When Black Friday Comes

Benson, Arizona

On Friday, I'll turn 70. I've never felt better and I'm down 53 pounds and packing my old wardrobe for donation to the homeless center in Sarasota.

When Black Friday comes
I'll stand down by the door
And catch the grey men when they
Dive from the fourteenth floor
When Black Friday comes
I'll collect everything I'm owed
And before my friends find out
I'll be on the road
-Steely Dan

We drove though the desert for days to get back to Benson and pick up the RV. It has a new windshield and the damaged rear end is bright and shiny. It was a good vacation with the typical suitcases and motels....

On my birthday I plan to have some "top shelf" margaritas, Brie with pecans and apples  and Chateaubriand  for two at the Double Eagle in Messilla, New Mexico. It's my favorite restaurant in the world. Billy the Kid ate there. At least he was tried there and sentenced to hang in Lincoln County for killing Sheriff Brady....where he made the escape that sealed his fame...

In the grocery store today i was looking (not buying) in the ice cream row when a bearded fat man with a Navy Seal baseball hat barked at me to move to one side of the isle or the other.

I told him what to do to himself and he pointed to his hat and yelled that he had spent eight years saving my ass. I told him that at least he had the hat, and that I was flying missions in Viet Nam when he was still crapping in his diapers.

He told me to kiss his ass and I replied that it looked way too much like his face....you can sense at this point that we are regressing to kindergarten taunts....

He was behind me in checkout and so I waited just outside for him to come out for about ten minutes. He had 50 pounds and 30 years on me, but my switchblade is sharp. He never came out until after I left. What a poseur.

Billy was here

Messilla, New Mexico

Mrs. Phred and I played our first tennis in four months yesterday. My right wrist has been hurting all that time. I finally gave up waiting for it to heal and just used the wrist brace the ortho doctor gave me. I don't have a backhand because I'm ambidextrous and just switch hands when the ball is on my left, so some of my best shots are on that side now.

From the Messilla blog:

Billy was captured December 23, 1880.

On March 28, 1881, he was transported to Rincon by train and from there to Mesilla by wagon for trial for the murders of Andrew “Buckshot” Roberts and Sheriff William Brady. The indictment for killing Roberts was a federal indictment. The indictment for killing Brady was a territorial indictment. The territorial district court handled both jurisdictions, with the federal cases tried first.

His trial for killing “Buckshot” Roberts began on March 30, 1881. The case against him in this trial was thrown-out on the grounds that the killing took place on private land, not public land, and the federal government thus had no standing to prosecute.

The trial for the killing of Sheriff Brady began April 8. The judge presiding, Judge Bristol, dismissed Billy’s defense attorney from the Roberts trial, probably because of the change in jurisdiction, and appointed John D. Bail and Albert Fountain to represent him.

On April 13. the jury brought in its verdict: guilty. The judge then sentenced Billy to death by hanging, to be carried out on May 13, 1881 in Lincoln, New Mexico.


Three days later he was taken to Lincoln. It was from the Lincoln courthouse that Billy escaped on April 28, killing two deputies.

We went into Mesilla in the afternoon for lunch. Mesilla was a stop on the Butterfield stage line and  the Pony Express.

The building below is the courthouse where Billy was tried. It's a gift shop now. The wind was gusting to 60 MPH and our food kept blowing off the table.

Mesilla was the territorial capital of the Arizona and New Mexico. A lot of the old adobe buildings are still here.The sandstorm closed a number of highways in New Mexico because of zero visibility.
 

Our RV is full of very fine grit.

We have a reservation at the the Double Eagle tonight at 7PM for their award winning margaritas and steaks. Maybe more tennis and a movie.