Old West Myth vs. Reality -by Devon Matthews

Today I’m revisiting one of my favorite topics—the myth versus the reality of the Old West.

 

As writers of western romance, we try to keep our facts straight and base our stories in reality, to give our readers a real taste of what it was like back in the Old West. But, as hard as we try, our efforts often fall short because we’ve been influenced all our lives by what we’ve seen on the big screen and tv—the romanticized west.

 

In the movies and even most of the books we read, we see our hero shove through the batwings (swinging doors) of some saloon—usually a nice, clean saloon. He bellies up to the bar and orders a drink. In the corner, a piano player is pounding out a lively tune while gaily dressed saloon girls engage the patrons. The bartender serves our hero a shot in a clean glass from a nicely labeled bottle of whiskey. After quickly tossing back the drink, our hero then flips the bartender a gold coin and carries his bottle to one of the poker tables, where a game is already in progress. After some interesting conversation back and forth, the game usually turns into a shootout and the result is several dead bodies lying on the floor. Sound familiar?

 

In reality, until the late 1800’s, when the railroads, mining camps, and cattle drives brought prosperity to the west, a typical saloon was neither large, nicely decorated, nor was it anything even approaching clean. More often, sawdust covered the floors, which absorbed everything from tobacco juice, blood, beer, and spilled liquor. The sawdust also disguised and soaked up the more unpleasant odors of urine and vomit. Nice, huh? Rather than a piano in the corner, you were just as likely to find a barber chair. In providing barber services, the saloons gave the more pious and wife-fearing patrons a respectable reason to walk through the doors.

 

Let’s go back to the image of our hero flipping the bartender a gold coin. In reality, drinks and other goods and services were often purchased with gold dust, especially in the numerous mining camps. Where gold dust was the coin of the realm, there followed some very inventive practices of stealing it. An unscrupulous bartender, intent on taking more than his fair share, would rub grease or thick liniment into his hair. Pinching into a sack of gold dust always left some clinging to fingers, especially if they were sticky with grease. The bartender had only to swipe his fingers through his hair to capture the extra grains. Later, the bartender washed his hair and all those precious grains of gold settled right to the bottom of the pan. There was another, easier method and here’s my heroine from the second book of my gold camp series (still in progress) to explain.

 

    She tossed her leather pouch on the counter. “Dry your hands before you go pinching inside my poke, Smitty.”

    The bartender glared at her long and hard, then snatched the filthy towel draped over his shoulder and swiped it over his hands.

    Susannah was aware of the bowl of water Smitty kept under the bar. A common practice among unscrupulous barkeeps and shop owners in gold country. Gold dust clung to wet fingers. After “pinching” someone’s dust for payment, it was an easy trick to slip one’s hand down to the bowl and release the extra grains with a quick dip in the water.

 

A slick trick, indeed. Which brings us back to the sawdust on the floors. Wherever there were drunken miners, there was a lot of gold dust spilled. Sawdust disguised the gold dropped on the floor. After a big night, the saloon workers simply swept up the sawdust and extracted the gold.

 

Now, about that poker game our hero joined. Most saloons were small, with only enough room for a couple of tables. Contrary to what we’ve been led to believe, prior to the 1870’s, poker was not the most popular game and was rarely played. More likely, you'd find our early cowhands and gamblers playing Faro, also known as Bucking the Tiger. Players, or punters, as they were called, played against the dealer, much like our modern day Blackjack. Some of the more famous names who were Faro dealers at one time or another included Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and Bat Masterson. Ben Thompson owned several gaming operations in and around Austin, and these included Faro.

 

Okay. We have our hero in the saloon; he’s paid for his drink and taken a seat at one of the gaming tables. So let’s take a closer look at that drink in his hand. While it’s true that good bourbon whiskey was available throughout the west in certain establishments, more than likely our hero was served something entirely different. Tarantula Juice, Coffin Varnish, and Stagger Soup were common concoctions sold as whiskey. These were often made with cheap watered-down alcohol, colored to look like whiskey with whatever was on hand, including old shoes, tobacco, molasses, or burnt sugar. Wait a minute. Old shoes? Really? To give the whiskey an extra kick, hot peppers and even rattlesnake heads (which tainted the mixture in pretty short order) were tossed in. Anyone thirsty? Ugh. So, next time you have your hero walk into a saloon for a drink, have him ask for the good stuff from a real distillery in Kentucky or Pennsylvania. One brand of rye whiskey that was top shelf and, as the stories go, favored by even the discerning Doc Holliday, was Old Overholt, which is still around today.

