Sam & Flavius Clemens

One of Mark Twain's favorite books was Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars. According to Twain's biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, he carried it around and read it until his very last day.

Near the end of the book, Suetonius tells how the Emperor Domitian put to death many people including his own cousin Flavius Clemens, a man "below contempt for his want of energy." (Latin "contemptissimae inertiae...") In the margin of his well-thumbed copy of the book, next to the name "Clemens" and the words "want of energy", Mark Twain wrote "I guess this is where our line starts."

This is amusing because:

A. Mark Twain's real name was Sam Clemens
B. Mark Twain was famous for his want of energy.

Lazy Jim & Huck from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Buried Alive?

or "The Case of the Bleeding Corpse"

In the winter of 1861, failed prospector Alf Doten was living in Milpitas, California, trying to be a farmer. The following year he would leave the Bay Area and head for Nevada to give prospecting one last try. He would fail again at prospecting but would end up as a newspaper reporter in Virginia City. Now, over a hundred years after his death, he is moderately well-known as a chronicler of Nevada History. For Alf Doten was a methodical diary-keeper, and the treasure he left was over 75 leather-bound diaries documenting fascinating aspects of daily day life in the old West. They have been edited and published in three big volumes (above) which I first discovered at the B Street B&B in Virginia City. The Journals of Alfred Doten (1849 - 1903)

I have been going through Alf's journals to get period details for my new Western Mysteries. Two days ago, I had reached November 1861 when I came across a couple of entries that chilled my blood.

Nov 5 - Campbell came this AM & got my pick to dig a grave - Miss Abby Nash died this morning around 9 oclock, of typhoid fever... She was 17 yrs old -

Nov 6 - Cloudy - Morning I rode Ben to Peacock's - learned that Miss Nash is to be buried at 10 AM - rode home - hitched Ben & Poncho to wagon - got ready - David and I rode to Peacocks - Took Mrs Peacock & Annie and a gentleman friend of theirs on board - drove to Nash's - friends & neighbors had assembled - Mr Barquay from Berreyessa officiated as clergyman - he read from the Bible, prayed, exhorted & we sang a hymn to the tune of Wyndham - four of us brought out the coffin & put it in Jim Smith's spring wagon - She looked very natural - procession moved to grave which was dug over next the fence on the line between Nash's and Valpy's farms - a very lonely out of the way place - opened the coffin that all who wished might take last look at corpse - her head was not properly pillowed so that in crossing the rough field I heard it knocking against side of coffin, and a large quantity of blood came from the right nostril - I helped lower her into the grave - funeral over - drove round & left our Peacock passengers & drove home - This funeral was got up on the very cheapest possible scale, and cost old Nash very few dimes - quite a saving -

What sent a shiver through me was this: I had always understood that corpses didn't bleed. As I re-read the entries, a few phrases seemed to jump out of the account: "she looked very natural" and "a large quantity of blood came from the right nostril" ... Was the poor girl buried alive in that "lonely out of the way place" where no one could hear her knocking to be let out? A truly horrible prospect.

I immediately sent a tweet to one of my favorite authors: Lee Goldberg, author of Diagnosis Murder and the Monk books. Lee instantly put me on the track of Dr D.P. Lyle, author of Forensics for Dummies. I was unaware that Dr Lyle has a fantastic blog about forensics for crime writers and other such eccentrics. I emailed him and wondered whether I would ever get a reply.

Yesterday evening, I had to go into central London to an event at the British Museum. As I was passing Jarndyce, the well-known Antiquarian Booksellers, a book in the window caught my eye: Premature Burial! I was early for my event so went into the bookshop and asked if I could look at the book. "You can look at it," said the nice shopkeeper, "but you can't buy it. It belongs to the owner." I perched on the edge of a walnut armchair and opened the book. Almost immediately my eyes fell upon this sentence: ‎"Live burials are far more frequent than most people think." Ew!

Sure enough, the book was full of accounts of people buried alive in the 19th century. Many people were so afraid of premature burial that they put clauses in their wills demanding that they be interred with coffins fit out with contraptions like that on the left. You could pull a little handle and a flag would pop up above ground, showing that you had been buried alive.

I was relieved to return home after my event and find that Dr Lyle, (the Forensics for Dummies doctor), had got back to me with a thorough and reassuring reply: "she was not buried alive and she did not bleed but rather this was either a broken down clot from her sinuses or purge fluid."

