Interview in Route 7 Review.

Utah Tech University in St. George publishes Route 7 Review, a digital literary arts journal. The name comes from a short highway through red rock and sand deep in southwestern Utah. A while back, while in the neighborhood for a “Poet on the Patio” reading at the city’s fine bookstore, the Book Bungalow, Utah Tech professor Stephen Armstrong and I talked about cowboy poetry.

Dr. Armstrong managed to wrangle my wandering words into some semblance of sense and the interview is included in the latest is issue of Route 7 Review, under a title honoring my hometown: The Man from Goshen. The links will take you there.

Some cowboy.

Not long ago, we lost a good friend of mine. Jim Fain is gone, but won’t soon be forgotten. Jim was a photographer of many talents, but specialized in rodeo action. I’ve got more than a few photos signed by Fain. Hundreds, thousands, of rodeo cowboys over the past sixty years can say the same thing.

The photo above is not typical of his work but, as he always did, Jim captured the essence of a story.

The year was 1973. It was Labor Day weekend, “Cowboy Days” in Evanston, Wyoming. Back then the arena had no lights so the rodeo was held Saturday and Sunday afternoon. The weather turned bad on Saturday—a deluge so heavy the rodeo committee pulled the plug and re-scheduled for Sunday morning. Then it rained some more. And snowed.

Mud, water, ice, and muck covered the arena come morning, but the show must go on. I was up in the first event, the bareback riding. In the cold, with icy fingers, and on the back of a frosty, dripping wet horse I did a sorry job of setting my bareback rigging. When the horse turned back into a spin, my rigging went over the side and so did I. Then the horse landed on me, stomping me deeper into the mire. I have other Fain photos that show it all.

Jim snapped the shutter on this picture as I waded back to the bucking chutes. I was soaked, muddy, and cold. My face and eyes were gritty. My hat was mashed. So was I. All in all, I was a mess. The few fans in the stands thought it funny. At the time, it didn’t seem funny to me.

A misadventure, recorded for all time through Jim Fain’s camera lens. The sad thing is, this photo is my favorite from the album documenting my rodeo career. Some cowboy, huh?

 

My Favorite Book, Part 29

We citizens of the United States sometimes forget that we do not own the West. Most everything that counts as cowboy came to us from south of the border, courtesy of Spanish and Mexican vaqueros. And their influence, always adapted for regional use, did not stop at the Canadian border. Cowboys are big in Canada.

I was reminded of that fact with this novel, Breaking Smith’s Quarter Horse. The book was recommended by my friend Doris Daley from Alberta. She is as fine a poet, reciter, and writer as you’re likely to find anywhere.

Written by Paul St. Pierre, the details of cowboy life in Breaking Smith’s Quarter Horse will be recognized by anybody who loves and lives the West, but with a unique north-of-our-border flavor that captures the quirks and customs of a time and place where the West was wild, the winters cold, and a sense of humor a necessary tool in coping—the sense of humor (or ‘humour’ as they spell it in Canada) perhaps most important of all. As you smile through page after page, and occasionally laugh out loud, you’ll wonder if the Indian cowboy—a horse whisperer of sorts—will ever find time in his not-so-busy schedule to see to the breaking of Smith’s quarter horse.

I thank Doris Daley for the recommendation. You will too.

 

Silver Screen Cowboys I have loved.

Movies and television programs are very much a matter of opinion. What some like, others despise. The same holds true for actors. Portrayals of cowboys on the big (and small) screen range from authentic to absurd, and the actors assigned those roles come off as believable or bogus, and sometimes downright laughable.

Like most movie fans, I have my favorites. I lean toward actors who are absorbed into the role, rather than movie stars who are essentially playing themselves in cowboy costumes. Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order. (Not included are many, many fine players who appear mostly in supporting roles or small parts.) I’m sure some—most—of you will disagree with my choices. Others will wonder about those left out. That’s fine. You can make your own list.

Robert Duvall. Tommy Lee Jones. Ben Johnson. Clint Eastwood. Tom Selleck. Paul Newman. Henry Fonda. Robert Redford. Thomas Hayden Church. Ed Harris. Jeff Bridges. Alan Ladd. Sam Elliott.

And, finally, Latigo Brown.

Latigo Brown?

