The Trail to Ogallala by Benjamin Capps

 

Blackie killed two newborn calves on that bed ground, splitting their skulls with the butt of the axe, and they buried them in hasty graves to hide them from their mothers. It was barely light when they prodded the cattle up and tried to make them graze; the cattle did not have the eagerness of the morning before. They were sullen as they walked north. They had used up too much moisture the first day.

This trail drive novel won the Spur Award for Best Novel in 1964 and won a spot on Jon Lewis’ 100 Best Western Novels.

Well, how is it?

In a word—Superlative.

Those looking for shoot-outs, steely-eyed slim-hipped heroes slacking into chairs will find none of the formulary here.

No, this novel plays more like a documentary of a trail drive, a cowboy procedural if you will.

It’s all about the work, the struggle, the bonding, the sweat, the weather, the gripes, the politics of tired men doing a damned difficult job.

It is essentially a novel of Work.

The novel lacks the usual shoot-em-up aspect of the Western, hell, there’s not even a romantic subplot—it’s all Pure OD “We got a job to do, Boys.”

The novel is better for this strict adherence to realism.

We are offered educated glimpses of the realities of a trail drive; I offer a few extracts below to give the flavor.

[While riding night-herd before an impending storm. I’ve ridden in a cracking storm with lighting in the tree line—this nails it.]

They sang church songs. The thunderstorms which had surrounded them and now threatened to engulf them from the west produced awe and some degree of reverence in the riders. They could see up into the vast reaches of the clouds, see the varied lightings, see the upward depths with murky streaks and puffy fingers, writhing in contrary currents. They could hear the rumbles of thunder that seemed to penetrate even into the ground. They understood the belief of many peoples in the past that the sun is a God and the storm is an angry God, a belief not caused by simplicity of mind, but by a nearness to these forces, an involvement, sometimes a feeling of standing naked and alone in nature.

[At the burial of a comrade along the way.]

Blackie found a clean sheet of writing paper and a pencil in the saddle bag and said to the Professor, “I guess we ought to put where he come from and where he was born--stuff like that.”

“All right. Where did he come from and when was he born?”

It developed that no one knew. They had no doubt that he had actually been a colonel, and that about him there must be many important facts that should be recorded, but no one knew. In fact, no one even knew the day of the month he had died, except Scott. Professor wrote: “Colonel Horace Kittredge” and “Died in a stampede” and the date.

They wedged it into a split in the oak. It might last six months in the rain and the wind.

[Upon discovery that one had a harmonica and knew how to play.]

He got into the swing of it, and he played it. He played “Oh, Susanna” and “Turkey in the Straw,” and “Way Down Yonder,” and “Buffalo Gals.” They tapped their boots in the dirt. After more than two hard months on the trail, the music was nothing less than magic. It was possible the Kid was not really much of a musician, but they could hear in his little harp with ten holes in it all the violins and sweet voices they had ever heard. He played “When You and I Were Young, Maggie,” and they all became motionless and silent. Ostler stopped puttering over the cow-chip fire. Then the Kid tried to play “Home, Sweet Home.” He got halfway through the chorus before he started having trouble; he played a little further, roughly, and gave up. He pounded the contrary harp on his leg to get the saliva out of it.

At his age, Kid might have been justified in falsely believing that he had a good home and remembering that he was a long way from it. But they all, even Ostler, four times his age, were thinking about things far away, and hardly a word was spoken during the evening meal.

[The experience borne trail craft of the characters, all based on real men, reminds us of what we lose by too much soft livin’ among artificial lights.]

In the north the Big Dipper had swung low and its handle curved out across the western sky. He got up and tugged the wagon tongue around and pointed it at the North Star.