According to Dr Lyle, Abby Nash "could have had trauma to her face and blood could have collected in the sinuses. Blood initially clots and then begins to break down and separate into a contracted clot and serum. The serum or liquid part of the blood is usually tinged reddish brown in this circumstance and when they alter her position some of this could have leaked from her nose. This would simply be separated blood following the dictates of gravity. Also there is the situation of purge fluids. These appear as part of the decay of the body. This is blackish looking liquid that comes from the nose and often the mouth and has to do with decay of the tissues within the head. These usually appear a couple of days after death since it takes that long for the decay process to get that far. There are circumstances under which this process is sped up. Things like a very warm environment. Another is when someone has an infection. Here bacteria are already scattered throughout the body and therefore the decay process does not depend upon the intestinal tract breaking down first and releasing the bacteria within the bowel into the system. So she would already have bacteria in her bloodstream from her typhoid fever and therefore would decay much more rapidly."

I could rest easy. Poor young Abby Nash died tragically young. But at least she was not buried alive.


If you are of a ghoulish disposition and would like to read Premature Burial, you can do so online.
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P.S. In the Arthur Conan Doyle 1901 short story 'The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax', a character is narrowly saved from being buried alive by the detective Sherlock Holmes.

Territorial Enterprise

Critters, Characters & Curiosities from The Western Mysteries

The Territorial Enterprise Newspaper

The Territorial Enterprise was a famous newspaper in the Nevada town of Virginia City.

It was established in 1858 in the town of Mormon Station (AKA Genoa) in the Carson Valley, but moved up to Virginia City in 1860 shortly after silver was discovered on the Comstock Lode. Virginia City suffered from frequent fires and for this and various other reasons the Enterprise moved offices a few times in its first two decades there.

The first office of the Territorial Enterprise was a rickety wooden building up on A Street at the top of the town. We know this from the 1862 Directory of Nevada Territory. We even have a rough idea of what it looked like, thanks to a lithographic drawing by a talented young artist named Grafton T. Brown in 1861. (above) A full page ad in the 1862 Directory tells us that the magazine was published every morning except Sundays, which meant the reporters and printers had Saturday off.

Dennis McCarthy and Joe Goodman were the owners and editors of the paper. Under their guidance the Territorial Enterprise became one of the best-known newspapers in the West. It carried national and local news, mining statistics, advertisements, etc. Frequently - when local news was thin - the reporters filled empty column space with witty stories and tall tales like the ones about the "Demon Frog" or the "Travelling Stones". Some of these stories were pure fiction but because they were printed in a newspaper many people believed them. Later, when readers discovered they had been "taken in" many of them became angry and accused the reporters of being "hoaxers".

In late September of 1862 a dusty 27-year-old failed prospector arrived at the Enterprise to take up a position as a local reporter. His name was Samuel Clemens and he had been promised $25 a week. In those days reporters often used funny or witty pen-names instead of their real names. At first, Clemens signed his articles "Josh". But early in 1863 he tried out the byline "Mark Twain" and it stuck. That is the name by which people know him today. (left: Mark Twain in 1862, before he grew his famous moustache)

Some less-famous writers who worked on the Territorial Enterprise were William Wright (whose pen-name was "Dan De Quille") and Alfred Doten. From the 1862 Directory, we even know the names of some of the printers who worked on the paper, like D.P. Iams and James Richards. Another famous employee of the Territorial Enterprise newspaper was the Chinese cook, Old Joe. Dan De Quille writes that Old Joe did the cooking, and three times each day the whole crowd of "newspaper men" were called out to the long table in the shed to get their "square meal."

Shortly after Mark Twain's arrival in Virginia City, the Enterprise moved offices to a building on North C Street. (Any street above Union in Virginia city is North.) By the summer of 1863, the Enterprise had moved yet again, to a big brick building called the "Enterprise Building" on South C Street between Sutton and Union. This was probably to accomodate a new steam-powered printing press.

By now, the boom times had arrived and the Enterprise's day off had moved, too. Now everybody worked hard on Saturday to get out a special Sunday edition devoted to mining news and other related matters. Everyone was happy and busy. Then, in the spring of 1864, Mark Twain wrote a tall tale that got him into "hot water". He had to "skedaddle" out of Virginia City. Twain went to San Francisco to work for another newspaper, and sometimes he sent articles back to the Territorial Enterprise. But within a few years, he had become a famous writer and a popular lecturer. (above: detail of the newspaper on 8 July 1874, the year before the great fire, shows offices on 24 South C Street)

Twain came back to Virginia City a couple of times over the next few years, but he was long gone by 1875, when a terrible fire burnt down his former workplace. The Territorial Enterprise you see today was built in 1876, several years after Twain's last visit, so he never set foot in this building. However, down in the basement you will find the Mark Twain Museum, full of fascinating items such as printing presses, a desk and even a toilet like the one Mark Twain might have used.