 

Now, what about that shootout at the poker table, where our hero is the last man standing? In reality, shootouts were much rarer than the movies would have us believe. While many men, including Wild Bill Hickok, Morgan Earp, Warren Earp, and Wes Hardin, died from gunshots inside a saloon, gun ordinances helped curtail much of the violence. Many of the towns in the Old West had gun ordinances that required you to leave your weapon with the sheriff, your hotel clerk, or even the bartender of the local saloon. Some saloons required you to check your gun at the door. As always, there were those who sidestepped the rules by carrying their guns concealed.

 

So there you have it, a few more tidbits to tuck away in your arsenal of Old West realities. And now a question. Which do you prefer for your entertainment (books and movies), the romanticized version of the Old West, or would you rather have the reality?

Happy reading and writing!
Devon

Devon's web site
Devon's blog

*Photos courtesy of the Public Domain via Wikipedia.

Raising Cane and Making Molasses



Welcome western romance lovers! Today’s post isn’t about cowboys, horses, or even romance novels. It’s about molasses, that homemade sugar substitute that past generations relied on to satisfy their sweet tooth when real sugar was in short supply.

Cane Field

When I was growing up here in Southeastern Kentucky, one of the biggest and most memorable occasions on the farm was the yearly molasses boiling. Every year, when the first nip of frost was in the air, my uncle and cousins went out into the cane field and cut the crop. Have you ever chewed a section of sugarcane right out of the field? You peel off the tough outside hull then chew the stringy pulp inside to extract the juice. It’s sweet as sugar and it’s delicious!

In anticipation of the cane boiling, my grandmother, mom, and aunt cooked up enough food to feed a small army because the neighbors always showed up and brought their entire families. Sometimes there was even a little pickin’ and singin’ to entertain while the men worked the mill and boiler. Making molasses was another excuse for socializing, plus there was the foam, which wasn’t to be missed, but I’ll get to that later.

Mule-powered Cane Mill

Make no mistake, while everyone had a good time during the molasses boiling, it was also a lot of work. First, the cane had to be stripped in the field where it stood. Then the stalks were cut and hauled to the site. My uncle used a big sled pulled by a mule. Once there, the cane was topped (the seed pods removed). Next, it had to be hand fed into a mill where the stalks were crushed to extract the juice. The mill in the picture is very similar to the one my uncle used. It was operated by mule power. The mule walked a continuous circle around the mill, which turned the mechanism that squeezed out the juice. The juice was collected in buckets, then strained through boiled cloth to remove the bits of pulp. This was not a simple matter of pouring the juice through the cloth. It was more like the cloth was filled with as much as a person could handle and then the juice was forcibly squeezed through. Then, the pulp was scraped off before filling the cloth again. Approximately 100 gallons of juice were needed to make one batch of molasses.

Boiler Pan

After it was strained, the juice was poured into the metal boiling pan. The pan in the picture at left is much more sophisticated than the one we had on the farm. In fact, I’ve never seen one set on a permanent base with its own chimney. The one my uncle used was just the basic pan elevated to the desired height with stones placed at the corners and at mid-point. The normal pan was 7 feet long, 3 feet wide, and about a foot deep. The baffles on the bottom of the pan remain a mystery to me because I don’t know how they worked, and the ones in the bottom of my uncle’s pan looked more like corrugated metal. A fire was kept burning evenly underneath the pan for 6 or 7 hours. During this process, my uncle ran a big wooden paddle back and forth between the baffles to move the juice around and skim off any cane residue that had slipped through the straining process.

Boiling cane juice produces a big head of foam. This was the part we kids—and the adults, too—all looked forward to. Everyone came to the boiling with a big wooden spoon in hand for dipping foam. The foam produced over the thickened, darker syrup was the best. If you ask my mom today about making molasses, she’ll talk at length about how she used to love eating foam.

