Santa Fe, NM

Today two busloads of convention attendees rode to Santa Fe to soak up some of the history in and around that city.  It's a lot different from Albuquerque which is sprawling out for miles.  Santa Fe is smaller, more compact, and more touristy.  The high desert really shows up between the two places.  It's brown except for the scrubby bush growing much like weeds.

Commuter trains connect the two, double decker cars.  We passed two of them and from what we gathered the service is well used.  We passed a sign indicating a turn-off to Las Vegas, NM and the man with a microphone explained that at one time that was really a tough town.  He spoke of the guy who was practicing his fast draw and an errant bullet killed a bystander.  He said, "Oops, that was an accident."  Some time later, he was drawing and shooting again, this time killing another person.  "Oops, doggone, that was an accident."  The sheriff arrested him and a lynch mob came for him at night and hung him from a windmill, there being no trees around.  The next morning his body still swung there and had a sign attached: This was no accident. 

I've visited with a couple of interesting foreigners attending the convention, one, a Scotchman living in England.  His interest is with the history of Apache Indians and as we talked I asked him if he knew what Manifest Destiny meant in this country.  Oh, yes, he teaches Western American history in a university.  He seemed to know more about it than I.

The other fellow was Japanese.  I don't think he speaks English well, but I asked him the Japanese were interested in our west, too.  He nodded that they did.  I said I'm interested in your Samurai.  The man he was sitting with seemed to be able to converse with him well in the Japanese language and told me that he can trace his lineage back two thousand years as he is a member of one of the historic Samurai families.

The altitude takes some getting used to.  For a flatland North Dakotan to come here takes some getting used to.  Albuquerque is about a mile high and Santa Fe was around 7,500 feet high.  Thursday we get down to attending speakers and meetings.

Day One, Albuquerque, NM

 

I fluttered in here on a flying culvert.  It's the first time in this part of the country for me, and when you look down from the plane's window, it looks very brown, a typical appearance according to the cab driver.  I took this picture of the Sandia Mountains from my hotel window, the seventh floor of the Marriott.  The occasion: a convention of the Western Writers of America, and I'm here because I'm a member.  I also hope to pick up ideas, make contacts, tour Santa Fe tomorrow, and hear some good entertainment.  I hope to write daily, but this place wants a $1.95 an hour to be on the internet. 

Airtime from Bismarck to here can't be much more than 2 1/2 hours, but there's always fooling around in these airports.  My plane was delayed about an hour in Denver.  I don't know much else, and if I think I can afford it, I will blog again in a couple of days.

They Grow and Bloom

 

Our yard started blooming in color again.  Mary told me she she'd like to spend all of her time out there in the dirt.  But what about me, I ask?  Every year the same wascally wabbits make trouble.  Who was it, Elmer Fudd that walked around all day on the hunt with a shotgun?

This is a bit of a stretch, but those oil wells keep growing and blooming, too.  I caught an item from a tv reporter that I thought interesting.  He said in Williston, in less than one hour, he counted license plates from 29 different states.  Likewise, lots of different ones can be found in Bismarck and Mandan.  I sure hope good fortune comes to all of the citizens of this state when the legislature meets.  On Tuesday's election one of the measures deals with throwing out the property tax.  I don't think it will fly because so many organizations have come out against it.  One of the problems is that out of state land owners wouldn't have to pay tax, either.

I need to get out and mow the yard again this morning.  I try to tell myself that it's good for me, it's exercise, but those mornings when my joints are stiff and my muscles ache, I wonder if I shouldn't just have another cup of coffee.  It reminds me of my old poem written with my favorite seven syllable lines:

My hair turns white like the snows
of late fall.  Memories drop
like leaves to the page searching
for words to express themselves.
Language limits, though, and scenes
cannot be retold as they
occurred.  Imagination
encroaches in some of them
wanting to cause amendment.
But in the end I can't doubt
the acts that have brought me here.

Wired

 

Barbed wire as we know it was patented in 1874.  Indians called it Devil's Rope, others called it thorny fence.  It changed the wild west to something more manageable.  Wire was the cheapest way to build a fence, not wood, not stones.  It's been used in pastures, prisons, battle fields, and protection.  I wonder how many pants and shirts I've torn holes in through the years, and I still wear a scar on a finger from the time I lassoed a calf too big that ran through a fence and dragged me with it.

In the famous novel All Quiet on the Western Front the man telling the story says, "We have to go on up to wiring fatigue."  I didn't know what he meant until a few pages later when he tells this, "Two men hold a roll and the others spool off the barbed wire.  It is that awful stuff with close-set, long spikes. I am not used to unrolling it and tear my hand."  Luckily, I've never been on a battlefield to experience men hanging from it who got snagged and shot.

Millions of horses were used and many died on those same battlefields.  That same book tells of the suffering of the horses, such as, "The cries continued.  It is not men, they could not cry so terribly.  'Wounded horses,' says Kat.  It's unendurable.  It is the moaning of the world, it is the martyred creation, wild with anguish, filled with terror, and groaning.  We are pale.  Detrich stands up. 'God!  For
God's sake!  Shoot them.'  He is a farmer and very fond of horses.  It gets under his skin."

...

 

Thirty-eight years ago today the wife and I had quite the experience, that is later on in the day I could call her my wife.  Yup, today's our anniversary, so I will be extra nice and take her out to supper tonight, probably the Texas Roadhouse.  I must have chosen well because the years have sure passed by fast.

Another Day in Mandan

I always wanted to take a picture of this old granary building that stands on Highway 27 near the Sheldon corner, and when I had my camera with me not long ago I took it.  The countryside still holds a lot of these structures, at one time very useful, and now obsolescent, weathering away to eventually fall under the weight of snow.

...

Yesterday morning as I typed away a message came up on my Skype program that Ann-Marie was video calling, that is Ann-Marie Eriksson from Sweden.  She regularly reads this blog so I want to say "Hello" to her.  We've now talked twice by Skype since they returned from their visit here.  Modern day technology still wows me.

...

When was it, twenty years ago, that "Dallas" played weekly on tv?  Well, it's coming back for a few weeks with three of the originals, J.R., Bobby, and Sue Ellen.  The first show has Bobby visiting J.R. in an assisted-care facility.  Interesting.  Apparently, the battles will come from their two sons.  I will watch it, at least a time or two.
...
I planned to write a bit today about my Civil War class last night at the Osher Institute, but alas, I went and no one was there.  I emailed the coordinator and she phoned back apologetic saying that class had been cancelled due to low enrollment.  Apparently UND person in charge of the program didn't think to notify me.  Such is life.
...
I drove by the Bobcat manufacturing plant in Bismarck the other day and saw a sign in front advertising for assemblers @ $12 an hour.  Before they closed the plant down a couple of years ago people made a living wage out there, now it's $12 an hour.  It seems in the same vein as the election in Wisconsin yesterday.  The votes supported the governor who took worker rights away.  We're becoming a nation of haves and have-nots with not much of a middle class left.

It's already June!

