The Cow Town Itself

Return to the West, IV: The Cow Town Itself

Our cabin in the ghost town of Dos Cabezas was fourteen miles from the town of Willcox, an almost daily destination because all the amenities of life were there: post office, library, laundromat, restaurants, a small bookshop run by the local Friends of the Library (the bookshop also sold local honey and jam), and a handful of little museums -- the Sulphur Valley Historical Museum, Chiricahua Regional Museum, a train museum at the old depot building (now City Hall), and two cowboy star museums, one for Rex Allen, the other Marty Robbins.

At the library I was able to send and receive e-mail daily, but the post office was equally important. I loved having our own p.o. box, our own keys, and since I sent nearly as much mail as we received, mailing letters to friends back in Michigan (and elsewhere) on a regular basis, the employees at the counter came to know me by name, as well as by sight. While our exchanges were never long or intimate, their friendly greetings gave me a sense of belonging to the area. Also, when I first arranged for the p.o. box I had to show our rental agreement, so the postal employees knew we were staying out in Dos Cabezas, not right in Willcox, and I liked that, too, especially the Mexican way they pronounced “Dos Cabezas.” Everywhere in town, it seemed, people flipped back and forth easily between English and Spanish, and that was another delight of the cow town for me.

So we visited library, post office, and bookstore every day but Sunday, when all were closed, and if we were returning to the cabin afterward, rather than setting off to explore farther afield, our last regular stop in town was Beverly’s. If we’d gone up to Safford or over to Benson, we might stop at Beverly’s on the way home, too. The business wasn’t called Beverly’s. A sign on the front of the building read “Motherlode Espresso,” and signs painted on the side seemed to call it something else -- maybe two somethings else -- it was always a little confusing, to tell the truth. But Beverly was in charge, it was her place, and if she didn’t get there (as happened once or twice), the place might not open at all. Beverly offered coffee, ice cream, magazines, books, and souvenirs. She had a cat named Sarah, and she always remembered that our dog’s name was Sarah, too. We usually took our coffee outside and sat at one of the shaded tables facing City Hall, with our Sarah at our feet.

It was exciting when a train came speeding through on the tracks the other side of City Hall (formerly the train depot), its whistle and rushing clatter deafening. Even better -- because this didn’t happen every day – was when a big pickup truck pulling a livestock trailer would park either directly in front of the shaded porch or across the street. Sometimes the trailer held cattle, sometimes saddled horses. On the best day there would be both cows and horses and a couple of cow dogs, to boot. I considered every inhaled breath a gift from the gods.

Even the obituaries in the weekly newspaper were different from those at home. Of one Arizona man it was written, tenderly, that he had “ridden trains all over the country” and “worked wherever he was needed.” Read between the lines on that one! A woman who had lived to a ripe old age had loved “quilting and working cows.”

Willcox boasts a weekly livestock auction, and it’s no small affair. Hour after hour, cowboys and cowgirls on horseback move cattle through pens and chutes into the auction ring to be bid up and sold by the hundredweight. It’s a serious, workaday scene. Big business. Ranchers and cowboys and families with little children cluster around the doorways or take seats on wooden bleachers that rise up from the auction floor so everyone has a good sight line. And the livestock pours through, in one side, out the other.

We were looking over the calf pens one morning, David in originally expensive but somewhat dusty and slightly scuffed old boots he’d found at a thrift store in Benson. He was wearing one of his most handsome cowboy hats. An older man holding a little grandson by the hand asked us, “You folks buyin’ today?” We were happy to feel we didn’t stand out conspicuously in the crowd as the outsiders we were.

Had my life been different, I could have loved running cattle (“working cows”). As it is, I have loved horses since babyhood. Two or three horses in roomy, shaded pens, saddled and ready for their turn to work, called me to them with their irresistible perfume. If a horse is shy, the trick is not to approach it, so I turned away and leaned my back against the fence. Sure enough, the horse stepped curiously over to nibble my shoulder. I was in heaven.

But even laundry days were pleasantly different in Arizona. The woman who ran the laundromat had grown up in Willcox, gone to live in either Tucson or Phoenix, and came back to raise her kids in her hometown. She was friendly and helpful. The place was clean and well run and never crowded. Out front next to a giant pot of cactus was a bench in the sun, and off to the side, between parking lot and sidewalk, was a food truck selling Sonoran hot dogs – not a Mexican thing but a border thing – piled high with beans and peppers.

A Michigan friend who works in real estate came to visit us in the high desert but remained immune to the allure of the cow town and the ghost town. I tried to impress her with what bargains were to be had, how many houses and other buildings were for sale. “But people would have to want to be here,” she objected, as if there were no attraction whatsoever. We experienced, she and I, mutual incomprehension. In town, I saw all the necessities of life: library, post office, restaurants (not a wide variety, it’s true), school, churches, community center, medical offices, museums, hardware store, feed store, and two large grocery stores. Outside town, not faraway at all, there were horses, cows, rangeland, open spaces, and mountains. No crowds, no heavy traffic. “And it’s the gateway to the Chiricahuas!” I said to clinch my argument. She remained unconvinced, and once again I realized (why does this continue to surprise me, after a lifetime of similar experiences?) that many of the things and places I love seem to lack appeal for most of my fellow Americans, who want what they see as “more.”

It’s true, no one would come to Willcox to shop for clothes or furniture. Most of the various wine-tasting rooms were not open during the time we were there. The old movie theatre only pulled in half a dozen audience members for a showing of a Paris opera, although it pretty nearly filled the house for a concert by the high school jazz band, and we had a fine time at both events. A huge, expansive feed store, the kind of thing I find wonderfully gratifying, is not high on most tourists’ lists of what they’re looking for in a winter getaway.

“It’s just a little cow town,” David would say with a shrug, when I sang the praises of Willcox. He understood how our visiting friend was seeing it.

But that – the “little cow town” -- was what I loved. Willcox is itself, not trying to be a center of fashion or high culture. There are plenty of cities and towns across the U.S. with upscale pretensions, and I would not trade the Willcox Livestock Auction for a Dior showroom or the Junior Rodeo for a dozen Starbucks or sushi restaurants.

Another friend of ours, years before and in another context altogether, commented that in the U.S. today, every place is like every other place. I disagreed then, and I disagree now. Willcox isn’t even like Benson, the next town west on the expressway. Benson doesn’t have a livestock auction or junior rodeo! Benson doesn’t have KT’s Market! Sure, Benson’s library is bigger, as is their library bookstore, but the library and bookstore in Willcox were plenty big enough for me. One day on the porch at Beverly’s we met a woman from Portal, Arizona, over the other side of the Chiricahuas, who bragged of the number of doctorate degrees clustered in that little mountain town in the winter. What do I care? I’ve lived in university towns and have plenty of degreed friends --and I love my friends! -- but do I need that everywhere I go? I don’t.

For the people of Willcox, I could wish for improvement in their local economy, but for myself I would hate to see its essential nature changed. “Cattle Capital of the World” is not a title to trade in for something easily found elsewhere.