After 6 or 7 hours of constant, gentle boiling, the juice was transformed. 100 gallons of cane juice produced about 10 gallons of molasses. The big gallon-sized glass jars were stored in a safe place and used throughout the year in a variety of ways. Molasses were eaten, just like jam or jelly, with a meal. They were used to flavor cakes and cookies. My grandmother made delicious stack cakes with molasses flavored biscuit dough and dried apple filling. In a pinch, my uncle even used molasses as a sugar substitute in his moonshine recipe.

One of my mom’s favorite memories from her girlhood is of sitting with her brothers and sisters in front of the fireplace during the winter and making tough jack. They boiled a pan of molasses on the open fire until it thickened to candy consistency. Once it cooled enough to handle, they buttered their hands and divided the thickened molasses between them and started pulling it like taffy. Mom says, the more they pulled, the tough jack became paler and more tender. She never had the patience to pull hers for very long and always ate it before it reached perfection. Vanilla could be added during the boiling stage to add more flavor. One of my uncles sometimes added nut kernels to his and mom says he would pull it and pull it until it was nearly white. Then, she and the others would beg for his because they’d already eaten theirs.

Making tough jack sounds like it would have been a good activity to keep the young people busy and happy while they were cooped up in the soddie or cabin during those long prairie winters, doesn’t it? What other activity can you think of that would have kept the youngsters entertained during those cold nights on the homestead in the old west?

Happy reading and writing!
Devon

Devon's web site
Blog - Romance in the Wild West

Photos shared from Wikipedia and freedigitalphotos.net

The Day The Cowboys Quit

The Day the Cowboys Quit is the title of a western novel by the late Elmer Kelton. The story, which I read many years ago and enjoyed very much, is set against the backdrop of the Great Canadian River Cowboy Strike of 1883. Despite its name, the Canadian River is a tributary of the Arkansas River. At 906 miles long, it originates in Colorado and continues through New Mexico, across the Texas Panhandle and most of Oklahoma. The cowboy strike mainly took place in the Texas Panhandle.

For twenty years after the Civil War, open-range cattle ranching thrived on the Great Plains. The ranches were mostly family owned and operated, and everyone was on a first name basis. Then, with the inroads of progress, things began to change. Railroads made cattle more profitable and there was a never-ending demand for beef in the big cities back east. Corporations and syndicates were formed with an eye on the profits to be made from cattle ranching. They began buying up the one-horse operations and combining them into massive holdings. But when the corporations moved in, the human touch went out the window, and therein began the problem.

The cowboy’s job was hard and the small owner recognized this, so the hands were often treated as family and given extra privileges. Usually, they were allotted a whole string of horses to work with. And the longer they stayed with a particular outfit, the better the horses they received. As an extra bonus of the job, it was common practice for a cowboy to claim a few mavericks for himself and slap his brand on them. If he worked long and hard enough, he could accumulate a herd and start his own outfit. In other words, the old ways gave the cowboy plenty of room for advancement, if he was ambitious enough.

When the syndicates moved in, everything changed. In most cases, the cowhands never met their new bosses, who remained some faceless entities in an office back east. The new owners decided it was better for their bottom line to claim all unbranded cattle for themselves. They also put restrictions on the use of ranch horses and each cowhand was limited to the use of two horses, and those had to be left in the corral when the day’s work was done. To makes matters worse, the corporate owners decided that their men couldn’t carry firearms or weapons of any kind, play cards or gamble on anything, nor were they allowed to drink alcohol during the terms of their employment. Wow. Wonder what they expected the hired hands to do in their leisure time.

In the spring of 1883, the cowboys had had enough and decided to go on strike. Men from the biggest ranches along the Canadian called a meeting and put together the following proclamation:

We, the undersigned cowboys of Canadian River, do by these presents agree to bind ourselves into the following obligations, viz:

First: that we will not work for less than $50 per mo. And we furthermore agree no one shall work for less than $50 per mo. after 31^st of Mch.

Second: Good cooks shall also receive $50 per month.

Third: Any one running an outfit shall not work for less than $75 per mo.

Any one violating the above obligations shall suffer the consequences. Those not having funds to pay board after March 31 will be provided for for 30 days at Tascosa.

