What a Sale!

What a Sale, yuk! We traveled all the way to Mesa Friday to sell some books ,at least I thought that was why were going over there. We picked out a nice hotel and made reservations for the night as the event would end at 10 PM and I didn't want to drive back that late. Hell, I'm over 80 years old and don't drive much at night any more nor any other time, either.

We signed in at 4:30 like the notice said, and set up the table and chairs, dug out the books and a sign, and an old battery-operated lantern in case we didn't have enough light. At exactly 6 PM we took our places in the l04 degree heat and waited for customers to inquire about the books. About 6:30 PM, I walked down the street to a Pizza parlor and bought a couple slices of pizza and we ate the pizza and drank a giant drink and waited for customers. I yelled at about everyone that passed the table to take a look, uh-huh, about six people so far. Around 7:30 a nice lady stopped and gazed at the books and chatted for a moment before moving on. The heat was cooling down a bit and there was a nice breeze and about 8:30 we started to pack up. A couple minutes later I dug the books out of the box to show a young lady and her son what I had and KaChing, she bought one. So we sat there a few more minutes with no action and I started putting the books back in the box  and another couple stopped to see what I had. KaChing, another sale! So we waited a few more minutes in the half-light before putting them away again. This time nobody answered our call to take a look, so we packed up and I went and got the car. I was told it was fine to double park to load and unload so there I was laboring away putting the table and chairs in the trunk and a city bus stopped, thinking he couldn't get by. I said to myself, "He'll just have to wait while I finish loading up." Another minute or two and we piled into the car and took off. I turned off that street, heading to the hotel and there was a police car following me. I  stopped for a light and the policeman turned the corner and let out a long sigh of relief.

It was Friday the 13th, what did I expect? We fell far short of meeting expenses, and besides almost having a heat stroke, I managed to enjoy the outing anyway.  Maybe I'll try it again next month.  

Coming Along

I'm proofing the manuscript of Trouble at Sagrado Ranch. My editor, my wife, has proofread it and caught a number of typos and a couple of contextual errors. So, I'm going through it and making the changes and re-proofing the text. After this is done, I will read it again and start thinking about a cover for it that I can use at no cost. I have only about $8 in my book account and I don't think I would get much in the way of cover design for that amount. I hope to add some funds tomorrow night in Mesa at the 2nd Friday Night Out event where I will be signing and selling my novels to all the street walkers, er, er, the wonderful people walking by on the sidewalk and participating in the event.

Have a great weekend!.

A Modern Cowboy's Unusual Story

Bob Norris was just a rancher in Colorado when one day he received a visit from a fellow named Jackson who wanted to rent six stalls for six elephants. The man was looking to get rid of the baby elephants for $18,000 each.  And that is the basis of this story by Malcolm MacPherson called, The Cowboy and His Elephant. It starts with a discussion of the life and habits of elephants in the wild and when you get through that the author takes up the case of Amy who was the only animal to survive a "cull" in the jungles of Zimbabwe.

Amy ends up on the ranch with Mister Norris and they get acquainted over the next few months, and by this time, they have fallen in love with each other. Bob Norris eventually gets around to teaching Amy a couple of tricks and Amy's world has opened up. She gradually gets acquainted with the rest of the ranch and follows Norris and his horse Big Bob around riding fence and all the other things required of a rancher. And Amy plays with her new friends, a goat and the dogs and is considered well adjusted. Norris was an animal lover of the best type, having had a bear in his young days and always looked out for any animal on the ranch.

As time goes by, Amy gets bigger and bigger and could hurt someone without meaning to, she is so powerful in her natural movements and curiosity. Norris had been taking her to various schools to entertain the kids and teach them about elephants. Amy was just getting too big to continue doing this and he stops and has thoughts about selling her to a zoo or a circus to ensure she gets the continued proper treatment.

I have a first edition of the book printed by St. Martin's Press, an imprint of Thomas Dunne Books of New York. It contains a few pictures of Bob and Amy and others and the signature of Bob Norris but not the Author MacPherson.