They knew things about the heavenly bodies and their apparent motions, such things as they learned from familiarity, from watching the night sky as hours pass and as months pass, from watching it as they move north on the surface of the earth. The kinds of things they knew were such as been known for thousands of years by sailors standing watch at night or by nomadic herders standing watch at night, and such as are rarely known among people who live among artificial lights under a roof. They knew that the stars seemed to rotate in fixed patterns and that one point about which they rotate is the North Star, that the moon and planets wander across the face of the fixed patterns, that as one trails north the southern constellation sink but the North Star rises until at last the Big Dipper swings clear of the ground and is like a giant clock in the sky, and the moon falls behind almost an hour each night, that the fixed stars gain on the days so that during a three month drive a star which comes up as darkness falls will rise so that is overhead when darkness falls. And a trail driver who has been north with cattle every year for the past ten years might have been able, awakening suddenly like Rip Van Winkle and gazing at the night sky, to tell about how far north he was and the month of the year, however, if he were a shrewd guesser, he might have been able to say, “We’re a few days drive south of the Nebraska line and it's a little past the middle of June.

I repeat—Superlative.

Christmas Western Spotlight: Daniel Boone “The Christmas Story”

 

This season two episode premiered on December 23, 1965.

A blizzard sends settlers to the central fort for refuge, provisions are low and an expectant Indian couple arrive to discover there is no room at the inn and are relegated to an animal stall.

The story stops leaning on the nativity there and rather provides us with a tale of survival, suspicion, and a moral about prejudice in the end.

On one, hand minor stuff, on the other, Fess Parker’s calm integrity as Daniel Boone and a script a tick or two above standard fare make this not bad Yuletide Western viewing.

My first experience with Parker as Boone as opposed to Davy Crockett. It won’t be my last.

Christmas Western Spotlight: Bonanza “A Christmas Story”

 

This Yule offering debuted December 25, 1966, and was penned by Thomas Thompson, author of many a fine Western tale.

Overall, a slight episode of this long-running series. Here guest star Wayne Newton regales us with a song or three, and fellow guest star Jack Oakie gives us an able turn as con man who finds his way Christmas Day.

Lorne Greene bows out for the majority of the episode leaving us in the hands of Hoss and Little Joe who provide a comic thread to the episode with all their usual fine chemistry.

The episode is no world-shaker, predictable as can be but…it still goes down easy as good-hearted holiday viewing.

If you’re a fan of the show, well, what’s not to smile about?

Words from a Fearless Heart by Laura Ingalls Wilder

 

There is something in living close to the great elemental forces of nature that causes people to rise above small annoyances and discomforts.

Beginning in 1911, Mrs. Wilder, of “Little House” fame wrote a column for a local Ozark newspaper, The Missouri Ruralist; the column was titled "As a Farm Woman Thinks." 

In these columns, she hits pioneer spirit mike drops left and right.

Many of these nuggets of self-reliant gold were collected in a book titled Words from a Fearless Heart edited by Stephen W. Hines.

I offer two big shovelfuls of Mrs. Wilder’s true preachin’ below.

The stout-hearted and good souled should find much to sustain!

 

If patience and cheerfulness and courage… count for so much in man that he expects to be rewarded for them… surely such virtues in animals are worth counting in the sum total of good in the universe.

Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds.

·        Whatever the color of the stained of your corneas, well, that’s what you’ll see, my friends.

Why should we need extra time and wish to enjoy ourselves? If we expect to enjoy our life, we will have to learn to be joyful in all of it, not just at stated intervals when we can get time or when we have nothing else to do.

·        The clock is tickin’, kick-back right now, hell, everywhere. Make friends standing in line. I do. So can you.

I have never been in favor of making good resolutions on New Year's Day just because it was the first day of the year. Any day may begin a new year for us in that way.

·        Every day is a new measure of the year. Hop to it!

The uplift of a fearless heart will help us over barriers. No one ever overcomes difficulties by going at them in a hesitant, doubtful way.

It does not so much matter what happens. It is what one does when it happens that really counts.

You are the window through which you must see the world.

Let's be cheerful! We have no more right to steal the brightness out of the day… than we have to steal the purse of the stranger.

