Days of the "Cowboys"...

Memoirs of a Geezer

  

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:        Days of the "Cowboys"...

A random thought, a cliche...  He thought of stuffing a plug of tobacco into the empty pouch of his left facial cheek, just to appear more natural as an authentic chaps-wearing, gun-packin' cowhand!  But, he didn't like chewin' nor did he fancy six guns, or any other bullet-firing contrivance, for that matter.  Didn't have a plug of tobacco in any case.  (Gave up the "shootin' life" when he left military service!)  

Jack was a journalist, a writer.  He sometimes looks behind himself from the heights of GeezerHood and wonders if his memory is intact, accurate, correct...   Years past, he

lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming and his labors earned $75.00...  hmmm, was it per week, or once a month? Must have been per week.  Who could possibly live on $75 a month, even in 1969 and 1970!?
 

Jack worked for a daily newspaper, and often wrote for the morning daily's evening companion paper, and its combined Sunday edition.  He was young, often foolhardy and not terribly conscious of safe behavior or the needs of self-preservation.  Who the hell is at 25 or 26, or thereabouts, in the prime years of youth or early manhood?  

There were two colleagues, or associates, maybe, at the same newspapers.  One was the Sports Editor, the other the Staff Photographer.  The former had some difficulty with strong drink, spirits, alcoholic beverages.  The latter was ancient, maybe old as the geysers at Yellowstone, and magnificently nicotine stained.  Jack thought he resembled a totem made of seasoned wood, or a carved figure standing sentry at a main street cigar store.     

The sports editor sometimes did not appear for days.  The photo chap was often taken ill

or maybe, himself, stupified or overly stimulated by an excess of refreshment --  strong spirits, booze-glutted tumblers of rye whiskey, for example.  As a consequence of the aforementioned, Irving or Edgar -- Editor in Chief and Managing Editor, respectively -- would ask Jack to step in and fill the empty roles.  Jack was delighted to accept, and so he did on several occasions. 

A Cowboy Football Player from the
University of Wyoming, in Laramie

As fill-in sports editor, Jack would feature much of the sports section with appropriate local news (e.g.  Laramie's University or Wyoming Cowboys football squad), but some with stories close to his own heart -- copy featuring Midwestern sports teams -- a bit subjective, maybe selfish or self-absorbed, but no one ever seemed to complain.   

The other fill-in role, as erstwhile photographer, was far more exciting, fun and adventurous...  like a cavalry scout or a horse-mounted cowpoke herding and driving hundreds of head of cattle to a stockyard, or a bold and brave buckskin-clad hunter slaying and bringing home fresh game for denizens of the Wagon Train! 

Hmmm...  Maybe, Possibly...  Jack might have
concealed himself, for safety sake, in that
kind of barrel...  Might could be the 
actual one, come to think....  maybe...

At Cheyenne-based rodeos, as the "man with a camera," Jack would position himself if a padded barrel, pop up as required and shoot pictures of bronc riders, or steer ropers or chuck wagon racers or even bull riders!  It was a helluva hoot was for a cub reporter, an  occasional fill-in editor and photo journalist.   

These are the tales, the adventures and memories he liked to keep in his Psychic album for posterity, to relate to family members, relatives and friends...  Materializing occasionally, like specters that appear to the unsuspecting in old houses and haunted inns or English castles or mist-shrouded city streets on moonless nights.      

Whether people, the aforementioned, wish to believe it or not believe it, the tales were mostly true, if sometimes embellished or enlarged, like a retouched photo or a poster painted by the story-teller him or herself, possibly re-touched to include and suggest something larger or bolder than the thing or event of origin.

When the sports editor and photographer were at their respective desks or at the horseshoe-shaped table near or across from "the slot" occupied by the editor, Jack would return to the more mundane tasks of writing up the days news he had gathered on his rounds, his beat.  At a relatively small newspaper, a reporter would cover everything...  Police news, the State House

(Wyoming's capitol building), crime, fires, accidents, academic news, community services, federal happenings to which the state might have been affected or economically allied...  all of it and more, everything!   

On occasions of so-called "slow news days," Jack longed for the barrel or the sports desk, not always, but on those rare, spare news days, something itched.  Those times when the excitement of the dust-choked rodeo grounds and the hoof beats and the drama of cowpunchers being thrown from bucking broncos and huge, snorting bulls...  The sights and noise of rocketing chuck

wagons, racing round barrels....  When those images came to mind, Jack fell under a spell, a kind of irresistible beckoning, and let his thoughts, his attention and daydreams be lassoed, captured by a band of shadowy cowhands!   

*******************************************

"Ahem...  Jack..."  Edgar was an excellent managing editor, always quiet and composed.  But he never lost sight of the objective, get the paper out; do it professionally, and on time.  He was always, in Jack's view, an effective leader and manager of the reporters under his supervision.  Edgar coughed lightly and cleared his throat...    "Jack, snap out of it.  We have deadlines to meet."  

