Bill Whaley is gone. Deb Villalobos is still here. They had quite a ride together.
I don't know their timelines. I'm just guessing that while Deb was a nurse in Chattanooga or Jackson, Mississippi, or flipping catfish in a Cajun café in bayou country, Louisiana, Bill was probably off skiing in Lake Tahoe, herding cattle from horseback on the family homestead, or studying Plato, Euripides, Sophocles and Finnegan's Wake at some uppity academic bucket-of-blood near rural Winnemucca.
Their adventures with Taos' The Horse Fly defy logic. How Deb and Bill kept the newspaper together for 10 years beats me. They both got in more trouble than Shakespeare's conspirators in Macbeth, King Lear and Julius Caesar. Bill never met a judge or a politician he couldn't offend. And Deb surrounded herself with enough county sheriff's deputies to win a corndog eating contest at the Taos Fiestas.
Bill, and my old buddy Leo Garen, were a match made in theatrical hell. And Harvey Mudd is probably still holding 30 IOUS from Bill. I once heard a rumor that Harvey hired Jim Levy to break Bill's kneecaps, but Levy chickened out because he loved too much screwing up the reels during every movie ever screened at The Plaza Theater.
Deb's intimate essays in the HorseFly on her cancer illness were disturbing and courageous. Her and Bill's court battles together against the Taos power elite are legendary. Bill was a good boy/bad boy growing up. Deb was a good girl/bad girl growing up. I don't think either of them had an ounce of good sense or a smidgen of fear. They were both crazy as betsy bugs and considered Mount Everest, "No hill for a stepper."
They were integrated in our Taos community on all sides: Anglo, Hispanic, Pueblo, outsiders, insiders, visiting criminals. I thought I knew everybody, but Bill and Deb knew everybody and their brothers and sisters and suegros and bisabuelos, nietos, primos, grandchildren, madrastras and kiva boys.
Talk about folks involved with their community. Seems to me Deb was always cooking for the world; old-timers from Chamisal loved her as she led them through workout sessions at their community center. She and Bill gently took care of the great rock and roll poet, Richard Trujillo, during the last difficult years of his life. And they've been friends with Leo Santistevan forever. I also salute their munificence for lately welcoming Joanne Forman into their little trailer park.
You can't look at their kindnesses without feeling awed and beholden.
We all know Bill was a member of the Four Horsemen of the El Prado Apocalypse. Or maybe they were the El Prado Pistoleros, what do I know? Juma Archuleta, Gene Sánchez, Arsenio Córdova, and Bill, the Gringo academic smarty-pants. I've mourned each one as they bit the dust. I miss Juma's haircuts and raucous laughter, Arsenio's guitar during Ranchos Church memorials, Gene's palship with my neighbor, Ted Jeantete, who always spoke Spanish with me, and Bill's sardonic commentaries on our beloved American Armageddons.
Dennis Hopper in Taos was like Nicolas Cage in "Leaving Las Vegas." Bill Whaley and Dennis Hopper together in Taos ... were like Nicolas Cage in "Leaving Las Vegas." I would rather have put my money in a Trump Atlantic City casino than invest in most of Bill's 100-1 shots.
But I always paid to get in and take a soulful look around. Bill Whaley had moxie. And he could reinvent himself like Leonardo DiCaprio in the film "Catch Me If You Can."
I figure Deb and Bill bet on each other like Liz Taylor and Richard Burton kept betting on each other. Why'd they do it?
Because they loved each other. If you don't know by now that "love is like a ball and chain" go back and listen to Joplin again.
And while you're at it wear warm pants and take two aspirin.
When I look at complicated paintings by Breughel, Hieronymus Bosch and Anita Rodríguez I see the Taos panorama as Deb and Bill saw it and willingly took it on, no matter the odds against it.
But Deb keeps nonchalantly feeding her turtles, and Bill kept nonchalantly walking his dogs (including those two little yappers of Gene and Jules) out on the mesa, or up Italianos Canyon. I know Deb's mom in Chattanooga died last year, and I see Deb driving back and forth across America, from the deep south to Taos - rhymes with chaos - New Mexico, while Bili, Fitz and Paloma kept the home fires burning.
How lucky we've been to have them both. Such complicated, endearing, multicultural and never neutral ne'er-do-wells we must always celebrate. No matter how many of us may have yelled at them, they've always kept us awake, interested and involved. I bless them both for that.
Adiós, Guillermo - te quiero.
(1) comment
Cher John, You hit the pen on the page with this en memorium for our friend and neighbor, Bill. Merci pour ce récit plein d'humour et coeur. And yes, Deb is still here; what a strong woman! We love you! Many fond memories of working with both Bill and Debra on the Horse Fly "back in the day" when I had Emanuelli Advertising Design. Long hours and lots of creativity for sure.
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