Riverboat: “Zigzag”

 

This is the penultimate episode in the Two-Season run of this 1959-1960 Western series set on the riverboat named the Enterprise.

Darren McGavin played captain Grey Holden, and Burt Reynolds played his partner Ben Frazer for the first 20 episodes but…

The two stars did not get along at all.

Season Two sees Reynolds exit the show and Noah Beery, Jr. is added as Bill Blake.

I chose this one as my first foray because of the guest star, Charles Bronson; we also have a young Stella Stevens on hand.

The plot is meagre and redolent of 1950s episodic television, and my guest star of choice is given little to do. To be fair, McGavin is hardly used here either.

Perhaps a sign of a show that knows that it only has one more episode to shoot before cancellation and the steam is no longer there.

It might be unfair to judge the shows run off of this single episode but…it doesn’t have me running after another one immediately.

Scouting on Two Continents, Part 2

 

We continue with the lessons we can reap from Mr. Burnham. See Part 1, for full immersion.]

[On one attribute of “Old Man Lee,” one of Burnham’s mentors in reading the land as an Apache Scout.]

“Lee had made a careful study of the air currents that sweep through the deep canyons, and although the Indians found ways to conceal the tell-tale smoke clouds, they could not prevent the odour of burning mescal from hanging in the air and drifting for miles up and down the canyons. By tracing these odours, Lee could mark the most secret hiding places of the Indians.”

·        I can vouch for an aspect of this craft.

·        I have made two sojourns into canyon country seeking Sinagua ruins and camps off-the-beaten track—another adventure/exploration scheduled for this January.

·        I have used many a tip and tactic from these Old Hosses to help locate what is no longer mapped—from using “High Eyes” and “Mouse Eyes” to spot lost trails to watching for cairn remnants.

·        At the foot of canyon face, if one is paying attention to the eddies of wind and the growth swirls of juniper you can get a handle on wise areas to place campfire high on cliff face that would both be wind-resistant and concealed.

·        If one is paying attention, you can spot where the ancient soot may show darker in lines of manganese oxides in the cliff face.

·        Walk that down, pay close attention—and just maybe…magic.

[On the boulder hopping/rock-stepping of Apache and Sinagua.]

“…if the Apaches were suspicious of pursuit, they would not drop a single thread of mescal and would step from boulder to boulder, leaving so faint a mark on the rocks that only the most highly trained eye would ever notice the trace.”

[A remarkable observation in the next passage. One that anthropologists, and mere readers of history don’t quite touch, whereas a man of action who lived it understands that we must understand a subject as a whole not piecemeal.]

“It is imperative that a scout should know the history, tradition, religion, social customs, and superstitions of whatever country or people he is called on to work in or among. This is almost as necessary as to know the physical character of the country, its climate and products. Certain people will do certain things almost without fail. Certain other things, perfectly feasible, they will not do. There is no danger of knowing too much of the mental habits of an enemy. One should neither underestimate the enemy nor credit him with superhuman powers. Fear and courage are latent in every human being, though roused into activity by very diverse means. If, as a nation, we had the courage to write the pages of history as the events really occur, there might be some changes in value very startling to our cherished beliefs; but many errors are so firmly planted in the public mind that it is sacrilege to disturb them, and where they are harmless, it is probably better to let them rest. The idea that the Sioux Indians could fight the modern soldier without any training is an error of the same cloth as the recent pronouncement of the late William Jennings Bryan that “an army of a million men can leap to arms between the rising and the setting of the sun.” Armies are not made in that way. The old Sioux warriors who pitted themselves against such generals as Custer, Reno, Miles, and Crook all passed through much preparatory training. To begin with, they hardened the body systematically. They controlled the mind and set it on a definite object unswervingly. They well knew the uses of both love and hate in all their shades and degrees. Around the council fires, traditions and tales were poured into the ears of the Indian boy until the time arrived when he demanded to become a warrior. Each spring, a class of candidates would come before the medicine man for physical examination. If not strong enough, the youth would be sent back to the care of the squaws for another year. Those who passed the tests were put in close training, both mental and physical, until, on some clear, sunny day in June, the whole clan or tribe would gather on a slope of the prairie near a stream and pitch their tepees for the Sun Dance of the young braves.”