Excuse the crass commercialism, but Latigo Brown is the hero of my latest novel, Silver Screen Cowboy. Like me, Latigo Brown is often uncomfortable, sometimes downright dismissive, of the unrealistic ways cowboys are portrayed on screen. Despite his surprising path from ranch and rodeo cowboy to movie star back in the golden days of Westerns and the remuneration and renown that come with it, some of the things he is asked to do on screen chafe like a bur under a saddle blanket.

Give Silver Screen Cowboy a read. Could be that Latigo Brown will make it onto your list of favorite silver screen cowboys. Even if you’ve only seen him in your mind.

At the movies.

Latigo Brown is a cowboy. A real cowboy, not like those TV and movie cowboys who ride everywhere at a high lope firing off six-shooters and hardly ever come into contact with a cow. But he finds himself lured to Hollywood by a rodeo hero, where he unexpectedly becomes a box-office star during the heyday of big-screen Westerns and cowboy heroes. Amidst the glitter and glamour of the movie business, he still harbors resentment for the way he—and other cowboys—are portrayed.

Will Latigo Brown swallow his pride and pocket the money? Will starlets, high society, and riches win out? Or will Latigo write “The End” to the movie business? Follow Latigo Brown’s adventures through rodeo arenas, film sets, and the Hollywood West in the pages of Silver Screen Cowboy. Coming soon in paperback and eBook from publisher Speaking Volumes.

 

All about cowboys.

“Cowboy” is a word that implies much more than it means. To my way of thinking, one of the best definitions of the word is that applied by the late cowboy author Eugene Manlove Rhodes: “the hired man on horseback.” My dad used to say that the way to tell a real cowboy was by the cowsh*t on his boots. It all comes down to cows and horses.

Granted, those definitions may be too limiting, especially today. But, thanks to the days when Westerns dominated movie and TV screens, “cowboy” came to be applied to too many kinds of people, most of whom had no idea which end of a cow gets up first, and had never had manure on their boots. Outlaws, lawmen, gamblers, gunfighters, and all manner of others who appeared in Westerns (except those gathered under the likewise too-broad term, “Indians”) were referred to collectively as “cowboys.”

A while back I was approached by Shepherd.com, a web site devoted to readers, and asked to list five books I thought represented something important in the literature of the American West. I titled my contribution “The best novels about cowboys who are actually cowboys” and wrote a brief note about each of my five selections. Each novel on the list carries a storyline that revolves around cowboys doing actual cowboy work. While works of fiction, all the books feature an authentic look at cowboys, cowboy work, and cowboy life.  

Take a look at the list on Shepherd.com. See what you think. You may disagree with my selections or my premise or my reasoning. You may be inspired to read one or more of those books if you haven’t already. For more years than I care to remember, reading and writing about cowboys is as close as I have come to having cowsh*t on my boots. But I still haven’t forgotten which end of a cow gets up first.

NOTE: I borrowed the bronze sculpture pictured above from noted Western artist Jeff Wolf—he’s a cowboy born and raised, and knows whereof he sculpts.

The Return of Rawhide Robinson.

Rawhide Robinson is the star of three of my previous novels. Rawhide Robinson Rides the Range – True Adventures of Bravery and Daring in the Wild West won a Western Writers of America Spur Award. Rawhide Robinson Rides the Tabby Trail – The True Tale of a Wild West CATastrophe won a Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award and was a Spur Award finalist. Rawhide Robinson Rides a Dromedary – The True Tale of a Wild West Camel Caballero was a finalist for both honors.

Now, after laying low for a few years, tall-tale-teller Rawhide Robinson is back. Speaking Volumes, publisher of the paperback and eBook editions of the aforementioned books, has just released the new, never-before-published Rawhide Robinson Rides a Wormhole – The True Tale of Bravery and Daring in the Weird West in paperback and eBook.

As you may know, extraordinary things often happen to ordinary cowboy Rawhide Robinson. In his latest adventure(s), while riding herd on a ranch in the remote Nevada desert a lightning strike zaps him into the middle of the twentieth century and the middle of Area 51, a top-secret experimental airbase where strange things are said to happen.

