DESCANSOS ~
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Roadside Memorials
Quilts
Etc.
Story and photos by Bob Miles
by
Marguerite
Made in the Big Bend
Tues and Friday 4 - 6pm
• Organic spelt, hard white wheat berries.
• Rye and kamut freshly milled in my
stone burr mill and baked into delicious
breads, pizza crusts, cookies and other
goodies.
• Stone ground flour milled to order for
home bakers.
We use no white flour or
white sugar in our products
HWY 118 • Terlingua 802 E. Brown St. and Cockrell
432.371.2292 432-386-3772
3/4 mile N of HWY 170
Alpine
[email protected]
HARPER ’ S
Hardware
Presidio’s favorite hardware store for almost a century
tools • plumbing supplies • home & garden
Monday - Saturday 7:30 am to 6 pm
701 O’Reilly Street • Presidio • 432-229-3256
V
isitors traveling along the roadways of
the Big Bend and other areas of the
Southwest are often intrigued by the iso-
lated crosses they see beside the roads. These
informal roadside memorials are known as des-
cansos and usually mark the site where someone
has died. They range from simple wooden cross-
es to more elaborate memorials, often decorated
by real or artificial flowers, religious icons,
favorite toys of children or other personal
mementoes. Sometimes parts of vehicles
involved in fatal accidents are incorporated into
the markers.
Some of these memorials bear a name, date or
other information, but many are just plain cross-
es placed by family or friends along a fence line
or on fences near dangerous curves, intersections
or other locations where a fatal accident has
occurred. While these descansos are most com-
monly seen in areas with large Hispanic Catholic
populations, similar memorials can be found
throughout the world to honor the dead.
In older times, descansos were resting places
where pall bearers could rest along the way to the
grave site. They also marked places where some
tragedy had happened. For example, the city of
Las Cruces, New Mexico, is said to have been
named for crosses placed where early travelers
had died at the hands of Apaches.
Descansos serve not only as memorials to lost
loved ones but help the survivors in the grieving
process. In addition, these informal shrines
remind us of our own mortality, prompting us to
drive more carefully.
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2013
15