From the Land of Cowboys to You; or, The Modern Buckaroo’s Guide to the World
Let’s see, where was I? Why yes, hip deep in Lorne Greene’s pillow lips circa Bonanza…
Sigh, no. I was in deeply in the wonder that is the Gene Autry Museum (aka the Cowboy Museum) and writing up another draft of the novel. Unlike movie cowboys, who seem to either
a.) multitask–fix barbed wire fences, herd cattle, [...]
A recent trip to the LA’s Autry National Center of the American West, aka the Cowboy Museum, yielded huge Westness moments. I don’t remember much of it–being so transported in ecstasy I wasn’t on the earthly plane–but I know I took a lot of pictures.
What is Westness? It’s the romantic thing that anything West of [...]
“I have often been asked how my characters differ from the traditional, larger-than-life heroes of the mythical West,” Mr. Kelton said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News in 2007. “ ‘Those,’ I reply, ‘are seven feet tall and invincible. My characters are 5-8 and nervous.’ ”
Elmer Kelton died August 22 in Texas, after a long [...]
We have Daniel Boone’s ADHD to thank for the western two-thirds of the United States. June 7 is a day that lives in glorious Disney colors or one that lives in infamy, depending on whether you were not or were a Native American.
On June 7, 1769, Daniel Boone crested a summit in the Appalachians and [...]
A Western definition:
Dude (dood) n.
Usually an Easterner, but it can be used to call anyone obviously unready for the West–such as if a person is wearing street shoes, too-fancy clothes, or unable to ride a horse or track game or make coffee in a tin can. A dude is usually mocked mercilessly (see The Virginian, [...]
What Americans and Europeans bought with every Buffalo Bill’s Wild West ticket, and what people purchase around the world with every pack of American cigarettes is a little bit of ourselves as we want to be–alluring, daring, legendary. With every MoMA “Into The Sunset” ticket it appears we also want to be alienated and disillusioned.
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 [...]