Yesterday
The saga of Billy, Millie, and Johnnie
The kids of Silver
City
By Stephen L. Wilmeth
The Silver City
of my youth was a good place.
United by
an absence of wealth and pretense, the community was a blue collar, independent
and self preserving mix of survivors. The mines kept the economy afloat as well
as luring a stream of capable people to the area. Trained engineers, craft
people, and administrators clearly elevated the local productivity.
Heritage
was glued together by the ranching community although its influence was clearly
in decline by 1970.
The
cultural mix was both interesting and healthy although that might not be the interpretation
in those days. Hispanic and Anglo families existed together to be ultimately
attached by the mines and youth sports. Generations of youth sweated and bled
together on fields of competition. The benefit of that union can only now be
quantified in terms of community allegiance and vested friendships. Those
relationships can resolve many conflicts.
Higher education
was a further enhancement of cultural and civic unity. Western New Mexico
University was an
influence that injected standards that were gleaned from a larger national
network of collegiate level teaching and knowledge.
The 10,000
members of the community were served by locally owned businesses. Leaders came
together and were vested in the decisions of local governance. A wonderful
system of checks and balances existed even though it wasn’t perfect by any
means. Many would deem us un-sophisticates, but we would insist they were incorrect.
Who were we? We were children … of Silver City.
Billy … the first recognized hooligan
Billy
Antrim emerged as the town’s world image of unlawful hooliganism. If local
interpretations had prevailed over the sensationalism of the non-resident
journalists writing about him, ‘Billy the Kid’ would not have been remembered
as anything but what he was … a thug.
He would
have joined the ranks of too many of his half cocked and loosely identified
societal mates who have lived and died in anonymity. As school age kids, we
were never taught that he was to be revered. He wasn’t special.
Billy,
however, would have likely been gathered in the back of the bus with us as we
sat mesmerized listening to that older sage, *** ******, holding court and
teaching us all we needed to know about girls. What he missed were the solid
lessons of our coaches and team relationships because we now know he had no
positive mentor leadership. He arrived with his desperate mother who survived
by doing whatever was necessary to survive. Later, a stepfather’s borrowed name
wasn’t offered with any positive influence. He tripped into an abyss that was
impossible to escape once the first mistakes were made. He was doomed and his
misdeeds became western legend. He was a societal misfit that walked our
streets.
Regardless of the real truths,
though, we share something in common … he was a child of Silver City.
Millie
If you
haven’t read Max Evans’ book Madame
Millie you ought to.
Millie was
the local Madame (yes, with a capital M) whose sphere of influence stretched
across the West and clear to Alaska.
I remember her well.
I was actually
only in her presence a couple of times, but, as an adult, I now recognize her
powerful personality. Call her manipulative or hugely controlling, she could
have led armies if her sex and accident of birth had placed her in an
alternative channel. I sat across from her one day waiting for my girlfriend at
a local beauty salon as both of them had their hair cut. In mere moments, she
had the whole place at her beckon call. Women were bringing her water, holding
mirrors, and swooning at her demands.
What is also interesting to me is
how she looked at me. Her eyes were unlike anything I can adequately describe.
Perhaps a warrior in serious combat would recognize the look or even my
colleagues could relate to their own eye contact dealing with the ferocity of a
hot bull in close quarters, but her eyes were on fire. They just burned right
through you.
In the
Evans book, unpublished until her death to protect the less than innocent, we
learned much more about her than any of us ever knew. She came west as a
teenager to accompany and take care of her invalid sister. She was an original Harvey girl. Driven to
finance the treatments her sister needed, she did what she had to do. A natural
business mind, she perused the options open to women and selected the course
that generated the most money. She learned the trade of a prostitute, but
quickly promoted herself to proprietor and Madame. Her stories are at once
provocative, fatalistic, and hilarious. She was wild beyond imagination and yet
consumed with allegiance to those who were loyal to her. She’d fight to her
death or kill if she was placed in that circumstance.
At the same
time, she’d make sure the kids that she identified her own childhood with were
provided with shoes and coats for Silver
City winters.
She did
business with men. Draw your own personal conclusions of that statement, but
she aligned women in her corner to conduct business with men. That meant
impacting local politics and zoning issues as well as her propensity to undertake
personal welfare endeavors.
Several
images come to my mind when Millie is mentioned. One was her infatuation with
powerful cars. In one episode she was caught speeding going to inspect her
establishment in Wyoming.
The police caught her going something like 135 miles per hour. Rather than
handcuffing her and throwing her in jail, she quickly had the officer and a
number of his colleagues gathered in rousing conversation as they inspected her
fire breathing, luxury rocket. Before she took her leave, they all got passes
to her place of business. They also promised to offer a bit safer escort if
she’d just alert them when she came racing through!
The other images
reflect specific stories about her in the book and my own postscript. You’ll
have to read the book to try to decipher the former, and look below for the
latter.
I suspect I
would have liked her … if I had known her in another track of life.
Johnnie Banks
I am
remembering Johnnie because my youngest daughter asked.
Johnnie
Banks was what must be termed Silver
City’s mascot for years
and years. I will not accept any suggestion of racial slur when I recall
Johnnie because my memories of him are exactly how many of us knew and related
to him.
Johnnie was
a black fellow who was unequivocally everybody’s acquaintance. If you poll 300
of us, we would not be able to tell you where he lived or who actually took
care of him, but he was constantly in our viewscape. One story we were told was
that he was trapped in an ice house as a youngster and the experience affected
him.
Prevailing
views of him was that he was simple stemming from the physical trauma he
suffered in that purported event. Another was that he suffered multiple
maladies, but, looking back, I would surmise he suffered something since
childhood.
He was most certainly gay.
In those days, homosexuality wasn’t
the accepted topic it has become, but there’d be Johnnie downtown on any given
day or holiday and he’d be decked out in outlandish combinations, flowing capes,
and footwear that’d make you blink. Where he got that stuff we couldn’t imagine.
On July 4, he’d be at the parade
tricked out in rakish rodeo splendor. He’d come in with his patented tippy toe
walk going a hundred miles an hour. He’d sit cross legged and chat only to land
somewhere else in mere moments. Everybody would talk to him, and, I can
honestly say, I never saw anybody treat him any way except with common courtesy.
He went to
school perpetually. The general consensus was that he couldn’t read, but he’d
show up packing books and enter classrooms for 10 or 15 minute visits. He’d
talk incessantly, never to anybody in particular, but to all in general. The
professors knew him like we did and they’d tolerate him with repeated patience.
Today, the
town has a downtown bench named in his honor. If he was alive that is where
you’d see him. He’d be decked out in something outrageous reading a book. It
might be upside down, but he’d be intently studying it and discussing the
contents aloud to himself and to everybody within ear shot. He became a curious
legend.
He was also what he was … a child
of Silver City.
Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “I admit to
all that I took a liberty with Millie that I have never regretted. When I left
that solon that day I winked at her and smiled. In response, she winked and
kissed back in silent gesture.”
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