The twenty-four who signed the proclamation were: Thos. Harris, Roy Griffin, J.W. Peacock, J.L. Howard, W.D. Gaton, B.G. Brown, W.B. Boring, D.W. Peepler, Jas. Jones, C.M. Hullett, A.F. Martin, Harry Ingerton, J.A. Marrs, Jim Miller, Henry Stoffard, Wm. T. Kerr, Bud Davis, T.D. Holliday, C.F. Goddard, E.E. Watkins, C.B. Thompson, G.F. Nickell, Juan A Gomes, J.L. Grissom.

Five copies of this declaration were made, signed, and delivered to the LIT, the LX, the LS, the LE, and the T Anchor, which were the large ranches along the river. And so the strike began. The original organizers, led by Tom Harris of the LS, established a small strike fund and attempted, with limited success, to persuade all the cowboys in the area of the five ranches to honor the strike. Reports on the number of cowhands involved at any given time ranged from thirty to three hundred and thirty-five. The number changed as men joined and deserted the walkout.

The out-of-work cowboys spent much of their time in the aforementioned Tascosa, northwest of Amarillo. At the time, it was a mecca for cowboys where any sin could be indulged. In the daytime, Tascosa was a thriving center for trade and supply. But at night, Frenchy McCormick and her husband Mickey ruled the gambling parlors and saloons. Consequently, the "fund" the cowboys had set aside to tide them over during the strike soon ran out of money. An interesting side note: during all of this, Pat Garrett was the sheriff of Tascosa.

Ranchers found an effective means of dealing with the strikers without using force. Officials at the T-Anchor and the LE fired striking employees on the spot. The LS and the LIT offered a slight increase in wages and fired workers if they refused the offer. Owners and managers continued with roundup plans by hiring replacement workers at temporarily increased wages. Many of the replacement workers were in fact strikers who asked to return to work. After two and a half months the strike was so weakened that the May roundup occurred without incident. The last press mention of the strike was in the Dodge City Times on May 10.

After the strike began, the Panhandle was plagued with an outbreak of rustling that many blamed on frustrated strikers. Other types of mischief, such as random burning of personal property, went on the rise, too.

For whatever the reasons, poor organization or lack of enthusiasm, the strike finally fizzled out of its own accord. Many of the strikers went back to their old outfits, but others drifted and found work at the less regulated outfits that still existed farther to the south. Some historians claim that the strike reflected the international labor movement. But most look on it as nothing more than an interesting incident that happened in our history. Whichever way you choose to look at it, The Great Canadian River Cowboy Strike of 1883 barely left a scratch on either the cowboys’ image or the cattle industry.

Happy reading and writing, everyone!

Devon

http://www.devonmatthews.net/

http://devonmatthews.blogspot.com/

Cowboy Duds

"I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy." This line was forever stamped in our consciousness of the old west cowboy when it became a song lyric in The Streets of Laredo. But exactly what was it about those cowboy duds that made the man wearing them identifiable on sight?

Since the cowboy worked with cattle and horses in some of the wildest terrain in the west, by necessity his clothing had to be durable. A cowboy’s clothing could also tell a lot about where he hailed from and the job he performed.

Stetson Champie

Hats gave a big clue to a rider’s origin. In the north, the brims were narrow and the crowns low. But just like a jackrabbit’s ears, the farther south you went, the bigger they became to shade their owners from the sun. In a previous post, Lauri Robinson gave us some great information about the Stetson and the various ways they are creased and what the creases signify. Stetsons came in a variety of styles, including the Dakota, Calgary, Champie (my fave), and the Ten-gallon. A common misconception about the Ten-gallon hat is that it referred to liquid measure. It didn’t. In Spanish, the word "gallon" refers to the band on a hat. The more gallons it had, the more expensive it was. Cowboys eventually started calling any hat that was large and expensive a Ten-gallon. Besides protecting him from the sun and rain, a cowboy’s hat had other uses. He could carry water in it or use it to fan a fire to life. If need be, he could use it as a whip to urge his horse to a faster run. On occasion, he might even stuff the crown with dried grass and use it as a pillow.