For more info about the Territorial Enterprise, go to the Official Site
And read Myth #101 at the Nevada Observer.

Dysfunctional Detectives

According to the Pulitzer-prize winning screenwriter David Mamet, "Asperger's syndrome helped make the movies." In his collection of essays, Bambi vs Godzilla, Mamet talks about the type of autism called Asperger's.

According to Mamet, the symptoms of Aspergers include "early precocity, a great ability to maintain masses of information, a lack of ability to mix with groups in age-appropriate ways, ignorance of or indifference to social norms, high intelligence and difficulty with transitions, married to a preternatural ability to concentrate on the minutiae of the task at hand."

Someone once described Asperger's as "mild autism with a startling streak of genius." In other words, many of those with Aspergers are brilliant but socially dysfunctional. A slightly sexier version of Rain Man.

Mamet goes on to say: "This sounds to me like a job description for a movie director." He also points out that Asperger’s syndrome “has its highest prevalence among Ashkenazi Jews and their descendants”, who make up the bulk of Hollywood movers-and-shakers.

Is Mamet joshing us when he claims that Hollywood is run by men with Asperger's? Maybe.

Or Maybe not.

Sometimes Asperger's is so subtle that it's not diagnosed until middle age. A well known case is that of Tim Page, a Pulitzer prize winning music critic who only found out that he had mild version of the syndrome when he was 45. He has written about it in his book Parallel Play: Life as an Outsider and was recently interviewed on NPR. "I didn't suffer from classic autism but something was clearly wrong..." says Page in one interview. "I couldn't tell you the color of my mother's eyes or what a person was wearing last night at dinner, but I'll remember exactly what we talked about."

If Hollywood is dominated by sexy Rain Men, it might explain why some of our most popular fictional characters have certain characteristics which might be called 'autistic'.

Think of Star Trek's Mr Spock (left) and Data. Both characters are popular among high-functioning autistic people. One of the most famous and articulate autistic authors, Temple Grandin, has confessed that she is a fan of Lt Commander Data, the android who tries to understand human behavior.

Then there's the brilliant but anti-social Dexter. His dysfunctionality is due to a traumatic childhood, like Lisbet Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I don't think Salander has Aspergers, but she does meet two of the criteria of someone suffering from that disorder: “high intelligence” and “ignorance of or indifference to social norms".

Sheldon Cooper of Big Bang Theory is the perfect example of a character with "high intellience" but "indifference to social norms". Indifference being the operative word in Sheldon's case.

Best of all are the many detectives who seem to have Asperger's-like qualities. The most famous of these, of course, goes back way before Hollywood.

Sherlock Holmes (right) is a creation of the late 19th century, but is just as popular today. He has several character traits of a person with Asperger's, though Steven Moffatt's clever new Sherlock sometimes lapses into ADHD behavior, dashing about with an almost Dr-Who-ish energy.

Adrian Monk isn't exactly autistic, but as a sufferer of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) he is a brilliant observer of detail and symmetry but a flop when it comes to interpersonal relationships. There is great comic and tragic potential in a character like this. Do all the best detectives have psychological or emotional weaknesses?

Not necessarily. Columbo is modelled on G.K.Cheserton's apparently ineffectual Father Brown. Whereas Holmes uses his brilliant deductive faculties, Father Brown uses intuition. But like Columbo, his fumbling, bumbling personality lulls criminals into a false sense of security. They may seem to be socially dysfunctional, but they're not.

A detective who is wildly socially dysfunctional and delightfully wounded is the wonderful Dr Gregory House (top of this blog). Like Sherlock Holmes, he is a social misfit with only one true friend. It's been pointed out before that the creators were partly inspired by Conan-Doyle's great detective.

Another modern-day Holmes wannabe is Christopher Boone, the teenage narrator of Mark Haddon's best-selling book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Christopher is a genius at remembering facts and doing mathematical calculations, but he is socially inept and takes every statement literally. Christopher's favorite fictional character is Sherlock Holmes, (in fact, the "curious incident of the dog in the night-time" is a quote from a Sherlock Holmes mystery). Christopher is obsessed with the Victorian detective and employs Holmesian methodology when a neighborhood dog is murdered.