[On how “we” might fare with “savages” or other guerrilla factions if armament were equal.]

“When the exhausting test was ended, the youths were carefully tended by the squaws and nursed back to full strength in a few days. They were then passed over to the hands of older warriors for training with bow or gun, lance and horse, and in all the intricate lore of the plains. When they became proficient, they were divided into bands and sent to ambush each other’s horses and equipment, also to manoeuvre on a large scale under the orders and eyes of the great chiefs. If to the qualities and training possessed by these men had been added modern artillery and weapons, one would hesitate to guess how many of our troops would have been necessary to conquer them.”

·        We must not assume victory is always because “’Merica, damn right!” than it is, the armorers and quartermaster corps are up to superior snuff.

·        Never underestimate the Spirit of those who war with “less.”

[On the MUST of hard Physical, Emotional, Spiritual training. The MUST.]

“In the literature of the West, the hero, bad man, or sheriff is usually endowed by high Heaven with superhuman powers and has not found it necessary to go through long dreary months and years of training, like ordinary mortals; but I have never, in my experience, met either savage or white man whose natural traits without careful development would have made him distinguished. There are, however, great differences in ability, even among Indians. Those who become famous add to their natural inheritance long training in many things, especially in the hardening of the mind and body to stoical endurance. The great Indian chiefs were men of iron will as well as iron bodies.”

[In the next, I find it intriguing that Mr. Burnham, an “uneducated” man of the Southwest seems mighty familiar with the ways of “Oriental” calming disciplines. A man who left nothing unexamined!]

“I have often thought it would be well for the nervous European to cultivate a little of Oriental calm and self-control and with “Kismet” as his password, relax both mind and body at times and learn to sleep soundly even in the midst of danger.”

“To sleep at will is a fine art.”

·        A man who slept uncomplainingly on hard ground on two continents in harsh conditions.

·        Wonder what he would make of sound machines, CPAP Machines, melatonin, and water cooler “I slept horribly” stories?

[I offer a personal shaming of myself after this next passage.]

“I have often been asked how it happens that I neither drink nor smoke. My answer is that both liquor and tobacco have their uses, but I am of a nature that has never required a stimulant or a sedative. As a scout, I needed all my five senses and every faculty of my mind at highest efficiency at all times. There is nothing that sharpens a man’s senses so acutely as to know that bitter and determined enemies are in pursuit of him night and day. In many lines of endeavour, errors may be repeated without fatal results, but in an Indian or savage war, or in a bitter feud, one little slip entails the “Absent” mark for ever against a man’s name. I recall one scout who forfeited his life by his neglect for one instant to keep in the shade of a small oak tree. He was safe from sight so long as he kept in its shadow, but he became so intent on using his field glasses that he allowed a shaft of sunlight to betray him to the enemy.”

·        Despite photos to the contrary showing a stogie in my hand or in mouth—I no longer partake.

·        I recall reading this passage and several like it approximately 5 years ago and dumping my supply of “sensory killers.”

·        Just one more step in my “Grown Ass Man Who Wants to Be One of These Hosses when He Grows Up” journey.

“The senses and actions of every animal, bird, and insect, if studied, can be made to pay tribute to our store of human knowledge, and our own rather dull wits can be wonderfully informed. Solitude intensifies the perceptions. The herd with a thousand eyes trusts itself to a solitary sentinel with only two. Yet there comes a point where solitude, which entails total repression of the social instinct, turns upon its victim and destroys the alertness of brain it has built up; when, like a great wave, it uplifts only to engulf. I have met solitary sheep herders in the West whose eyes clung to the ground and who mumbled unintelligent words for hours at a time. Solitary confinement in prison brings insanity. Overtrained athletes become muscle-bound, and solitude in excess may make one thought-bound.”

·        Brilliant observation.

·        Crowd source sensory input by affiliating with our fellow creatures—“dumb animals” and humans alike.

Two Stories of Sensory Affiliation

Story 1

·        On my last canyonland trip, I’m on Day 3 of looking for a particular Sinagua camp my reading tells me is tucked in a particular slot canyon.

·        After more than a few false starts on cliff ledges that peter out the same time my fortitude at that height says, “Surely, to God no one would choose to place a camp here.’’

·        I come to a narrow alcove in the ledge where shadows have left the snow unmelted.

