Jane Little Botkin
I picked up my nine-year-old grandson from school recently. After throwing his backpack onto the car’s floorboard while climbing into the seat simultaneously, he sighed. My cue. “How was school today?” Cam gave me a side glance. “I’m writing the story of my life, and it’s so hard.” “Why is it hard?” I asked. “Because…
At the WWA conference in Amarillo in 1983, famous western biographer J. Evetts Haley recalled reading Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains when he was a boy. The author, Captain William F. Drannan, claimed to be an adopted son of Kit Carson. Stories of trapping beaver, hunting buffalo, and chasing wild horses…
Eight years ago, my husband and I decided to purchase a recreational home, i.e., a cabin, in Ruidoso, New Mexico, almost ten hours from our primary home in Dripping Springs, Texas. We first met on Sierra Blanca’s ski slopes in 1976, so the location had a romantic appeal for our newly retired lives. Besides, our…
When Marty Robbins first made a West Texas town famous with his hit song “El Paso,” he did more than just earn a No. 1 country single for the original version, as heard on the 1959 album Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs. He changed the face of a city struggling to become consequential within the Lone…
During a visit to the Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight Ranch House Museum several years ago, I inquired if there were any books on Mary Ann Goodnight. The docent in charge quipped, “No one has written a biography on Molly Goodnight, and besides, there is only a smidgeon of information!” Then she squeezed her index…
It was her dimples that first drew my attention to the Miss America pageant. A more-than-passable piano player with wholesome beauty, Phyllis George could have been anyone’s big sister or babysitter. I watched the pageant every September along with my parents. Before Phyllis, we knew almost nothing about the contestants parading in pale rainbows of…
(Photo El Paso Historical Society) Recently I returned to El Paso to visit my past—my classmates, Northeast El Paso’s Milagro Hills where I grew up, the Upper Valley where I last lived in the city, and, of course, Guyrex landmarks important to my newest book, The Pink Dress, Memoir of a Guyrex Girl. A pleasant…
Some folks claim that El Paso, Texas, should be El Paso, New Mexico. It’s true that the city sits in isolation from the rest of the state—635 miles from Dallas, 600 miles from Austin, and 551 miles from San Antonio. These same naysayers maintain that Midland, 306 miles away, is true West Texas, not El…
My parents initiated a truce the year I won a beauty-queen title. Actually, I was promoted to queen, but to my mother, how I received the title was of no consequence. In effect, I moved from a dysfunctional middle-class family into a theatrical ménage of high performers, intent on managing all aspects of my life for one…
We’re at the Summit, Now What?
Traversing Mount Arapahoe, ca. 1920 Woman’s Club of El Paso Speech March 2026 Did any of you work in an office in the 1970s? Were any of you required to bring coffee to your boss? And was that boss male? I recall working on the 5th floor of the old El Paso Natural Gas Company…
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