When I was about 12 years old, we made a trip to Silver City, New Mexico to visit some of my dad's family. I remember that trip clearly because we spent a week with my dad's Uncle Rex, an old bachelor, who had, along with the rest of his family, made the long migration journey from Comanche County, Texas to New Mexico by horse-drawn wagon when he was a young man. Of course, the main reason I remember Uncle Rex so clearly was that he had spent his whole adult life searching for gold and silver in New Mexico. He told such exciting stories about claims filed and stolen, gunfights, and places where he knew gold was located, and those stories made me want to head out with Uncle Rex and start digging for gold.
We returned to Silver City in May 2004, to search for family, rather than for gold. Our first stop was in Memory Lane Cemetery. I had completed an extensive family search using my computer and knew that Uncle Rex, his brothers, and a few other family members were buried in that cemetery. We easily found all of them and I photographed all of the head stones. Then I discovered that Ben Lilly, an old mountain lion hunter from the area, and Billy the Kid's mother were also buried in that cemetery, and photographed those stones, as well. The trip to Silver City really brought back memories of that first trip to Silver City so many years ago.