​One of the singular joys of trekking the back roads in a Jeep is the treasures one finds; some are small, others larger, and sometimes one encounters an entire township of them. Such it was this past summer when my wife and I were visiting relatives in New Mexico. Hwy 159 just north of Glennwood, NM leads to the old ghost town of Mogollon. 
 
The journey is half the adventure, as Mogollon lies a half-dozen vertical miles off of Hwy 180 and it’s a narrow windy bit that can give those of delicate constitutions the vapors, but once there the town itself is a quaint village nestled in a deep valley that reminded me of Bisbee, AZ – another late 19th century mining town.
 
Founded in 1889, Mogollon enjoyed the typical boom of a mining town, followed by the bust that folllows; in the early 20th century the mines were producing wealth for all, but by WW1 they had virtually all been shut down.  The mines reopened during WW2 for a time, and even the Little Fanny Mine hung on the longest, producing until the early 1950s when it too shut down forever.
 
Now a berg of scarcely over 25 souls, Mogollon seems to hang on out of sheer will and memory of its former glory. There is a museum, a few private homes, the Purple Onion Cafe, and not much more.
 
But its remains honor the history of the boomtown mining camps of a hundred plus years ago, and there are historic structures and a cemetery at the top of the canyon that bears witness to the struggles of our forebears.  There are no t-shirts, really, or trinkets to buy, only the experience of visiting, which in a town like Mogollon, is more than enough.

​You’ve seen the ads; a happy family with a spotlessly clean house that miraculously vacuums itself.   I, like so many others, was lured into a happy Utopian fantasy in which my house would be kept spotlessly clean all by itself.
 
It’s not true.
 
Now, it’s partly my fault. My foray into robot vacuums began at Target, where I chose an off-brand vacuum because it was significantly cheaper than the official iRobot brand Roomba.  As is so often the case, cheaper is cheaper for a reason, and I had a lesson in false economy.  The vacuum worked okay, but it got hung up on things, and worse, it had a ridiculously small dust bin that required me to empty it far more often than I had imagined as I stood starry-eyed in Target.  All ideas of setting it to vacuum while I was gone at work vanished; this thing needed almost constant supervision and in the end, wasn’t worth the effort to monitor over just doing the job myself.
 
So I continued sweeping by hand for a time.
 
Then I got a Roomba. . .  the genuine article. I ponied up for the whole megillah, the higher-end vacuum with the Bluetooth connection and the automatic emptying tower so I didn’t even have to touch the dirt with my delicate fingers, but just empty a bag every few weeks.  The app let me schedule it and gave me updates on its progress to my phone.  The app asked me to name my Roomba; I named it Clyde, in honor of my father, who always wanted to name things Clyde. With Clyde’s help, it would be a Brave New World of dustless floors.
 
Except it wasn’t.
 
This Roomba was worlds better than the knock-off I originally had . . . but there were still issues.  Clyde had a habit of getting hung up on electrical cords, most especially the ones that were hard for me to reach, like underneath the desk or behind the couch.  Then sometimes it doesn’t even come on.  My Roomba will periodically struggle to dock itself properly, and then when it’s due to vacuum again it doesn’t have sufficient charge to launch itself. I get no notification; it simply doesn’t do its thing until I investigate why.
 
I had envisioned a world in which my Roomba would clean the house wholly unsupervised, perhaps even while I was away at work.  Such was not to be, and instead the Roomba was like a toddler, whose movements through the house needed to be monitored to prevent catastrophe. And like toddlers, a quiet Roomba signals trouble is afoot.
 
So in the end I’m keeping my Roomba, but if company is coming over and I need the floors done quickly, I still reach for my old-school dust mop.

​Recent weeks have seen a lot of turmoil and upheaval, beginning with protests about the death of George Floyd, leading to more protests, rioting, and still more protests.  Protestors began defacing monuments and statues with “BLM” graffiti and demanding their removal. Soon cities were on board; on June 18th the National Trust for Historic Preservation lent their approval for the removal of Confederate monuments from public spaces[1]. The statues began to come down.  I don’t think that their removal will have any significant effect on race relations in our country, but I see the argument.  Statues honoring generals of a rebellious country that lasted only four years don’t exactly rank up there with the Founding Fathers.
 
