Sunday, March 23, 2014

The saga of Billy, Millie, and Johnnie



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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