No blog post today, just pictures

Click the pics before I end up in New Mexico.

These are some of the belongings of the founder of Tombstone that ended up in this Museum. Being a gun person myself one of the first things I noticed is the broken, but repaired, stock on Ed Schieffelin's rifle, and there are several things that can explain this all too often occurrence of how a rifle got broken back in the day.

One reason for this happening is you carried your rifle everywhere you went in those days. It was always with you and was used a great deal, therefore it was exposed to more hazards than the seldom carried rifles of today.

But probably the best reason, is your trusty horse. The rifle is carried in a scabbard attached to the saddle and the rifle stock can get hung up on some brush if the horse walks to close which could break the stock.

The horse may rub up against a tree to scratch himself, and if the rifle is in its scabbard it can get broken.

And probably the most common reason would be, every once in a while a horse likes to roll, especially in certain patches of dirt. And if you can't get your rifle out of its scabbard quickly enough.... The stock will surely break.

No blog post for me today, just pictures. I've been busy saying goodbye to Tombstone, and packing up getting ready to leave tomorrow morning for New Mexico.

Theboondork

These folks are mining silver the slow, laborious, hard way.... By hand. The mine was not lit up brightly like this, the camera's flash powder lit everything up for the picture. If you click the pic and look very carefully you may see that each miner has a candle, in a holder, stuck in a crack in the rock. That single candle is all that was lighting up the miners work area... Dark and dismal does not begin to describe the miners work environment.

In this picture the miners are drilling holes to put the blasting powder in to break up the rock, and the method they're using is  very hard work. A long piece of steel with a chisel shape on the end is hit with a 4 pound hammer, rotated 1/4 of a turn and hit again, this was continued until the hole was about 2 feet deep.

Swinging a 4 pound hammer all day especially while in odd positions was hard, dangerous, miserable work..... But at least you ended up with a pair of arms you could be proud of.

These are the candle-holders that would be stuck in the crack of a rock so you would have enough light to see the drill and not hit your hand with that 4 pound hammer mentioned earlier. Some folks collect these old candle-holders which can sometimes be found laying around mining areas or even in the old mines.

If you read carefully you to may also wonder what in the world is a "street taco" ? And the only thing I can come up with is it's "roadkill" in Mexico.

Random bird perched on a bush outside my door.

Her tombstone reads....

Ava Waters age 3 months.

Poor little Ava never got to experience the harshness of this rough mining town she was born into, or any of the other vicissitudes of life that may have befallen her, as she was struck down by Scarlet Fever. One of the many diseases that took the lives of countless  children at a time when all a family could do to help a sick child was pray.