·        The snow above is trickling water to a small pool on an 8” ledge hundreds of feet above canyon floor.

·        I spot a small puma track in the snow around the pool trickle.

·        First, I think, “Hmm, narrow ledge plus puma—time to go.”

·        Then I see that the tracks lead from the snow in an untried direction—I think, “Hell, just 20 more yards of shimmying along this ledge then I’ll turn back.”

·        I break around a corner and…there it is a Sinagua camp embedded in cliff face.

·        That puma’s post-water path told me that semi-accessible ground had to be that way.

Story 2

·        Another day, I leave one Sinagua ruin high up canyon wall—a gorgeous Eastern Sun facing location that just allows the Rising Sun to illuminate perfectly the precisely placed rock doors.

·        Canyon base is a tangle of manzanita, every step is stop—untangle from the brush—take another step.

·        I’m on the track of a ruin my readings say that runs beneath a snowmelt waterfall.

·        In the midst of one of my entanglings, I come face to face with a lean and haggard face wearing an ancient backpack and carrying a gnarled walking stick.

·        We are both surprised—likely thinking the same thought, “What sort of madman leaves curated trails and ventures here?”

·        I say what I’m looking for.

·        He sorta grunts, “Yeah, there’s stuff like that around here, but they can be hard to find.”

·        I say, “Yeah, I just came from that one above us.”

·        He looks up then back at me, says, “You found that one?”

·        “Yes, it was glorious.”

·        “That one is hard to get to, most don’t do it, let alone know about it.”

·        We get into a conversation about my love for such things.

·        He goes from “tourist disdain” ala Edward Abbey to, “Perhaps this is a kindred spirit.”

·        He then says, the snow waterfall is hard to find.

·        I say, “I’m willing—my guess is that it has to be ensconced in a west wall to protect the snow and provide the fall.”

·        Him: “That’s right.” Pause. “ Want me to take you?”

·        “Hell, yeah.”

·        We go and after another hour of tangle—there she be! Glorious!

·        He then says, “There’s another one back here that most of the locals don’t even know about.”

·        “I’d love to see.”

·        Another trek—another glory.

·        While sitting in the midst of dwelling stones placed more than 2,000 years ago, I point to the piece of wood protruding from his pack wrapped in felt.

·        “That’s my Indian flute. Sometimes when I’m back here, I play.”

·        “Will you play for me?”

·        “I play for my friends.”

·        “Are we not friends? We have trekked together.”

·        He considers, smiles, says not another word and almost shyly pipes a 2–3-minute freeform etude that resounds mournfully off the canyon walls while we sit in an ancient abode.

·        The impromptu concerto is organic and mystical.

·        I never asked his name.

·        He never asked mine.

·        When I tell that story I call him Sedona Johnny.

·        Well, just like Mr. Burnham’s advice, Sedona Johnny allowed me to “borrow his eyes” so to speak to see more than I might have seen on my own.

We will return to more Lessons from Mr. Burnham in Part 3.

[Look for a Lifetime of Such Scoutcraft Lessons in our upcoming book Hombres Del Campo: Scoutcraft Lessons from Men of the Wilderness.]

Go get ‘em, Crew! Get after that Life, Burnham Style! Right Now!

For Old School Combat Ways and Livin’

The Black Box Warehouse

https://www.extremeselfprotection.com/

The Indigenous Ability Blog

https://indigenousability.blogspot.com/

The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast

https://anchor.fm/mark-hatmaker

Scouting on Two Continents by R. R. Burnham [Part 1]

 

Frederick Russell Burnham was born on a Dakota Sioux Reservation in Minnesota in 1861.

He wound up migrating to the American Southwest picking up scoutcraft and woodsmanship along the way.

He worked as a civilian scout in the Apache wars, wound up in the Pleasant Valley Range war.

Seeking new adventures, he headed for South Africa where he wound up putting his “Indian” scouting skills to test on a new continent and against new tribes and saw much action in the Matabele Wars.

In 1926 he put pen to paper and offered us a rousing narrative of his exploits and an insight into the Bonafide scout mindset.

The book begins with this epigraph:

“England was never made by her statesmen; England was made by her adventurers.” GENERAL GORDON.

