My book editor, Stuart Rosebrook, took a couple of photos of me working the crowd at Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale on Tuesday night:
BBB lays it on thick at Poisoned Pen on Tuesday night, part I
Poisoned Pen crowd number two, that's Jack Alves, far right, who played lead guitar in the Razz Band.
A very spirited crowd. We sold 35 books by my count.
Meanwhile, I was cleaning in the studio and ran across a contact sheet of photos from the 1920s that was in my mother's belongings. Lillie Louise Guess—everyone called her Bobbi—was born in Lordsburg, New Mexico in 1925. The Guess family ranched and farmed in the Animas Valley, also known as the Boothell of New Mexico, and for awhile, her parents, Bob and Louise Guess, had a house at Stein's Pass which is right on the Arizona-New Mexico line. These photos were taken when they lived there:
Bob and Louise Guess outside their house at Stein's Pass, New Mexico, 1926
A couple miles north of Steins was the Volcano Mine, which I visited in 1977, but very little remained. The mine was close to Doubtful Canyon where numerous Apache attacks had occurred in the 1860s and 70s, thus the name, which reflected your chances of making it through alive.
The ruins of the Volcano Mine tent houses and the headquarters office.
Mary Guess on the ore track at the Volcano Mine
I've always loved this photo for the design and the pathos, or loneliness of the West it conveys. it has such an emotion to it. The pose is so eloquent, to me, with her hand on her shoulder. So innocent and yet elegant. Mary grew up and married Choc Hamilton and is the mother of the rodeo champion Billy Hamilton.
My mother Bobbi and her older sister Mary at Stein's Pass.
Not sure who this old timer is but he's definitely Cowboy Kin.
"Art runs parallel to nature."
—Paul Cezanne