·        Preach! We’re all in this big boat of a planet together, pitch in and row. Give a hand. When it’s not your turn to row, bail water like a good crewmate.

We are so likely to see defects in institutions close at hand and imagine that further away conditions are so much better.

·        Right here, right now.

Blue is without a doubt a heavenly color, but it is better in the skies than in one’s mind.

·        Don’t live in dreams and screens—suck in that r-e-a-l life.

Did you ever take a little trip anywhere with your conscience easy about things at home, your mind free from worry, with all care cast aside and eyes wide open? You will be surprised how much adventure can enter into ordinary things.

“Oh, I have such a dreadful headache,” we say and immediately we feel much worse. Our pain has grown by talking of it.

·        Thinkin’ of bitchin’? Shhh! You’ll only make it worse and no one else wants to hear it. No one.

No one can become great who is not ready to take the opportunity when it comes.

Why not have a family motto? If the motto of a family were, “My word is my bond,” do you not think the children of that family would be proud to keep their word?

·        What’s your family motto? Your personal motto?

We may not “Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy,” but we’ll not forget to stop working.

·        Get some sacred into your life—whatever that means to you.

It takes judgment to plan seeds at the right time, in the right place, and hard digging to make them grow, whether in the vegetable garden or in the garden of our lives.

We have so many machines and so many helps, in one way or another, to save time; and yet I wonder what we do with the time we save. Nobody seems to have any!

The American pioneer spirit is of courage, jollity, and neighborly helpfulness.

We are in the midst of a battle of standards of conduct and each of us is a soldier in the ranks.

·        Many complain of the conduct of others; few bear the standard of what glorious demeanor embodies.

·        Show ‘em how it’s done! Model it!

There are those who persistently disobey the laws of health, which, being nature's laws, are also God's laws, and then when ill health comes, wonder why they should be compelled to suffer.

Is there something in life you want very much? Then pay the price and take it, but never expect to have a charge account and avoid paying the bills.

An infidel asserted that he would not believe anything that he could not see. It was a good retort the Quaker made, “Friend! Does thee believe thee has any brains?”

Our next president should be chosen for his fitness for the place as though we were hiring him to attend to our own private business.

A “government of the people, for the people and by the people” can be no better than the people.

The days never have been long enough to do the things I would like to do. Every year has held more of interest than the year before.

·        The clock ticks on, our wants don’t cease.

·        Hop to the goodness now as that upper glass is emptying out.

A year of being crippled has taught me the value of my feet, and two perfectly good feet are now among my dearest possessions.

I have learned that few persons have such happy and successful lives that they would wish to spend years in just remembering.

We must first see the vision in order to realize it; we must have the ideal or we cannot approach it. But when once the dream is dreamed, it's time to wake up and “get busy.” We must “do great deeds, not dream them all day long.”

Life begins at eighty.

There are just as many hours in the day as ever, and… there is time enough for the things that matter if time is rightly used.

We go lightheartedly on our way never thinking that by a careless word or two we may have altered the whole course of human lives, for some persons who will take our advice and use it.

·        Act as if every word you utter is a world-changer.

·        Behave as if every act of yours levers the Universe.

·        Just maybe, just maybe it does.

·        Hold that door open for that person behind you, maybe their day was a “last straw” day and you just klaxon-called a change in fortune an uplift in spirit.

·        Be a person who matters by making all matters matter.

When we recover from a serious illness, just a breath drawn free from pain as a matter for rejoicing.

The true way to live is to enjoy every moment as it passes, and surely it is in the everyday things around us that the beauty of life lies.

Everyone is complaining of being tired, of not having time for what they wish to do…It would be a wonderful relief if, by eliminating both wisely and well, life might be simplified.

It seems such a pity that we can learn to value what we have only through the loss of it. Truly “we never miss the water till the well runs dry.”

It is surprising what an opinion one sometimes forms of one’s self by mentally standing off and looking on as at a stranger.

·        Try this experiment: Dredge through your own social media posts.

