Did you ever meet someone, and from the very second you met you were friends? Where the stars just seemed to align right and an immediate connection was made? Well, that was the way it was between John Welty and I.
John was tall, handsome and loved to have a good time. Compared to John I was semi-tall, semi-handsome, but could enjoy a good time better than most, and we both had a similar sense of humor. Most of our times together involved drinking, or dancing, or occasionally fisticuffs. When John and I painted the town, we gave it two coats.
We had some great times together, but many of those tales are just too tall to tell. I will share one though, that involves culling our friends from raiding our pot of beans.
I lived in a trailer behind the Drive-In Bar, and we always had a pot of pinto beans on the stove. They were good food and economical. That is, they were economical except when your friends kept happening by and helping themselves to a bowl. John came up with an idea to cure the problem. We doctored the beans with a healthy dose of red chile powder. Even the meat in the beans was fried in chile. Then we just set back and watched. Friends would arrive, grab a bowl and help themselves. As they would start eating we would notice little beads of sweat popping up on their foreheads. But they would never say a word. Some finished their bowl, some didn’t, but none ever raided our beans again. John and I could barely contain ourselves, because it was sure fun watching.
Anyone who knew us back then would never have dreamed that John would reach the positions he did in the USDA, or that I would become the New Mexico Secretary of Agriculture. He was a wonderful friend, we had great times together, and I only wish our paths had crossed again in later life.
He will, however, live forever in my memory. Adios my friend, and may you rest in peace.
Frank DuBois
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