Anyway, I'll leave the ending out of this blurb, not wanting to disclose it and maybe ruin it for other readers. And there is also a surprise, at least it was to me, about Mister Norris which I will leave for other readers to discover, too. After I had read the opening discourse on elephants, the story moved rather fast and ended all too soon. I really enjoyed this book.

Hamlin Garland, Writer

This month's sketch is a resemblance of HAMLIN GARLAND, Author.

Garland wrote the "Border" books, A Son of the Middle Border, A Daughter of the Middle Border,  Trail-Makers of the Middle Border, and Back-Trailers of the Middle Border among others. Born September 14, 1860, in Wisconsin, he passed on March 4, 1940, in Hollywood, California, at the ripe old age of 79. He began his writing career in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1884.

He traveled to the Yukon in 1898 to witness the Klondike Gold Rush and wrote a novel, The Trail of the Gold Seekers in 1899. He lived in Iowa for a while which inspired many of his writings. He wrote about fifty books, including several that had Prairie in the title and  others that had Trail in the title. Garland won a Pulitzer Prize for biography for A Daughter of the Middle Border it says in Wikipedia.com, where this info is coming from and the sketch is from a photo there. While he was in Hollywood he investigated psychic phenomena and wrote in 1936, Forty Years of  Psychic Research and The Mystery of the Buried Crosses in 1939.

I read a couple of the Border books and found them to be interesting and not exactly what I would call traditional western, but they were personal reminiscences of his travels in the midwest and are literary in my world. If time permits, I will certainly read his gold book and Boy Life on the Prairie to see what they are like. He also wrote a biography of Ulysses S. Grant, Ulysses S. Grant, His Life and Character, which I may find time to read if I can find a copy.

The Hard Time Bunch

The Hard Time Bunch is a Doubleday Western by Clifton Adams published in 1973. I just read James Reasoner's post yesterday with his review of The Colonel's Lady by Adams and agree with what he had to say about Mr. Adams being a gritty writer of the hard-boiled variety. In The Hard Time Bunch Adams has another fine western with grit and humor. Frank Beeler is out of a job having quit as a Deputy Marshal in the Indian Territory and is half-looking for something else that would support him and his on-again, off-again romance with his old true love, Elizabeth Stans. He found it as a hunting guide for two dude Easterners who wanted to go hunting in the Indian Territory. Although the two decimated a flock of wild turkeys just to continue on with their deadly games, that wasn't exactly what they were looking for as they moved further into the Territory.

The Hard Time Bunch was just a few farm boys who were in hard times and took up robbing trains to feather their nests. However, they weren't very good at it and after a failed attempt, a bounty was put on their heads. Known as the Brannon Bunch, the gang was made up of two Brannon brothers, another farmer named Rafe Jackson and an Indian named Johnny Coyotesong. And when the hunting party runs into these outlaws, the story gets interesting and more complex. The two dudes, Warren Conmy and Ben Sutter, and their hired help Duane Keating and Humphrey O'Toole, were not exactly "dudes", all being dead shots and expert in the use of firearms. Along with them was Conmy's pretty wife Verna, adding a bit of mystery and romance to the plot. The "dudes" game now becomes one of who can kill the Brannon bunch. Frank Beeler sees what's coming and wants out and joins the Brannons and becomes an object for the killers to hunt down, too, in their little game.

As the story winds down to its bitter end, they all get caught up in a Creek funeral as one of the Creeks agrees to help his old friend, Beeler, hide out with the Brannons in their camp while the funeral goes on and on and on to its unexpected conclusion.

This novel was only 161 pages long and read easy and fast and I liked it (as I do about all of them).

Enjoy Memorial Day and drive carefully if you're leaving town on the road!