·        Find your last “Woe is me” or “Allow me to bitch” rant.

·        If you find yourself shocked and or embarrassed---good on you, that’s progress.

·        If you’re not embarrassed, well, likely you’re not even reading something like this from a guy like me.

It is easier, for a time, to go with the current; but how much more can be accomplished if we would all be honest in our talk. We all despise a coward, but we sometimes forget that there is a moral as well as a physical cowardice…It is weakness to one's personality and moral fiber to deny one's opinions to falsify one’s self, while it throws broadcast into the world just that much more cowardice and untruth.

“Sweet are the uses of adversity” when it shows us the kindness in our neighbors’ hearts.

·        I’ve had some bad times, there will be more.

·        But…there have been people in those bad times that I will NEVER forget.

·        Never not be grateful for.

Some by their bad temper and exacting dispositions estrange their relatives and repel friendly advances. Then they bewail the fact that their friends are so few.

It is true that we find ourselves reflected in our friends and neighbors, and if we are in the habit of having bad neighbors, we are not likely to find better by changing our location.

If we would not be satisfied till we had passed a share of our happiness on to other people, what a world we could make!

As much good can be done by the right kind of gossip as harmed by the wrong sort. Every hear of golden gossip? A woman who was always talking about her friends and neighbors made it her business to talk of them, in fact, never said anything but good. She was a gossip, but it was “golden gossip.”

·        I love this concept, May we all be Golden Gossips!

I wonder if you all know the story of the man who is moving from one place to another because he had such bad neighbors. Just before making the change, he met a man from the neighborhood to which he was going and told him in detail how mean his old neighbors were. Then he asked the other man with the neighbors were like in the place to which he was moving. The other man replied, “You will find just the same kind of neighbors where you are going as those you leave behind you.”

 Shafts of malice aimed in anger forever fall harmless against the armor of a smile, kind words, and gentle manners.

·        May we all be antifragile well-armored Warriors of the Heart!

The Frontier Stoic by Mark Hatmaker

 

Well, talk about tootin’ one’s own horn.

I offer the snippet below from my own tome of western nonfiction: The Frontier Stoic: Life Lessons from Those Who Lived a Life.

A Frontier Phrase Worth Resurrecting

If a friendly [or merely polite sort] asked one “How’re doin’?” You might hear from gregarious hombres, “Well, I’m livin’ in the shade of the wagon.”

To declare that one is “livin’ in the shade of the wagon” is to say, “Life is all right by me, no matter which way she bucks.”

To pull this wee little phrase apart and have a look at the context reveals more than a quaint colloquialism.

Crossing “The Great American Desert” [The Great Plains] and actual deserts was no easy feat. The Oregon Trail, the Bozeman, the Santé Fe, the Applegate, the Gila, the Upper and Lower Roads of Texas, and all the other lesser known routes for the adventurous, determined or downright foolish and unprepared to cross were rife with dangers.

All of these early trails were riddled with the graves of the hopeful and the discarded belongings of people who continually lightened their loads jettisoning what they thought they “couldn’t live without” to what they really needed to survive and thrive.

Dangers were incessant. The elements, the indigenous folks, the non-indigenous that had gone rogue, disease, the never-ending struggle for food, potable water, and hardships a bit beyond the grasp of we pampered folk reading this on a screen.

Such challenges and privations spawned a philosophy all its own. A creed with its own informal chapters and verses.

Many of these terrains had zero trees, bluffs, hills, anything to block the sun.

The wise walked on the shady side of the wagon when travelling.

The wise walked on the shady side of the horse when afoot.

When it was time to rest, the wise slacked against a wheel in the shade or stretched out under the wagon to provide relief from the sun.

“Livin’ in the shade of the wagon” meant that “Sure, there may not be a shade tree in sight, but I got my own shade right here and she’s just as good.”

It meant that you were amenable and adaptable.

It meant you kept your sunny-but-shaded disposition wherever you went because you knew how to enjoy what was at hand no matter the circumstances.