Humbly Submitted 03-17-2026...   by Joel K.  

      

    

    

The Disappearance of Jack Dawkin!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:       

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF JACK DAWKIN!

Folks in Rawbone, Texas called him “The Mercantile Man.”  He owned and operated the general store, and provided all manner of goods and supplies for the town folk, ranchers and

farmers too who lived within a 40-mile radius.  He was always up and at his store mostly before anyone else in the town was astir, and this morning was no exception.  Rawbone was situated almost exactly at these latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates…. 32°54′26″N 96°38′7″W.

Dawn had begun painting the sky various shades of muted grey and blue, then as the morning moved closer to full daybreak, its canvas was splashed with brilliant shades of orange, gold and blue.  It was going to be a fine but hot summer day.  Buford Anders was a short, round man of probable Scandinavian ancestry, though he had no ideas why his forebears settled in this remote part of Texas, and where they’d truly been born.  He wore thick spectacles, and always dressed in white shirt, black string tie, garters at mid sleeve, a striped apron always tied around his abundant middle.  His balding head looked like a melon on which ice cream was scooped, then melted in the sun’s heat and dripping its color down its back and sides, creating a brown and white fringe behind and in front of Anders’ large, pendulous ears. 

A daily obsession just prior to its opening, he swept the front porch of his store.  The wooden surface lay exactly four steps above the surface of the road and just beneath the large hand-painted sign that read, “Buford Anders, Proprietor.”  Soon his customers would begin to appear, to climb those four steps, eager to book or make their purchases of coffee, beans, flour, kegs of nails and other goods, necessities for life on the plains of Texas.  

And then, a faint sound broke the morning calm and caused Anders to stop and turn his bulk toward the long road leading into the town.

“What the…,” he exclaimed, as he squinted and  followed the progress of the oncoming sound.  Slow and rhythmic clopping of hooves increased like the growing drama of an orchestra’s building crescendo.  “What the devil,” Anders murmured.  “I think I know that horse.  Why the deuce is it empty?  The saddle, those conchos…. That’s Cowboy Jack Dawkin’s horse and saddle.  Where the hell is Jack.  Where’s that guitar he always carries, tied to his bedroll?  Rifle’s gone too.  I gotta go get the sheriff.  No way a man as tough and able as Jack Dawkin should lose his horse.”

Wasn’t long before the sheriff appeared, and then several of Rawbone’s citizens as well, as the town began to wake up, loud and lively, horses and buckboards and foot traffic clamoring along its dusty roads.  “Can’t figure it,” the sheriff said.  “Could be Jack was waylaid by Indians, maybe road agents!?  I think I’d better gather up a few of the fellers, a posse like, and go out to look for him.  Aint like a man of his abilities to lose his horse, and himself.  And the geetar!  Where the hell’s that geetar ‘o his’n?”

“Weren’t he a gunslinger at one time, a gambler maybe….  Oh, I think I remembers!  A Indian fighter, too, maybe…?” Asked Hickory Hank Suggins to no one in particular.  Suggins was the town character, just raised like the dead from his drunken slumber and smelling like the horse stable he slept in and the cheap whiskey that kept him permanently inebriated.  Women stared at Suggins with their usual disgust and contempt, staying appropriately downwind.  “I better get to the saloon,” he mumbled, shambling away from the Anders store toward the other end of Rawbone’s main street.

Sheriff Hubert “Handlebars” Pickins wasted no time in deputizing a few of the locals, merchants and cow punchers, to ride with him in search of Jack Dawkin.  “Handlebars” owing to the enormous mustaches that divided his face into two distinct territories.  Among the posse members was Bearclaw Batisse, a half Potawatomi sometime army scout who could track a man straight to hell and back if he had to.  Batisse was a dark-skinned, fine looking man, strong and fit.  He could run miles effortlessly as another, lesser man might do merely walking a hundred yards.  His face wore the blending of his mixed parentage.  Women secretly admired him, his quiet dignity and dark good looks.    

Mavis Pickins, the sheriff’s only daughter had come to Anders’ store with the parson’s wife, Mrs. Mildred Bickel.  “I sure hope he’s not dead somewheres,” said Mavis, as the talk about Jack’s mysteriously riderless horse continued.  “He’s such a fine singer and guitar picker.  Handsomest man in north central Texas to boot!  He loved to sing about all things Texas, made

up many of the tunes he sang, I’m told.”

“Wish he were a church-goin’ feller,” said Mrs. Bickel.  “Would make such a fine addition to the choir in our little church…  if he’s isn’t deceased, of course.”  She sighed audibly, as did Mavis Pickins, each for a very different reason.  Both women watched as the sheriff and his posse rode away.  As the horsemen trotted off a great cloud of dust gathered behind and seemed to swallow them up, like a huge grey-brown beast devouring its prey.  