Twenty, maybe twenty-five years ago, I procured a short book that I recognized for its rarety.  I am glad I did because it is full of great stories about this area we now live in.  The title - Paha Sapa Tawoyake - is pretty meaningless to anyone who doesn't speak "Indian."  I don't either, but I recognized its author, William V. Wade, as an old-timer who experienced many adventures here while this was still frontier.

In Wade's own words the book was "Written in 1926 at the Anchor Ranch, Cannonball River."   Born in 1851 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, he made his way west to St. Cloud, Minnesota 1n 1870 and ended up freighting with oxen for a time and made his way to Fort Rice, about twenty miles south of here.  He got to know the historical characters we read about in the myths and legends and told stories about them.

One story he was about Nigger Tom at Fort Peck who was quite a good hunter, went off one day to bring back game by himself, and was accosted by ten Indians led by Sitting Bull.  Tom thought they had good intentions, but Sitting Bull said the sun was in his eyes and wanted the nice hat Tom wore.  Another said he wanted his shirt, and so on.  He was soon stripped of his clothes, and then the Indians brought out some paints and decorated his entire body with pictures and signs.  After an exhaustive run back, he rested before he was able to tell the men at the fort why he came back as a painted up nude.

Another story related as how Custer, when he came to the area, brought a pack of hunting hounds with him that succeeded in driving off all the wild game in the area so that the locals couldn't hunt anymore, so they shot two of the dogs that were caught away from Custer one day while they were chasing a deer.  Custer got very upset about that but could never determine who did the deed.

He told how he and  another's horses ran off from them when they were 50 miles from anywhere, their powder got wet, and they only had a shot apiece in their rifles with which they did shoot one scrawny deer - which did not last long.  One of them caught a mouse which made the other aghast, "You're not going to eat that?"  No, but they used it for bait and caught catfish with it.

In 1876 in Bismarck he watched a man who had arrived from the east and was dressed up in finery including a top hat.  As he walked down the street the saloons had emptied so the men could watch a dog fight.  Most of them wore pistols and one of them wise-cracked, "Shoot the hat, boys."  This didn't scare the slicker who took off his hat, set it on the ground and said, "Try your luck, my friends."  That's just what they did, and after the shooting stopped a number of holes could be seen ventilating the hat.  Afterwards he bought them drinks and told them how he would wear it back east and tell them of the good time he had in Bismarck.

Great stories.  These guys lived much differently than we do.

Spelling

I've always considered myself a good speller, so I enjoyed keeping tabs on the just completed national spelling bee.  Especially fetching was the little six year old girl who did get eliminated but just making it there was spectacular in itself, let along making it through a couple of rounds.  What is there in some brains that lets some excel at such young age, or at any age, for that matter?
 

I lifted a book from my shelf that I've owned for awhile - Man's Unconquerable Mind by Gilbert Highet - which contains a passage that is appropriate to this:
"Day and night, from childhood to old age, sick or well, asleep or awake, men and women think.  The brain works like the heart, ceaselessly pulsing.  In its three pounds' weight of tissue are recorded and stored billions upon billions of memories, habits, instincts, abilities, desires and hopes and fears, patterns and tinctures and sounds and inconceivably delicate calculations and brutishly crude urgencies, the sound of a whisper heard thirty years ago, the resolution impressed by daily practice for fifteen thousand days, the hatred cherished since childhood, the delight never experienced but incessantly imagined, the complex structure of stresses in a bridge, the exact pressure of a single finger on a single string, the development of ten thousand different games of chess, the precise curve of a lip, a hill, an equation, or a flying ball, tones and shades and glooms and raptures, the faces of countless strangers, the scent of one garden, prayers, inventions, crimes, poems, jokes, tunes, sums, problems unsolved, victories long past, the fear of Hell and the love of God, the vision of a blade of grass and the vision of the sky filled with stars."

HBO Movie

Sunday evening we watched a good movie on HBO: Hemingway & Gellhorn.  Ernest Hemingway had four wives, Gellhorn was his third.  She became quite an accomplished war correspondent, first learning her trade in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930's.  Neither she nor Hemingway could stay married for long, so this union ended in divorce, too.

The compassion she showed to the down trodden in society attracts me to her story.  In the introduction of her biography (which I found in the library) it was written she did not like leaders like Nixon, Kissinger, and Mrs. Thatcher saying of them that they "led the innocent into chaos and the dark night, stupidity and arrogance."

She could find plenty to write about these days.  But back to the Spanish Civil War.  It drew world attention in the years prior to the beginning of World War II and many youth were attracted to the country to join the fight.  Franco led an insurrection against the established government or Republicans and gained support from Hitler and the Nazis who sent planes and tanks that overpowered their opposition.  Hemingway went to Spain to support the Republicans and Gellhorn made her way there, too.

With Franco's victory he went on to be dictator of Spain for forty years.  The supporters who hadn't been killed in the battles melted away and went on to other things.  Hemingway wrote a great book, For Whom the Bell Tolls, about this war, married a fourth time, drank lots of alcohol, and killed himself with a shotgun in Idaho.  Gellhorn wrote for many more years, and, finally, at the age of 89, because she'd gone blind, killed herself with sleeping pills.

In Medora

So I sez to Mary, "Let's go to Medora Saturday."  She sez, "OK."  Then I add, "It's the cowboy poetry gathering, remember?"  Since she stopped me from performing on that stage, I hadn't mentioned it for a couple of years.  I maintain she never thought I was good enough and that I embarrassed her.  She has told me if I want to go on stage, she isn't going to be there.  Anyway, we arrive in Medora and I walk into the hall and the first person I see is Bill Lowman, the mover and shaker who makes the gathering happen.  He sez right off, "You're gonna get up there, aren't you?"  "Well, no, the wife doesn't think I'm good enough."  So he tells me this story about a well-known and quite accomplished poet and singer, Ken Overcast, who got up one time with a presentation that really embarrassed his wife, but one that the audience thought was great.  Since his success made little difference to her, she said she almost walked out of the auditorium.  Well, the way I look at it, another year is coming.

Medora is always a great day trip for us with the Western Edge Book Store usually being the first stop.  We've gotten to know Doug and Mary Ellison and always have enjoyable conversation with them.  Plus I bought a book on Major Marcus Reno, the figure around whom the Sheldonite J. T. Hickey worked up to and including the Battle of the Little Big Horn.  Mary found an old picture of Flasher, ND that she bought.

Since I'm hold a membership in the ND Cowboy Hall of Fame and am entitled to free admission, I wanted to take advantage of that and tour through again.  That is where the picture of my Uncle Russell's chair was taken, something his family donated to the Hall after Russell passed away.  And, I almost fell over when I looked into a conference room off the office area and saw two of my old wagon works that have made there way into the Hall as part of an old pioneer village and was told they will be part of a permanent exhibit.  Mary cautioned me right away about getting a big head, but I told her, after all, that puts me in the hall of fame. (although not having been voted in like the legitimate members are.)

Of course, we can't go to Medora without eating in the Cowboy Cafe, an establishment with its woodwork branded by cattle brands from the area and pictures hanging everywhere of old time cowboys who lived around there.