In a chance encounter, Rawhide Robinson meets young teenager Eric, who helps the discombobulated cowboy escape the clutches of military police, the CIA, and local law enforcement, and gets him mixed up in a kidnapping by Las Vegas mobsters. All the while, Rawhide Robinson entertains with his signature tall tales as he wonders if he will ever get out of the modern world and back to the Old West.

Learn more about Rawhide Robinson and his adventures on his very own website, RawhideRobinson.com. The books are available at Speaking Volumes and from online booksellers listed below.

The sentiment author Ol’ Max Evans once inscribed in my copy of The Rounders certainly applies to Rawhide Robinson Rides a Wormhole: “Have fun here—I sure as hell did.”

eBook On Sale Now:
Amazon US
Apple Books
Barnes & Noble
Google Play
Kobo Books

Preview eBook Here:
Amazon US
Google Play

Print Book On Sale Now:
Amazon US
Barnes & Noble

My first rodeo.

I don’t remember my first rodeo. Or my second rodeo. While I have memories of many, many rodeos over many, many years those memories are somewhat muddled and there are no numbers assigned.

Most likely, my first rodeo was a hometown Pioneer Day affair during which little kids like me were screwed down onto the backs of Hereford or black bally calves, with two hands in a death grip on a loose rope, then turned out into the arena for a few (very few) frantic seconds of jolting and jarring and jerking before landing in the dirt with a better than even chance of getting a mouthful of the stuff.

The first rodeo I have record of was a Little Buckaroo Rodeo in Orem, Utah, on Friday, May 31, 1963. On the printed program, right after “Specialty Act—Trampoline” came Section III of Pony Bareback Riding, and there I am, in black and white, with my age listed as 10. Next to my name, in my dad’s handwriting, is my score: “0.” I learned nothing from the experience. For several more years I kept getting on bareback horses that didn’t want me on them—through high school, amateur, college, and pro rodeos.

 When circumstances require, I can honestly say (for what it’s worth), “This ain’t my first rodeo.”

I am now of an age that my last rodeo, like my first, is so long ago that any memory of it has leaked out of my porous brain. There may be a connection.

P.S. My latest novel, All My Sins Remembered, is now available in hardcover from Amazon and other online booksellers. Your local bookstore can order it, and it should be in libraries soon.

Old poem.

You can’t live without ageing. One day it dawns on you that you are no longer young. Then, someday, it occurs to you that you are old.

We all know it’s coming. Still, we are often surprised and sometimes shocked at the realization. Despite the passing years and the accompanying changes we can’t ignore, there are many, many other things inside us unchanged since our salad days. And that, I believe, is behind the bewilderment of finding yourself old.

The bewilderment of finding yourself old is the inspiration behind “Through a Glass Darkly,” a new poem built around a bunkhouse cowboy’s wonderment at what has become of him.

And what comes next for all of us. Live well.

Through a Glass Darkly

Chipped and cracked, fogged
by seasons and dimmed by years,
the face in the glass confounds;
furrows deepen, wrinkles ridge.

He turns away, hand wavering
unassured, touches tousled
sougan and sits, head in hands,
eyes shut but unsettled.

Stands again to stare into the glass
at creases and canyons and crags
and coulees cut by wind
and sun and snow and smoke.

He reads the lines that tell
of blisters and burning hair
and the bloody blades
of a hundred branding fires.

Wan forehead marked by hard line
over tangled brow bristles shading
whiskers whitened on wizened
chin and cheeks burnt brown.

How the hell has it come to this?
he will wonder, till one day he looks
in the mirror and there’s no one there
to look back.

A book reborn.

Years ago, an author friend asked me to write a novel for a new publisher he was trying to help get established. The result was Cold as the Clay. That publisher, unfortunately, never gained a foothold and has long since folded its tent and pulled its picket pin. So, Cold as the Clay has been out of print for years.

But the book is too good to die. Now it is available in a handsome new e-book and paperback edition (that’s the cover above), published by Speaking Volumes. The links will take you to the publisher’s site, but you will also find it wherever you buy books online.

The story follows a cowboy named Wilson Hayes, whose life more or less follows the pattern of King David’s story in the Bible—plenty of heroics, violence, treachery, greed, and romance. All, of course, in an Old West frontier setting.

I’m happy to see Cold as the Clay live again. It deserves a second chance.

 

 

My Favorite Book, Part 27.