This sets the theme for the internal compass of not only this scout but most scouts, frontiersmen, pioneer men and women of the 200+ years leading up to Burnham’s era. We often overweight the influence of the Founders, the bureaucrats on a boat signing compacts. We study hard the still existing documents that say, “Looky here, look what we did” while blithely ignoring the little documented often intangible contributions of the unsung ones who simply said, “Hey, let’s go that way and see what there is.”

Ones who said, “I have an idea for a thing, I’ll see if I can make something out of it.”

Things haven’t changed much, the small of outlook still look to “The ones in charge” as if these were builders of any sort, while walking right past all the folks who tweak that bit of code to make this or that process faster and easier, the unnamed soul who put wheels on suitcases so we aren’t hefting them around like we were a mere two decades ago, the person who goes into hock to ply their trade in a fine but only-existing-on-the-margins diner that serves good vittles.

Little acts of heroism, personal risk, intrepidness exist day-in, day-out right before our eyes—and yet, the attention goes to the “top of the food chain” that never slapped a wheel on a suitcase, made keyless checkouts easier or cooked us a meal.

That opening epigraph says much about Mr. Burnham’s mindset.

I shall repeat it as it should be held foremost if you decide to read on.

“England was never made by her statesmen; England was made by her adventurers.” GENERAL GORDON.

Burnham, whether one has heard of him or not, still holds influence within our culture. He was one of the exemplars that the founder of the Boy Scouts had in mind when he began his organization.

Extract from a letter from LT. GEN. SIR ROBERT BADEN-POWELL, K. C. V. O., K. C. V., written from Africa to his mother, in 1896: “12th June, 1896… Burnham is a most delightful companion… amusing, interesting, and most instructive. Having seen service against the Red Indians he brings quite a new experience to bear on the Scouting work here. And while he talks away there’s not a thing escapes his quick roving eye, whether it is on the horizon or at his feet.”

·        No eyes on a phone for this man.

·        Sure, there were no “smartphones” then but…there is still something so different in attention that the military man Baden-Powell felt the need to remark upon it in a letter not to his superiors but to his mother.

·        What is Our distinguishing trait that might be remarked upon?

Consider the following story of Cincinnatus like humility of not requiring credit, adulation, or “Likes.” In a day of “Me, me, me” “Name that hotel and bitcoin after me” and “Make sure my name is on the lipstick” this attitude is almost preternaturally alien.

“Cecil Rhodes when discussing the winning of Rhodesia, that great territory about the size of California, which lies south of the Zambeszi River and contiguous to the Transvaal on the north. Rhodes had been reading a letter which he passed over to me [Mary Nixon Everett—Burnham’s editor] with the explanation that it was in reply to one that he had written to Burnham after the first Matabele War in 1894.

“Rhodes said that he had asked Burnham to suggest some way in which the British South Africa Company, the owner of the country afterward called Rhodesia, could recognize the invaluable service he had rendered as a Scout in that war. Burnham’s reply, and I well remember it, was to this effect: “While I appreciate the honour you pay me, in your generous estimate of the service you consider I have rendered, and your offer of recompense, I must frankly tell you that the part I played was not with the object of promoting the interest of your company but was in defence of the lives of the people who were at that time besieged by hordes of savages under Lobengula. For that reason I cannot consistently accept any reward, but I sincerely hope that I shall be able to retain the appreciation you have expressed by what I may be able to accomplish in the future.”

“Rhodes exclaimed, “What an extraordinary letter! It is a rare experience to have an offer of that kind turned down.”

I said, “Yes, but you respect him the more for having done so.”

·        To Burnham, the reward was doing the right thing as he saw the matter.

·        The reward was the deed.

·        So, how often do we see that today?

·        How often do We do that?

One encounters in Burnham’s work the word “Savages” and other like epithets. In some of these old accounts the slur is omnipresent and intended. In Burnham, the word is common usage, but he has an eye for the gray area on all sides and the beauty that can still reside in the midst of struggle as the following passage shows.

“Those were rough days and fierce resentments. To-day, recalling all the crimes of the Indians, which were black enough, one cannot but cast up in their behalf the long column of wrongs and grievances they suffered at the hands of the whites. Then hatred dies, and I can entertain the honest hope that they have all reached the Happy Hunting Ground of their dreams. But the dark side of the lives of the pioneers, measured in terms of tragedy and hardship, violent feuds and religious intolerance, and Indian massacres, does not tell the whole story. The daily tasks, the hours of relaxation, the eternal love theme woven by joyous youth into the scheme of things  — these made up the sunshine of those days.”

