,. It is the old the Texaco where you could get an ice cream sandwich. It is the “airstrip” and old cemetery on the hill. It is standing on ant piles. It is going to Truth or Consequences for a Sunday big meal out at the Turtle Inn. It is igniting the hillside with 4th of July fireworks and watching the volunteer fire department respond, It is Apache Canyon, looking at the sheer rock walls and thinking about Chief Victorio and his party, just waiting in ambush. It is watching the sky on fire from a roof top during the August meteor showers. It is the Ghost in Grandmother Hazel’s house on the hill. Much of Hillsboro still looks as it did in 1895, when the silver market busted, but for me, it will forever be 1962 in Hillsboro.

Hillsboro is a ghost town. It haunts me. It lies on the eastern portal to the Black Range. It sits on the Percha Creek, nestled in a narrow valley. To its west lies Kingston. To the south, Lake Valley where the world’s richest deposit of pure silver was found in the famous “Bridal Chamber”. North are a hundred miles of ranches, foothills and arroyo’s until you get to Magdalena. To the east are the Caballo Mountains, whose baron strata look like a child’s watercolor painting. The Caballos overlook Elephant Butte Reservoir and the relatively thriving metropolis and Sierra county seat, Truth or Consequences.

I visited Hillsboro at least once a year from when I was born until I was about 12 years old. I always looked forward to visiting this remote dry corner of New Mexico. It was a sharp contrast to Sacramento, where I lived through 1st grade. It was like another planet compared to the suburbs of Cincinnati where I grew up after that.

Thinking about how to write about my ghost, and my one encounter with the spirit of the dead sheriff that rambled through my Grandmother’s adobe house triggered a flood of memories, stories, smells, sounds and feelings. I made a list three pages long, just so I wouldn’t forget them. I intend to write them all down, for my benefit and to pass to my kids. I also plan to mine the old family picture archives. I’ll be the kid that looks like Alfred E. Neuman. If this is in the spirit of these boards, and you don’t mind my unpolished writing, I’ll post as I go. Oops, I never did get around to saying much about the ghost in this pass…I guess my haunting is bigger than one little bit of ectoplasm.

CeeCee

[Jenny Boylan]

Wow, this is fantastic! Tell the stories! Yes, it's absolutely the spirit of these boards. Well, these boards are intended to have LOTS of different spirits. Please carry on, with my blessings!

J

[Tracey Cross]

Quote:Wow, this is fantastic! Tell the stories! Yes, it's absolutely the spirit of these boards. Well, these boards are intended to have LOTS of different spirits. Please carry on, with my blessings!



Cognac, Brandy, Rum, Gin etc and other spirits...
To name but a few...
Wait for it there will be more on this post...?

[CeeCee]

The operative spirit here is Tequila...with a Dos Equis chaser...

I've chunked some of my memories into a couple stories so far. I'll be posting some more as I write it, hopefully a first one tonight or tomorrow...that is, it I can shtill typeeeeeee...

CeeCee

[CeeCee]

Getting There

Lots of other people have vivid memories of a vacation destination from their childhood. Whether it is vacation home, a favorite camp-site or a coastal village, that chance to be totally out of the context of daily life can be refreshing for adults, and even life-altering for their young children. I would estimate that between birth and age 8, I visited Hillsboro at least once a year, often twice for one to three weeks a year. The geographical separation from everyday life has provided a lens that helps me remember aspects of childhood much more clearly. These memories are not just people and events, but are rich with emotional and sensory elements that don’t appear other distant recollection.

Getting to Hillsboro was part of the adventure. Planes, trains and automobiles all had their place. The primary means of transportation I remember is the Ford Country Squire, LTD station wagon, cream colored with wood-panels. I would sit in the back seat with my older brother for the two day drive from Sacramento. The Hillsboro vacations were typically two or three weeks, there wasn’t the modern pressure to have you vacations in tidy one-week increments.

I remember there was always a canvas water bag strapped over the front grill of the station wagon. It served the dubious purpose of being an auxiliary radiator and emergency water supply. The mid-summer drive via Yuma could get really toasty in the back seat in the days before automobile air conditioning. I remember more than once sitting by the side of the road while the water in the canvas bag was being used to top up the steaming radiator.