A bandana, also known as a wipe or rag, was just as necessary as a hat. They usually came in blue or red and were worn loosely around the neck. When the weather turned frigid, a bandana could be pulled up over a cowboy’s nose to prevent frostbite. It also served as a mask when a man pulled drag duty and had to ride behind the dusty herd. A bandana was long enough to be draped over the crown of a cowboy’s hat and tied under his chin to prevent the hat flying off in a high wind. This also protected his ears from frostbite if he got caught out in a blue norther. And just like his hat, a cowboy’s bandana had other uses and was sometimes brought into service as a potholder, towel, or bandage. If the only available water was muddy, the bandana could be used to filter it for drinking. In a pinch, the bandana probably had a couple of other uses, too, but I’d rather not mention those and put you off your feed this early in the day.

Shirts were always long-sleeved and most often were the pullover type with a three or four button placket on the front opening. See the young cowboy in the photo; he’s wearing a pullover, probably made of wool. Fabrics used were some variety of cotton or wool, depending on the climate. Let’s not forget gloves and leather cuffs, which fastened around the lower arm and extended down to cover the wrists. These were necessary to protect against rope burns or injuries from barbed wire and sharp animal hoofs, plus they saved wear and tear on shirt sleeves.

Contrary to popular culture, the most common pants worn by cowboys in the old west were made of heavy wool, not denim. As I mentioned before, the clothing had to be durable and wool lasted longer than other materials. Levi Strauss didn’t perfect his denim jeans until 1873, and I imagine it took quite some time after that for them to become readily available in dry goods stores throughout the west. So if you have your cowboy set in any time period prior to that, he’d most likely have worn wool or some other material.



Can you imagine wearing that hot, scratchy wool from waist to ankle? I can’t. Which brings me to the reason most cowboys wore their unmentionables year round. Since the great westward migration began after the Civil War, that’s where I’ll begin—with the union suit. The first union suit was patented in 1868 as "emancipation union under flannel." Normally, they were red flannel with full-length arms and legs. The front buttoned up from groin to neck. There was a flap in back that unbuttoned for easy access in the outhouse. After a time (don’t have an exact date) the union suit gave way to long johns, which were very similar to the two-piece suit of long underwear we’re familiar with today. Just fyi, it wasn’t unusual for men who didn’t have an easy means of doing laundry to wear their long johns for an entire summer or winter between washings. How romantic is that!



Back side of Batwing Chaps



As if two layers of garments weren’t hot and sweaty enough for our cowboy, let’s add a pair of leather chaps to his outfit. Chaps were necessary to save wear and tear on precious clothing. Plus they offered some protection from cactus thickets, thorny bushes, barbed wire, and even an occasional love nip from his best friend, his horse. Chaps came in three basic styles: shotguns, batwings, and woolies. Shotgun chaps were slim and close fitting and had to be pulled up the legs, over the pants. Sometimes awkward because the boots and spurs had to be removed to get them on. Northern cowboys preferred woolies for extra warmth. They were most often made from sheep hide with the long wool left on. For pure comfort and convenience, most cowboys preferred batwing chaps. They were looser and fastened around the legs, which didn’t require removing footwear. They also allowed more air to flow in, which was essential on the sun-scorched ranges of the southwest.

Last, but not least, no cowboy would be caught dead without his boots. Back in our cowboy’s day, a pair of boots cost between $10 and $25, depending on how much fancy stitching he wanted and the quality of the leather. Most cowboys only owned one pair, and they held onto that one pair as long as possible and resisted buying new ones. If you’ve ever worn a new pair of cowboy boots, you can sympathize. When new boots were required, they sometimes soaked them in water before putting them on the first time so they would conform to the shape of their feet. Toes were pointed for ease in and out of the stirrups. The heels were high and slanted for gripping the stirrups. The slanted heels were also good for gripping the ground when a cowhand had a rank steer on the other end of his rope. The leather loops, called mule ears, at the tops of the shafts were used to pull the boots onto the feet. No pair of cowboy boots would be complete without spurs, and they came in too many shapes and sizes for me to elaborate on in this post. A cowboy who had a care for his horse filed down the tips of the spur rowels so they wouldn’t damage the animal’s skin. And if a cowboy wanted an extra jingle in his step when he went to town, he added a pair of jinglebobs to the end of the shank.

Ah, those cowpokes and their jinglebobs. Puts a smile on my face every time. :)

Happy reading and writing!

