Tellin’ dark tales…
The March 9 centennial of Pancho Villa’s Columbus Raid was marked in fine style at Paulina Springs Books in Sisters, Oregon. This excellent indie bookstore is a pillar of our community — a small town like ours is very lucky to have a thriving bookstore staffed with people who really love books. They hosted me and The Anvil Blasters Wednesday night for an evening of story and music set in the wild borderlands. The borderlands of the U.S. and Mexico. The borderlands of good taste…
Eighty-seven people filled the joint to overflowing. As is so often the case when you share Story with friends, I got more out of it than I put in. Col. John Turner, a World War II veteran, shared a tale: Like me, he was an avid MexRev buff as a young man, and he traveled to Chihuahua City to spend a day with Luz Corral, Pancho Villa’s first (of many) wives. He said he worked up the nerve to ask her about Pancho’s other women, and Luz’s reply was priceless: “The General had many churches. I was his cathedral.” He shared a picture of himself with the venerable old keeper of Villa’s legacy outside the museum that to this day houses Villa’s weapons and the bullet-pocked Dodge motorcar where he met his death in 1923.
Another audience member told me that Alvaro Obregon saved her Anglo rancher grandfather from execution by a revolutionary firing squad. This history is still present…
I told the story of the tangled web of the Mexican Revolution, read excerpts from my Pancho Villa essay in “Borderland Noir,” and did some Q&A with the audience. Recommended books… Then the band stepped up and we played “Pancho and Lefty” and “Compadres in the Sierra Madres” and some border-themed originals before closing it off with Tom Russell’s classic “Tonight We Ride.” Primed by the dark tales they had heard that evening, there was a bloodcurdling scream from the ladies at the right moment in that song…
Managed to growl my way through despite battling a chest cold that descended upon me the previous weekend like a hellbent desert horde.
All in all, a fine evening.
Jeff Wester and Lynn Woodward. Compadres of the Sierra Madres.
Mike Biggers — shredding.
Not pictured — sound engineer extraordinaire Pete Rathbun, who consistently pulls rabbits from his ball cap…
All photos by Sue Anderson