The shade was both the actual wagon and the metaphorical cool spirit of the individual who displayed coolness under duress. [Hemingway’s “grace under pressure,” long before Hemingway.]

To be a shade enjoying sort also meant that you were a shade provider.

Your calmness of spirit and Yankee Ingenuity demonstrating how to “use what you got at hand” in turn acted as a sort of calming shade for others around you.

The man and woman who was able to stand tall and stay cool no matter what was valued by all.

“Livin’ in the shade of the wagon” was not a mere colorful retort.

It was a declaration of intent.

It was a philosophy.

It was a valued goal to shoot for.

May we all live in the shade of the wagon!

If suchness strikes your soul you can snag physical copies in our store here.

Or grab a Kindle version here.

Scouting on Two Continents by R. R. Burnham [Part 3] by Mark Hatmaker

 

We continue with the lessons we can reap from master scout of the Southwest American Frontier & Africa, Mr. Burnham. See Part 1, and Part 2 for full immersion.]

“At this time, I used to practise incessantly with the pistol, with both right and left hands, and especially from a galloping horse.”

·        How you train is how you will fight.

·        Static range time was not the way of these early Hosses.

·        Movement and chaotic movement at that.

Mr. Burnham advises that we learn more from rough times than we do the every day nice and easy times we wallow in, day in, day out.

“In order to know life as it really is, it is necessary once in a while to be the under dog.”

Ask yourself, who is the wiser, the man in the field doing it or the man on the couch viewing the how-to video?

“As compared to Arizona, California seemed a free and happy country where Law reigned but, at that time, was not carried to the point of prescribing what one should say, write, think, eat, drink, love, or hate. The Reformers had not arrived, but if a crime was committed, the offender was usually captured and punished.”

·        Proscriptive laws/mores were hard and fast for the Universal Ethical Standards.

·        The hewing to party creed and punctilios of this or that fashion, not so much.

·        Freedom, responsibility and disdain of lockstep were of higher value.

On lessons learned from the stark Apache Ways.

“Most amateur sleuths and scouts would quit the vigil after three days, and many after one day, but an Apache will lie on a rocky point for many days and make no trail or sign. His whole equipment consists of a gourd of water, a piece of dried meat or jerky, and a little mescal, mesquite beans, or a handful of parched corn meal. Every film of smoke, dust cloud, or glint of light on the desert below will be noted, as well as the flight of every bird and the movements of the few desert animals. Patience, patience, and then more patience! The Indian scout will make a little buried fire of smokeless dry twigs, warm up the ground all the afternoon, bury the embers under the earth, and then lie on the warm spot until toward morning, when it will have cooled again. Then he will make a tiny fire of two crossed sticks, wrap his blanket around him, if he has one, and doze and freeze by turns until the sun once more brings warmth and another day of silence and watching.”

Ask yourself, many of us think of ourselves as Hombres/Hombrettes with grit for a core, how do you stack up against this standard?

On the Apache and like cultures he admires.

“What the white scout has to learn from the Indian is the power to endure loneliness, as well as stoical indifference to physical pain. The Boers of the high veldt, the Tauregs and Bedouins of the desert, and the Apaches, have this power in a superlative degree.”

On making gear choices based on Indigenous experience.

“You keep with you your light shoes or Mexican tawas (a kind of moccasin and legging combined, and very useful in a thorny country.)”

·        I can vouch—I have tested top-rated desert hiking boots in desert and cactus country and moccasins.

·        The moccasins won hands down for contact, comfort and raising the attention game.

A trail-running hack from Mr. Burnham. [Hundreds upon hundreds of such tips and tactics in our upcoming book on El Camino del Hombre del País [Way of the Man of the Country.]

“Again my legs took command — and no Apache could compete. I ran with a strange sense of strength, clinging to the trail, and at dark I reached a sandy arroyo where I doubled on my trail for a hundred yards and then threw myself flat on my back and put my heels on a bit of driftwood a few inches higher than my head. This relieves blood pressure better than anything else I know, and eases the breathing.”

