Grand Dad

Pancho Villa. The mere name evokes emotions a 100 years later.

Good? Bad? In Between? Hero? Villain? Who Knows? History has cloaked Pancho Villa's Life & Legacy in a shimmering tapestry befitting The Legend he is.

If not for Pancho Villa, it's entirely possible I would have never become so enthralled by Arizona.  Here's the story.

My Grand Dad was a grunt US Army Private sent down to be part of General Black Jack Pershing's attempt to bring Pancho Villa to justice. My Grand Dad never rose above the lowest of the lowest rank in the US Army back then because he was a "hand full," as some are wont to say.

Grand Dad got the worst and most despicable duty of anyone. I can't even tell you what it was. Yes, it was THAT bad! Terrible stuff. But he was down there, taking orders, fighting and doing things that US Army people do.

And so it is that we get to revisit Grand Dad's Duty Stations on this Road Trip. I owe a lot to my Grand Dad. First, of course, he sired my Daddy and where would I be without him? But here the other weird twist.

My Grand Dad didn't like me and I can't recall he ever spoke to me face-to-face, actually in person. Whenever my parents would go visit the grumpy old man, they would tell me to "get out of sight" and "be seen rather than heard."

Well, since my Grand Dad served down there on The Border back in 1915-1917, he fell in love with Old Arizona. He got discharged out of some Texas military post and went back to Indiana. (I have his service record  back in Idaho.) As the hush-hush Family Story goes, he got some young lass pregnant and they got married.

But he carried a chip on his shoulder the rest of his life because he never could get back to Arizona. So when Arizona Highways Magazine was born in July 1921, Grand Dad became a Charter Subscriber, almost a year before my Dad  was born.

And so, when I would go to his Old Man Place, my folks would shoo me into a musty bedroom that was filled with EVERY Arizona Highways Magazine printed from 1921 into the early 1950's.  And all I did was sit there in that musty old room and leaf through and through and through those ancient magazines.  I grew so enamored with Arizona my Little Heart was about to pop.  All I could live for was a chance to see those mystical, magical, monumental places that soared so far beyond my imagination.

I can so clearly remember sitting stunned with some of those old magazines on my kiddie lap.  I simply stared in disbelief.   Could such a place exist?  Is this truly real?  How soon can I get there? And when?

And so, there ya go.

Well, we're a goin' back to Grand Dad's Old Stomping Grounds on this here trip. MUCH more to come soon!