Of all the fictional characters mentioned so far, Christopher Boone is certainly the highest on the scale. Like most people with Asperger's, he can't decode facial expressions and needs guidelines to help him figure out what people are feeling. Christopher has a flat, neutral, toneless voice which comes across as wonderfully deadpan. "He doesn't get sentimental," said Haddon in one interview. "He doesn't explain things too much... It's the voice of person who doesn't feel there is a reader out there. So when you're writing in this voice, you never try and persuade the reader to feel this or that about something."

I've been thinking about detectives with Asperger's because the hero of my new series, The Western Mysteries, is P.K. Pinkerton, Private Eye (below) a 12-year-old detective who is half Sioux and half White, and definitely somewhere on the Asperger's spectrum. Of course, in the 1860's the syndrome had not yet been diagnosed and had no name. P.K.'s 'Thorn' is not being able to determine what people are feeling.
My Gift is that I am real smart about certain things. I can read & write and do any sum in my head. I can speak American & Lakota and also some Chinese & Spanish. I can shoot a gun & I can ride a pony with or without a saddle. I can track & shoot & skin any game and then cook it over a self-sparked fire. I know how to cure a headache with a handful of weeds. I can hear a baby quail in the sage-brush or a mouse in the pantry. I can tell what a horse has been eating just by the smell of his manure. I can see every leaf on a cottonwood tree. But here is my Problem: I cannot tell if a person’s smile is genuine or false. I can only spot three emotions: happiness, fear & anger. And sometimes I even mix those up.

When we're feeling lonely or obsessive or have made a particularly big social gaffe, many of us probably wonder if it's because we are somewhere on the Asperger's scale. I think that's why these dysfunctional characters are so popular, they are like us, only more extreme. I myself often find people completely unreadable. What I wouldn't give to be able to glance at a person and - like Sherlock Holmes - know instantly who they are and what they are feeling! That's one reason I created P.K. Pinkerton.

[The Case of the Deadly Desperados features stagecoach action in the very first chapters. This Western Mystery for kids aged 9 - 90 is available in hardback, Kindle and audio download. It will be published by Putnam's in the USA in February 2012.]

Advice from "Old Timers"

How do you research the Western genre when you live in London?

Last month my husband and I attended the Santa Clarita Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival. One of the best things about it was meeting lots of other Western movie fans. All of them were friendly and all of them gave us advice about things to do and see and places to visit.

We met Jerry and Sharon over the plaque of Graham Green on Newhall's Western Walk of fame. (Graham Greene played Kicking Bird in Dances with Wolves). They gave us some recommendations. They told us to go to Durango, Colorado and ride in the open car of the Silverton Railroad. (above) "The nearby Indian ruins are stunning", said Jerry. "Like Mesa Verde." They also said we should visit Williams, Arizona. There is a train tour of two days and two nights with all meals included. "And watch out for the natural spike in Sedona, Arizona," said Jerry. "You have never seen red rocks like them."

Sharon's favorite Western film is Murphy's Romance, a rom-com with Sally Field and James Garner. Jerry likes The Shootist, John Wayne's last film. It was filmed partly on the Warner Brothers Western lot (no longer there) and partly in Carson City, Nevada, near the governor's mansion.

Waiting for the shuttle to take us to Melody Ranch Movie Studio's for an open-air showing of High Noon, I got talking to Sampitch Kid, named after a river that runs through Utah. We talked about firing cap and ball revolvers and he told me I should check out the Single Action Shooting Society: http://www.sassnet.com "The closest you'll get to the Old West short of a Time Machine." Dang, that looks like fun! You even get to choose your persona and a period name. Hmmm. Maybe I could be my great grandmother Corinne Prince: schoolmarm, quilter and buffalo-hunter.

Standing in line for grub at the movie night, I got talking to Western journalist Mark Bedor. I told him about my new Western detective series set in Virginia City, Nevada in the 1860's. "So why are you here at the Melody Ranch?" he asked me. "To get a sense of the smell and sound and feel of a western town," I said. "The light, for example. When you walk into a saloon your eyes need to adjust because it's so dim in there." When I mentioned the light, Mark got excited. "Yes," he said. "I recently did Cavalry School and we were riding on the plains of Montana. I've never seen light like that big sky." "Cavalry School?" I said. Mark nodded happily. "I spent a week riding with Custer for Cavalry School. You can't understand it until you've done it." He gave me the link for an article he wrote and told me the website: www.uscavalryschool.com


"But I don't know how to ride a horse," I said.

