mcneal

The Sulphur Springs Valley was the route for rustling cattle both ways across the border, and McNeal is only about 3 miles from the location of the McLaurys' last ranch.

And we have this, the real thing, right where they found Johnny Ringo's body:

(and we also have some kind of space dog, the "Area 51" breed, whose members give every appearance of wisdom beyond their years, until they open their mouths:

and those kinds of things are pretty much why the Sulphur Springs Valley rules!

McNeal is in Cochise County, Arizona, about 20 miles north of Walmart, Radio Shack, Safeway, and Mexico, on US 191. Elfrida (aka North McNeal) is about 6 miles further north. McNeal has a few dozen visible people, Elfrida a few hundred.

Here's a view from Monte Vista peak toward the Mule Pass fire in Bisbee, taken at 1:18 p.m. Monday, May 18.
The smoke on the far mountain is 45 miles away as the crow flies:

Here's the new tower behind the old building:

Talk about your "sky islands" -- here's what the trail upward looks like, including two wild beasts found nowhere else in this mountain range:

A stealthy approach revealed one of the beasts as a short-legged deer:

And revealed the other beast as the famous Chameledog, shown here in two color phases:

Here's a view from the peak toward Cochise Stronghold:

The pic of the Bisbee fire was taken from the same spot, just facing south of west. Again, 45 miles away. If you go almost 2 miles up, the maquiladora pollution diminishes.

The break dancer is Eric Drabeck, in Ray & Cricket Lawson's front yard.

Ray & Cricket also have a singer/guitarplayer friend known on Youtube as carlsborgbob. Here's how to get to him on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/carlsborgbob

Between the breakdancing and the guitar playing, looks like a salon over there!

Here's another local gem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL0NwrzFxF0&feature=channel

I do like the minimalist school of video-making. McNeal and North McNeal are in perfect country for it.

Here's a link to the world's worst video, of the inner workings at the Elfrida Art Center

Here's a brand new business in town, part of the doubling of McNeal's shops in the last year or so:

Here's a link to a blog page by a very interesting couple who wandered into the library at North McNeal on Friday, January 9. As you can see from this page of their blog, they were looking around in the Wilderness Of Rocks before dropping down our way. You can get to all of their website from this page:

Here's a link to the Danish cartoons of Mohammed that caused all the commotion a couple of years ago, that's just revived again:

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A Good New Business In Town:

and a bunch of people happy about it:

So now the north end of the McNeal Mercantile building
is being put to a good use for our little town.

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Here:
http://www.bellestarr-az.org/index.html
is a wonderful website & a wonderful place to visit in Cochise County.
About mile 353 on AZ 80. South side of the road. Look for a lot of corrals.
This is a private home, not a business, but Belle is very sociable.
So are her horses and burros and lord knows what. Take apples and sugarlumps!

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The picture below shows most of downtown McNeal: mainly McNeal Mercantile, by The Shop Next Door, facing SW from US 191. McNeal Mercantile has a website: http://www.mcnealmercantile.com . The site has a link to a map putting the store about 2 miles north of town. Trust me, just go to the corner of 191 and Davis Road, not 2 miles north.

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AIIIIEE! HOW CAN PEOPLE LIVE LIKE THIS?

The great blizzard of Ought-7:

In our own back yard:

Oh, horrors, it happened again in 2008!
On December 26, 2008, mysterious white powder again fell from the sky,
at the same time that the temperature got down to about 32.

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Charlene Kennedy, officially of McNeal, in charge at the Elfrida Library, won a sing-it-in contest on KWCD 92.3 FM! Here are her winning lyrics (to the tune of Jingle Bell Rock):
        Outback, Lawley's, & KWCD
              Are all teaming up on a dinner for me!
        Such Xmas spirit, refreshing to see,
          12 lucky winners get steak dinner for free!
        We got our '05 from Lawley's last year,
          The radio was playing country,
        We haven't changed the dial at all,
          All year 92.3 is the station for me!
        What a fine time,
          Just to go dine,
              At the Outback Steakhouse today!
        If I don't win
          I will try agin,
              After all we have 12 days!
        So hurry up, hurry up,
            Write down a song,
              Take a small chance this year,
        You could be the winner this time around,
          And Cochise County will all be laughing,
                As they're driving through town!

Yay Charlene!

All this green stuff! If I wanted greenery, I would have stayed up North. Can we please have a parched, brown, landscape again, the way it s'posed to be? Where I can see the goatheads before I step on them? Where the toads and snakes are visible? Where the dog can see jackrabbit ears to chase?

