Bill and I
BILL AND I HUNG OUT at the same gin mill back in the last century – La Cocina. We were at different ends of the bar at La Cocina. Each of us with our own drink. I hadn’t amounted to much and think I was intimidated by someone who could drink like Steve White, Jim Wagner or Wolcott Ely — yet be neck-deep in so much action.
This guy who was always on the “far out” side of everything – not really hip nor a beatnik; but for sure not a proper American? Somebody from a Nevada ranch? The cat was too much for my sensibilities.
He dropped out of Taos somehow while I dropped further in. He came back years later sober. I had also managed the feat and made the natural shift from drinking to writing and fishing. But who is gonna publish a ‘60s Taos lush whose views are at odds with American decency? That would be Bill at Geronimo and then HorseFly.
He only gave me 800 words an issue but it was a perfect lesson, cause the literary professor then helped me trim my piece down to sinew and bone. Having both been raised on La Cocina bar stool, he always knew where my scathing drift was heading. In all my dealings with editors and publishers he is the only person that always had my wavelength. He never said “back up a little,” it was always forward.
I was always amazed by how he reveled in Taos political strife. If anyone is reading this and new to the Taos valley beware that under the dust and mud there is a cruel joke of a very raw life here. It dates back to when the Comanche swooped over that adorable Taos Mountain for trick or treat.
Bill faced the dark side of Taos head-on. There were no excuses in Bill’s newspaper; no being “nice nice” cause your great-grandpa got abducted by Comanche! No free ticket if you had a bucket of cash. No excuse for bad business, bad art or bad actions against the next human; all’s going to be addressed no matter who you were. He could have filled any of Biden’s cabinet posts! He could have been the third Pope! Always at service to his fellow human.
He had a fault or two and I got an email from an upright Taos citizen that Bill pissed off mightily. I know the story and Bill likely wronged him. But it was water dashed under the bridge for the newsman; as Bill was a different breed of cat when the subject was Taos politics. I saw him in action once at the PO when he met a top-level Taos politician who had just been attacked in HorseFly. They were joking what color Bill was going to paint his poor house once the slander litigation got thru. They spoke a different language. I walked away thinking these guys put on suits of ½-inch leather when they leave the house.
Tracy McCallum said Bill always told the truth no matter the cost and called him “the conscience of Taos.” Suzanne de Silva asked me how I was taking it and I said, “OK, I guess, I can’t fathom Taos without him. Its like looking at that mountain that presides over the valley and then it’s not there anymore.”