 

When President William McKinley was assassinated, a high-toned politician said, “Now look! That damn cowboy is President of the United States.” The “damn cowboy” in question was Theodore Roosevelt. And he remains, to this day—despite a few Texans and a make-believe movie actor—the only real cowboy to rise to that office.

Roosevelt’s cowboy career is chronicled in The Cowboy President: The American West and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt by Michael F. Blake.

Blake outlines the circumstances that sent Roosevelt, a patrician New Yorker, to the frontier West where he established cattle ranches in North Dakota. More than an owner, Roosevelt worked alongside his hired hands and became adept at handling horses, working cattle, riding the range, and surviving in a hard land.

Based on detailed research, Blake relates Roosevelt’s cowboy career to his wider life, telling how the lessons he learned in the West colored his endeavors in government service, the military, politics, and family life. The result is a well-rounded picture of the cowboy president that’s interesting, intriguing, and informative.

You’ll close the book with new understanding of and appreciation for “That damn cowboy.”

Camel bytes.

 

The Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award and Western Writers of America Spur Award finalist novel, Rawhide Robinson Rides a Dromedary: The True Tale of a Wild West Camel Caballero, is now available from Speaking Volumes in digital bits and bytes. Which means you can download and read it on your Kindle, iPad, smart phone, or other electronic gadget. For us old-fashioned or unplugged types, it is also now available in paperback.

Here’s where to get your copy of the eBook:
Amazon US
Apple Books
Barnes & Noble
Google Play
Kobo Books
Here’s where to get your copy of the paperback print book:
Amazon US 

You can read more about Rawhide Robinson, the ordinary cowboy who lives an extraordinary life—much of it a product of his imagination—on his very own web site. Enjoy.

Rawhide Robinson gets a re-ride.

    

    Some of you will be familiar with Rawhide Robinson. He’s the ordinary cowboy who spins stories about his extraordinary experiences. He’s the star of three award-winning novels, Rawhide Robinson Rides the Range, Rawhide Robinson Rides the Tabby Trail, and Rawhide Robinson Rides a Dromedary. His outlandish tales are enjoyable for readers from junior high age to geriatrics. He even has his own website where you can get to know him.
    The news of the day is that Rawhide Robinson is once again riding into the literary world, in new paperback and eBook editions from the publishing house Speaking Volumes.
    Rawhide Robinson Rides the Range: True Adventures of Bravery and Daring in the Wild West is now available in paperback and eBook. That’s the handsome new cover above. The other two Rawhide Robinson novels previously published in hardcover will be along soon in paperback and eBook. And, somewhere down the trail, another Rawhide Robinson adventure will be available for the first time—Rawhide Robinson Rides a Wormhole: A True Tale of Bravery and Daring in the Weird West.
    For gifts, for yourself, or just for fun, when Rawhide Robinson rides into your life you’ll have a lot to laugh about. Stand by for crass commercialism. Here’s where the new edition of Rawhide Robinson Rides the Range is now on sale:

Paperback:
Amazon US
Barnes & Noble

eBook:
Amazon US
Apple Books
Barnes & Noble
Google Play
Kobo Books

The Bird has flown.

   

Back in our college days when all the rodeo bums who lived at or hung around the Rounder House were known by nicknames more than names, Marlowe Carroll was Bird, or the Bird Man, a moniker earned by long, skinny legs.
    More than anyone else I can think of, Bird was influential in my rodeo years. When I arrived at USU he ran the Rodeo Club and was the star of the Intercollegiate Rodeo Team, winning a bunch in both bareback and bull riding. He made sure I was involved in the club, and encouraged and supported and assisted my efforts as I earned a place on the team, eight seconds at a time. We spent a lot of time together, much of it involved in activities best unmentioned—but those days resulted in a lifetime’s worth of memories.
    A series of brain aneurisms and strokes while still a young man ended Marlowe’s rodeo career and landed him in a wheelchair, his agile mind betrayed by a mostly unresponsive body. Still, he lived for decades and never lost his sense of humor or happy outlook on life.
    Marlowe—Bird—left this life in late December, and made the whistle with the same grit and try that you see on his face in the photo of him aboard the infamous bucking bull Fuzzy 4.
    (The other fuzzy photo shows the USU Rodeo Club in 1971. That’s Marlowe in the upper right; yours truly is there on the left.)