Some Arizona Events

This event runs through June 1, 2014, at the Desert Caballeros Museum in Wickenburg, AZ, and complements the "Cowgirl Up" Artist exhibition. It is the third annual "Cowgirls with a Camera" exhibit featuring the photos of talented women photographers in the Western genre, from mustangs to working horses, ranch life to rodeo, and the stunning landscapes of the American West.

Running through May 31 is "Ghost Towns of Arizona", photography of Kurt Wenner at the Pueblo Grande Museum in Phoenix. More than 40 photos of Arizona ghost towns taken between 1996 and 2006.

May 31: Blue Ribbon Horse Show at the Phoenix-Horse Lovers Park. Halter, English and Western pleasure, trail and more.  Mount up and take a ride to this exhibit.


June 8: 34th Annual Territorial Days Arts and Crafts - Courthouse Plaza, Prescott, across the street from the famed Whiskey Row.

June 13th: 2nd Friday Night's Out in Mesa, AZ, Sci-Fi Friday, on the sidewalk on Main Street. I will be selling my books here. Don't miss this one.

(Thanks to Sun Life Magazine for the events listed, except for the last one.).

Wild Cow Tales

This book of short stories, Wild Cow Tales, by Ben K. Green, was interesting and funny, even hilarious in places. Mr. Green's tales were written in a straight-forward style as he relates some of the wildest cow chases I've read about. As an independent rancher near Weatherford, Texas, he was hired by fellow ranchers and others to round up some of the wildest cattle to be found anywhere. In one of the tales, he tells his troubles rounding up a herd of cows in the Rocky Mountains for a bank that was taking over the herd because the Scottish owner owed the bank some money on a loan. The Scot didn't exactly want "that skinny little excuse for a cowboy" to push his cattle off his ranch and Ben had to battle him, too, on top of the ornery steers.

In another one, Ben was hired to round up a small herd of the meanest and wildest long horns in an out of the way town in southwestern Texas. Though only eight or ten of 'em, he had one of the toughest jobs he'd ever had catching and keeping these animals out of the brush and thickets where they usually could find peace and quiet in their daily routine. This was one of the best instances that rope is a cowboy's best friend and the long, sharp horns are one of the worst . He was horned on a leg, cutting a gash that caused Ben do to some quaint doctoring of the wound and wasn't anything I'd heard of before.

And there's a story about a young boy that helped him out with a small herd of the critters, and at the end of the book thee are some real short episodes he relates while herding and handling cattle, one about some cows reading a morning paper, and another tyring to head off a wild calf that ran into a schoolhouse. All very funny and exciting. Mr. Green is a writer that rode the trail and enjoyed his work. A real cattle man doing what he liked to do and his writing isn't so bad either.

This book was published by the University of Nebraska Press  

Territorial News

Since I received such an outstanding ovation for my previous post about the Territorial News, I thought I would run another one. This edition has Chapter 3 of The Captivity of the Oatman Girls by R. B. Stratton on the front page and continues further into the paper. Also on the lead article is 'Indian Massacre' on the West-bound Stage. This is about a stage robbery west of Wickenburg, AZ, in 1871. The robbers were dressed up as Indians it was thought and was "one of the bloodiest deeds ever committed in Arizona."

Another article was about Ned Huddleston, horse thief and cattle rustler, who turns out to be none other than Isom Dart of Brown's Park fame and an acquaintance of Butch Cassidy during the time  Cassidy was in Brown's Park. This article says he was killed by Tom Horn, who plugged him as he was coming out of his cabin one morning.in October 1900.

There is an article about a Gunfight in Fort Worth, which I found interesting. The big fight was between Luke Short and Jim Courtright. The dispute was over the "protection" offered to Short by Mister Courtright and Short said he didn't need it, so they tried to kill each other in front of the Shooting Gallery Saloon. Short won and Courtright was killed. Short got off, the judge ruled justified self-defense at the trial..