[On the lost art of Indian Running—we revive this skill in the aforementioned book El Camino del Hombre del País [Way of the Man of the Country.]

 

“It was my good fortune to find service, at one time or another, under such remarkable men as Al Sieber, Archie McIntosh, and Fred Sterling. Every commanding officer in the Apache wars suffered from lack of information as to where the Indians were and from the difficulty of getting in touch with them. It was for this reason that Crook, Miles, Chaffee, and Lawton made frequent use of fast-running Indian scouts. It is a mistake to suppose that a cowboy is a fleet man in the mountains. He is a superb horseman, but he will trudge miles to catch a horse so that he may ride a mile. There are very few white men who can or will make long runs on foot, and no horseman can overtake an Apache on foot in rough mountains such as those of Arizona. Through the Indian games of my childhood and my hunting afoot in the mountains of California, I had developed a swift and silent pace which enabled me to scout in the Apache, country without fear of being caught, even if sighted. For an untrained white man to be seen in an Indian country is to be caught if the Indians so mind. There were a few old-time trappers who could out-foot the Apaches, but they were already old men when I was on the frontier.”

[See our article on Apache Running for more insight.]

Much more to be learned from Mr. Burnham and others of his ilk…another day.

Resources for Livin’ the Warrior Life, Historically Accurate & Viciously Verified.

The Black Box Store

https://www.extremeselfprotection.com/

The Indigenous Ability Blog

https://indigenousability.blogspot.com/

The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2fTpfVp2wi232k4y5EakVv...

Tales of Soldiers & Civilians by Ambrose Bierce

 

The fighting of the day before had been desultory and indecisive. At the points of collision the smoke of battle had hung in blue sheets among the branches of the trees till beaten into nothing by the falling rain. In the softened earth the wheels of cannon and ammunition wagons cut deep, ragged furrows, and movements of infantry seemed impeded by the mud that clung to the soldiers' feet as, with soaken garments and rifles imperfectly protected by capes of overcoats they went dragging in sinuous lines hither and thither through dripping forest and flooded field. Mounted officers, their heads protruding from rubber ponchos that glittered like black armor, picked their way, singly and in loose groups, among the men, coming and going with apparent aimlessness and commanding attention from nobody but one another. Here and there a dead man, his clothing defiled with earth, his face covered with a blanket or showing yellow and claylike in the rain, added his dispiriting influence to that of the other dismal features of the scene and augmented the general discomfort with a particular dejection. Very repulsive these wrecks looked—not at all heroic, and nobody was accessible to the infection of their patriotic example. Dead upon the field of honor, yes; but the field of honor was so very wet! It makes a difference.—“One Kind of Officer”

Tales of Soldiers & Civilians first appeared on the scene in 1892 with 16 tales, more were added later. This volume contains the rightly famous and well-known “An Occurrence at Owl creek Bridge.”

I decided to feature a lesser-known story so that one could get a feel for the fact that Mr. Bierce was no one-trick pony.

His own harrowing wartime experience and dyspeptic [realistic] view of life is to the forefront in this tale.

The war images smack of the real. No romanticism. Stark—terse, brutal.

The interactions with humanity come off no better, perhaps worse in this tale.

What never fails is Bierce’s gimlet eye.

Captain Ransome sat motionless and silent on horseback. A few yards away his men were standing at their guns. Somewhere—everywhere within a few miles—were a hundred thousand men, friends and enemies. Yet he was alone. The mist had isolated him as completely as if he had been in the heart of a desert. His world was a few square yards of wet and trampled earth about the feet of his horse. His comrades in that ghostly domain were invisible and inaudible. These were conditions favorable to thought, and he was thinking.

Many a fine critic has offered that Bierce’s Civil War tales are the best example of American war writing, exceeding that of Stephen Crane and Hemingway [Clifton Fadiman being a dissenting opinion—I myself, dissent from Fadiman—so much is done with so little text, it’s rather remarkable.]

