The Tucumcari Inn has seen better times

“Willin'”

Ahhh, Lowell George and Little Feat. Play the tune if you don’t know it.

Every family has favorite songs, and their tune, “Willin'”, is one we like to sing and play on the guitar around the campfire. Lowell and the band sing their metaphorical song of outlaw truckers smuggling the goods from Tucson to Tucumcari, from Tehachapi to Tonopah. Tucumcari lies in east New Mexico on the west edge of the plains along old Route 66, but like many establishments on the rest of the Mother Road, the Tucumcari Inn’s glory days are past. The doors are boarded up and the swimming pool is full of brush, the parking lots overgrown.

Although it dates me, I used to listen to WHFS progressive radio from Bethesda, Maryland when I was a kid in the 1970s. Cerphe was the DJ and this is an audio recording of Lowell George and Linda Ronstadt singing Willin’ together in the ‘HFS studio on Cerphe’s late night show way back in 1975. The real thing for sure.

The past two days I spent in the Black Mountains of south central NM, visiting the Gila Cliff Dwellings and surrounding wilderness. The dwellings are small but spectacular but it is a very long drive to get there. Photos to follow later.

By the way, the Tehachapi Pass is the gateway from the Mohave Desert to the rest of Southern California and Tonopah was the queen of the old Nevada sliver mining camps in its day!