Mel La Follette, an Episcopalian priest in Redford for many years and one of the border's most original characters according to Lonn Taylor, died on July 4.
On this week's "Rambling Boy," Taylor traces La Follette's unlikely path from boyhood in Indiana to cocky young poethood in college to priesthood at the Yale Divinity School. La Folette arrived West Texas after all of that in 1984, and he began riding a horse along either side of the Rio Grande in the name of the Episcopal Church.
There will be a service for Father Mel, as he was popularly called, in Terlingua at 10am on July 23. His New Yorker-published poem "The Ballad of Red Fox" is available online, and Lonn Taylor offers a reading himself in this episode.
