I can only give Bill Mixon an 8.1 out of 10 stars. Bill was a male, slightly bald, about 5'-9", light complected, almost skinny.
Bill was somewhat of a curmudgeon - but only when he was not with his beloved greyhounds. He was especially saddened after he had to start living without his last dog. He presented himself around me, as a passive person, content to sit in one spot at camp for a good part of the weekend and talk to anyone willing to start an interesting conversation. I deducted the first star, because he did not like Rock and Roll, nor maybe not any noisy music at all. And the second deduction, goes to his frugalness or thriftyness. Did he ever upgrade from DOS to Windows ? Or get a 64-bit computer ? I would be tempted to put an AMD Threadripper in has ashes, just so he can tell Oztotl that he got one as a going away present, as a warm token of admiration. Anyways, I hope there are greyhounds and a giant dog-park in the afterlife, so that he can enjoy eternity on his terms. Below is a story that I have told many times: I first met Bill Mixon in October of 1984 while on a weekend excursion as a sophomore student at Texas A&M University ( College Station campus ). Bill was standing at the bottom of a large sinkhole in a remote ranch in west Texas. I had no idea why. Myself, ( an Aggie ), and another new young newbie caver from Univ. of Texas at Austin, Ed Sevcik, were staring down at him. The two of us had missed the group going into the cave, and we both were standing at the edge of the sinkhole peering down into it. ( UT cavers had hauled out tons of rusted rubble the day before or trip before, so we had a clean safe view of the sinkhole ) We both were unsure what to do. There was no ladder or rope, and a fall would be potentially bad. There was nothing to see, but Bill, and an ugly hackberry tree, which oddly, was the only tree for 50 miles. We had no idea who Bill was, or where everybody had disappeared to. Bill yelled up to us on how to use the tree limbs and tree trunk in the sinkhole to descend the sharp drop-off and climb down using the tree as a hand-hold. To our surprise, the actual cave entrance at the bottom of the sinkhole was just a tiny intimidating belly crawl. That was my introduction to a first real Texas cave. We learned the cave was known as "Big Tree Cave," but its official name was "Langtry Lead Cave." Cavers were deep inside, allegedly pushing a lead and maybe re-surveying. I chose to sit there in the sinkhole, as did my new found friend, Ed. Ed was much bigger than me, so he might have even been more intimdated by the tiny entrance. Bill was almost a generation older than us, and we assumed he was an experienced caver. My first impression of Bill was that he seemed like a pleasant spoken guy. Eventually, Bill convinced us to give the entrance a go. We three crawled into the tiny entrance, and started some very fun climbs - going downward into the belly of the cave. About the 5th climb down, we chickened-out. Ed and I could not believe there was no rope or hand-line. It looked like a bottomless pit, but was actually only 23 feet at the deepest part, which was more of an illusion, as if you fell, it would have only been 12 feet. Our cheezy headlamps were not bright enough to see that the climb was the easiest of all the climbs. [ I doubt I had anything more than a cheap flashlight. ] We three set there, in the dark and Bill talked to us about caves and caving for probably an hour. Then Bill showed us how to climb back out of the cave. That was so much fun, that we went back and forth several times. Eventually we did the 5th climb down and it was so much fun, that we also did that several times. We eventually met up with the cavers. Bill felt his job was done ( helping newbies ), so he headed back out to camp to enjoy the desert sunset. That group ( in sort of a small junction room ) which were two Aggie cavers: John Ragsdale, and Freddie Platt, and also several Austin cavers, James Reddell and maybe Bill Elliot and about 10 others. They pointed us in the direction of a long crawl to the "Hall of Unicorns." Once reaching that point, I knew then that my secret passion that I had had since 1968 as a 4 year old - to go cave exploring - was now something etched permanently into my D.N.A.. ( from watching the tv kid's episode - "Davey and Goliath - Lost in the Cave" ) [ Sidenote: Over the years, I returned there many times and went to what may be the bottom of the cave at least twice. The rancher there was nice to us Aggies from 1985 to about 1990, but then he sold the ranch to a rancher that was more worried about liability. We returned a few more times. The last time was over 20 years ago. ] This post or recollections of memories is all about Bill: At all the caving events that I attended over the last 34 years ( 30 something events ), Bill Mixon was there selling very interesting caving books, mostly about explorations in remote areas of The Sierra Madres in Mexico that he had a hand in editing. I bought many of those books, and cherished them and still do. I still plan to buy some more. As you all know, Bill proofread nearly every one of them with magnifying glass and spoke bluntly of errors, and had no qualms of speaking negatively about an article if he felt it was rubbish. He edited them all before being sent to the publisher. Bill was the world-authority on cave-exploring-literature and donated his library to the cavers of Texas to be on display at the new Texas Speleological Center ( which was his 5 acre ranch ). Bill was well known in caving circles at the national level, and always wore a tuxedo-t-shirt to formal banquets to present awards to distinguished cavers. I especially recall the one in Indiana in the long mine. Bill did some real caving while in college - I think when he was living in Chicago in the mid 1960s. Feel free to expand on that. There is a vague trip report of the trip above in a 1985 issue of the "Texas Caver." David Locklear NSS # 27639 RL
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