Burnham felt that scouting, woodcraft and survival lore was built by experience—not by book [YouTube channel, app, any other present-day fill-in] experience and time alone testing the self.

“For sharpening the perceptions and enabling a man to concentrate his mind for hours on one thing without change, I believe a certain amount of solitude is necessary.”

·        And for the record, here, alone does not mean, “Well, me and my trusty phone.”

·        It means—You, out there----Alone. Your wits and you.

The following passage reeks of bitter truth. Burnham tells a story to shame himself. The story IS shameful, but it is important that he learned the lesson of his shame and decided there and then—Never Again Will I Be That Coward.

“One day when he was very drunk, he got into a terrible fight on Alameda Street with another powerful man who finally threw him and started to beat out his brains with a cobblestone. I stood by so paralyzed with horror and fright that I never thought of doing anything to help. Suddenly Juan Abbott, a boy about my own age, rushed by me shouting, “Won’t you help a friend?” He dashed into the scrap and pulled off the man with the cobblestone. Twice this aggressor jumped up to attack again and twice Juan tripped him. Meanwhile my old soldier friend, covered with blood, made his escape. My humiliation was intense. Juan had saved my friend while I had played a miserable, cowardly part in the affair. That query of Juan’s, “Won’t you help a friend?” burned into my brain like a hot iron and I believe has caused me to act quickly many times in later life when help was needed.”

The following passage is telling. It is a common story of the Frontier expansion—even frontiers now.

“There came a time when I realized that I must have some education, so, when an uncle living in the Middle West sent for me, I set forth, at the age of fourteen, and landed in a little town on the banks of a great river. Lest my statement about its good people should even now wound their feelings, it shall be called Montville. It was a flesh-and-blood replica, including the cuticle, of many little Puritan villages, but without the broader vision which New England communities acquired through having as citizens retired seafaring men or men of wide affairs from such places as Boston or New York. The town was just old enough to have lost its rugged pioneers and Indian fighters and had become a strange combination of materialism and intolerant religiosity. When the inhabitants were not trying to reform one another, they were wholly bent on making a lot of money. In this town I remained long enough to get one year of schooling.”

·        Hard Men and Intrepid Women go some place unexplored or make something new.

·        Once it is tamed and safe, the rest of us flood in and use it.

·        We like the “image” of the hardy ones who preceded it, so we adopt the clothing, lodgings, vocabulary of the Truly Intrepid while lacking the pith and fiber that truly makes a hale and hearty one.

·        As he notes, the usual sign of the “fake hardy” materialism [“Time for a phone upgrade!”] and intolerance, “Gotta own the Dems! Gotta decry MAGA!”

·        To Burnham’s eyes: Weakness all Around.

On one of the frontiersman who taught him the ways of the wild—Old Man Holmes.

“Many times, in emergencies, his remembered words proved the deciding factor between my destruction and my survival, and I have gratefully given credit to his wisdom whenever I have been able to save lives entrusted to my leadership. About all that is left in our memory of such old pioneers are some of the more dramatic incidents in their careers, but I feel that it would be of more real interest and importance to us to recall their methods of meeting their problems as they arose day after day and the deep romantic and philosophical ideals wherein they entrenched their hearts. Such characters are worthy to be remembered as long as the nation endures, not only for what they did, but for what they knew and thought.”

·        It is a telling observation of Burnham’s that he found more instructive, not in the dramatic, but the bedrock philosophy of Holmes’ day-to-day. A philosophy, not simply pragmatic [which it was as all must be who depend upon the self for survival] but also the Romanticism of choosing a Life of Seeing, a Life of Doing—not one of mere consumption and spectatorism.

·        I repeat: “but I feel that it would be of more real interest and importance to us to recall their methods of meeting their problems as they arose day after day and the deep romantic and philosophical ideals wherein they entrenched their hearts.”

I’ll stop there for now. In Part 2, we’ll delve into Apache scoutcraft, the scouting mindset, and, well, lots more. Lots more.