Participants in the show in the auditorium ranged from poor to outstanding, and I'm at least as good as the poor ones.  Whatever, the afternoon show is free and a large crowd sat in.  It's pretty handy for church-going Catholics because immediately after the last song and poetry session all one has to do is walk into the theater in the same building where mass is held in the summer months.

It was a good day, and I'll be ready to go back soon.  One thing about Medora though is that they have two standards for sexual discrimination.  In one place I saw this sign hanging: Gentlemen - no shoes, no shirt, no service.  Ladies - no shoes, no shirt, free drinks.

School's Out

There was this teacher who was disappointed with his students because they were so incredibly lazy.  He told them, "I wouldn't be surprised if 50% of you flunk math."  Little Ole put up his hand, "But teacher, dere ain't dat many in dis class."

...

Heaven forbid, but an article in today's Bismarck Tribune stated that North Dakota may have a population of one million people before long, up from two-thirds of a million now. This is because the daily production of oil may hit one million barrels a day, and may in fact overtake or at least equal Texas's output.  In order to produce that much it will take that many more people.  This possibility is being cheered by the talking heads who make the front pages and the evening news. But another 300,000 people!?!

The western part of the state used to beckon as a relief valve to get away and see open landscape without any people to get in view.  What will happen to all of the wildlife and the clean air?  Instead of looking out over the Badlands landscape and seeing beauty, oil wells will show up, too.

I suppose it is all for the greater good.  This way all the extra oil we produce will keep the country going for a while longer so that we don't have to develop alternative energy sources.
...
Ole and Lena went to the hospital so Lena could give birth to their first baby.  As Ole waited in the lobby, the doctor came out to inform him that he had some good news and some bad news.  "The good news is that you have a normal baby boy.  The bad news is that it is a Caesarian."

Ole started crying, "Vell, I'm glad it is a healthy baby, but I vas kinda hopin' it would be a Swede."

Point of View

I don't quite know what to make of the oil boom we are experiencing.  There is a lot of excitement and lots of money being made.  In Bismarck the community leaders speak giddily about the Williston Basin Petroleum Conference being held there this week.  The Civic Center is awash in oilmen.  Four thousand registrants are expected from over 40 states plus an assortment of foreign countries.  That means restaurants, rental cars, hotels, and bars are hauling in money from these high-flyers.  Speaking of high-flyers, the airport expects to be filled with private company planes, too.

Here's where an opportunist cashes in.  My favorite old watchdog at northdecoder.com reported that Governor Dalrymple will hold his hand out for contributions.  He quoted a Fargo Forum article: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal will be helping North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple raise money for his re-election race.  Dalrymple's campaign has scheduled a dinner with Jindal in Bismarck on May 21. 

Like northdecoder says, Dalrymple is having a party and you're not invited. Our state's administration seems to be very cozy with the oil industry.  One can only hope that the relationships are uncorrupt and high-principled.

Ghost Towns

An interesting website I visit occasionally is ghostsofnorthdakota.com.  Two young men from Fargo run it, quite ambitiously.  They drive all over the state finding little "used-to-be's" and photograph them and write a bit of narrative.  The list of place names they've visited keeps growing; a few of them I recognize and have visited.  They have not included the one above, but it maybe could be some day.  It is the bar in Nome, ND.  My hometown of Sheldon has not been included yet, but it probably fits their definition of a ghost town and might be included in the future.

I think of all the businesses that existed in Sheldon when I was a little boy, and when I go to the Heritage Center and read old newspapers, I find many more businesses that operated.  On Saturday night the street used to fill with cars, diagonally on the business side and parallel on the opposite.  Then if something special was going on, side streets held the overflow.  On Friday night we attended a high school graduation reception in Flasher.  The business district is filled with buildings on both sides of the street, most of them empty.  At one time it thrived as a market for its trade area.  The reception was held in an old hotel that surprised me as still being viable.  It was old when Mary and I married almost 38 years ago.  My parents and a few others stayed overnight in its rooms, but nos it still rents rooms to guests.  Insert the word "venerable" somewhere in here. 

Bismarck-Mandan thrive, actually bustle, in a boomtown atmosphere.  Home builders say they cannot keep up with demand.  Cities like Dickinson, Williston, Watford City, and others boom in relation to the development of the oil patch.  How long?  I probably won't see the end of it, but I can't help but think that some of the towns listed in the "ghosts of North Dakota" were boomtowns, too.

Writing an Opening Scene

 Following is the opening scene from a short story I am writing:

     A man holding an arm across his face leaned into the wind and struggled to walk across the parade ground.  The blinding dust storm darkened the sky and caused him to trip over something that moved and groaned when his toe jabbed it.  Private Eassom, the doctor's assistant, with nowhere else to go, lay there on the ground waiting for the wind to die.  He shouted above the wind, "Hey, what the hell!  Oh, I'm sorry Captain Crossman, sir, I didn't know who..."

     "As you were, Eassom, I'm trying to find my way to the hospital tent and can't see a thing!"

     "Sir, the tent blew down, stakes and all, and them burnt Indians is all inside underneath the canvas.  We can't get at 'em til the wind dies down.  They're right over there."

     Crossman crouched low and fought his way forward the next few feet and, more by feeling than seeing, found the rumpled mass of canvas and heard moans and screams coming from under it.  These people needed help, but he felt helpless knowing nothing could be done until the wind stopped and the tent was set upright again.  He searched the canvas with his hands until he found a loose door flap and lifted it to peer inside.  The only thing he saw in the opening was a girl, lying motionless, who no longer could feel pain.

...   ...   ...   ...   ...   ...

In 1867 the installation of Fort Ransom had been authorized and work had just started when a huge prairie fire swept across the prairie.  A band of Indians, encamped there to trade with the fort trader, suffered the worst of it when twenty of them burned to death in the fire.  It so happened that after the fire passed by, a strong straight-line wind buffeted the area for several hours, thus the setting the the story.

Visitors

Visitors from Sweden, Ann-Marie and Lars E,  have been with us for the last two days.  The picture shows them at the Double Ditch Indian Village a few miles north of Bismarck.  The double ditch is a misnomer, because in reality, there were four ditches used as defenses against attacks.  This morning they are on their way  to Sheldon.  We have enjoyed having them as guests in our home.

Not with Custer

     We visited the Sheldon Cemetery yesterday to decorate my dad's grave.  I took some time to wander among the tombstones with a goal in mind of finding the marker for John T. Hickey.  Without too much trouble I found it beneath a fir tree that had displaced and moved the marker as it grew to maturity.  Why be interested in this man?  This obituary from the April 12, 1923 Sheldon Progress explains it (Several portions of it deleted). . .

J. T. Hickey, Reno's Freighter Died Suddenly Last Friday

(First two paragraphs not included)

     Deceased was one of the old timers in the state, coming to Dakota Territory fifty-two years ago at the age of seventeen.  Coming from the east, he was out for adventures and in 1871 entered the employment of the government and freighted with ox teams between Winnipeg, Fargo and Fort Abercrombie.  He was a freighter with Major Reno's command at the time of the Custer massacre and often related with much vividness the stirring times of encounters with the savage Indian tribes that roamed over the state.  He passed through this section when scarcely any settlers were here, with the train of government supplies from Fort Abercrombie, to Ft. Ransom, and then on to Fort Lincoln where the troops were quartered.