Getting to Phoenix was always exciting, as it meant that soon we would get to stay in a hotel. Later in life, hotels symbolize lots of things, few of them happy, but when you are 6 years old, they are pure adventure. “Where is the ice machine, does it have a pool? Is it two stories? do we have quarters to make the bed vibrate?” Even better, on the eastern outskirts of Phoenix was a motor lodge that had its own miniature train running through the courtyard. The first time I spotted this, my folks drove right on by, wanting to get to the east side of Phoenix before stopping. I pestered them for an entire year until the next visit, when we did stop there…”all aboard!”.

To this day, I am a sucker for everything “Route 66”. Give me neon, lots of neon! I recall staying in the wig-wam motels. What could be more fun that spending the nights in a concrete, air-conditioned teepee? Then there was “The Thing”. Located conveniently next to nowhere, around the Arizona, New Mexico border lies a mystery so deep, so compelling, that it takes road signs every 2 miles for 100 miles to work your toddler in the back seat into enough of a frenzy to make you stop. We never did stop and see what “The Thing” really was. This was before the aliens treated Rosewell to a visit a few years later. (Note: I did finally stop wondering about
"The Thing", just a few years ago with my wife and children stopped to see “The Thing”…I’m not telling!)

Next up came Lordsburg New Mexico, woo hoo! By this time, my brother and I, crammed in the back set, were in full bickering and retaliation mode. My older brother had an 18 months advantage, but I could fight dirty! Everyone was hot and edgy. But we all knew we were within a few short hours of our destination. Let me say more about Lordsburg,…um…um…their gas is good? It must be a good place to say you are from, with an emphasis on the FROM…Here the route varied, sometime we would wander up through Silver City, by the open pit mine in Santa Rita, the rock that looked like a praying nun and over the Black Range, dropping into Hillsboro from the west. Other trips, we went on through Deming, up through Lake Valley and came in from the south.

Another trip that sticks with me is when we took the train. It was a Santa Fe, just like the ones in our Lionel train set. I have later learned that the venerable and distinctive engine is called an F4. The room was a Pullman sleeper cabin,. I loved it when the porter entered the small room and lowered the upper berth. “I get the top bunk, no I do!”, I would argue with my brother as we exchanged feckless blows and scrambled to claim the bunk. And of course, sitting atop the lounge car in the “vista dome”, was pure heaven. The trip seemed way too short. Arrival was at a tiny platform in Engle, New Mexico. Engle is a suburb of Elephant Butte which is the gateway to Truth or Consequences. I’m still not sure there is more to Engle than the train station. From here, it was a 40 minute ride west over to Hillsboro.

The final method of approach was to fly. Flying was a pretty big deal in the early 60’s. Everybody dressed up. The plane was some big old 4 engine job, probably a DC-6. The operative word here is propeller! To this day, flying into El Paso reminds me of the first lunar landing. No matter where you come from (later on it was Cincinnati) it was wetter than West Texas. Stepping off the plane onto the baking tarmac to enter the adobe style terminal building seemed so foreign that one may have well been in Casablanca. The drive from El Paso to Hillsboro took a couple of hours. An amazing thing always happens on that drive. Somewhere, between El Paso and Las Cruces, near the State Prison, the air changes. The hot, dirty oppressive air that the folks from El Paso and Juarez live in all the time yields to a clear, blue, high desert sky. Somewhere in your bones, you know you have entered the Land of Enchantment.

[CeeCee]

Horn Toad
From my vantage point, the American Southwest and the horn toad are synonymous. These were cute little creatures (from a 6 year old perspective) that seemed to be abundant in my grandmother’s backyards. They were also easy to catch while they were sitting in the sun, digesting a bellyful of ants. They were almost as mythical as fireflies are to folks in the east. These were fat, flat, light brown and tan critters about three ines long with distinctive horns over their eyes.