 

WOMB TO TOMB
for Marlowe

Two hearts. One beats steady
and strong. The other races by.
Confinement presses knee
against rib, back to thigh.

Sounds, muffled and distant,
penetrate. Irresistible, the urge.
Pull. Squeeze. Slide. Every muscle
tense, you nod and emerge;

delivered into chaotic glare
assaulted by motion and sound.
Bull bellows. Brain blows.
Body, unbound, seeks ground.

Face down in arena dirt
consciousness goes astray
as flooding blood erodes neurons
and synapses wash away.

Tucked, then, into the coffin of
a body cold and unresponsive;
rolling through years gathering
dust as memories weave

tapestries of Rounders and rodeo,
broncs and bulls—of life before
a hemorrhagic stroke of bad luck
drew you out to ride no more.

The whistle has sounded.

Bob Schild’s ride is over. He left us January 20. And, no matter what criteria you use for judging, Bob made the whistle on a winning ride.

The years found Bob in a variety of arenas. He was a rodeo cowboy of the first order, successful in all the rough stock events with numerous championships to his credit. He was a businessman, establishing and operating B-Bar-B Leather for decades, building and selling saddles, rodeo gear, and providing all manner of horse equipment; a business passed down to his sons. He was a poet, long before cowboy poetry became the thing to do.

When I first thought to pen poetry, I looked to Bob’s work for inspiration and an education. Beyond mere rhyming stories, Bob’s verse showed literary technique, deep thinking, and attention to craft. I wanted to meet him.

I tracked Bob down at the National Circuit Finals Rodeo one year, where I found him sweeping up under the grandstands. That’s the way Bob was—always willing to lend a hand and do any job that needed doing. He was happy to make my acquaintance and willing to talk poetry and rodeo anytime, any place.

We became friends, and for years engaged in a one-sided admiration society. I had little to contribute to the relationship. Bob gave it his all. I wish time and distance hadn’t gotten in the way of my spending more time with him.

A few magazine articles focusing on Bob found their way into print, and it was difficult for me as a writer to maintain any semblance of objectivity when writing about him. 

I will never forget Bob Schild. Even though the whistle has sounded, his winning score is permanently inked in the record books.

See page 48.

The Winter 2019/2020 issue of range magazine is hitting the streets. On the cover, among other things, it says “One Heart” and “Gauchos & Buckaroos.” Both refer to a story I wrote that opens on page 48 of the magazine.

Featured in the article are two artists: Carlos Montefusco and Jeff Wolf. Carlos is from Argentina, where he has enjoyed a long reputation as a painter of the gaucho, the cowboy of his country. Jeff is a sculptor famed for his works of art depicting the buckaroo culture among American cowboys.

The two have become friends, brothers even, as they have explored rural life in their respective countries, and shared knowledge and history and meaning.

Find a copy of range and read all about it. It is an inspiring story of two artists who share one heart.

My Favorite Book, Part 13.

The history of my homeland, the American West, has been of interest to me for as long as I can remember. From Indians to Spanish and Mexican colonizers to explorers to mountain men to pioneer settlers to mining boom towns, I like learning about it all.

But, mostly, I am intrigued by cowboys and the cattle trails and ranges and ranches where they worked. So it will be of no surprise to anyone with similar interests to know that you’ll find a well-thumbed copy of Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries by David Dary on the bookshelf beside my desk.

The book is thoroughly researched, extensive in its reach, and well written. I’ve read it through on more than one occasion. And I refer to it often when verifying facts for something I’m writing, or merely to satisfy my curiosity about some person or place or event. In fact, I just picked it up, and there are no fewer than thirteen bookmarks sticking out of it.

While I cannot claim to know David Dary well, it was a pleasure, on two occasions, to share a table with him at Western Writers of America banquets. (His company was much more enjoyable than the food.)

If you haven’t read Cowboy Culture, you should. You’ll soon see why it won the Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, the Spur Award from Western Writers of America, and the Westerners International Award.

And you’ll come away knowing about real cowboys, as opposed to the fast-riding, gun-toting “cowboys” of movie, TV, and Western novel fame who seldom, if ever, cross paths with a cow. 

Post Script: I just learned from one of our readers that David Dary passed away just one week ago. That's the loss of a fine historian, writer, and man. 