John T. Hickey was born at Baltimore, Md, November 27, 1854, and died April 6, 1923, being near his seventieth year of age.  When seven years of age he moved with his family to St. Louis, Mo.  He learned the printers trade, but on coming west in 1871 did not follow this vocation. . . . 
...
In 1909 he purchased the Sheldon livery barn which he operated and also engaged in the livery business at Enderlin.

. . .     . . .      . . .      . . . 


     When Custer approached the scene of his demise he decided to divide his soldiers into a three prong attack on the Indian village.  He did not know enough about the size of the camp or the lay of the land when he sent a third of the men under the command of Captain Benteen to attack one sector and another third under the command of Major Marcus Reno to strike another part.  Custer was annihilated, but Benteen and Reno's command survived albeit with lots of casualties.  What Hickey experienced at the battle is unknown, but it will make rich fodder for an exciting piece of historical fiction.  Stay tuned!

     Freighters accompanied the soldiers in the field to haul supplies for them as well as grain for the horses.  Hickey was somewhere in the mix in this battle.

True Grit

My favorite young lady in all of literature is Mattie Ross, the spunky girl around whom the story of True Grit swirls.  She tells the story from the viewpoint of an old lady looking back on the murder of her father and and how she managed to convince Rooster Cogburn to help her settle the score and bring the killer to justice.  I just re-read the book and could not help but see John Wayne's face all over the pages.  I wonder if ever the role of a fictional character has been better matched to an actor.  Jeff Bridges did a good job in the remake, but it still belongs to John Wayne.  I can still see him putting the reins of his horse in his mouth, holding a pistol in each hand and spurring his horse forward while saying, "Fill your hands you son-of-bitch!"

Mattie Ross tells the story with a strong  Old Testament morality (eye for an eye) and makes it clear to Rooster she does not approve of his besotted ways.  I love the line she speaks when she berates him for being drunk, "I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains."   Great stuff!

A little horsetrader she became after her father died and left some horses he had bought.  She claimed one horse from the string, Little Blackie, that became her savior  when Rooster swept up her rattlesnake poisoned body and rode the pony to its death while on the way to a doctor.   I wish all books were as satisfying as this one.
. . . . . .

The Center Cannot Hold

The Second Coming   by W. B. Yeats (first part)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. . . .


W. B. Yeats wrote his poem The Second Coming while most of the world was trying to fit all the pieces together again after World War I, but legitimate leaders met obstacles and social troubles loomed ahead to grip the governments and institutions in a vise for many years.  Yeats expressed concern while watching extremists on both the left and the right gain footholds with people grown weary and impatient in their post-war lives.  The histories of Germany, Italy, and Russia during this period between the two world wars attests to that.

Now, on another scale and another time, look at today's political climate.  I took a journalism class or two in in my college days, and in them the theory professed that when reporting news stick to the facts; if you want to state your opinion, call it an editorial and put it on a different page.  Cable networks have grown notoriously guilty of opinion disguised as fact and people on the fringes repeat and are influenced by the jingoism and sloganeering they hear; some act as if it has substance..

For the most part, I quietly sit in the center of political thought and often wonder who represents me saying, "These are the times that try men's souls.  The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of men and women."

In World War I, my grandfather fought in the 362nd Infantry Regiment of the 91st "Wild West" Division.  On September 26, 1918 the entrenched U. S. troops received the order to go "over the top." Grandpa's regiment performed admirably while taking heavy casualties.  They reached and took their objective, the town of Epinonville, only to be ordered to withdraw.  Why?  Because the regiments on either side of them had not kept pace and left the 362nd's flanks exposed.  They had given up 50% of their unit in casualties, only to be told to retreat.

It seems to me in today's world the flanks are not keeping up to the center.  Instead they slow up or impede it from moving forward.

Hard Copy for Me

 

Weekends bring some good TV on C-Span2's "Book TV."  Yesterday Tom Brokaw sat in for a question and answer session with call-in listeners.  One of the them asked him to respond with his feelings about e-readers compared to hard copy.  I thought, "Right on, Tom," when he said there are times he wants to go back to lift a book off his shelf and look something up, re-read something he remembers from reading before, or just browse through the pages.  

The e-reader's not well suited for that kind of reading.  At least, it isn't to my estimation.  I possess a Nook Book, given by Santa Claus a couple of Christmases ago.  It saw some use when I first received it, but now it collects dust.  I like collecting and reading from my library of hard copies that reflects my tastes and interests.  I like the heft of them, their smell,  physically turning the pages, writing notes in the margins, the joy of finding another to add to my collection.

I know this is a generational thing and a strong current of support is building for the e-readers in the schools.  Tremendous gains are being shown by students using this technology, and people of my age are the dinosaurs.  Still, can the accumulated knowledge of the ages be secure in digitized form?  We hear of information becoming corrupted or lost from hard drive failure, virus infection, power surges, stupid mistakes, etc.  Thank you, but my allegiance will remain with the printed word.  All I need do is grab and haul my books out of the house in case of fire or anchor them down if a tornado wants to suck them through a hole it made in the roof.

Now, I'm about ready to click the publish button on the blogger program that I am manipulating on this little laptop computer.  (Speaking out of two sides of my mouth? Maybe.)
...

Talkin' Cowboy

I looked on the bottom of this cowboy and see that I carved it way back in '91.  I used to turn out lots of this stuff but now haven't picked up a carving knife or chisel for about four years, maybe more.   I guess I have gotten too old!

. . .
I have a lot of books on my shelves that need reading.  They've been piling up; whenever I go to a used book sale I always end up with more of them.  So on Wednesday I finally picked up The Shootist by Glendon Swarthout. This story came out in print in 1975, and only a year later as a movie.  I remember liking the movie very much but had forgotten a lot of the story line.

The term "shootist" always seemed contrived to me.  Why not call him a gunfighter like they do now.  It is correctly used, however, because in the nineteenth century that was the terminology.  John Wayne played the part of the shootist, an aging man with prostate cancer.  He came into town to see a doctor played by Jimmy Stewart.  He found a room in a boarding house, but the woman running it did not want him there.  But money talked, and she finally accepted him.

The shootist had a bad reputation, and in the year of 1901 found himself to be the last of his breed.  And when word got around that he was in town, several wannabee bad guys wanted the distinction of gunning him down.  I picked that book up around noon and had read through it by 8:00 that evening.  It read fast, easy, and very interesting.

It so happened last year at the Western Writers convention in Bismarck that the author's son was in attendance and made a presentation one evening about the making of the movie.  I bought a DVD of the movie from him but haven't watched it yet.  I'm all primed to watch it now!

Careful is...

