Portrait by Mike Capron, used with permission.
By Lisa Morton
Last week The Advocate had a visit from a couple from Comfort, Texas who was sent over by Bucky Etheridge after asking him about the late Judy Magers aka “The Burro Lady”. Lucy Griffith, Ph.D. was interested in local stories and myths about The Burro Lady for her poetry works.
Lucy Fowlkes Griffith lives on a ranch on the Guadalupe River near Comfort, Texas. She’s a retired psychologist, and happiest on a tractor named Ruby, (A muse with 25 horsepower). She has written a book of poetry, Healing in Reflection and a book of essays and images Limestone in my Bones: A Year at Rusty Bend. She has work in Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems.
This Editor shared a story from my insurance days of how the most hilarious of Insurance Appraisal Reports ever written was about Judy and a collision she had in her green Cadillac towing a makeshift trailer for her burro, with an 18 wheeler West of Van Horn. True to her ways, Judy refused the Appraisal Companies generosity to replace her makeshift trailer with one they would purchase and personalize with “Judy’s Burro”.
Lucy Griffin has graciously allowed The Advocate to print one of her poems about our forever famous “Burro Lady”. Lucy’s email is [email protected].
Judy Magers, nicknamed “The Burro Lady” or “La Reina,” wandered the roads of far West Texas for twenty years riding her burro. Her legal address was: On the Land, Terlingua, Texas. She died of natural causes on 1/26/2007.
