Tumbleweeds tumble in search of a home
Monday, March 9, 2026 11:46 AM PDT
Seattle, WA
This weekend, I was scrolling Instagram (as you do) and first heard “The Ballad of Boot Hill” by Johnny Cash. The reel featured someone showing headstones from the Boothill Cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona. That sat with me, and the song’s a banger, so I wanted to write about that today. But I only give myself 11 minutes, because I have to make and eat lunch, write an essay, and go to my 1:30 PM class on Python coding in astronomy.
I have always loved history for one because I feel like I’m almost inside of it when I think about it. As a kid, I loved historical fiction novels (and that reminds me that I should read one now) because it felt so real: a human story so distant from mine. I especially loved Holocaust and refugee stories, which maybe guided my later work in high school and some of college in immigration law. When I think of, say, the Revolutionary War, it feels so vivid and like an adventure.
The same holds when I read the Wikipedia page of said Boot Hill cemetery. I worry about glorifying the Wild West when in reality, it was full of immense struggle and also discrimination that I think we overlook. Even so, I find the concept so fascinating of people living where I stand now a very long time ago. I wonder what their lives were like. For instance, there is one grave of a Mrs. Ah Lum (who was given a rather racist nickname, mentioned on said Wikipedia page, that I do not care to repeat.) She was Chinese-American and owned a general store, and many people attended her funeral. Surely this must mean that this town was fairly tight-knit, welcoming enough of a foreigner in a period where people from her entire country were outright banned from entering this one. I am quick to say that I do not wish to live there. I think it is, again, not nearly what it’s cracked up to be. But I wonder sometimes.
The Ballad of Boot Hill starts as follows: Here lies Les(ter) Young Four slugs from a 44 No les no more Out in Arizona, just south of Tucson Where tumbleweeds tumble, in search of a home There’s a town they call Tombstone, where the brave never cry
It’s a beautiful song, so here I have linked it. But this excerpt is very evocative of the nostalgia I feel, but can’t quite describe, when reading about this town and listening to the song: of a place I have never been to and missing people I have never met.
If you’re curious, it seems like Lester Young was not actually a real person and, in fact, “his” tombstone was created specifically to attract tourists following some Hollywood fame in the 1930s. It’s unclear if the tombstones are real and the epitaphs fake, or the other way around, both are true or neither are. I must admit that Lester’s story is quite creative. He died in a shootout with a customer over a damaged package, but it seems that there’s no record that either Lester or the customer ever existed.
I only have 30 seconds left, but I am enjoying writing so I will continue for a little bit longer. I’ve been procrastinating so hard on work anyway, so I might as well continue pursuing an activity that doesn’t directly involve scrolling through content that is bad for my mental state. (A blog post for another time) Ironically, writing that made me lose my drive to continue so I might actually end this blog post here. Timing myself does help somewhat though, because I struggle with starting trouble in general.
I do have a couple more interesting anecdotes to share from my DuckDuckGo-ing (the only browser I have found where you can outright disable AI) namely that Boothill is named as such because the people buried there “died with their boots on.” That means unexpectedly, such as in a gunfight.
Here is the interesting article where I learned this linked
There is another guy, John Heath, who was convicted of manslaughter. He was rotting in jail until a crowd broke him out, only to lynch him because they believed he deserved a harsher punishment. He did actually die near/in Tombstone, and he has a headstone, but his body was returned to his wife in Texas.
This is actually a great, well-written post (way better than what I’ve got now) that I will be perusing more soon. I am running out of time because it’s 12:10 PM and I have to eat lunch at some point, so let me get to mine. This summer, I am likely exploring an opportunity in California (which I will explain once I actually accept the offer) and really want to take some road trips. I hope to finally get my driver’s license in spring quarter, and take the Amtrak down to Arizona, then drive to this cemetery. I don’t know why it fascinates me, but it does.
It’s relevant that I am not the type to go to a cemetery whatsoever. I cried when the plane was hijacked in the movie “Air Force One” starring Harrison Ford. I run to my bedroom at home when I turn off the downstairs lights at night. But something about this place fascinates me—so long as I go in the daytime.
Something about history fascinates me. The brave men (and women) who don’t cry, in their own search of a home.
(Was that a banger last line? I can’t tell.)