A friend of mine sent an Ole and Lena joke that fits with the theme of nakedness.  A woman, stark naked, jumped into a taxi in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  The taxi driver, Ole, who happened to be an old Norwegian man, opened his eyes wide and stared at the woman.  He made no attempt to start the cab.  She said to him, "What's wrong with you, honey?  Haven't you seen a naked woman before?" . . .  Ole said, "I'm not staring at you, lady, I am telling you, dat vould not be proper vair I come from." . . .  She said, "Well, if you're not staring at my body, sweetie, what are you doing then?" . . . Ole replied, "Vell, I am looking and I'm looking, and I am tinking to myself, vair in da heck is dis lady keeping da money to pay for dis ride?"

. . . . . . 

The same friend sent some groaners - How does Moses make his tea?  He brews it. . . I stayed up all night to see where the sun went.  Then it dawned on me. . . I didn't like my beard at first, then it grew on me. . . Did you hear about the cross-eyed teacher who lost her job because she couldn't control her pupils? . . . When you get a  bladder infection urine trouble. . . England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool. . . Velcro, what a rip-off. . . Venison for dinner again? Oh, deer.

. . . . . . 

It should be obvious nothing much is going on in my world.  I just keep on reading, writing, and teasing the wife.  The darn grass started growing, so I'll have to start up a lawn mower pretty soon.  That reminds me of the poem I wrote:

It was time to mow the grass.
Gallon and a half of gas
cost me over six green bills,
think I'll put goats on these hills,
milk the nannies, make cheese
and smell that odor on the breeze.
Spurge spreads in pastures and everything,
so when the goats beget offspring,
I'll rent 'em to the highest bid
so they can eat and get rid
of that grass chokin' weed.
Hope I don't create a stampede
of goat-hungry folks to my door
asking, "When will you get more?"
I'll set up and register a brand,
operate with supply and demand,
sit back, and salivate with greed
since I've created such a need
that the money would start rollin' in.
Now here's where the dream will end.
Wife'll say, "We've got cash, mow again!"

Countryside

t

I found another book relating the story of a man not ready or even willing to take the step from an old style of life into a modern one: The Good Old Boys by Elmer Kelton.  He is such a good writer of the old cowboy way of life and the old grizzled characters who inhabited that way of life.  The word "farmer" can be substituted, too.

Monte Walsh by Jack Schaefer tells the same tale.  Two good buddies go their separate ways when one steps into the business world, becomes a banker, and is elected to public office.  Monte Walsh can't bear to leave his old world behind, and even refuses to ride in a newfangled car.

In an early memory of mine, a man still comes walking across the section and into our pasture on a cold winter day, partially disappearing in blowing wisps of snow, then reappearing again.  He was an old cowboy-type who worked around the community awhile.  Whatever the agreement Art Hansen had with A. C. Weig, he was breaking it, probably starved out or froze out, maybe both.  At any rate, he took off walking across country to our place and mooched a warm supper and a warm place to sleep that night.  Of course, that didn't sit too well with my mother, and she got Dad to take him into town next day, after a good breakfast, I'd imagine.  When gone, he had left a .22 lever action rifle.  I don't remember the circumstances of why, but it got put up high in our basement where I couldn't reach it.  At least I couldn't be stopped from standing there looking longingly at it.  Eventually the rifle got reunited with its owner, and I believe the man drifted on out to the western part of the state, according to Dad.  Not long ago, my mother said of Dad, "He could talk to anybody."  And I imagine he enjoyed having the drifter for company.

In The Good Old Boys, Kelton has his main character thinking to himself after he couldn't remember the name of a failed homesteader, "Sad, how quickly a man's name got lost.  It was hard to make a big enough track that your name was long remembered."  I remember talking to my wife about that very topic a couple of weeks ago and said to her, "At least when I Google my name, some information comes up on the internet."  But there's always an engraved tombstone, too.  I wonder if Art Hansen has one.

Birdhouses, etc

For the last several years we have been seeing turkey vultures.  They're big, ugly, and I hope I never see one circling lazily over my head waiting for me to take my last breath like in the old western movies.  The experts suggested using a scarecrow type of deterrent which seems to work, i. e. they take a taxidermy mount of a vulture and hang it upside down on places they've been roosting.  Besides dropping big splats of yuck, they are a potential hazard to flying airplanes.

Recently, that very thing has happened when a couple of planes struck birds and made emergency landings to check the damage.  And, a couple years ago, a flock of birds ingested into the engines of the plane piloted by Capt. Sullenberger caused him to set his airliner down in the river.  How to ease the problem?  One thing they are saying is not to build garbage dumps near the airports.  The birds like to hang around and scavenge.  Common sense.

I just received "The Sun" magazine which this month talks about garbage. A favorite writer of mine, Wendell Berry, wrote an article titled "Waste" in this issue.  Berry has earned a reputation of being an outspoken environmentalist and makes strong arguments for his case.  Here he talked of watching  huge amounts of garbage floating down the river near his Kentucky farm home as well as seeing daily fifty to sixty truckloads of garbage from large cities being hauled into the landfill located in his county.  He says much of our waste problem is caused by the "intentional flimsiness and unrepairability of the labor saving devices and gadgets that we have become addicted to."

I won't go into any more of his argument, but he makes a good point.  The same magazine posted a couple of good quotes regarding garbage.  Lily Tomlin said, "I bought a wastepaper basket and carried it home in a paper bag.  And when I got home I put the paper bag in the wastepaper basket."  Another person was quoted, "Throw a few chairmen of the board in jail for polluting the air and water, and you'll see pollution disappear quite rapidly. . . . You would also see some pretty drastic prison reforms."

Angels Unawares

As I wandered around outside one day with camera in hand, I remembered a Bible verse that talked about "angels unawares."  After cranking up friend "Google," it whispered in my ear that, indeed, Hebrews 13:2 said in the King James Version, "Be not for forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."   I will still be very leery about that one, though, given the large number of people who are packing pistols nowadays.  If they are angels, I want them to identify themselves.
...   ...   ...
The Bismarck Tribune sent me another book to review: Trip of the Tongue: Cross-Country Travels in Search of America's Languages.  Having just received it yesterday, I can't say much about its worth, but in glancing at the index a few of the chapters interest me.  The one named "North Dakota:Norwegians" should be a good one.  The author attended the Hostfest in Minot to report on her findings there.

Another chapter, "Nevada: Basque" reminds me of the time in Elko we went uptown from our motel to eat Basque food at the Star Hotel.  It was quite the experience; as soon as we sat down a waitress brought us a bowl of soup and an plate of appetizers, and this was before we even looked at a menu.  It was good.  I'll have to read and see what the chapter is really about.

Other chapters are New York City: American;  Montana: Crow;  Arizona: Navajo; Washington: Lushootseed, Quileute, Makah;   Louisiana: French and Louisiana Creole;  South Carolina: Gullah;  Florida: Haitian Creole;  New Mexico: Spanish;  and Los Angeles: English.

Right now I've got so many things to read and write, that it's keeping my days full.  I should complain??? 

