Meet Crawfish Jack and Curly Sue

I spent this last week in Albuquerque, New Mexico with my husband. He was working, I mostly shopped and rested, although I worked with him on Saturday. We drove so that he could haul all of the things he needed to set up his booth.

Sometimes I forget how enormous Texas is. We live in the center and drove from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. to get to just past the Texas border. It's always good to go West...no one else is, and so the traffic is minimal. For miles and miles in West Texas, there is nothing but brush, cactus and mesas. The joke that you could stand on a tuna can and see forever is pretty accurate. We did go through one interesting area between Sweetwater and Lubbock that had literally hundreds of windmills all within a stretch of a few miles. This has apparently changed the entire economy of Sweetwater, TX and the area surrounding. Other than that, there's not much to see driving in that direction.

I love New Mexico, there's no other place like it. I've made short visits to Taos, and Albuquerque, and longer visits to Santa Fe and Ruidoso. As a child, I lived in Roswell for a time (Alien fame). Each of those cities is so different from the next. But, I've never spent any quality time in Albuquerque, so I was glad to go. Our niece recommended that we go to Old Town to shop and eat at the Church Street Cafe. She also told us that El Pinto was a great restaurant. We did all of those and she was right.

My husband, who is a retired teacher/coach/principal, now sells western belt buckles for Lone Star Silversmith. He worked at a ranch where the 28th annual End of Trail shooting event was being held. The people who participate in this are hard-core, pistol-shooting (I'm talking REAL guns, REAL bullets), period dressing, alias-monikered cowboys (and girls). They were lots of fun and very serious about their sport. Some of the people we met had names like Fishcreek Charley, T-Bone Dooley, Fancy Florence, Ringo Fire, Buffy Logal, and Prairie Flame. Since I don't like to be left out, I decided that my husband and I each needed an alias. So we are now Crawfish Jack and Curly Sue.

The members of the club are serious about their dress and have to follow certain clothing rules to shoot in certain events. Almost all of the vendors sold vintage western clothing. Let me tell you, it's pricey to be a vintage cowperson! Needless to say, my outfit from Ross bought at the last minute didn't quite meet the standards...but I wasn't shooting!