In real life, about 1/4" across -- even higher until the spike breaks off in your foot.

Standing water once dotted the Sulphur Springs Valley. In 1872, a survey found water just ten feet down almost everywhere. Alfalfa and other such plants covered the valley.

Our surface water went for cattle. By 1890 we had a hundred thousand cattle. Cochise County was actually called America's Cattle Capitol. Came a drought. By 1895, only 25,000 cattle survived. The rest starved to death, after eating every plant down to the dirt, creating the desert that we live in now.

Our underground water survived until about 60 years ago. Old-timers remember diving into running rivers. Then came rural electrification, and cheap energy made it feasible to pump water out of the ground. In 1944, the County had only 12 square miles irrigated. By 1950, with electrification, that was 40 square miles. By 1975, 312 square miles. Came the oil crisis, and expensive electricity. About 2/3 of the irrigated land in the County went bust. Irrigation hasn't come back much, nor has the water table. It's typically 300 feet down. In places, the surface of the ground has sunk 6 feet or more. And abandoned farms keep blowing away in dust storms.

Today's money crop is housing. To real estate developers, housing means profit. They always want just one more project. They say we'll never run out of resources. That's what miners, cattlemen, and farmers said in their turn. But we live in their ruins -- mine tailings, ghost towns, a desert, sinkholes, dust storms, and scarce water. All over the county, new cracks in the earth show us that the aquifer is drying up today.

Government wants to appear in control, and developers and their allies want us to think that with new zoning and careful use of water, we can keep adding housing. But our eyes show us that we are out of water, and Cochise County history shows us that whenever we push the limits in this county on the edge, disaster happens.

On March 8, 2006, Planning & Zoning approved over a thousand new housing units. If developers eventually fill just a third of the County, with big 4-acre lots holding standard-size families, that's 750,000 people -- 6 times our population now. But the water's not here. It is either insane or crooked for politicians to keep pushing for developers to get rich by adding new homes to a valley that cannot support them.

I call the McNeal area "Rustler's Range" because this area was home base for a lot of rustlers back in the days of the Wild West. The McLaurys may have died in Tombstone, but they lived here, and rustle they did.

At the far left and far right of the picture is US 191 facing south. The car whose top you can just see is about halfway between Davis Road and McNeal Road. A hundred feet or so ahead of the car, you can barely see Davis Road branch off to the left and right. In the middle of the picture is US 191, facing north. The white blotch just to the left of US 191 facing north is downtown McNeal.

All of us in the Sulphur Springs Valley get to enjoy sunrises like this:

The library is by the community center, west of 191 on the north side of town. Its address is 10552 North Hwy 191; phone 520 642 1744; hours Tuesday 1 to 8, Thursday 9-12 & 2-5, Friday 1-5, Saturday 9-12, with the usual holiday closings. Except for Charlene Kennedy, the honcho, the staff is all volunteer, so be nice. The library has four computers with free internet access, and an online catalog with links to much more stuff.

Here is a photo of the interior of the library, with several of its helpful staff.

At the far left, in the green sweater, is Charlene Kennedy, our librarian. To her right, sitting at the computer, wearing green, is Charlene Kennedy. At the left of the shelves, in green, is Charlene Kennedy. And at the far right, in green, is Charlene Kennedy. Man that woman can work!

The library has some interesting programs. Story Time, for small children, is continuing, and a new development is a Teen Council for teenagers who want to be involved in library work, and spread the word of literacy. The Teen Council is going great; to jump in, call the library at 520 642 1744.

On a personal note, "here" is a link to some books I have liked in the last few years. Many of them are available through the Elfrida library.

You are looking south towards Mexico, from about 20 miles north of Douglas AZ and the Mexican city of Agua Prieta. Agua Prieta has a few hundred thousand people, many of whom come from parts of Mexico where people have no hope or opportunity at all, to get jobs in factories that are far below American standards of wages, safety and pollution. In the picture above, the golden area low in the sky is the pollution over Agua Prieta. That's how "free trade" looks.

Many impoverished Mexicans don't want to stop in Agua Prieta, they want across the border into America, where the streets, not the skies, are paved with gold. From the American side of the border, the illegal immigration looks like a crisis -- which leads to the following item:

On August 23, 2005, the Cochise County Board Of Supervisors voted, 3-0, to place Cochise County in a state of emergency.

Arizona law allows a county to declare an emergency to meet a man-made calamity, disaster, or civil disobedience which endangers life or property.

