Read The Fine Print

After longer than I care to admit, I finally saw the magic words "I Accept the Terms of Service" on the photo upload page and checked the little box. Geez. I get the feeling that 2.0 is going to be very difficult for me if I don't read the fine print!

Anyway. The photo that I was finally able to upload (cast your gaze to the left) is a photo I took of the Pecos River near Pecos, Texas, my hometown. I love this picture for several reasons.

First of all, the river actually has water running in it. During my junior high school years, the state of New Mexico dammed the river on their side of the border. The river on the Texas side was reduced to a trickle. Texas eventually won the ensuing lawsuit, but while New Mexico controlled the flow of the river we got used to seeing a mostly dry river bed. See all the greenery in the picture? I hardly ever saw that while I lived nearby. That's one reason I had to stop and take the photograph.

Another reason is that the picture was taken from a new bridge, one that was constructed only yards away from an old trestle bridge that had recently been demolished. The old bridge, Sullivan's Bridge, was the favorite hangout of my group of friends from the moment we could drive the nine miles away from town on our own. It was such a fixture in our lives that my friend Kimberly, the editor of our high school annual, used a photo of the bridge for the end pages in the yearbook. I'm glad Sullivan's Bridge is preserved that way.

Finally, if I had taken just a few steps to my left while taking this picture I would have been West of the Pecos. Yep, Pecos is the first town located literally west of the Pecos River on Interstate 20. It is where a replica of the Jersey Lilly stands proudly next to the West of the Pecos Museum and recalls the time of "hanging judge"Roy Bean and of Clay Allison, the gentleman gunslinger who was killed in a shootout in the Orient Saloon - the building that now houses the museum. Pecos, Texas, is also the Home of the World's First Rodeo. (Sorry Prescott, Arizona, but we documented ours in 1883. We know you know that, so the moral victory is ours!)

That's probably a lot more than you wanted to know about Pecos and this photo! But there is a lot of history in Pecos and some of it is my own. This photo reminds me of all that and takes me home for a while.