Devon

http://www.devonmatthews.net/

Resources for cowboy clothing in the Old West:

The Book of the American West –Section 6, Cowboys and Horses of the American West by Ramon F. Adams 
How the West Was Worn by Chris Enss 

Bandannas, Chaps, and Ten-Gallon Hats by Bobbie Kalman

The School in the Hills

Living in Southeastern Kentucky during the 1950’s and ‘60’s has given me a lot of first-hand, daily life experience to draw from when I’m writing my western historicals. It wasn’t until the late 1960’s and early ‘70’s that real progress began to filter into the Appalachian Mountains and, until then, many things remained pretty much the same as they were back in the 1800’s. Since a couple of people have expressed an interest, over the next several weeks I will attempt to share some of my experiences with you. Even though not directly connected to the Old West, I hope you might find it useful in some way.

~~~~~~~~

The first school I attended was called Bennett’s Branch. It stood atop a high ridge that was known locally (although you'd never find it on any map) as the Tollie Hill. It was called that because Tollie Sasser, the teacher at Bennett's Branch, and his family lived in the only house midway up the hill. Coming from my grandmother's farm, in the opposite direction, the walk to school was only about a quarter of a mile, if we took the shortcut through the woods.

To give you some background, here’s a picture taken circa 1943 or '44, when my mom and dad were students. I’ve drawn arrows to them. Mom is the little blonde holding onto her best friend and dad is the cute fella with the dark hair. This old photo is one of my treasures, but there were a lot of people not in the shot, including my aunts and uncles. It’s a shame, too, because—as far as I know—this was the only class picture that was ever taken at Bennett’s Branch.

Click on photos to enlarge.

At the time of this photo, the school was actually two separate buildings. Tollie Sasser (that’s him standing on the far left) taught the upper grades (5-8) in the stone building you see here, and the lady standing on the extreme right taught the lower grades (1-4) in a separate one-room log building. The log building, which was built in 1935, was the original school.



Our desks looked like this.

By the time I started school, the log building was long gone and so was the lady teacher. The stone building was all that remained and Mr. Sasser was the only teacher with all eight grades lumped together in one room. The students in each grade were separated by rows of desks. Depending on the number of people in each grade, there might be two grades in a single row. The year we started, my cousin and I were the only students in 1^st grade. Being the youngest and smallest, the older girls quickly took us under their wings. We were allowed to sit anywhere we wanted while the others were given their lessons. Most of the time, we shared a desk with the older girls, who drew paper dolls and made drinking cups out of notebook paper for us. When it was time for our lessons, we sat right up in front of Mr. Sasser’s desk, all eyes and ears and eager to be the smartest. We were quick learners. I think it was because we had the advantage of hearing the other students' lessons throughout the day. By the time we moved up to the next grade level, we already knew the material.

Like all the buildings and households in the area, the school had no indoor plumbing or running water. Thinking about it now, I'm not even sure if it had electricity back then. A lot of light came through those big, tall windows in the southern exposure. (note to self- ask mom) But back to the water...when you walked in the door, the first thing you encountered, standing in the left hand corner, was a small wooden table holding a water bucket. There was also a wash pan. When someone used the wash pan, they were expected to carry it outside and dump the water when they were finished. Mr. Sasser drew the first bucket of water from the well every day. After that, it was up to the older boys to keep the bucket replenished. A communal dipper hung from a nail above the bucket, but most of us used the aforementioned paper cups made from notebook paper when we wanted a drink. Even back then, we must have had some vague notion about cooties. :)

At dinnertime (we’d never heard the word lunch; the noon meal was dinner and the evening meal was supper), we all rushed to the cloakroom, grabbed our pails and ran outside. The cloakroom was a long, wide closet equipped with hooks for coats and shelves for storage. It ran along the front of the building and was situated immediately to the right when you entered the door. Outside, we sat on the ground and ate our dinner. It was like having a picnic every day. After that, we played (usually marbles, kickball, jump rope, or bob jacks) until Mr. Sasser told us it was time to go in again. If the weather was bad, we ate at our desks and used playtime for spelling or adding contests

.

