Tag Archives: Big Leg Kathy

Hangman’s Tree

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Back in the days when they hung folks they needed a pretty good tree to do it from. And in the desert that was sometimes a problem. First there weren’t many trees and if you did find one it was usually sort of short. That wasn’t always a problem either because people were a lot shorter themselves then. But if you had a tall one it kind of was. This tree was short even for those times but since it was the only one around for about 50 miles people took what they could get.

Folks were problem solvers back then. Take the time when they had to hang Big Leg Kathy, a notoriously bad woman that was so damn mean she just needed to be hung. The crowd brought her out here and hooked her up but she was so tall that her head stuck up through the branches. She just laughed and the crowd was so embarrassed by the whole thing that there was even talk of just letting her go, but then some enterprising soul had an idea. They’d just dig a deep trench right next to the tree there, which they did, hook her up again and shove her off the edge. Worked like a charm. Didn’t matter how tall you were then, and it didn’t matter how short the tree was. Problem solved.

Everybody was just darn pleased with that solution. That was until they got back home and in the celebratory proceedings at the Kingston house, the towns fanciest saloon, the problem solver, a Mr. Gaddeus T. Kellenbrock, shot the bartender’s cat, then shot the bartender when he got mad about it. Course next weekend they made the trip back out to the hangman’s tree with Mr. Kellenbrock to test his solution again, which by now they were calling Kellenbrock’s ditch. It worked fine the second time too. So all’s well that ends well.

It was always a good day for a hanging and given the scenery here outside of the Great Sand Dunes folks would look for any opportunity to string somebody up just for the chance to have a little time off, bring your best girl, have a picnic, see the sights and then hang the no good bastard and call it a day. Sunset was always a good time. The setting was so picturesque often the condemned would ask them to wait until the sun was just right and then they’d send ’em off with a flourish and start the long drive home.

Now a days there aren’t so many hangings and some folks lament that but we got to accept change when it comes. You have to admit though, it might just settle some of our more pressing problems. I got a list just in case they decide to have a change of heart and bring it back. I wouldn’t doubt you do too. Sometime when we get together to chew the fat let’s compare notes. I bet we got some of the same names on our lists.

Riverwalk

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First off I have to apologize to Texas. Texas I’m sorry. Seriously. I had never been to Texas before although I had been to eastern New Mexico so I thought, like I hope many others have so that I’m not entirely alone here, that there wasn’t a stitch of color in Texas. At least no primary colors. OK so occasionally you’d see a splash of red next to an armadillo road kill, or possibly that incredible yellow that big-haired Texas women with names like Birdie, Emma Louise and Big Leg Kathy, can get in a fresh perm, but no real color. Man, was I wrong. Sitting in a roadhouse eating the worlds biggest Tex-Mex combination plate one evening I casually mentioned my misbegotten prejudice to one of those self-samed big-haired women. I was told politely but firmly in that way that only big-haired, but beautiful Texas women have, that “Honey, you’d best get yourself on down to San Antonio and take a stroll through the Riverwalk. Then y’all come back and talk to me about color. You go on now.”

Because I had never been there before my only experience of Texas was the occasional movie, like “The Last Picture Show”, or “Tender Mercies”, and that sleeper “The Stars Fell on Henrietta” where all you saw was endless stretches of no color, only a vista filled with a tan that shifted just enough towards grey that you’re stretching it to call it tan. A place where a dust devil gave you some occasional relief because it was a lighter shade of tan that contrasted with the rest of the countryside. But I was misinformed about that too, as the hill country in West Texas has a muted palette that grows on you as you travel down those endless highways. Filled with the paler darker greens of the low-lying mesquite, the more vivid lime green color of the yucca with its creamy ivory and pale yellow flowers as it bloomed along the roadway, hints of red in the stone where the road builders had deeply cut through the hill, it was colorful just different. And as we all know just being different doesn’t make you bad. It might make you a little weird but not bad.

I was headed south down to Brownsville which is the furthest south you can live and still be an American, to spend the Christmas holiday with some VIP’s that winter there. These VIP’s who would like to remain nameless (fat chance) but are really my sister Marcia and her partner Paul who I call my Brother-in-law because it’s easier than calling him “my sister’s partner-in-law” had promised that if I came down for the holidays she would fix me Spaghetti for Christmas day. I did, and she did, and Christmas was splendid. She is after all the world’s greatest spaghetti sauce maker and what better way to spend Christmas than with loved ones stuffing your fat face with Bolognese. Before I got there though I took heed of the advice given me by that gorgeous big-haired woman who told me to stop in San Antonio to see the color of the Paseo del Rio, or the Riverwalk, along the San Antonio river.

Now I could spend hundreds of words describing the Riverwalk, how it’s one story below the streets of the city, how it’s five feet deep, and every other fact that you need to know to be a proper tourist, but as you know, being proper isn’t one of my major priorities. If you need to know that stuff, Google it. They do a much better job than I would in telling you everything you need to know. Besides, I hear those kind of things, that fact stuff, and it’s going in one ear and out the other. I have the attention span of a 3-speed blender when it comes to facts and dates etc., but I never forget a color or a scene or the experience of participating in an amazing event like the Riverwalk.

As this was the night before the night before Christmas they had gone all out decorating the walkways that follow along the river. Lights of every color of the rainbow were strung along the shore with care, Mariachi wandered through the restaurants’ outside eating areas playing, the happy but surprised shouts of those unlucky few who toppled into the river and the resulting laughter of those nearby rang through the night. OK, I made that last part up. Nobody fell in the river although you could if you were determined enough. The tour boats came by every 20 seconds all lit up and filled to the gunnels with happy tourists. There was even a dinner boat that went by and we all got to watch 40 people drip green chili down the front of their clothes. It was by and large simply spectacular, the Riverwalk that is not the diners.

If you are color starved by the lack of them during the winter, or even if you just want to see one of the most amazing sights you can encounter, where you can walk in one end and come out the other gob-smacked, then you need to go to San Antonio and do the Riverwalk. It’s even pretty in the daytime.

The trip was successful. I have many, many images to show you and stories to relate, both fanciful and factual, but they are for a another time. Right now it’s good to be back.