John Wise

Disclaimer: This post was updated in November 2022, as the original only included 1 photo. The bigger details were written back then, although a few things needed to be figured out.

After leaving the Guadalupe Inn in Whites City, New Mexico, the three of us had breakfast in Roswell at the Nuthin’ Fancy Cafe. After a ton of desert and not one alien, we stopped for a laugh here off State Route 20 and the intersection of Altito Road, but if you don’t read German, you may not know why we stopped. You see, Geiler in German means hornier, and the idea of some serious horny cattle out there as though that were a possibility, well, that seemed pretty funny to us.

Not so funny is this shrine to a mass murderer, but because this psycho arrives out of the over-romanticized Old West, he’s a kind of folk hero. So, what’s in the Billy The Kid Museum?

Oh, a gun that maybe he used to murder someone. It makes me wonder why we don’t have a roadside museum dedicated to Jeffrey Dahmer featuring power tools and blood-stained towels for processing the eating of his victims.

Okay, this fits: why not feature racist iconography out of the dark past, as those who worship at the feet of villains might enjoy memories of better times?

Right on, some angry injun beating his drum, that works for this abomination of a place.

I think the wheels fell off this once-quaint idea of building a museum to this type of character.

Bosque Redondo was the end of the trail for over 8,000 Navajos who were force-marched off their lands and into New Mexico on what is known as “The Long Walk.” A new visitor center has opened here on these grounds next to the Pecos River in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. I would have supplied a link to more information, but the links are a hit-and-miss hodgepodge of snippets of info that fail to go into great detail about the significance behind the memorial.

This map shows a proposed route of what could one day be the Long Walk National Historic Trail.

We are out on the interpretive trail; this is the Pecos River running through the Memorial Park.

This memorial was just opened back on June 4th, not even 3o days ago; even the dragonflies are new.

The exhibits in the facility are not yet all-together there; this is all a bit of work in progress.

And if you arrive in the summertime, expect the temperatures to be north of 100 degrees (40c).

There’s a nearby photo that depicts Native Americans under armed guards building the barracks for the white guys, except those were built with adobe bricks; we’re guessing this is a recreation over the foundation, so we get the idea.

Nearby, the Billy The Kid Grave Site is guarded by a cage, and somehow, people want to throw money at it and leave flowers. Next week, I’m gonna set up a shrine and museum in honor of John Gacy, the Killer Clown, so people pay my bills by throwing their spare change at his headstone. Don’t go telling me or anyone else that he was cremated because that doesn’t matter; we just need a place, some artifacts, and maybe some body parts.

Encino, New Mexico, simply turned into a ghost town and is being allowed to crumble. Too bad Charles Manson didn’t kill people here.

Maybe Kenneth Pinyan, a.k.a. Mr. Hands and the city of Enumclaw, should come to mind? Last night he died after having his internal organs used as a punching bag by a stallion penis.

Makes you wonder what kind of bestiality might have been happening out in these parts, seeing how this Encino Motel was under new “menagement,” obviously a play on menagerie and management.

My mother-in-law’s body is in there, don’t tell anyone.

We crossed a fuller-than-usual Rio Grande River; seems I’m kind of full of it, too.

Of course, we stayed the night in Socorro, as where else should we have had dinner? Staying here allowed us to not only grab our evening meal at our favorite little restaurant in New Mexico – the El Camino Family Restaurant, but you can rest assured that breakfast will also be right here.