Fish Stories

 Trae, Our Neighbor with his Walleye

While I roamed around our yard yesterday looking for pictures to snap, Our neighbors Trae and his dad drove in from a day of fishing the Missouri and unloaded their limit of walleyes.  I told him to get one and I would take his picture.  This is the one he grabbed, so I don't know if they were all this size or not, but I especially liked the story his dad told,(with a straight face).  He is a school principal, and given my experience in that same profession, we cannot tell a lie.

This how the story went.  He caught a big one and just about had it when it got under a rock and broke the line.  Lost!  Later on he caught another, and as he reeled it in, here comes the other one with it,  twisted up on the line.  Two in one!   Trae's mother asked if we like fish.  Oh, yes, we do!  And sure enough, a little later Tina comes to the door with a beautifully cleaned sack of fillets.

I used to fish quite a little, have owned two boats, and still have a bundle of gear in one corner of the garage.  The fishing trip that still stands out in my mind as the best one took place on The Lake of the Woods in the spring of 1973.  After three years  as high school principal in Dunseith, I was a total burn-out and when this trip came up I jumped at it.  George Bunn, Ray Bartholomay, and I drove up to northern Minnesota and met up with an acquaintance of George's who owned a large fishing/pleasure boat who graciously took us out on the big lake.  We never caught fish of any size, but we caught a lot of them, and I still can taste that walleye fixed on Shake and Bake and washed down with gallons of beer.  It was a relaxing interlude before I jumped back into the fire and took another administrative job.  

...   ...   ...

Our friend Ole always gets accused of being the dumb one, but how about when he fooled the game warden:
Ole was stopped by the game warden just as he was leaving the Lake of the Woods with two buckets of fish.  "Let me see your fishing license." . . . "Oh, Sir, I don't have vun, dese here are my pet fish," says Ole . . ."Pet fish?" . . . "You betcha, every night I take dese fish down to the lake and let them swim around for awhile.  Den I whistle and dey yump back into the buckets , and I take dem home." . . . "That's a bunch of hooey, fish can't do that," the warden says. . . Ole looked at the warden with a real hurt expression on his face and said, "Vell, den, I'll yust show you den.  It really does work." . . .  "OK, I've got to see this," says the warden, really curious now.  So Ole poured the fish into the lake and stood waiting.  After several minutes, the game warden turned to Ole and said, "Well?" . . . "Vell, what?" . . . "When are you going to call them back?" the red-faced warden says. . . "Call who back?" Ole asks . . . "The fish!" . . . . . . . "What fish?"

Junkyard Buicks & Other Stuff

It's fun to drive around the countryside and find interesting sights.  This old Buick takes me back to the year I graduated from high school.  A little uncertain as to its model year, I searched the internet for pictures of '59 and '60 models.  It appears as if this number could be either one.  It sat out front in the junkyard, and I'm sure the owner was showing it off in hopes of finding a classical car lover to buy and restore  it.
. . .
Quotation hanging on my office wall:

Tho' much  is taken, much abides; and though
We are not that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are . . . 
from Tennyson's Ulysses
. . .
I started wondering what was going on in 1959 and did some looking on timelines. Ike was president . . . Alaska and Hawaii admitted into the Union . . . First photocopier, Xerox 914 on market . . . Castro took over in Cuba . . . Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper killed in an airplane crash on their way to Moorhead, MN and Bobby Vee was the fill-in act . . . Dodgers won the World Series . . . Coors Beer Co. introduced the aluminum beer can . . . Texas Instruments applied for patent on Integrated Circuits . . . Barbie Doll was introduced . . . China took over Tibet . . . Ford won a battle with Chrysler to call its new car "Falcon" . . . "The Battle of New Orleans" by Johnny Horton topped the charts . . . The first missile-carrying submarine, the USS George Washington launched . . . Rod Serling's Twilight Zone started . . . Chubby Checkers sang "The Twist" on the Dick Clark Show . . . Ford quit making Edsels . . .

 

Double-Takes

Fort Rice School & Outhouse

I saw something a few days ago that has been rolling around in my brain, but I just couldn't be sure if I saw it correctly.  I thought I saw in Barnes and Noble this title: Donner Party Cookbook.  Now at first blush that seems innocuous enough, just another cookbook, right?  But stop to remember what the  Donner Party was; it was a group of pioneer travelers headed west in wagons who were stranded in a mountain pass by a blizzard that blocked their passage. Trapped all winter,  they ran out of food, and resorted to cannibalism to survive.

Did I see it correctly?  You betcha, I did.  I looked it up on the internet and there it was, Donner Party Cookbook.  For me I thought instantly of cannibalism, and a sort of ghoulish urge led me to think the title was humorous.  Well, I still think it is.  The book looks legitimate enough, contains some history of the period, and does list recipes that people of that period followed.  I don't think recipes for human flesh were included.

...   ...   ...

Some "double-take" signs -

- in a dry cleaning store - Thirty eight years on the same spot
-outside a country shop - We buy junk and sell antiques
-in a cafe - Customers who find our waitresses rude ought to see the manager
-in a loan office - Ask about our plans for owning your home
-on a telephone pole - Are you an adult who cannot read?  If so, we can help
-in Arkansas - Take notice: When this sign is under water, this road is impassible
-at a private school - No trespassing without permission
-in a maternity ward - No children allowed
-in a clothing store - Wonderful bargains for men with 16 and 17 necks
-in a funeral parlor - Ask about our layaway plan
-at a highway diner - Eat here and get gas
...   ...   ...
 A joke
A man walks into a bar with a giraffe, takes a stool, the giraffe does the same.  They proceed to order drinks, one after another, well into the night.  Suddenly the giraffe falls off his stool and lies unconscious on the floor.  The man gets up and heads for the door.  The bartender shouts at him,
"Hey, you can't leave that lyin' here."  To which the man replies, "It's not a lion, it's a giraffe!"

The Way It Looks From Here

 

My wife said for not having anything to say, I sure do it well.  Now I thought about that one for awhile and decided there was probably a multiple choice question in there.  Here are the choices:

1.) I was the victim of a left-handed compliment

2.) It illustrates the art of the gentle put down

3.) She damned me with faint praise

4.) All of the above

Like many another husband, I just can't fool her with blib-blab.

...   ...   ...

I found the barn with the hilly backdrop near Huff, ND.  So many old hip-roof barns look like this or even worse.  One time they were a very common sight but have been replaced with tin sheds.  They stand as historical monuments celebrating a time that has passed

...   ...   ...

Speaking of history I enjoyed reading a text and writing a review on this book -  Sioux War Dispatches: Reports from the Field, 1876-1877 by Marc H. Abrams.  The Bismarck Tribune receives examination copies and makes them available for citizen reviews.  Recently I saw the editor's announcement of the availability of this book, asked for it, and found myself the lucky recipient of it in the mail.  The book read well, and I found it very informative.  The author drew accounts from thirty-one different newspapers and dozens of various other resources to piece together a good picture of the period.

I couldn't help but state my own understanding of the period and said, "An often overlooked back story, yet present and significant, threads through these accounts.  With battles fought in the names of generals and chiefs, the soldiers and warriors receive little attention in the histories.