A full-page ad lures visitors to Florence, AZ, with the Chapel of the Gila short history in the center of the page. The Chapel was constructed in 1870 and subsequently renamed the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church. One of the ads is for "The only indoor fast draw shooting range in the U S." Florence is an interesting little town, home of the State Prison and not far from the "Casa Grande" ruins and museum. Have a nice visit.

The paper is still available for $29.95 a year.

HAPPY MOTHER;S DAY!

Not About Raccoons

I ran across this book at a Used Book store and bought it thinking it had to be some sort of western about a Hell and Damnation preacher. Was I surprised when I began reading it and found out it was the story of a young Baptist in early Kentucky who had a lasting effect on the Baptist religion and revealing to them the faults in their take on it. The book is Raccoon John Smith, written by Louis Cochran whose "maternal grandfather was also a preacher and a lifelong advocate of 'Christian unity' after the manner of Raccoon John Smith" it says in the author bio on the back inside flap of the cover.

I continued reading until the end, not that it was a subject that appealed to me much, but since I invested a whole simoleon in it, I would read it no matter how boring it was. Well, it wasn't really boring overall as I followed Raccoon John Smith around the towns and churches in Kentucky in the early 1800's. Although it isn't a traditional shoot-em-up, Kentucky at that time was on the edge of the frontier and there was an episode early on about the killings and unsocial-like behavior of the Harpe gang.

Young John found out early on with urging from his family and others that he was a member of the Elect, having had a revelation and was further urged to set his sights on becoming a preacher. As he learned more about the Bible and the Baptists, he had other revelations that convinced him that the Baptists was not considering the full facts of the Bible. He met several preachers like Barton Stone and David Fall, who thought pretty close to the way he did, and as time goes on, he was booted from several churches as a heretic and Reformist, not being able to change enough people from their deep-seated beliefs and Calvinist ways. The narrative is pretty dull in places to me as John gets married, raises a family and has a couple of the kids die and his house catches fire and wipes out some of them. But John recovers, keeps preaching, gets remarried and has more kids. He was called upon to preach in homes, churches, barns, and oversee weddings by the hundreds, sometimes doing ten in a day. 

John meets Alexander Campbell and becomes a "disciple", believing that baptism by immersion and the Bible are all that is necessary for a Christian to be a good Christian. As time struggles on, he attends a meeting of the Disciples of Christ and the Church of Christ believers and they become united in a loose conformance to the same principles of faith and consider themselves "Unified."

From reading the book, I learned again some of the problems of the various religious sects and will continue to see that there will never be a total re-unification into just one Church of Christians. There is just too much politics and power involved for those in power to relinquish even in the Name of God.

For the most part, I thought the book was just fine and written in language easily understood.

O. Henry

This month's header sketch is O. Henry (William Sidney Porter). I hope I didn't mess it up too much.
O. Henry (Porter) lived from 9-11-1862 to 6-5-1910.
American writer famous for his stories with surprise endings.
Born in Greensboro, NC, died in NYC from cirrhosis, diabetes and an enlarged heart.
Buried in Asheville, NC.
Moved to Texas in 1881, LaSalle County (hill country, I presume).
During his life he was a draftsman, pharmacist, bank teller, and journalist, in addition to being a writer. He played the guitar and mandolin and sang.
As a bank teller he embezzled some money (why? I don't know. He needed it, I guess.) When the law came calling, he left for New Orleans and Honduras. He returned to Austin to be with his wife, who was dying from TB, and surrendered. He was given a five-year sentence, but spent three years in jail where he worked as the prison's pharmacist.
Mister Porter liked his "porter" and was a heavy drinker.
He wrote many stories and submitted them for publication, and many were published. He wrote about ordinary people, clerks, policemen, waitresses, etc. Some of his best were contained in the Cabbages and Kings collection. A couple of his best known were The Gift of the Magi and The Ransom of Red Chief. I liked both of those, laughing at Ransom and being sad with Magi and both had surprise endings.

This info taken from Wikipedia about Mr. Porter, where you can get a more detailed description of his life and works and how he chose his pseudonym, O. Henry.