The fervor to remove statues didn’t stop with the Confederacy, however. Soon protesters were taking aim at Washington; a descendant of Jefferson wrote an articulate plea for the removal of his monument[2]; even Lincoln was not spared the criticism of the “woke” crowd that was drunk on destatuation[3].
 
This movement is not exactly revisionist; it’s not “rewriting” history per se, but it is certainly censoring what our nation should consider laudable, and we will see where this little experiment takes us. Thus far there has been no discussion about who might replace the images of those removed and now discarded personalities of our past.  Perhaps we no longer believe in heroes.
 
So where does it end? Which public figure is safe at this point? Is Theodore Roosevelt safe; would Martin Luther King make the cut – John F. Kennedy?  What public figure is sacred and pure enough to withstand the scrutiny of this new Zeitgeist? I’m not sure when this statue toppling frenzy will stop, but I suspect that human nature will eventually want to replace the statues with something that the new generation finds acceptable. My recommendation on this point is not to suggest a person, but a material. I submit that all new monuments be made in unfinished sandstone . . . or perhaps even pumice.  That way the new monuments will be sure to exist only in our spotless present and will not outlast the sensibilities that erected them.


[1] https://savingplaces.org/press-center/media-resources/national-trust-statement-on-confederate-memorials?utm_medium=email&utm_source=update&fbclid=IwAR3oFnlZTiXL4zR1da0tVLirDNKS3A4odDmB7RxlsbbsE3XcXuemKOrSAEw#.Xwat5S0iefC
 

[2] https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/506186-jefferson-descendant-take-down-his-memorial

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/protesters-denounce-abraham-lincoln-statue-in-dc-urge-removal-of-emancipation-memorial/2020/06/25/02646910-b704-11ea-a510-55bf26485c93_story.html

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On April 28th of 2011, the Arizona State Legislature declared the venerable Colt Single Action Army (SAA) revolver as the Official State Firearm.  While Sturm, Ruger firearms (who manufacture their single action Vaquero right here in AZ) might have preferred to get the nod, it makes perfect sense to award the designation to the old Colt model, as it was an important tool in establishing law and order on the southwestern frontier.
 
The Colt SAA came out in 1873 as Colt’s most successful revolver in the then-new self-contained metallic cartridges, and sales to the Army quickly made this revolver a hot commodity. This was a wholly new model, replacing the 1872 Open Top that had been built on a rehashed design from the 1860 Army that had been one of the primary sidearms of the Civil War (which is still a fine weapon in its own right).  The new SAA employed a solid top strap and a new, more powerful ammunition, the 45 Colt. Loading 35 grains of black powder underneath a 255 grain conical bullet, the 45 Colt boasted being the most powerful handgun cartridge of its day, and in fact this claim to power was not eclipsed until the advent of the .357 Magnum cartridge in 1935. Even afterwards, many big-bore aficionados, no less than the Dean of Sixguns, Elmer Keith, still preferred the old 45 to the new and modern 357, feeling that the mass and diameter of the bigger bullet outweighed the high velocity energy figures that the smaller round produced.  Keith also noted that the SAA was the fastest gun of any design for getting the first shot out of the holster
 
The Colt SAA has been made in three major “Generations.” The First Generation ran from 1873 to 1941, when handgun production for World War Two shut down production.  Then the Second Generation ran from 1956 (taking advantage of the popularity of westerns and “fast draw” on TV) to 1974, when the original tooling was just too worn out to continue.  They quickly retooled and began production of the Third Generation in 1976, and continue production in limited quantities.
 
The Colt SAA, chambered in 45 Colt with a 5.5 inch barrel, was the official sidearm of the Territorial Arizona Rangers during their tenure from 1901 to 1909, which is perhaps the most compelling reason for it to be chosen as the official State Firearm.  The Modern Rangers have since moved on to more contemporary semi-automatic pistols as their primary duty weapons, but even now individual Rangers can still qualify with the old thumb-buster and carry it on ceremonial duties.
 
So slip out of your quarantine for a bit today and go burn some powder to celebrate the State icon!