Just enough seeps through the articles to tell us that soldiering in the field during this time was harsh.  With only bacon and hardtack making up their field diet, scurvy set in.  Illness and injury went untreated.  Men traveled and slept through blizzards, mud, drought, mosquitoes, and pelting hail lacking adequate shelter...."

It was little wonder Custer's command suffered defeat, "The soldiers and their mounts were undernourished and exhausted from their march and Custer's cavalry could not maneuver well in the area of the final showdown."  So the Deseret News concluded, "The simple truth is that General Custer went out to slaughter the Indians, and the Indians slaughtered him."

Just musing

I've never had much desire to attend a Broadway play, but  in the case of Magic/Bird I would make an exception.  Their competition and friendship exemplify the way things should be. Unfortunately, the "critics" aren't liking it too much.
...   ...   ...
Information overload is occurring now.  I sometimes think a person would be better off not listening to the news.  North Korea still acts like an outlaw that has never been arrested.  They will have to send out a posse. . . In politics if someone sticks their foot in their mouth, a roar of false indignation arises.  The latest on that one Mrs. Romney being called out to be quiet because she's never worked a day in her life. . . A Florida congressman gained attention when he said there were 80 communists in Congress, he being a republican and they democrats.  I remember McCarthyism. . .  The guy who shot Trayvon probably wishes he had never gone vigilante with a gun. . . I was steered to an article in the Business Week magazine of January 19, 2012 that carries the brash headline "The Man Who Bought North Dakota."  Reading that makes it easy to see why our state politicians keep fetching this oilman's coffee and polishing his boots.
...   ...   ...
The Tribune regularly carries the Richard Cohen column.  As the years pass I'm developing a growing respect for President Eisenhower and today's column added to it.  The editor of the newspaper that Cohen began working for as a young  man assigned him to cover an exhibition of Ike's paintings at some gallery.  For some reason Cohen found himself the only reporter there, and who should come out of a side door but Ike himself.  Ike spent time with him and walked through the gallery.  History tells us that Ike was an amateur artist and not too good, but Cohen tried to flatter and patronize him and asked of one painting just what was the symbolism he painted into it.  Ike didn't bite.  Cohen quoted him saying, "Let's get something straight here, Cohen.  They would have burned this (expletive) a long time ago if I weren't the president of the United States."
...   ...   ...
It's raining.  We needed it.  Only half an inch or so fell, but things already look greener.

Beauty in Black and White

While in the Bismarck Public Library today I picked up the Western Horseman magazine as I waited for my wife.  The front cover featured an action picture of a horse and rider and was rendered beautifully in pencil.  When Mary was ready I called her over to have a look.   I've forgotten the artist's name, but he is an accomplished artist.

Another good pencil artist is Don Greytak from Montana.  I met him once when he exhibited at an art show in Fargo.  He told me you can't do it any simpler, all you need is a pencil and a piece of paper.  We have a few of his prints hanging on our wall, and I have seen them in many places.

 I'm still amazed at the quality of old time black and white pictures taken with cameras as simple as a Brownie.  They had good lenses, even the cheap ones.  When it comes to reproducing  the pictures 50-75 years after they were taken, detail comes out very sharply.

A joke mentioning the colors of black and white features our friends Ole, Lena, and Sven.  Ole plans to take Lena out that night and when he gets home from work he goes upstairs to where Lena is standing in the middle of the bedroom -  naked.  "Lena, vhy are you standing in the middle of the room naked? - - - "Oh, Ole, I have absolutely nuthin' to vear!" - - - Ole walks over to Lena's closet and opens it.  "Lena!  Vhat do you mean you have nuthin' to vear?  Here's your white dress, here's your black dress, hello Sven, here's your red dress. . . "

Of course, all of the foregoing blib-blab is a poor attempt to introduce the really important item.  Our daughter-in-law forwarded a picture of her black and white diploma awarded by the American Board of Family Medicine stating that she is now certified as an M.D. in Family Medicine.  She and her family have traveled down a long road to get that piece of paper.  They will now move to Fargo where she will establish a practice and our son will continue on with his college student personnel work.

Sailing

 

We were probably the only two people in the U. S. who had never watched the movie Titanic.  Yesterday we joined the crowd.  It so happened our son and wife could not come for Easter dinner because of an illness in the family (dog had the flu).  So we looked in the movie schedule and Mary picked it out, the 3-D version.  Undoubtedly a good movie, I didn't particularly like it because one dramatic scene followed on the heels of another so that I could never relax.  The date it sunk: April 12, 1912, one hundred years ago.

Reminded of a trip I took once on  a ship, I dug out this picture taken in Alaska in the fall of 1968 as I stood on the dock waiting for it to arrive.  The ship was named the M. V. Wickersham and was a working ferry on the inland passage.  I had driven up to Alaska a week or so before but decided it was not for me to stay with winter coming on.  I drove from Anchorage to Haines in time to catch a ride.  I bought a ticket and surrendered my '66 Impala which the dockworkers drove in the hold with other vehicles.  Quite the experience it was!  The ferry system is a working system for Alaskans to get from one port of the state to another or move commerce along or haul sightseers like me.  Not a very large ship, It did a lot of rocking and rolling in the rough water.  Prince Rupert, BC was my  getting off 30 some hours later, a trip I've never regretted or forgotten.

To celebrate our 25th anniversary, we traveled north  to Alaska on Carnival Cruises which proved to be an entirely different experience, strictly tourist.  Each day we would float into a different port, disembark, and walk through the tourist trap businesses set up and waiting for us.  Anyone for Brazilian sapphires?  Some of it was authentic, though, such as the narrow gauge railroad to the top of Whitehorse Pass, a trail where thousands of gold-seekers once walked up to fail at prospecting. Another interesting stop was church at the Diocese of Alaska cathedral in Juneau, a ramshackle wooden building with squeaky floors and pews.

Other than those two trips, the only other floating I've done was in fishing boats.

Changing Your Mind

I belong to an organization called the Tanka Society of America to which I submit a few poems each time they publish their magazine.  Tanka poems are based on a Japanese form written in five lines.  The magazine asks for a poem to fit a theme and last time it was "Changing Your Mind."  They printed this one of mine:

when young
I planned to change
the world
blackened eyes and broken bones
made a new man of me
...   ...   ...   ...   ...   ...

Our friend Ole changes his mind from time to time, too.  Take this one for example when he and Lena decided they didn't want to be married any longer.  They went to a lawyer to see about a divorce.  "How old are you folks?" he asked.  "Vell, I'm 96 and Lena is 92," said Ole.  "How come you are getting a divorce now?"  Ole said, "Vell, ve vanted to vait until all da kids were dead."
...   ...   ...   ...   ...   ...
One more will be all I can stand - - -

Ole lived across the river from Clarence who he didn't like at all.  They were yelling at each other all the time from their sides of the river.  Ole would yell to Clarence, "If I had a vay to cross this river,  I'd come over dere and beat you up, you betcha."

This went on for years, til finally the state built a bridge across the river right by their houses.  Then Lena said, "Now's your chance, Ole, go over dere and beat that Clarence up like you've wanted to."