Hosses of Yore, their reality sends my Soul like nothing in any text of philosophy, mythology or tome of divine provenance.

Go get ‘em, Crew! Get after that Life, Burnham Style! Right Now!

For Old School Combat Ways and Livin’

The Black Box Warehouse

https://www.extremeselfprotection.com/

The Indigenous Ability Blog

https://indigenousability.blogspot.com/

The Rough ‘n’ Tumble Raconteur Podcast

https://anchor.fm/mark-hatmaker

A Western Author’s “True” Haunting

 

To prepare for Halloween…

Stewart Edward White was a Western author, historian and big game hunter of some renown in the early 20^th century. Little-read today, his well-researched narratives and pithy prose put him head and shoulders above the bafflingly still known Zane Grey who operated in the same period. [Some of Mr. White’s works are reviewed in this blog.]

In 1937 Mr. White offered a volume titled The Betty Book “written” in tandem with his wife, Betty.

“Written” is in scare quotes as the books claim to be the explorations of the couple’s experiences with the “Invisibles.”

That is, spirits they first contacted via a Ouija board with un upturned whiskey glass as a stand-in for a planchette.

They graduated to automatic writing at some point where more fluid communication could take place.

The Betty Book is a straight-forward, seemingly no-nonsense tale of how a man of action, a man of sense came to delve in these areas.

He enters this realm almost jokingly at the beginning, then the gradual, “Hmm? What’s going on here?” progresses as the oddness persists and grows.

Mr. White went on to write a few more of these “Invisibles” non-fiction volumes.

Now whether they are sincere subjective accounts, the shared delusions of a couple, or one big con, I cannot say.

Here’s Mr. White on the intellectual start of this voyage.

In any research work it is always important to know the equipment of the experimenter. Before March 17, 1919, my occult background might, I suppose, have been called average for a man who had lived an active life. That is to say, I had paid such matters very little attention and formed no considered opinions on them one way or another. By way of considered opinion I suppose I would, if called upon to express myself, have taken my stand on the side of scepticism. This was because, like the average man, I referred all “occult” or “psychic” matters to spiritualism; which is also the savage’s method. And spiritualism meant to me either hysteria or clever conjuring or a blend of both. I knew that it had been “exposed.”

Throughout we are still peppered with Mr. White’s grounded feel that is the earmark of his “fiction” as the next sample demonstrates—regarding what the “Invisibles” will and will not impart.

For instance, there was a steadfast refusal to give advice or opinion on matters of our everyday lives. The argument seemed to be that everyday life is a series of opportunities for making decisions; that those decisions form character; and making another man's decisions for him deprives him unwarrantedly of opportunity. That looked to us like sound common sense.”

My default skepticism finds the premise hard to swallow but…Mr. White writes so well. So convincingly of his move from “Nah, this ain’t true” to “Well, what do ya know” that be it fiction or non-fiction I wound up enjoying it immensely and…thinking about it after closing the book far more than I do most recent volumes.

Kentucky Blues by Derek Robinson

 

He sighed, and smiled. ‘You have a worrying way of making everything sound simple,’ he said.

‘Well, it is simple. Either you live to enjoy or you live to regret what you didn’t enjoy while you had the chance.’

This 2002 novel is the only Frontier novel by a British author more noted for his aviation novels of the first and second world wars and…well, that is a crying shame as this novel is simply superlative.

We begin with the founding of a small border town in colonial Kentucky and we stay there through the Civil War, the Post-War Period and on through Prohibition.

This is not one of those “kitchen sink” novels that tries to shoehorn every bit of history into the page count to prove, “Hey, I did my research.” No Edward Rutherford or Michener here.

Mr. Robinson, keeps it small, keeps it human even when working against the backdrop of large events.

The novel is cynical, wise, redolent with flavor and brimming with a wry humor.

He can limn entire characters in a sentence, entire storylines in a paragraph.

‘Jeez, I dunno.’ Ruthie had a good chuckle. Nothing disturbed her. She never complained, never celebrated, never criticized, never praised. Sold from the auctioneer’s block when she was six. Three masters – one cruel, one loud but lazy, one dying and therefore indifferent – before Henry Hudd saw her at a bankruptcy sale, told her to strip, poked and prodded and squeezed her until he was sure she could breed, and got her at a knockdown price of two hundred dollars, with a lame mule that nobody wanted thrown in too. Three good husbands, all dead now. Seven children, all sold south, never seen again. Snakebit once, nearly died but didn’t. All luck, all chance. Nothing agitated Ruthie. What she didn’t understand made her chuckle. She chuckled a lot.