The technical name for these little fella’s is the Texas Horned Lizard. Everyone actually called them horned toads, but, since I could barely speak when I first learned what they were, I always called them just “horn toads”. I still do. Lots of folks call them horny toads, but I never saw much evidence that they were particularly sex-crazed, as amphibians go. Of course, they are actually lizards, hence reptiles, not amphibians at all! Sometimes, too much information can take all of the fun out of a memory.

I do remember how prickly they felt when held in ones bare hands. I remember looking intensely at there little beady eyes, holding them 3 inches from my face. I remember putting holes in the shoeboxes in which I would temporarily keep them. I remember there were lots and lots of them.

As I have come to understand, horn toads have been gone from Hillsboro for some time now. There are many theories why they disappeared. One theory is that an invasive South American fire-ant species has displaced the tasty Texas ants they used to munch on. It could have been pesticides. At least in Hillsboro, it was probably not habitat loss or climate change. It’s always been damn hot in Hillsboro, no change there! One thing is for sure, every native southern New Mexican over a certain age remembers them fondly from their childhood. All but the most squeamish (or those that had them stuffed down their clothing by bullies) miss the cute little bastards. The common lizards that took there niche in the ecosystem are just too darn fast for a 5 year old to catch!

[Jenny Boylan]

I love this. RRRibbit.

[Dee]

Originally Posted by CeeCee

Horn Toad
From my vantage point, the American Southwest and the horn toad are synonymous. These were cute little creatures (from a 6 year old perspective) that seemed to be abundant in my grandmother’s backyards.

I do remember how prickly they felt when held in ones bare hands. I remember looking intensely at there little beady eyes, holding them 3 inches from my face. , every native southern New Mexican over a certain age remembers them fondly from their childhood.!

So does this native Northern New Mexican. (I guess I'm over that certain age!)

They also blended in nicely with the soil: a mix of red desert soil with ground up sandstone/rock/mica/quartz/etc. good for camouflage. You'd have to train your eyes to see them. Quite pettable, too, once you had one in your hand.

Camouflage is good (maybe this is the start of something along the lines of "everything I know, I learned from the high desert"?)

"I just love keeping my audience ribbited"

[CeeCee]

Dee,
Didn't mean to diss the north

As a young child, we didn't go north too often. Maybe once to Albuquerque and once up through the Taos Pueblo to C. Springs. I remember the cog railroad ride to the top of Pikes Peak. Once we got up top to the 14,000 ft high gift shop, a thunder storm rolled in.

We were standing by the front door and saw a ball of lightning. It was about two foot sphere of electricity, 5 feet off the ground. It bounced around the parking lot like a pinball then came straight at us. When it got to the outer door of the shop it simply vanished. I dare say, that if any pioneer saw this, they would have thought, GHOST. Scientists call it Ball Lightning. Since they named it, it can't be magic anymore

It was really something to see, quite rare I read. While not quite supernatural, it definitely qualifies as unusual.

I moved back to Albuquerque in 1979. Being a college student, the best cheap weekend was to head into the mountains, hike all day and then camp near some hot springs. In many years of exploring the northern parts of the state, I never did see another horn toad.

I guess I figured their range just never extended that far north. They were already difficult to find further south. It makes me sad that they used to be there too, are there any left? Its neat that they adopted to the redder soils up north to be just as stealthy. And yes, I remember now how you could stroke them. Never could get them to fetch though

CeeCee
' 83 Lobo

[Dee]

Originally Posted by CeeCee

Dee,
. In many years of exploring the northern parts of the state, I never did see another horn toad.

I guess I figured their range just never extended that far north. They were already difficult to find further south. It makes me sad that they used to be there too, are there any left? Its neat that they adopted to the redder soils up north to be just as stealthy. And yes, I remember now how you could stroke them. Never could get them to fetch though

CeeCee
' 83 Lobo

To the rest of the list, this is who we are talking about:
http://www.desertusa.com/april96/du_hliz.html
http://animals.nationalgeographic.co...rned-toad.html

Their habitat is being encroached on by humans, they're collected too often, and their food is being thinned out by encroaching non native species of ants.

They were prolific when I was a kid. Harder to find but not all the way gone now.