The Wild (banned from the) West

As the sheriff, or even as a normal citizen, would you walk up to these guys and tell them they could not smoke in a saloon? HELL NO! It is a miracle that at the time they would even ask them for their guns before rolling in to town.

Founded by rugged people who smoked, drank, sweated, farmed, harvested, prayed and preyed on others; the Southwest in now only wild when you look at the spectacular views of nature. Western Frontiers now only dwell in the eye of the beholder. The people, descendants of explorers and conquerors, warriors and defenders, have become softer than a flour burrito.

Avoiding a sudden monsoon, We drank at this bar (left) the Tin Star Saloon, a collection of odd misfits and strangely bland patrons drinking martinis and local beers. A woman that is leaving Santa Fe because of the horrible education there (ah reminders of New Orleans!)

Drank to my hearts content, which was a bit earlier because of the lack of oxygen at 7G's above sea level, and noticed no one with style, no one with gusto, no one SMOKING! The bars smelled like the armpits of cherubs, no hasy atmosphere. The conversation mostly of tourists and local college puppies.

Noted one Indian among the domesticated ivory cattle, which the same people that banned smoking tell me I should call Native-American. No dirt, no chaps, no cursing and throwing through windows, not even an outburst. You can forget America's frontier spirit, it has been weeded out by bureaucratic law. You can't be original without encroaching on someone else's space. And the more civilized we become the more everywhere feels like somone else's space.

Ah the West, now only Wild on film, in comic books, and in old photographs on City Hall's walls. Yet somehow those City Hallers are slowly killing those images with their damn laws, their ordinances, their curfews and parking meters.

Deadwood is now a suburban cookie cutter without natural grass or ashtrays. Lord knows what the fine is for spitting, even if you can find a spitoon and hit the target.