Tell me we don’t know Ruthie from the get-go from that.

The futility of war from the following.

The shots had attracted others from their regiment, and now that the enemy had been found, the two armies drifted into battle. The more they fought, the more they fought. Eventually about 28,000 men were shooting and being shot at. About a quarter of them got hit. At the end, General Bragg pulled his men out and went back to Tennessee, so he lost; but the Unionist army failed to chase him, so it didn’t win. Nobody won, least of all a seventeen-year-old from Spendthrift, who had only joined the army to prove to a neighbour’s daughter how brave he was. How brave was he? About average, it turned out.

Some novels will spend chapters on a downfall; Mr. Robinson spends two lines for a sardonic epitaph.

General Buck T. Masterman went home and concentrated on drinking himself to death. This was something he had a natural talent for, and he achieved it in only one year and forty-seven days, at the time a record for southern Illinois.

The claustrophobia of a small town made “smaller.”

That night the Cameron flooded its banks. By dawn, it was halfway up Main Street. Briefly, the rain turned to hail. Then it went back to rain again. It was too wet to get into trouble. Only place to go was Maggie’s. Only thing to do was drink, play poker, talk. Talk was cheapest, so a lot of it got done, until just about everyone had said just about all they knew to say, and said it so often the others knew what was coming and knew not to listen because it hadn’t been worth the wax in your ears last time around and nothing had happened to improve it since.

A room depicted more redolent than a photograph.

Charles went into the tavern, and found Frankie in her office: a back room that Maggie used for private poker sessions. A thousand bad cigars had lived and died here and their ghosts were in the air to prove it.

A backwoods trial setting that precedes an utterly entertaining episode of frontier jurisprudence.

The barn was full an hour before the trial was due to start. Many had come in from the surrounding countryside, bringing charcoal and barbecue. It was a holiday. The heat of bodies quickly built and all the doors had to be opened and kept open. Dogs and children ran in and out. There was singing, fiddleplaying, card-playing, even a little horse-trading. The barn smelled of sweat and overdone pork chops and the sour drift of cigar smoke and the sweet memory of ancient cow manure; Maggie had never had the floor properly cleaned. The noise was loud. It was one long fight to hear and be heard.

What sums up the many non-heroic souls that people this tale?

Boston found Doc Brightsides. ‘No offence meant,’ he said, ‘but why are you living here?’

‘It’s not so bad.’

‘Not so good, either. You’ve travelled, same as I have. America’s full of nowhere towns like this. I meet these people all the time. ‘Ain’t stayin’ here,’ they say. ‘Just catchin’ our breath. Soon’s we get two dollars to rub together, we’re off to find Happy Valley.’ Twenty years later they’re wearin’ the same overalls and they still haven’t mended that hole in the fence.’

An utter masterpiece for this reader. With no other Westerns in his oeuvre, I shall gladly plunge into his aviation tales.

I repeat, Superlative.

Black Saddle “Client: Travers”

 

This is the first episode of the two season ½ hour Western Black Saddle.

Our premise, ex-gunfighter Clay Culhane tries to turn over a new leaf and practice law.

Culhane is played by Peter Breck. Breck looks like a man who might be named Clay Culhane but, to this viewer at least, there seems to be little of the steely-eyed gunman or of the opposite nature, the man with a tortured past and a thirst for justice seeking new ways to apply that justice.

The fault may be the writing.

For a man committed to lawyerin’, jurisprudence is paid lip service so we can get to the neat and tidy 1950s third act gunplay.

Overall, mild familiar stuff.

Side-Note: We do have a young Russell Johnson as Marshall Gib Scott of Latigo.

Many of us remember Johnson as the “Professor” on Gilligan’s Island.

Based on this sample of a single episode, there is better nostalgia to be had.

The Game by Jack London

 

He lacked speech-expression. He expressed himself with his hands, at his work, and with his body and the play of his muscles in the squared ring; but to tell with his own lips the charm of the squared ring was beyond him. Yet he essayed, and haltingly at first, to express what he felt and analyzed when playing the Game at the supreme summit of existence.