One day each week, the older girls used the extra time between lessons to give the toilet (also known as an outhouse, but we never called it that back then) a scrubbing down with the soap, brushes and buckets that were stored in the cloakroom. As I write this, I'm reminded of something in particular about that outhouse. Whenever one us girls had to "go," we always took another girl with us to stand guard outside the door. In case any of the boys ventured too close, the girl on guard could sound the alarm or warn the boy away. The problem was, the old toilet was built of rough lumber, which had warped from the weather, leaving gaps between the boards, and we girls were afraid the boys might see us sitting on the throne if they wandered too close. The latch on the door wasn’t all that great either, just a small piece of wood with a nail driven through it that you turned to hold the door closed. A tug on the door handle would drop the latch to the floor. Looking on the bright side, at least no one could lock themselves in. ;)

During the winter, Mr. Sasser arrived at school extra early every morning and built a fire in the big potbelly stove so the room would be warm when we got there. During those cold months, the boys took turns carrying in buckets of coal and keeping the fire fed. At dinnertime, we all sat around the stove while we ate. If we were lucky enough to have a moon pie (huge treat back in the day) in our lunch pail, we held it up to the heat and melted the icing so we could lick it off. I'm telling you, you haven’t lived until you’ve scorched your tongue on a hot moon pie. ;)

Mr. Sasser was a firm believer in daily exercise. If the weather was too cold or nasty to go outside, sometimes he’d go out and cut a long switch from a tree and we’d all line up inside the schoolhouse and take turns jumping over it. After each round, the switch was lifted a little higher. If you tripped, you were out of the game. When it was our turn, he always lowered the branch for my cousin and me because we were the smallest. Since we were given special treatment, we were usually declared the winners as well. Can you imagine kids these days being entertained by something like that. Sometimes, like when my electronics are giving me fits, I miss those simpler times.

Many of the students of Bennett’s Branch--mostly those of my parents' generation--migrated north when they reached adulthood because that's where the jobs were. In those days, working the family farm was pretty much the only option if you stayed here. Before I started the fourth grade, my dad moved us to Ohio so he could earn a living as a welder. As you can imagine, this little country girl had to make quite an adjustment when we moved to the city, but I hardly missed a beat when I started school in a new place. Mr. Sasser had taught me the basics very well. Granted, there were no art classes at Bennett's Branch, no music, and no library. If I had continued there, would I have become an avid reader, or learned to play the piano and paint? Would I have pursued writing and publishing? There's no way of knowing, of course, but these questions have crossed my mind a time or two. 

Before I go, I want to share another picture. This one was taken seventeen years ago. This is a view of the front of the school, and that’s me standing in the doorway. As you can see, the place is overgrown, the windows are all gone and the roof has collapsed. I wanted a picture of the old girl before she fell down completely, so hubby and I got in the car and drove over one day. The school is only about ten miles from our house. If you look closely, you can see the remnants of the tongue and groove walls behind me. That area at the front of the building where the windows are was the cloakroom. The stone step I’m standing on is where I sat and cried and refused to budge on my first day of school because I was terrified of going inside. (I thought it was like jail because it was built of stone, very similar to the jailhouse in town, but without the bars on the windows.:)

Since this picture was taken, the current owner of the property gutted the building and rebuilt it. I wish I could say it was restored, but it wasn’t. The cloakroom was not rebuilt, a new roof went on and the walls inside were covered with modern paneling. The room stands empty now, no desks, no stove, no water table. But once a year, the owner opens the building and many of the surviving former students gather there for a reunion. My mom and uncles go, but I can’t bring myself to go with them. Call me strange or overly sentimental but I’d rather remember the old school as it was when class was still in session.

Happy reading and writing! If you have questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Devon

Devon's web site

Devon's blog

The Gunfighter - Bad Boy With A Big Gun

Welcome fellow western romance lovers! I’m a diehard western fan and—I admit it—I’ve always been fascinated with the myth of the old west gunfighter? Wait a minute…did I just say myth?

