tbell spaketh thusly:

That is a classic reply.

Ah! So, you know Sheriff "Showboat" Arpaio and his six-figure
publicist! Excellent.

Enjoyed your humor mixed with useful information.

Any useful information dervied from anything I write is purely
accidental. If it works for you, there's a good chance it's coincidence.

Weren't you in Davis, CA, at one time?

Wow. You mean visiting? Probably. That would have been back in
'85; I haven't been to California (LA area, specifically) since... '96, I
think it was.

Before moving to the Phoenix area, I lived in Socorro, New Mexico-
a spectacularly wretched place. Aside from the drunk driving, water
shortages, corrupt police, absurd medical care, tire fires, drought, price
gouging, the "produce museums" known as supermarkets there, intermittent
explosions and who-knows-what kind of fallout from research performed for
the past 50 years at EMRTC, and New Mexico Tech itself- which defies
description- yeah, sure. Everything was fine there. 'Cept those matters.
The sunsets were great, I gotta admit that. But you had to drive 70 miles
each way to Albuquerque if you wanted to see a movie, unless it was
showing at the 1-screen theater in town.

To give you a better idea about Socorro, you must understand the
story of Elfego Baca, a self-appointed sheriff who survived a 33-hour
gunfight with 80 cowboys in 1884. With a mail-order tin badge, he arrested
a local cowboy who considered "entertainment" to be making Mexican
citizens dance by firing at their feet.

When approached by several cowboys who wanted their buddy,
McCarty, to be released, Baca shot one cowboy in the knee, and a horse
reared up and crushed the foreman. Baca got away, but when McCarty was
released, Baca was ambushed by a contingent of 80 of cowboys who didn't
see it quite the same way as Baca did. Baca ended up hiding in an empty
house that, most fortunately, had a floor that was 18" below ground level.
In a veritable fusillade of bullets, Baca was shot at with approximately
4,000 rounds into a tiny building; the front door sustained 367 holes
alone. A stick of dynamite was chucked inside. But when dawn arrived, he
started cooking breakfast- still alive, and uninjured. As an interesting
aside, one cowboy made a shield using the door of a cooking stove as
primitive armor, arguably the first time body armor was worn into modern
combat. Baca grazed the man in the head, sending him running. Indeed,
Baca's ability to return fire had caused the cowboys to string up blankets
so they could walk around without getting shot.

Baca was acquited of murder twice from that particular event. If
memory serves, I don't think he was injured in the event. The lesson to be
learned? New Mexicans like their guns (which I have no problem with), but
white men can't shoot. Four thousand rounds into a building the size of
most people's living rooms? Good heavens.

Anyway- that event pretty much defines Socorro, except it would be
a lot harder to find 80 people sufficiently enthused to attempt to murder
someone in that town these days. It's tough to find 80 people that want to
work in Socorro, let alone kill.

Today, the Elfego Baca Golf Shoot memorializes Baca; golfers tee
off from the top of M Mountain, at 7,243' ASL. The "hole" is a helicopter
landing pad, 2,550' below, and about three miles distant. The first shot
can carry 600 yards if done correctly. The next one is this Saturday, 14
June. Top prize is $500, and bragging rights. Mike Stanley has won it most
years; I used to work with him at the EMRTC. He holds the record at 9
strokes.

http://www.hiltonopen.com/Elfego.htm

If memory serves, the Elfego Baca Golf Shoot is considered one of
the two most difficult golf tournaments in the world. The other is in
South Africa, I understand.


-AJHicks
Chandler, AZ