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Praise for Revenge of the Saguaro Originally published as Jack Ruby’s Kitchen Sink
Miller is a superb reporter and slyly funny stylist. This is a compulsively readable book by one of our best non-fiction writers.
—San Francisco Chronicle
Residents, potential visitors, and armchair travelers alike will be captivated by Miller’s informative and often humorous book, in which the romance and reality of the Southwest are intermingled within a fine narrative.
—Library Journal
A great book to have if you’re planning a leisurely trip through America’s vast Southwest. If you enjoy travel books that give you the real skinny about places, people and local curiousities, this book is guaranteed to delight and entertain. Revenge of the Saguaro is the perfect antidote to anything that Fodor’s ever published.
—BookBrowser
…a perverse love letter to the Southwest—land of jaw-dropping natural beauty and rusted-out Chevys, a land that reflects both the sublime and the ridiculous in our culture at large.
—Citation from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation, Lowell Thomas Gold Award for Best Travel Book of 2000
Tom Miller has brought the region to life in his own special way. He helps us all see beyond the ancient pulp fictions to the dailiness of life in that American place and in doing so, he adds to its reality and magic. We should all thank him.
—Pete Hamill, from his foreword
REVENGE OF THE SAGUARO
Originally published by National Geographic Society / Adventure Press as Jack Ruby’s Kitchen Sink. Copyright © 2000 by Tom Miller.
Revenge of the Saguaro: Offbeat Travels Through America’s Southwest. Copyright © 2010 by Tom Miller. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written consent from the publisher, except for brief quotations for reviews. For further information, write Cinco Puntos Press, 701 Texas Avenue, El Paso, TX 79901; or call 1-915-838-1625.
The first draft of many incidents and episodes described in this book appeared in the following publications, more than half of which, I am chagrined to note, have since folded. Arizona Trend, The Berkeley Barb, Cineaste, Crawdaddy, Hard Times, Hemispheres, The Nation, New West, the New York Times, Olé, Oui, Phoenix New Times, Nuestro, SunDance, Travel & Leisure, and Tucson Monthly. Additionally, album notes from the Rhino Records release, The Best of La Bamba. “El Paso” by Marty Robbins. © Copyright 1959. Renewed 1987. Mariposa Music Inc./BMI (admin. By EverGreen Copyrights). All rights reserved. Used by permission. “Faleena (From El Paso)” by Marty Robbins. © Copyright 1966. Renewed 1994. Mariposa Music Inc./BMI (admin. by EverGreen Copyrights). All rights reserved. Used by permission. Lyrics from “Open Pit Mine” reprinted courtesy GLAD MUSIC CO. © 1961 Glad Music Co. Finally, I am guilty of auto-cannibalism: I have drawn material from two of my own books, On the Border and Arizona: The Land and the People.
FIRST EDITION
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Miller, Tom, 1947-
[Jack Ruby’s kitchen sink]
Revenge of the saguaro : offbeat travels through America’s Southwest / by Tom Miller.
p. cm.
Originally published: Washington, D.C. : National Geographic, c2000, under title Jack Ruby’s kitchen sink.
ISBN 978-1-933693-90-3
1. Southwest, New--Description and travel. 2. Miller, Tom, 1947—Travel—Southwest, New. 3. Southwest, New—Social conditions. 4. Southwest, New—Social life and customs. I. Title.
F787.M53 2010
917.904’03—dc22
2009042536
COVER ILLUSTRATION: Roger Brown, 1993, color silkscreen, 28 3/16 inches x 22 1/4 inches Copyright © The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Brown Family.
BOOK DESIGN: JB Bryan / La Alameda Press.
Many thanks to our intern, Amanda Mata, for the index—it was a gift. Have fun in Prague!
CONTENTS
WHAT IS THE SOUND OF ONE BILLBOARD FALLING?
4
SEARCHING FOR THE HEART OF “LA BAMBA”
5
HOLLYWOOD GOES SOUTHWEST
6
DEATH BY MISADVENTURE
7
THE FREE STATE OF COCHISE
8
REVENGE OF THE SAGUARO
9
THE OCCIDENTAL TSURIS
To Regla
PATRICK HENRY MCCARTY WAS JUST ANOTHER WILD KID in the Five Points section of New York in the early 1870s when he first heard the siren call of the American Southwest. The Five Points was the most disgraceful slum in the United States, dense with alcohol, poverty, drugs, and murder, and one fine morning the teenaged McCarty—as Huck Finn had in another context—decided to light out for the territory. He made his way to New Mexico, assumed the name of William Bonney, found work as a ranch hand and sheepherder, and ended up as one of the pistoleros in the famous Lincoln County War. He was soon called Billy the Kid, and supposedly bragged that he had killed 21 men by the time he himself was 21. He never did turn 22. Sheriff Pat Garrett gunned him down one July day in 1881, the same year that Henry James published The Portrait of a Lady. In a way, McCarty’s early ending didn’t matter. As Billy the Kid of the American Southwest, Patrick Henry McCarty had found immortality.
Billy the Kid was not the first Easterner to seek freedom and renewal by heading west. Although he almost certainly never heard of Horace Greeley, an obscure Brooklyn hoodlum named