Rex Allen Days

REX ALLEN DAYS Cherishing Songs of Willcox's Past

My road trip with my family while I was a kid meant we sang our way to wherever we were headed. So last October, when my nearly adult kids, Kriselle and Wesley, agreed to go with me to my childhood home of Willcox for the annual Rex Allen Days events, I started singing before we hit the freeway: I love those dear hearts and gentle people, who live in my hometown, until, joining in, they didn't miss a beat. Growing up in Willcox during the '50s and '60s provided a family friend on every block and the freedom to roam from one end of town to the other. Saturday afternoons meant a walk to the movie house on Railroad Avenue, where I could see a double feature for the dime I earned doing morning chores. Our hometown hero, Rex Allen, already famous as a singer and a cowboy movie star, drew me into Walt Disney's nature films with his resonant country-style voice. In those days at the Rex Allen Days Parade, this little girl waited on the curb for the Saturday matinee storyteller, not the singer and star. The parade and rodeo that brought Rex (first name for almost anyone from Willcox) home annually for 49 years now functions as part of the Rex Allen Western Film & Music Festival, which happens from Thursday evening to Sunday afternoon on the first full weekend of October. We arrived on Friday night, my little Saturn looking odd in the convoy of trucks and horse trailers that stretched from Benson to the Willcox Rodeo Grounds. The best spot to see the parade isn't at Haskell Avenue and Malley Street anymore; it's on the block of Railroad Avenue across from Rex Allen Park. But before we chose a spot, I had to stand in front of each storefront saying things like, "This bookstore used to be the pool hall and this empty spot was the bar Mama warned me to be careful of when I passed by on the way to the show house." I beamed as I walked through the doors of The Commercial, grande dame of Railroad Avenue, bragging to my children that Geronimo had shopped there once. The merchandise has changed some since I bought my Keds there, but the creak of the wooden floor and the smell of new cloth soothed me like holding my mother's hand.

REX ALLEN MUSEUM WILLCOX COWBOY HALL OF FAME

Like The Commercial, the parade appeared to have not changed much since my childhood days. Cowgirl queens and princesses in sparkling clothes waved to dreaming girls, bands from every surrounding community proudly marched in formation or not - cowboys of every age and horses in a roundup of varieties trotted down the street. Clowns selling balloons and whistles watched where they stepped and parents cautioned children to do the same. Antique tractors, gleaming like new, were driven by farmers balancing children on their laps. Floats showing off the Future Farmers of America in blue corduroy jackets, the Girl Scouts in pressed green and a team of pink-clad baton twirlers all seemed familiar. I smiled and waved as if these kids were still my peers who shared sack lunches with me at Willcox Elementary.

Rex and Koko are not in the parade these days. Rex Allen died in December 1999, truly "The Last of the Silver Screen Cowboys."

Rex Allen Jr., who is also a singer, and faithful to Willcox, rode by perched above the back seat of a gleaming Cadillac convertible, waving with his father's movie sidekick, Pedro Gonzales Gonzales.

When a blast from the fire engine signaled the parade's end, we drank in the sounds from the four entertainment venues pouring out every variation of country and Western music. I sang along to old songs I'd forgotten I ever knew. Krissy and Wesley threatened to unplug a guitar if we didn't get going to the rodeo.

The ridin' and ropin' were in full swing as we took our seats. While my children winced when the cowboys fell and cheered when they didn't, I thought the best part was hearing the announcer call out contestants' names from small towns in Arizona - San Simon, Bowie, Elfrida. I felt like neighbors encircled me.

Saturday evening boasted a concert with Rex Allen Jr., along with other country and Western stars, performing at the Willcox High School Auditorium. Of course we couldn't take our seats until I'd found and pointed out to Krissy and Wesley the graduating class pictures of their aunts and uncle, who received their diplomas on the very stage where Rex Jr. would perform for us.

For two hours, Rex Jr., Roy Rogers Jr. and Johnny Western stirred more memories of my childhood than any picture album could have. They sang the theme song to just about every Western TV series from Sugarfoot to Bonanza. I sang, I cried and I even forgot that every chair in the auditorium squeaked.

We walked back to our motel in the same crisp air that had greeted us that morning. It felt good to be out late at night, to stroll with my children along the dirt shoulder of the road and to have no fear at all. Maybe the current residents of Willcox don't recommend that nowadays; I don't know. But for me it was all still there. And, for a weekend, Krissy and Wesley witnessed their mother's Willcox - a place of childhood heroes and church bells that ring all across town, a place of dear hearts and gentle people. AH