"You want to ride?" said Mark. "Go to White Stallion Ranch in Tucson, Arizona. They will match you with the right horse and at the end of a week you'll be cantering and galloping." (Horses of the White Stallion)

"I know your books are set in Virginia City, Nevada," he added. "But you should also visit the Virginia City in Montana. And Red Rock, Utah." Mark also recommended some reading: John Gray on Custer, a book called Apauk, Caller of Buffalo by John Willard Schultz and Trails Ploughed Under by Charlie Russell. Mark even took a photo of me in my new buckskins with Richard. (photo by Mark Bedor)

Later in the week I went to an elementary school to talk about my other history mystery series, The Roman Mysteries. The class teacher's father picked me up in Santa Clarita and while we were driving to Chino he told me about Oatman, Arizona, a town named after a young woman kidnapped by Indians. "You can see the real thing there," said Dave King. "Once I went into a saloon to use the facilities and there were old timers there propping up the bar like in those Westerns. You can also see donkeys roaming the streets." Apparently there is an egg-frying contest on July 4th every year. (www.oatmangoldroad.org)

Thanks, "Old Timers", we'll definitely ride the railroad, sign up for a week at White Stallion and visit Oatman!

Top 3 Westerns?

Which three Western movies do you think might be the most popular among real cowboys and cowboy re-enactors? Go on. Have a guess. Then read on.

I've just spent three days at the Melody Ranch Movie Studio with my husband Richard, researching my new series of kids' history mystery books, The Western Mysteries. This is the 17th year they've held the Santa Clarita Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival and by all accounts it was bigger and better than ever. I chatted to lots of performers, re-enactors and fans and asked most of them what their favorite Western movie was.

I've already mentioned cowboy poets Yvonne Hollenbeck and Pat Richardson in my blog about Cowboy Poetry. Yvonne's favorite Western is Lonesome Dove and Pat's is High Noon. "Gary Cooper was a real cowboy," said Pat. "And they filmed a lot of that film right here on Melody Ranch."

On the last day of the festival, Sunday, Richard and I boarded the trolley at the La Quinta Inn to find a beautiful cowgirl: Miss Catherine Lane. She plays Belle Montana, heroine from dime novels of the 1880's. Her fave Western is The Good, the Bad & the Ugly. YES! That's mine, too.

On the trolley was also a passel of desperados from Tombstone. They are Law Dogs 'N Ladies, a tribute to the movie Tombstone. You'd think they all place Tombstone top but no. Susan plays Calamity Jane. Her fave Western is Quigley Down Under. Tim Fowler is Ike Clanton and his fave Western is Tombstone. Their son Kirk likes Lonesome Dove.

Other fans on the trolley voted: One for Lonesome Dove and one for High Noon.

When we got to Main Street I wandered over to a blacksmith who was personalizing horseshoes. I figured I'd better get one inscribed with the name of the hero from my new series, but blacksmith Wishbone Smith said "P.K. Pinkerton" was too long. While he was hammering out "P.K." on a pony-sized horse shoe, I asked him what his fave Western was. "Lonesome Dove," he replied without hesitation, and proceded to quote Robert Duvall's character Gus. His son's fave Western was Tombstone. I was beginning to detect a pattern here.

David Rainwater the fiddler couldn't choose between Tombstone or High Noon. Lasso expert Dave Thornbury's top flick is Tom Horn and black-clad, bullwhip wielding Doc Durden from Virginia City's is... you guessed it: Tombstone.

There was some great music at the festival: a Civil War Brass Band, Indian flutes, some great rock/blues and of course tons of Western music. Richard and I loved it all. I met Rich Hillworth waiting to hear Celtic Cowboys outside the California Stage on Main Street. He lives near Lancaster and used to drive mule trains across the desert. His fave Western is Lonesome Dove. David Matuszak was selling the "Bible of Western films", A Cowboy's Trail Guide to Westerns, but he loses points by saying Richard's fave Western, Little Big Man it wasn't a Western! David's fave Western is Red River. A fabulously dressed couple named Todd and Holly loved The Big Country and Tombstone, respectively.

Everybody was telling us to get the peach cobbler and bottomless coffee made by the Chuckwagon guys so we got a bowl to share and bought the tin mugs you can refill all day. The cobbler was yummy but the coffee had grounds at the bottom. Now I know why those cowboys in the Westerns always toss the last bit into the sagebrush. We sat at a table with Carol and Dave, who told us about Cowboy Church! It was held that morning at 8.00 and they had some good ol' gospel cowboy worship. Too bad we missed it. They also meet the first Friday of every month at their pastor's ranch in Agua Dulce near the amazing Vasquez Rocks. Carol's fave Western is Tombstone and his is (the newer) 3.10 to Yuma.

