'We had us a time': Las Crucen details his life as a cowboy on the border

Bill Adams said he has had a good life, and 20 years ago he got himself a manual typewriter and began to write his life story as a cowboy and rancher who lived on both sides of the border. "El Rancho Kid," his memoir, is rich in detail and lively in spirit. It's a story of the way life used to be on the border that is especially poignant, given the way things are now. Adams, 91, said that many people have told him that being a cowboy and a rancher sounds like a romantic life. "And it is," he said. "There is almost no end to what might happen." Born in York, Ariz. in 1919, Adams moved with his family to Mexico in the third grade to work on his uncle's ranch. The Parajito Ranch was 100 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border and situated in one of the many Mormon colonies that were founded in Mexico in the late 19th century. Young Willie was sent to the local school in a nearby town called Colonia Juárez, where he learned Spanish. On the ranch, he learned to ride horses, rope cattle, shoot guns and ride the range looking for lost cattle. "We had us a time," he said. "El Rancho Kid" tells in detail the daily life on the ranch, with its joys, hardships and sometimes ridiculous moments, such as the time his mother inadvertently shot both the family horse and the family car. Adams also said he likes to think about the time he got into a horse race with a neighbor kid, and ended up plunging over a cliff and into a river. In those days, Adams had to cross the border routinely, which he said he usually did at Antelope Wells. If the U.S. border guard was asleep, he said he'd just walk over and ask him to open the gate. Adams said he always stayed friendly to those who worked both sides of the border, and they stayed friendly to him...more