   

The posse headed in an easterly direction from where the horse had entered the town.  About five miles out, Batisse halted the horsemen, and then dismounted, peering at the ground.  On his knees he scanned the earth looking for signs, got up, sniffed the air and went round the other side of a giant granite boulder.  “There’s the remains of a campfire here,” Batisse announced to the posse, all the them still mounted.  “But I see no tracks leading to or from this campsite.  Can’t figure it.  It’s too unmarked, too clean.  No blood.  No trace of a struggle.  No tracks.  Darn’dest think I’ve seen in all my days of tracking man and beast.”  The men

searched everywhere they figured Jack could have been or gone, scouring a 10-mile area from all points around the center of Rawbone.  Nothing!  No signs, or clues.  No tracks.

In time the Sheriff, Batisse and the posse returned to the town, to their homes or shops or places of business.  Jack was plum gone, disappeared.  Jack’s disappearance happened in the year 1859.  Something like a year passed with no word or sign of Cowboy Jack Dawkin.  And then something strange, almost mystical began to occur in Rawbone.  Late at night, people swore they’d hear unmistakeable singing and guitar strumming, and the soft sounds of hoof beats moving from east to west along the main street of town.  

People said they heard the music of Texas each late night for a long time.  And each night some folks would dash to their windows to try to see the ghost of Cowboy Jack Dawkin, but no one ever saw anything but a star lit dusty road and stuff the wind blew by;  nothing more.

******************************************************************************

In the passage of time, the railroad tracked well north of Rawbone, while the stage line traveled some 20 miles to the south of the old town.  Things would change eventually, but not for the people of Rawbone.  In time there wasn’t even the ghost of a town, not the bones or skeletons of town buildings.  The entirety of Rawbone seems to have been carried off on the shoulders of the wind, with nothing but dust and tumbleweeds left to memorialize a once proud and thriving community.

Some folks claim that Garland, Texas, settled for the most part in 1874 and incorporated as a city in 1891, is situated at the epicenter of what was once Rawbone.  In present day Garland there’s a fine community theatre.  Some of its players and crew members claim they can sometimes hear the strains of Texas-loving tunes, over the haunting and beautiful melodies of a finely tuned guitar, sung by the specter of a singing cowboy.   

Humbly Submitted -- 12-20-18 by Joel K.

Grandparenting and the Illusion of Dignity!

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    Grandparenting in the Geezer Age:   Or, Losing One's Dignity?!...  
                                          Um...  If Indeed One Really Ever Had Any Dignity!!??

There are those abroad in the land who insist that human beings possess or should possess some actual dignity, a kind of dignified demeanor.  Especially, I suppose, those who strut about in expensive suits purporting to be your "Average Top-Flight Business Executives."  As for me, any pretense at having ever had any actual dignity was expunged at a quite early time of life.  Allow me to elucidate...

My elder brother was large and strong vs. my somewhat smaller stature, and only a year separated

This is a slightly exaggerated
image of one having been shot
with an arrow, causing the leaking
of one's complement of dignity!

our ages.  He punctured me with steel-tipped darts, once shot me in the leg with a blunt-tipped arrow and frequently "flipped" me into walls when practicing his jujitsu!  (Possibly the bloodletting that resulted caused the draining of ill humors, including any quantity of dignity I may have possessed!!)  My reward was a quarter a flip, if injured in the process (bruises and scars included with no additional fees paid!), and if I promised not to "rat on him" to mater and pater.  I'm not sure if those episodes constitute a "an early loss of any hope of a dignified persona," but there's more, and far more recently...  that is, here in the present, in the time of "GeezerHood."

During a recent trip to the warmer climes of the southern tier, I was cavorting in a swimming pool with my grandchildren, the issue of our elder daughter.  I was floating on an orange, buoyant noodle, having decided to assume the character of an adventurer.  I announced to the grandchildren, "I am Emilio de Leon, bold voyager, and I have just traversed the Atlantic Ocean from West to East on a Flotation Noodle.  Am I in Espana?  El gente de Espana," I proclaimed, "Estoy Aqui!"

In a swimming pool with
grandchildren, having been
pressed into service as an
elevator!  The image below
attempts to illustrate the
challenges of being an
elevator, and being choked,
 to the great amusement
of grandchildren!  

At which point, the children spat mouths full of water into my noble visage, and then commanded in unison, "Go back where you came from, you silly old goat!"  I of course demurred, and then tried speaking to them in French, in case I was mistaken as to my destination on the shores of the European continent.  

"Where are the cheering throngs?" I asked in my best accented French.  (Où sont les acclamations des fouls?)  More jets of expectorated pool water struck my noble countenance, once alight with victorious pride, now awash in mock rejection and humiliation!