“All I know, Genevieve, is that you feel good in the ring when you’ve got the man where you want him, when he’s had a punch up both sleeves waiting for you and you’ve never given him an opening to land ’em, when you’ve landed your own little punch an’ he’s goin’ groggy, an’ holdin’ on, an’ the referee’s dragging him off so’s you can go in an’ finish ’m, an’ all the house is shouting an’ tearin’ itself loose, an’ you know you’re the best man, an’ that you played m’ fair an’ won out because you’re the best man.

This 1905 boxing novella from the author of The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea Wolf and many a fine Yukon and adventure tale seems right up the alley of a man such as myself.

Here are the boxes it checks…

One—It’s about old school boxing. Aces!

Two—It’s by Jack London. I am a fan of much of his Yukon work and consider his story “Love of Life” one of THE exemplars of survival fiction. [Reviewed by, yours truly here.]

Three—Stories by real life doers, that is, men and women who truly lived experiences always move me more than mere “I’ve read a lot in my day, now here’s me offering up a quilt of what I’ve read of other’s lived experiences.”

Four—The man offered up so many fiery quotes of Go! And LIVE! It is hard to choose one as a stand-in. So, here I go with several verbal spurs to Live. [None from this novel.]

“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.”

“The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

“Life is so short. I would rather sing one song than interpret the thousand.”

“The function of man is to live, not to exist.”

“It is so much easier to live placidly and complacently. Of course, to live placidly and complacently is not to live at all.”

“Limited minds can recognize limitations only in others.”

“You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

“I do not live for what the world thinks of me, but for what I think of myself.”

“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.”

Jack London was a doer. A sailor, a Gold Rusher, a boxer, a… well, he did many things in his lifetime.

Here, he wishes to bring his own boxing experience to life.

Of this novel he has said, "I have had these experiences and it was out of these experiences, plus a fairly intimate knowledge of prize-fighting in general, that I wrote The Game."

So, with all of the above praise, how is this novel?

Unfortunately, rather weak. It has streaks of the London panache here and there, but it is also a bit heavy on the pulpy “He-Man & Adoring Female” side of things.

This is our female admirer on our “Hero”, London’s fictional stand-in.

“And yet, while it frightened her, she was vaguely stirred with pride in him. His masculinity, the masculinity of the fighting male, made its inevitable appeal to her, a female, moulded by all her heredity to seek out the strong man for mate, and to lean against the wall of his strength.”

Yeah, that’s a little…well.

What London overshoots in his male-female relationship he gets more than right in a few ring particulars.

We have this…

“They came to the hall, on a dark street-corner, ostensibly the quarters of an athletic club, but in reality an institution designed for pulling off fights and keeping within the police ordinance.”

·        We must not forget boxing existed in a long shadow of out and out illegal to quasi-illegal status for decades.

·        For more on this facet of history put your ears on our brief podcast on this very topic Illegal Boxing.

We have this common ring instruction of the time.

“Joe Fleming fights at one hundred and twenty-eight,” he said; “John Ponta at one hundred and forty. They will fight as long as one hand is free, and take care of themselves in the breakaway. The audience must remember that a decision must be given. There are no draws fought before this club.”

And we have such observations as this, which can only be written by one who has fought and learned that wasted emotional effort can be as debilitating as wasted physical effort. Something that many of today’s “action authors” never nail as, well, I doubt they’ve ever rolled or taken a shot.

“The effect was bad on Ponta. He became more frenzied than ever, and more impotent. He panted and sobbed, wasting his effort by too much effort, losing sanity and control and futilely trying to compensate for the loss by excess of physical endeavor.”

London loved the game of boxing, yet what he wrote here is not a love story. The Game is a bit grim and gritty.

It is said that Gene Tunney read this volume in the late 1920s and this contributed to his decision to retire.

True or not, I cannot say, but I can vouch that this is no love letter to boxing.

But that is not the reason for a minor thumbs down.

It is simply that the melodrama of the novel, the long sections that are not boxing, well, they lack the bald-face realism that London exhibits in his best work.

There is better boxing literature to be read, but kudos to Mr. London for stepping into the ring and gives a few glimpses of verisimilitude.