The Biggest Leg In Mexico

February 11, 2011

Talked on the phone to the great Texas actor Barry Corbin yesterday. Really a thrill for me. Barry has a long career (he was the astronaut in the popular TV show Northern Exposure) and I told him he absolutely nailed it in No Country For Old Men. Towards the end of the movie, Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Bell goes to visit his uncle (Corbin) who tells about how one of their kin was killed by In-dins, "They was wantin' this and wantin' that. . ." Just dead on, I gushed. "Well, I knew them boys," was how Barry modestly put it. Barry is coming to the Sedona Film Festival next weekend and I'm going to interview him for What History Has Taught Me. Great guy.

Bailed into the illustration of Sarah Bowman, known as The Great Western, riding a donkey and exclaiming to a line of soldiers in the Mexican War, "Who wants a wife with $15,000 and the biggest leg in Mexico?" She was six two, tipping the scales at 200 and had flaming red hair. Quite a character. Here is my take on that scene:

She was a "camp follower" so I dressed her as more of an 1840s cook-washer woman, rather than some romantic saloon girl, which is the temptation.

One more illustration to finish today and this one is of Isiah Mays, the black medal of honor winner at Bloody Run. That illustration to follow.

"Be not merely good; be good for something."

—Henry David Thoreau