Cochise County's "calamity, disaster, or civil disobedience" is the border situation. The Board was following Governor Napolitano's lead. On August 15, the Governor issued a Declaration Of Emergency for the counties bordering Mexico, stating "that the massive increase in unauthorized border crossings and the related increase in deaths, crime and property damage justifies a declaration of a State Of Emergency."

A State Of Emergency is not the same as martial law. Under Arizona Revised Statute 26-301(16), a State Of War Emergency "exists immediately whenever this nation is attacked or upon receipt by this state of a warning from the federal government indicating that such an attack is imminent." The Governor did not find that language appropriate for the border situation.

The States Of Emergency do, however, give state and county government great power. The Governor can directly control every state agency in Cochise County, and exercise the state's police power, subject only to Arizona's constitution and laws. And the Cochise County Board Of Supervisors can, among other things, impose curfews, close any business, and close any public street or place.

Despite having such great powers, the Board Of Supervisors is reluctant to use them, because the Supervisors have to be elected, and perceive Anglos and Latinos as distinct voting blocs who must be separately placated.

In this situation, because our politicians are no better than average politicians, two bad things happen. First, when the politicians do anything, they build on the differences between the Anglo and Latino voting blocs, and make the differences greater. Second, whatever the politicians do, they do in twisting, turning, evasive ways, so that nothing bad can be pinned on them.

Thus, people are taught to look at others as enemies instead of fellow citizens, and governmental structures are distorted to rule subjects instead of representing citizens.

It's been a while since I added anything here, so I broke my rule & put a business up front. Cochise Sports & Recreation seems to me to do a good job of teaching people how to get a CCW license. I took their class and was very impressed. If you want to be able to carry concealed legally, you might call them at 824 2299. This is a good time to get that permit anyway, because the state has just dropped the hours of instruction required from 16 down to 8, just one day.

On Wednesday, November 9, 2005, I met Tom Bohmfalk, who talked about the old days around McNeal, and let me take some pictures on his place.

The legend at the bottom identifies Tom as the cowboy at the lower right, with the glamorous job of pulling on the back end of the cow. That drawing was made a few months after WW II ended. Tom does not normally pull on the back end of cows anymore, but if he had to, the work he is doing around his place indicates that he would do okay.

Tom lives on Davis Road, retired and busy. Among other things, he is restoring the Model A Ford that he used to drive to high school:

Tom has completely disassembled the car, and is readying every part for reassembly. He doesn't fix only cows, you see. Tom is a good example of people in the Sulphur Springs Valley -- they learn to do what needs to be done.

-- and will be building a faux cemetery, to be known as Buzzard's Breath, with a collection of tombstones memorializing his friends. The idea sounds odd, until you look back over your own life and realize that you have known many good people who should be remembered more, and maybe with a little bit of humor.

(Tom is, by the way, mentioned in a pretty good book about conditions on the border: Hard Line, by Ken Ellingwood.)

In the "OK Corral" shootout, two McLaurys were killed. They had a ranch very near to what is now downtown McNeal. Cowboys brought cattle stolen from Mexico, and Mexicans rode up to rustle them back. The border meant a lot less then. This is also where cowboys brought donkeys rustled from the Cavalry, and sold them back to the Cavalry, without the Cavalry recognizing them. You might call it disreputable country, but I'd just say, "self-reliance." I hope that McNeal businesses begin to use this history, because it should be just as thrilling for a tourist to stand on a rustlers' range, as to stand where a gunfight took place.

McNeal and Elfrida have a lone, overworked DJ, exhausted by the throngs of party people who overrun this area. Here is a link to his website, which includes links to his playlist organized by performer, song title, and year.

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Another job for the pros, as far as we are concerned. Doing some well work:

And the results of my asking to see some teeth for a closeup. Careful inspection of the photo below shows the strange disappearance of one subject, and the strange lack of teeth from the smile of the other. It's back to the portrait studio for a refresher course in portraiture for me:

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Here are a couple of fellows who did right by us on some water well work and education.

Most of the housing around here arrived in one or two pieces on a big truck. Here is A-Ray's, a business that does a fine job taking care of them, new or old. They made our floors much more level.

They do such good work it's almost worth while to break things just to see real craftsmen.

Here are (little) Gary & (big) Gary Mattingly, of Bar-Heart Enterprises. They do heavy-duty plumbing for farms & homes, including backhoe work. They know what they are doing, they care about doing it well, & they are scrupulously fair in their billing.

Every one of the people listed above is somebody we are glad to know, & would be proud to have as a friend. Things down here are not like in the big city. These people all pull their weight.