Yes, I did. Thanks to the movies and tv, we’re all familiar with the archetypal image of two gunfighters facing off in the middle of a dusty street at high noon. But how accurate was this depiction and how often did it really happen? While it’s true that such showdowns did occur, evidence that there was some kind of unspoken code of behavior between gunfighters seems conflicting, at best. But just as our modern media latch on to human interest stories, the newspapers and dime novels of the day took up the exploits of men such as Wild Bill Hickok and Billy the Kid and sensationalized them until they became ingrained in the very fabric of our history.

In his biography, Wyatt Earp described in detail the correct way for a gunfighter to carry, cock, and draw his six-shooter. He also had little respect for any man who shot from the hip or "fanned" his pistol, which would suggest there was some kind of code among the shooters of the old west. In reality, in most deadly altercations, one guy just tried to get the drop on the other to avoid getting shot himself. The fast-draw wasn’t nearly as important as modern cinema makes it out to be. Many a gunfighter entered a shoot-out with his gun already drawn and in hand. The key to walking away without catching a bullet was accuracy and a cool nerve rather than speed. If you could hit what you were shooting at, you might live to shoot another day. Remember that famous shoot-out down in Arizona called the OK Corral? The facts suggest, between thirty and forty shots were fired that day to kill three men.

Now, don't get me wrong, many of the legends that came out of the old west were not pure fabrication. Here’s just one factual account: In 1865, in the town of Springfield, Missouri, James Butler Hickok, also known as Wild Bill, got into an argument with Davis Tutt over $40 Bill owed him. At approximately 6 PM on July 21, the two men advanced on each other in the town square. When they reached a range of 50 yards, they drew their guns and started firing. Tutt missed and Hickok put a shot through his heart. In the aftermath of the incident, Hickok was tried for manslaughter and acquitted. Then, in 1867, Harper’s New Monthly printed a sensationalized account of the shoot-out and Wild Bill became a national celebrity. At the time the story appeared, there were skeptics because 50 yards is a goodly distance for Hickok to have hit his man, but all the evidence pointed to the story being basically accurate in its facts. And this was just one of the stories that gave fuel to the lore of the western gunfighter, not to mention his prowess and expertise.

Most gunfighters proficient at their trade preferred a distance of about 15 yards from their targets in order to achieve accuracy. And speed often didn’t figure into it. One gunfighter named Turkey Creek Jack Johnson became famous for taking his good ol' easy time. In 1876, in a saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota, Turkey Creek Jack became embroiled in a row with two men and invited them to take it out in the road so they could shoot it out. Jack’s opponents both had two six-guns strapped around their hips. They faced off at opposite ends of the cemetery fence, a distance of about 50 yards. When they started walking toward each other, Jack’s opponents each pulled a gun and started shooting. By the time they’d covered 10 yards, they’d emptied the chambers and drawn their second gun. Meanwhile, Jack was walking toward them with his pistol drawn but he still hadn’t fired a shot. At 30 yards, he fired his first shot and killed one of the men. At that point, he stood still and waited for the second man to come closer, then fired his second fatal shot.

Gunfighting was a grisly business, what with all the violence and death involved, but the movies and books sure can make it seem romantic. In Angel In The Rain, my first published western historical romance, my hero is a gunfighter. Getting inside his head was sometimes a stretch, but I have to confess, I enjoyed the ride. Writing him was a labor of love and I ended up giving him all the larger-than-life qualities I’d soaked up during a lifetime of reading and movie watching. The following is a snippet from my heroine's point of view as my hero is facing off with two men, preparing to shoot it out:

The transformation she saw in Rane sent icy shivers racing up and down her spine. The wind played with a sable strand of hair that had fallen across his forehead. The elflock gently lifted, moved, a soft contrast against his features that now looked as though they had been sculpted from cold stone.

The absence of expression in his eyes ran her blood cold. They had gone flat and black, until no spark of warmth or emotion remained. The eyes of a deadly predator. Just as they had looked the first time she’d seen him.

Beneath his bronzed skin, a blue vein pulsed at his temple. She looked closely at his uplifted hands, trying to detect if they trembled, if the angry pounding of his blood set up a vibration.

They were as steady as a dead man’s.

And so, with our stories, the legend lives on. Of all the old western heroes, gunfighters have always been my favorite, and I choose to continue believing in the myth. How about you? Has there been a gunfighter in a particular movie or book that you especially liked? If so, I’d love to hear about him...or her.

Thanks for stopping by!

Devon

Devon's web site

Devon's blog - Romance in the Wild West