"Go away," the children shouted gleefully!  "Go back to your own side of the ocean."  Finally, I "identified" the children as the fabled "Spitting Barracuda" of the Eastern Atlantic.  At that point their determination became unstoppable!  Oh my!  What fun we had on that lengthy and prune-skinned occasion!

During the previous year, with another set of grandchildren, progeny of our younger daughter, I was coerced into service in the self same pool as an elevator.  "Going down," I would announce as the children ordered me into character.  "Second floor -- foundation garments, ladies' frilly frocks, pumps, stockings, millinery..." the final words a choked and gurgling gasp as the "elevator-traveling" children pulled me under the surface.

Are all grandparents so employed by the offspring of their own children?  I've often been a horse -- to most an almost cliche grandparental role -- but also, and quite frequently, a helicopter, a robot, a fire-breathing dragon, a sword-wielding villain, a pack mule, a bovine...

As at least one of the grandchildren has grown older -- the eldest of four -- the expectations of grandparental interaction have changed appreciably.  He, now 11 years old, is a remarkably talented, self-taught juggler.  Though he craves an audience for his art, it is hardly a chore for the watcher, but rather a pleasure to witness his skill and talent.  Just as often, because he's a Harry Potter devotee and much attracted to the "Mario" electronic games, he urges his grandparents to sit with him as he displays his magic wand collection or translates the images in Mario books to the actions of the games themselves.  He also has recorded the musical "overlays" that accompany the games, has entire CD's devoted to "Mario Music."

And here's another example.  July 3rd has become a cherished family gathering day, all of us together to witness the spectacular fireworks show at Milwaukee's Lakefront.  There's lots of idle and play time between arriving in mid-afternoon until the skies go dark and then wild with loud and colorful explosions!  Our two granddaughters, ages 5 and 7, have developed a ritual of

The first-born grandchild
(at left) with his "Baba,"
the name he conferred
upon her even before he
could speak in sentences!

placing small stickers on my sunglasses until the lens are totally obscured.  At other times during the afternoon, they climb upon me, strike me with illuminated wands and other light-up souvenirs, and then all four of them sit on me, one 7-year-old on my throat, the others on various parts of my torso.  Unable to move, my groans of discontent and choked pleas of mercy drive the four of them into convulsions of mirth.  It becomes a prolonged source of glee (with a bit of pushing, jockeying for a better position!).

One of our granddaughters, the older of two, has a most remarkable gift for and sense of humor.  She has often placed a stuffed moose on my head; the moose has large floppy antlers.  She proclaims, "There's a moose on your head" or, "There's a flying moose on your head!"  The phrase has become so popular with the grandkids, my daughter made a T-shirt for me that sports the aforementioned legend, along with an appliquéd moose.  

I could go on, but it may be time to put this episode to bed, perhaps along with a pair of grandchildren who are spending the night.  I love my grandchildren with all that's in me, and my interaction with them may have nothing at all to do with dignity, or the lack thereof, but merely with my own devotion to absurd behavior, a kind of reversion.  So, what the hell, who says one cannot go on being a cow or an elevator, a robot, an aardvark, a reviled visitor to foreign shores.

Sometimes, one simply cannot resist the urge to misbehave, or to adopt various obtuse roles just to join in the fun, to entertain.  I mean, it isn't that long until the grandchildren enter their teenage years and beyond.  Then, when we grandparents behave like silly imbeciles, our grandchildren will look at us with self-conscious displeasure and announce, "OMG...  Why does he have to act like that...  and in front of my friends...  so embarrassing!"

Until that happens, I will endeavor to play the fool, to be myself and to enjoy the moment and

the silliness that pervades their youthful deportment until they, our grandchildren, become more "grown up" and dignified as adolescents and adults (I hope they never actually lose their senses of silliness!!).

Special Notes:  1.)  None of that which my sweet, wonderful grandkids do to me, as described herein, is mean-spirited or discouraged by the perpetrator of this post.  It's all in great fun, and actually encouraged, often precipitated by my own words and deeds.  I thoroughly enjoy their funny and guileless behavior.  Cards and letters, Email as well, may be sent in care of this medium, anytime!  2.)  No pelicans or other creatures were harmed in the making of this blog posting.  Thank You! 

(Special Note of Attribution and Gratitude:   The perpetrator of this blog extends unending thanks to our beautiful, talented and endlessly creative grandchildren, without whose support and silliness this writing would not have been possible:  C, age 11, almost 12; S, age 7, more than almost 8; L, age 7, age 8 in fewer than four months; S, age 5-1/2!  B and P, among many others, of course, are enormously grateful every day of our lives to have them in our lives!!)

Humbly Submitted 07-18-15 -- Joel K.