In the next offering there is a cynical humor in this muddled exchange made all the more, well, horrifying, when one has read the tale and understands the import of what is being communicated and horrifyingly ignored.

Here, during the hottest of the fight, he was approached by Lieutenant Price, who had just sabred a daring assailant inside the work. A spirited colloquy ensued between the two officers—spirited, at least, on the part of the lieutenant, who gesticulated with energy and shouted again and again into his commander's ear in the attempt to make himself heard above the infernal din of the guns. His gestures, if coolly noted by an actor, would have been pronounced to be those of protestation: one would have said that he was opposed to the proceedings.

All told, brief tales, sparsely written, dripping with a cynicism likely borne of experience.

The only heroic characters here are the peripheral ones who must suffer the mistakes of those who point and say, “Go.”

Strong brew.

If the South Had Won the Civil War by MacKinlay Kantor

 

A young staff captain, Hubert Gaines, had the presence of mind to swing from his horse to run forward, drawing his revolver in the same moment. He fired two shots into the animal's ear and the great beast lay still. Then Grant could be remove--his uniform covered with clay, and blood issuing from his nose and mouth. Mr. Charles A. Dana himself escorted the white-faced little Frederick Grant away.

This slim volume from the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Andersonville begins with a simple premise—General Grant dies beneath a recalcitrant horse.

Kantor then proceeds to detail the ramifications in billiard ball fashion what follows from this single mishap.

It is written as if it were true history, complete with mighty convincing footnotes throughout.

My copy clocks in at a brief 112 pages but that does not mean this is not a jam-packed work.

Kantor tells us not just how the South prevailed but then follows along with the seldom considered aftermath and how a successful secessionist nation might regard future such attempts.

Our alternative history takes us through until the 1940s as we see just how far ramifications may reverberate.

I found this a remarkably well-informed thoughtful work.

An easy read, yet there is nothing “easy” about what the piece insinuates.

Fascinating.

Calico by Lee Goldberg

 

‘You’re probably right, but you have to admit this case is weird,’ Amanda said. ‘It’s like he walked out of the 1800s and into the path of a motor home.’

A curious one here—an author I’ve enjoyed before offers us a neo-Western and a kinda/sorta traditional Western at the same time.

I tip nothing to say we have twin timelines: literally.

One—A police procedural in the Michael Connelly mode, or even in the mode of the author’s own Eve Ronin series [a few of which I have read and enjoyed.]

Two—The second timeline, a time-travel to the Old West tale.

Allow me to state, I have enjoyed other work from this author and was looking forward to this tale.

But…this one strikes me as either rushed or as a prose draft of an idea intended to be a television script.

Exposition is fast and to the point, but, again, but…many chapters feel as if, “Yeah, this is where the commercial break would be.”

“This is where David Caruso would slide off his sunglasses and deliver his out-the-door line.”

The book is a bit of a déjà vu in the sense that when it is set in the modern era, I am reminded of Michael Connelly’s Renee Ballard series without the complexity.

And once we have the time-travel timeline I kept harkening back to Michael Crichton’s Timeline which dealt with the mechanics of how this would occur with far more conviction. That novel also deals with the time-culture shock in an interesting manner.

Here, our time-traveler arrives in a new timeline and seems to go “Wow, I’m in the Old West. Weird.”

We have none of the cognitive struggle that I would presume ensue as one slowly comprehends the anomaly that is occurring.

Here, the move from realization to coping is staggeringly blithe.

I end with, Mr. Goldberg is a talented author and an indulgent man [he was kind enough to correspond with me on a topic years ago—Thank you, Sir!]

This is simply a misfire for this single reader as many seem to enjoy this one very much.

Let us assume the majority has it right.

“The Sky Sheriff” by Thomson Burtis

 

“And listen, son: the old days in this country meant that a man had to have guts or go under. Because they was men ridin’ the range and maintainin’ their necks as good as new by their own gun-play, the same red blood which showed in them things was responsible for what's known now as the old ‘wild West’ stuff.

