From the Land of Cowboys to You; or, The Modern Buckaroo’s Guide to the World
I asked him what his favorite western pulp novel was. (Brave, I admit–Clint Eastwood does not have a lot of time to make nice with visitors to his California ranch.)
In reply he did that squinty Clint thing (my heart simultaneously leaped and quailed–giving me heartburn later on in the day).
You know, I persisted, like Luke Short or Ernest […]
Let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffalo is exterminated, as it is the only way to bring lasting peace and allow civilization to advance. –General Philip Sheridan
Buffalo skulls, mid-1870s, waiting to be ground into fertilizer
Here’s a more recent quote:
“I am especially concerned,” [Governor Palin] said in a written statement in August 2007, when […]
MAVERICK. Ask not how many times you can say a word, but why you need to say the word so many times in the first place.
“Maverick.” Thou shalt not repeat a word in the hopes that it sticks.
“Maverick” took on a pop culture tone in the 1950s with James Garner’s hat-pushed back, insouciant gambler. The […]
Cowboys are white. Thus proclaimed the thing with greatest authority in my life: TV programs. Even the Indians were white, and so were the chiefs and chiefs’ daughters (who were white enough to be loved by the white heroes). (Fact: Natalie Wood as Debbie Edwards in The Searchers, 1956) So imagine my surprise, at […]
In times of moral confusion, I turn to my collection of a gajillion western paperbacks from the 1940s and 1950s*. Their bold colors and bolder titles (such as Action by Night, Gunsmoke Justice, Dig the Spurs Deep) bring me back to my center. Good/bad. Right/wrong. Yes/no.
The one-two punch of pulp writers, who must have banged […]
Any western where the Hero bombs a town with trebuckets, and a TNT-dropping kite…
Well, folks, from the dead-eye aim of the Picksburg Kid, that can only be Gone with the West, a ’70s-porn-soundtracked, leather-clad-Sammy Davis Jr.-co-starring, James Caan-must-have-had-to-fulfill-a-contract-mumbling, weird-debauchery-flavored, shaky-camera-for-drunk-scenes, can’t-recall-the-woman’s-name-starring-but-she-became-famous-and-for-this-role-spoke-only-badly-accented-breathy-Spanish-and-got-pushed-around-by-James-Caan, naked-whip-smacking-opening-scene movie.
You’ve got to see it to believe it. It took me a while to […]
Yesterday was Owen Wister’s birthday, the man who almost single-handedly created the Cowboy mythos. He’s both a masterful wordsmith and a cautionary example against using the Cowboy indiscriminately.
Who the hell is Owen Wister? One of my favorite places on the Wild Western Web for all things Americana, The Library of Congress’s American Memory site […]
Channel a Mythic Cowboy who sings, and you can embody more Cowboy facts.
Roy Rogers November 5, 1911-July 6, 1998
31. Cowboys get cool nicknames like Tex, Red, Ringo Kid, Cattle Queen, Bucko, or Roy Rogers–although I think Leonard Franklin Slye has a nice ring.
30. Cowboys burst into Song. Mythic song. And often. Try it next time you are […]
A patriotic theme for a patriotic day—Happy July 4th!
On July 1, 1898, Roosevelt was cursing the fact that he had to dismount from his steed, Little Texas, to lead the cavalry charge up Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill in Cuba. But he knew that if he could get up to the top and strike […]
Used to prop up many a political point, the Cowboy Hero risks being seen only as a monolithic feature on the American landscape, like those iconic buttes and pinnacles in Monument Valley.* Connoisseurs of westerns know that the Cowboy Hero splinters into impressively variegated types, such as bounty hunters, cowboys (from Jack Elam to Gene […]