Gads, gut hooks, and grapplin’ irons.

Cowboys call them by all kinds of names—gads, gut hooks, and grapplin’ irons among them. Then there’s can openers, rib wrenches, and buzzsaws. And more.

But the official name—if there is such a thing in Western lingo—is spurs.

Spurs are a common cowboy tool, in everyday use wherever horses are saddled. But Western Writers of America borrowed the name and attached it to something uncommon and not everyday. As the organization puts it, “Western Writers of America annually honors writers for distinguished writing about the American West with the Spur Awards.”

Winners of the 2018 Spur Awards were announced recently, and I am honored to know several recipients and their work. And I am especially honored to once again be counted among them.

“Lost and Found” is a short story published last year in Saddlebag Dispatches that tells of a modern-day cowboy who loses a piece of his thumb in his dallies while gathering strays on a remote range, and finds the body of a dead boy dumped in a dry wash.

The judges somehow found it worthy and named it the Spur Award winner for Best Western Short Fiction.

Also published in Saddlebag Dispatches, my poem “The Knowing” was named a Finalist for the Spur Award for Best Western Poem. My friend and fine poet Marleen Bussma won the Spur for her poem, “She Saddles Her Own Horse.”

All thanks to the late Dusty Richards and to Casey Cowan who elected to publish the story and the poem in their magazine. And appreciation to the Spur Award judges who bestowed these honors.

I am more than happy to pound a couple more nails in the wall.

Rawhide Robinson trades cows for camels.

(Note to readers: We will return to our usual literary nonsense following this brief commercial message.)

Don’t worry. Giving up horses and cows is only a temporary aberration for Rawhide Robinson. Just as our ordinary cowboy hero traded cattle for cats in Rawhide Robinson Rides the Tabby Trail, in his latest adventures(s), we find him delivering dromedaries.

Rawhide Robinson Rides a Dromedary: The True Tale of a Wild West Camel Caballero is loosely—very loosely—based on the US Army’s experimental use of camels as pack animals in the southwestern deserts. And if you think herding longhorn cattle and Chicago alley cats is fodder for fantastical escapades, wait till you read about our cowboy’s exploits on the high seas and at Levantine ports of call.

As usual, Rawhide Robinson spins tall tales as easily as a loop, and sailors find his stories every bit as entertaining as cowboys do.

Western Writers Hall of Fame member Loren D. Estleman says the book is “rich in color, texture, and relentless forward movement.” Booklist says, “Rawhide’s over-the-top storytelling is complemented by Miller’s slapstick humor and verbal gymnastics.”

Rawhide Robinson Rides a Dromedary is hot off the press. Watch the short video for a taste of what’s inside the covers, and visit RawhideRobinson.com to read an excerpt. And, of course, buy the book.

End of crass commercialism. Tune in next time for something altogether different.

Re-Ride Stories.

When rodeo cowboys hang out, conversations often turn to “re-ride stories.” Sometimes true, often embellished, occasionally fabricated, and usually humorous, re-ride stories recount rodeo adventures. Actual re-rides, wrecks, bad luck, great performances, road adventures…the subjects are many and varied. 

But one thing’s for sure—rodeo folks like a good story, even if they themselves come off looking foolish in the telling. And rodeo folks are not immune to the “The older I get the better I was” phenomenon among humans, so the stories, over time, sometimes take on lives of their own.

As the years pass, many rodeo folks drift away from the arenas of their youth as lives travel different paths. But the memories linger. And so does the longing to, and enjoyment of, recounting that life and telling those stories, especially to an appreciative and understanding audience.

That’s why I’m looking forward to the Re-Ride Reunion. On November 3, from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m., all rodeo folks from ’60s, ’70s, and ‘80s are invited to gather at the Zermatt Resort Hotel in Midway, Utah. We’ll re-connect with long-lost friends, renew old acquaintances, and, mostly, revisit days gone by.

Afterward, most will probably make the short drive down the road to Heber City for the Friday night performance of the PRCA Wilderness Circuit Finals to witness the birth of another go-round of re-ride stories.

I know there are some in the Intermountain West who read this stuff who would love to hear some re-ride stories, and have some of their own to tell. Learn more on Facebook.  

See you there.