Maggy Smith began operating the small trading post at Hot Springs during the early days of Big Bend State Park and continued to serve the local people for several years after the National Park was established. In addition to managing the store, post office, cabins and bath house at the hot springs Maggy also presided over the kitchen whenever it was necessary to serve meals to the tourists and other visitors. Maggy lived there alone following the death of her husband, but had lived in the area for many years so was well known and comfortable in the Big Bend Country. Maggy was fluent in both Spanish and English and was gifted with good humor as well as courage and determination.

Pete and Etta Koch made the decision in the fall of 1945 that Etta and their three young daughters would be spending the winter at Hot Springs [while Pete was traveling in the East with his Big Bend lecture film]. She knew it would be warmer on the Rio Grande, but Etta was concerned about living in a place so remote. 

In her book, Lizards on the Mantel, Burros at the Door, Etta shares many of her experiences during the winter of 1945-46 when she and the children lived on the hill across a small creek from the Hot Springs store.

Many of Maggy's customers came from small farms along the Rio Grande. Most folks bartered with Maggy for their needs, therefore cows, chickens, goats, burros, and mules were often residents of the pens under the shade of the mesquite trees along Tornillo Creek.

One of the first things Etta did after moving into the Livingston house was to paint the empty walls with murals. She wrote: "On our first visit to the house on the hill, the plastered and cracked gray walls had been forbidding and stark. . . . [we] bought a can of green paint to swish onto a 10 x 10 foot space to form a giant prickly pear, complete with budding flowers. . . . .as well as a backdrop of Casa Grande, the most interesting of all the Chisos mountain peaks. "

On the kitchen wall she painted a Mexican boy kneeling beside his burro-- partially to cover cracks in the wall. The cracks themselves became parts of wonderful saguaro plants, even though saguaros do not grow in the Chihuahuan desert.

When Maggy saw Etta's murals,  she asked Etta if she would paint pictures on her walls in the store. They gathered some old cans of paint that were lying about and in the front room Etta painted her recollection of a Mexican woman she'd seen at the creek washing her baby. She called it "Desert Madonna."  She painted the baby wrapped in a white blanket to avoid painting  realistic features. Maggy also wanted a Mexican boy with his burro in her kitchen.

All of Etta's murals are now faded, and barely visible.

About 1953, when the Hot Springs store closed, Maggy moved to another location outside the national park. The Desert Madonna was redone by a temporary resident and what you see today bears little resemblance to Etta's original Madonna.

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In her book Etta also tells of an idyllic night when she and Maggy attended a wedding at a Mexican hacienda in San Vicente. The following are excerpts from the book.

"We were met at the river crossing by horses and guides. I mounted a horse and clung to the saddle as if in danger of my life. . . . Lest I fall off from the sheer dizziness of watching the swirling water [as we crossed the Rio Grande.] I shifted my gaze to the shore beyond. . . .  The moon, glowing golden, lent an unreal setting, while the Del Carmen mountain backdrop contributed its stagelike effect.

After traveling a half mile or so we reached our destination. . . . The exterior of the hacienda in the moonlight was picturesque. The usual cactus and desert growth surrounded the place, but most unusual for these eyes of mine was the fence of ocotillo stalks that surrounded the house, for it was in full bloom. The [green-leafed] fence with bright flame-colored tips was, to me, a phenomenon.

The ranch house was . . .a rambling affair. . . . I passed in admiration through a doorway decorated in what appeared to be stenciled flowers with touching evidence of a homemaker's love for this plain adobe structure with its dirt floor packed hard and swept clean. The bedroom beyond was also festive with hand-embroidered bedspread and pillow shams, beautifully done. In one corner of the room was a small shrine with artificial flowers adorning a picture of the Virgin Mary. A votive candle sent small flickering shadows up the wall."

"We were conducted to the feast being served on the patio. There, at a long table, the guests were seated on benches. . . . The food was especially good-- a thick spicy goat stew. Tortillas were passed around to be used as spoons to scoop up the stew and have a bite of tortilla at the same time. When this 'spoon' had been swallowed there were others waiting.

"It was a merry party. Most of the Mexicans were known to us, or at least to Maggy, being her customers as well as friends, for Maggy was a friend to all.

"The meal finished we adjourned to an open courtyard with a trellis-like roof. Here the wedding ceremony took place followed by a dance. The men seated themselves on one side of the courtyard; the women on the other.

"The ceremony was a simple reading of the marriage vows . . . .[After the ceremony] a three-piece orchestra struck up a dance tune and each young man rose from the bench on his side of the court, crossed to the lady of his choice, and they began to waltz to the music of two violins and a guitar. Following the dance the young men returned their partners to the ladies' bench, and returned to the mens' side of the floor. I was struck by this formality. I also noticed that the men held their partners loosely, reminding me of Slavic folk dancing I had seen. Their faces were expressionless, almost stoic, and if they enjoyed the dance, it was not obvious."

"The moon was high and as the moonlight fell over my shoulder that early March evening my eyes sought the distant horizon of the Chisos, beyond the fence of fiery ocotillo. As the music shattered the silence with its plaintive notes, I could hardly believe that Hot Springs and the simple everyday life of this tenderfoot was but a few miles downstream. . . .

"It was as if I had stepped into a looking glass [and found] another world where the meld of breeze, violins and a blossoming fence produced the same unreality as did the chiseled peaks of the ghostly Chisos mountains beyond the far shore."

Excerpts adapted and condensed from Lizards on the Mantel...Burros at the Door: A Big Bend Memoir. By Etta Koch with June Cooper Price. © 1999. Published by University of Texas Press