Ole said, "OK, by gosh, I think I'll do dat."  He started for the bridge but sees a sign on the bridge and stops to read it.  Then he turns around and comes back.  Lena asked, "Vhy did you come back?"

Ole said, "Lena, I changed my mind about beatin' up dat Clarence.  You know dey put a sign on da bridge dat says, 'Clarence is 13 feet, 6 inches.'  He didn't look dat big ven I yelled at him from across the river."

The Time It Never Rained

I just finished a book titled The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton.  The story centers on a very independent rancher in Texas who in the early 1950's refused all government programs of assistance to feed his cattle and sheep, while his neighbors readily accepted help.  He had built his ranch to be a sizable, profitable operation when an unrelenting drought settled in.  As the story progresses he is forced to whittle down the numbers of livestock and acreage to stay solvent.

A while back I copied a quotation that appeared in the movie Braveheart: Uncompromising men are easy to admire - but compromising men get things done.  As I read the book, I thought that fit the main character well.  While the community admired him for his independence, they also thought he was not being very smart by refusing some assistance.

The scenes of sheep shearing especially rang true for me as they brought back lots of memories.  The main character got extremely irritated when a young man with the shearing crew took hold of a clippers and made lots of bleeding cuts on the ewe's hide.  A good shearer does a clean job.  I can remember the differences in the shearers Dad used to hire, some were easy on the sheep, and some really cut them up.

Elmer Kelton, the author, is a man I would like to have met.  He knew the agricultural industry and because of his career as an ag reporter with a newspaper, he also knew how to write, and write well.  He died a couple of years ago and was held in high esteem by the Western Writers of America.  In a poll of the organization's membership he was voted number one as the best western author, and the book, The Time It Never Rained, as the fourth best western novel.

An article of remembrance praising Kelton appeared in the Western Writers of America magazine.  One of the quotes from admirers stated, "He gave us the real West of stockmen with mulehead horses, wild-hair bulls, broken fences, stove-up hands, the day-in, day-out hard work of cowboying, nutty neighbors - all of it, comic, human, heart-touching.

Family Tree

Occasionally a good television program comes along.  One we're enjoying now is Who Do You Think You Are?  It helps people find their deep family roots.  Two weeks ago the actress Helen Hunt followed trails of family history that researchers on the show helped her trace.  Last Friday Rita Wilson, wife of Tom Hanks, traveled to Greece and Bulgaria to discover her father's story.

She said that her father had always been very quiet about his background, so much so that she knew almost nothing except that he was Greek.  When he was young, his family migrated to Bulgaria for economic reasons, but his life there was not pleasant.  The army drafted him, and as they did to many conscripts, found him guilty of some misdemeanor and jailed him for three years to hard labor.  When he got out, he married and had a child who was half-brother to Ms. Wilson, a brother who she never knew she had.  The wife and child both died, and for undetermined reasons he got sent to a labor camp for a long stay.

Finally he gained his freedom, made his way to America, and lived a much happier life.  It turned out that he left family there in Bulgaria who never saw him again.  And he never talked about his past life.  My wife, who is deeply engrossed in researching her family history, told me that was a very  typical reaction.  They didn't talk so as to protect the family from cruel treatment who remained in the old country.  It seems as if the dictators had a diabolical inclination to punish family who did not escape the regimes.

I found a couple of short stories on the internet that speak of the harshness these people encountered.  One, written by Cynthia Ozick, was titled "The Shawl" and follows a starving mother whose nursing baby received no milk, its only pacifier was sucking a corner of her mother's shawl.  They were being forced along with throngs of other prisoners who knew not where they were going.  Of course, it does not end happily.

The other story, only two pages long, is Isaac Babel's "Crossing into Poland."  It had to do with quartering soldiers amongst the peasantry of the region they occupied.  He slept in a room with others.  He dreamt a nightmare, thrashed about, and was woken by the lady of the house saying he was pushing her father about.  It turned out he was dead, killed by the Russian army.  She said he pled with his killers "Kill me in the yard so that my daughter shan't see me die."  But they did as they pleased and she saw them murder her father.

The Stockyards Cafe

The archives of the old hometown newspaper coughed this story up one time when I was poking around. This was how the editor's creative writing described the fact that hobos passed through town and hung around the stockyards because of its proximity to the train rails.

"The Southwestern Stockyards Cafe is serving excellent meals a la carte to transients of the hobo genus. The vicinity of the stockyards is a favorite rendezvous for tourists of the side door Pullman class and when the pangs of hunger begin to afflict them they repair hither for the purpose of replenishing the inner man. Every man is his own cook and furnishes his own eats."

The old folk singer Jimmie Rodgers, nicknamed The Singing Brakeman, sang this song about hobos, "All around the water tank/ waiting for a train/ a thousand miles away from home/ sleeping in the rain! . . .

Unless they've been living under a rock, everyone knows of John Steinbeck's stories of the hard life causes from drouth in the 1930's. In the very first paragraph of The Grapes of Wrath he wrote, "The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in awhile they did not try anymore." This drouth set in motion a great migration to the west.

The well-regarded writer of rural life in Texas Elmer Kelton wrote in his novel The Time It Never Rained about the hungry wetbacks from Mexico who, coming north across the ranch of his story's protagonist, gladly accepted food from the rancher's wife. Just like today they were looking for something better.

The point to be made here is that it is happening again today. The so-called "Housing Bubble" burst and caused people to become homeless, too. The carrots held out by the real estate industry in cahoots with the bankers made houses too easy to buy. Some people bought too big, expecting inflation to increase the value of their homes, some treated their house like it was a piggy bank and dropped most of their money into the slot in its back. I find it heartbreaking whenever I see stories of homeless families forced to live in their cars, motels, with relatives, whatever. Anyone who reads history knows the displacement of people has occurred throughout history, but just knowing it doesn't make it any more pleasant.

Aftermath

It was necessary to visit my friendly prosthetist at Hanger Orthopedics yesterday for an adjustment, something I need to do a few times a year. The Hanger company came into existence during the first year of the Civil War. The story goes like this. In 1861 James Hanger's wound made him the first amputee of the Civil War. His biography tells that a suitable solution to walking again was not available. So he took to developing an artificial leg for himself, that first one being fashioned from barrel staves. Apparently it worked well enough to prompt the Virginia state legislature to commission Hanger to manufacture limbs for other veterans. Since its humble beginnings the company has grown to provide services from 600 locations.

One can only guess how many wartime wounds have caused amputations, but then we can only guess how many pails full of water are in the Pacific. I imagine dusty records in Washington could be tallied to an accurate number, but who cares. Whatever the count, there are too many. One source I read claims that among the Federal troops thirty thousand amputations were performed with a similar number among Confederates. The stomach turning facts tell of the high risk of infection and that due to frequent shortages of water, surgeons often went days without washing their hands or instruments. In spite of the conditions, 75% survived.

A company like Hanger can only grow. How many wars have we been involved in since the Civil War? Fresh client numbers are constantly being provided to them. Thankfully, the company and others like them keep developing new and better appliances and techniques to make life better for people who need them.