“I reckon your boys are pioneers, Cap’n. To my notion, any man that picks up this here flyin’ as a profession ain't ever gonna get no kick out of a ten-cent limit poker game. Where would yore air service be if the men in it was playin’ things safe?”

I found this story in an issue of Blue Book Magazine, April 1923

This old piece trades biplanes for horses, but all other elements remain.

Six-guns, John B. Stetsons, thrilling chases and all the other tropes.

What takes it out of the formulaic realm is its deep reverence and knowledge of the early seat-of-your-pants days of flying.

The author knows of what he speaks, a former lieutenant in the US Army Air Service and then pilot for the border patrol, his flying lore shows. We spin props, adjust carburetors, feel the pull of G’s as we skew in a slipstream.

Yes, the plot may be formula, but for this reader, this ride-along with a true flying Hombre more than paid for the ride.

Empire “The Day the Empire Stood Still”

 

This is the pilot episode of the 1962 TV series.

My entry point was to view the work of guest star Charles Bronson—quite able here, as a matter of fact.

It is a “modern” western set on a large ranch in New Mexico in 1962. A ranch owned by Constance Garrett [played by Terry Moore] and oversaw by square-jawed ranch foreman Jim Redigo [played by Richard Egan.]

We also have a young Ryan O’Neal playing Constance’s son Tal Garrett.

I was unfamiliar with the show but was struck that it reminded me of today’s Yellowstone franchise.

All the elements are there—powerful family, the pressures of running a ranch and still making it profitable—add in some outside soap-opera elements [in this episode a trial for murder] and allow Western can-do, stick-to-itiveness to be the backbone of the narrative thread.

It may lack the large production values of Yellowstone, and the narrative approach is a bit less overtly garish, but…I’ve never quite connected with Yellowstone, whereas I found this time-capsule of a “modern” Western a bit more compelling. There is something reassuring in its commitment to ideals with no amoral overlay.

I shall watch more. It is no classic but neither is Yellowstone.

Biases revealed—judgement offered.

Make of that what you will.

When Will This War Be Over? “by Emma Simpson”

 

Sunday, May 29, 1864

There is talk of a terrific battle just east of here-- near Spotsylvania Courthouse. Terrible casualties are feared on both sides.

The full title of this volume is When Will This War be Over?: The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson, Gordonsville, Virginia, 1864.

It is the war time experiences as recorded by a 14-year-old girl in the war-ravaged Confederate South.

Or is it?

After one has finished the volume, we are tripped to the fact that this is no diary at all, but the concoction of author Barry Denenberg who decided to compose this piece not as verisimilitude fiction but present it as fact and then make the “reveal” after one has plowed thru the pages.

I read many a first-hand account of Westerners, frontier folk, and memoirs of the Civil War. Sure, some of them are not up to literary snuff [some are] but even those that are not have a compelling drive to them by dint of being true. Life as lived by those in the midst.

I cut slack to spending time with a young girl attempting to grapple with her circumstances in her broken “young girl” prose as she is simply a human being recording her soul to the best of her ability.

But…to have made those emotional allowances and to discover that one has plowed thru sub-standard prose for “literary effect,” well, I feel deceived.

It is not the mere deception that leads to my distaste for this volume—it is that the deception did not allow me to pass judgment in an honest manner.

If I knew it were fiction going in, I might have stopped earlier and felt no need to comment.

I don’t finish many a volume as they are not to my taste but feel that it would be a disservice to “review” what I have not consumed in full.

There is always the possibility that the next page after my stopping point the work in question becomes startlingly brilliant and it is my lack of fortitude that means I miss out.

The present work—I read because I assumed it awas authentic. No hint at deception until the last page is turned.

My take on this is one of a “burned” reader. One going in with foreknowledge of the “trick” may enjoy more.

But…the false sentiment of a grown man aping a 14-year-old girl, still strikes me doubtful.