By now I was pretty sure of the winner. On our way down Main Street the last time I did a double take. Was that Robert Duvall? Nope. It was Gus Curry. His fave Western? Lonesome Dove of course. He posed for me with the tastefully attired Mary Culver, who loves High Noon. Despite her vote, I think Lonesome Dove was definitely the top Western, followed very closely by Tombstone. High Noon came in a respectable third, according to my very unofficial and random poll.

So here is the answer to the question I posed:

Top Western?
1. Lonesome Dove
2. Tombstone
3. High Noon

The Santa Clarita Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival was fabulous and we will be coming back next year, hopefully with lots of copies of the first book in my new series, The Case of the Counterfeit Injuns!

P.S. I forgot to put up a picture of a delicious couple of other Tombstone re-enactors, bad boy Nathan and hurdy girl Colleen. Nathan wears dark blue glasses with a tiny mirror in one corner so he can see who's sneaking up behind him! (I didn't mention to Nathan that buffalo soldier Victor Williams told me blue sunglasses were worn by those suffering from V.D.) No prizes for guessing Nathan and Colleen's fave Western... But Lonesome Dove still moseys in at the top place.

Cowboy Poetry

What is Cowboy Poetry?

Yvonne Hollenbeck

I'm in the lobby of La Quinta Inn in Newhall, California, waiting for a shuttle to take me to Melody Ranch open weekend - research for my new Western Mysteries - and I am suddenly surrounded by cowboy poets. Fair enough: the official name of the Melody Ranch and Movie Studio Open Weekend is the Santa Clarita Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival.

So I ask a lady on my right. "What is Cowboy Poetry?"

She is Yvonne Hollenbeck, entertainer, author and 'Cowgirl Poet of the Year'. (http://www.cowboypoetry.com)

"Well," she says, "cowboy poetry talks about cowdogs, horses, the western way of life, in poetry."

'So it's like Country Western music without the without the music?" I ask.

"And without the country," says Andy Nelson, who is sitting behind her. He is a cowboy poet who has the 'Clear Out West' radio show and has written a book called Riding With Jim.

"We like to think our poetry can stand on its own", says Yvonne. "Some times the best song is a bad poem set to music. I'm quoting Sting," she adds.

On my left is Pat Richardson. He writes poetry, does his own illustrations and is a popular performer on the cowboy poetry circuit, along with Yvonne and Andy. He gives me a signed copy of his book Unhobbled.

I flip through the book and my eye falls on a poem called 'Pony Eggs'. Apparently when Pat was a little boy, longing for his own horse, his dad told him coconuts were pony eggs. "You'll notice they got hair and fur on them, and when they hatch out there'll be a pony in each one!" The poem tells how Pat got his 'revenge' many years later.

Another poem called Five Card Draw has this verse:

One night Ben had a full house,
Bet his saddle, spurs an' rope;
Zeke giggled at his foolishness
and raised three bars of soap.

That poem goes on for stanzas until a humorous and bloody ending.

According to Wikipedia, Cowboy Poetry was told around the campfire, with humor, rhyme and tall tales. I think of Mark Twain, and the tall tales that got him into such trouble in Virginia City.

What is surprising to me as I attend the Cowboy Festival is how popular Cowboy Poetry still is. Probably because in America ranching is still a major industry.

Later that day Richard and I are sitting in a sold out tent of maybe 700 people. Every third head in this place wears a cowboy hat. And most are real cowboy hats. We are all watching a white-mustached guy called Dave Stamey who is obviously a huge star on the cowboy poetry circuit. And deservedly. He is like a singing Sam Elliott: a brilliant musician whom everybody loves. Just outside the seating area, I see two young women gazing at him adoringly and mouthing the words of his songs, including "I'm not old, I just been used rough..." Wow. Imagine having groupies when you're in your 50's and not even Mick Jagger!

I'm sitting next to a woman from New Mexico. She tells me her husband wanted to come but it was his busy season and he had to visit some ranches.

"What does he do?" I ask.

Above the sound of the music it sounds like she says: "He shoots horses."

"WHAT?"

"He's a farrier," she says. "He shoes horses."

"Ah," I say. But already I am thinking: There's got to be a cowboy poem in that.

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