Hello cowboys & cowgirls. I hope this month's nooseletter finds you and your loved ones in good health. It looks like another month of "Shelter in Place". I think our president is just sending us all to our rooms. Anyway, you may have noticed that there is no calendar in this month's issue. That is because everything is being cancelled these days and I do not want to tempt you from the safety of your homes. Remember to wash your hands often and especially when you come into contact with other people and anything from outside of your home.
On another note, Reel Cowboy Meetings and Movie Nights have been cancelled until further notice due to the Coronavirus.
Enjoy the articles and be safe.
~The Editor
FEATURED ARTICLE
Gunning for the 'Cowboy Way' ~ by Robert Knight
In 1949, as part of its “Riders in the Sky" promotion, a film studio released Gene Autry’s 10-sentence Cowboy Code.
The code resurfaced in 2007 in a biography of the movie star by Holly George-Warren, a prolific chronicler of America’s popular culture.
The reason it’s included below is because cowboys are being thrown under the horse, along with “farting cows." They’re the latest targets of the political correctness that seeks to replace American grit with a nihilistic creed of wimpery.
Actually, it started years ago when leftists thought they had delivered a roundhouse punch against Ronald Reagan, and later, George W. Bush, by deriding them as “cowboys." That made the two men rugged icons to many Americans.
CHRONICLE OF THE OLD WEST
Constable Alexander ~ by Dakota Livesay
In the Old West women were not to be hurt. But, what's a man to do if he's an officer of the law sent to make an arrest, and a woman confronts him with a rifle.
In an incident that took place near Yuma, Arizona on February 7, 1901, that code was broken.
The ownership of a ranch occupied by Joseph and Mary Burns was under dispute. Constable Marian Alexander went to the ranch to serve papers on the Burns. With Joseph Burns away, Mary Burns met Constable Alexander with a rifle. Unarmed and unprepared for a confrontation...
America loves cowboys, from the swaggering heroes of the silver screen, to legends like Buffalo Bill, to today’s bestselling videogames, such as Red Dead Redemption 2. Even presidents turn to the iconic cowboy hat and boots to endear themselves to the public and make themselves seem more authentic, capable, and iconically "American."
But in real life, the American cowboy’s fortunes took a turn for the worse long ago. In a 1982 article in The Massachusetts Review, writer Peter R. Decker points out the contrast between how America celebrates cowboys and how it treats those who still roam its open plains.
Little Bighorn's Forgotten Hero
~ by Robert M. Utley
In 2019 I turned 90. As a Custer aficionado since the age of 12, I was prompted to reflect on my connection with Custer and the Custer Battlefield, now termed the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Errol Flynn in They Died with Their Boots On (1942) introduced me to Custer. Captain E.S. Luce, superintendent of the Custer Battlefield National Monument, introduced me to the battlefield. In 1946, I bought a bus ticket, and from my Indiana home, toured the West. At Custer Battlefield, Luce, an old cavalryman, guided me over the battlefield. The following year, he twisted government rules to hire me, at age 17, as a seasonal ranger-historian at the battlefield.
The Unknown Side of McQueen
~ by Ed Gross
The King of Cool is certainly not a new concept in Hollywood. We've seen it used in reference to Marlon Brando (Streetcar Named Desire—era), Clint Eastwood (still kickin' it so many decades later), and, of course, the late James Dean. But you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who has held onto that mantle longer than Steve McQueen. And this despite the fact he's been gone for nearly 40 years and that his first leading man role was in a movie called The Blob (he went on to bigger and better, though the film does have its following). The natural question to ask is why? What was it about Steve McQueen that has stood him apart from...
The Wild West provides some of the most enduring tenets of American mythology, perpetuated by film legends from Bronco Billy to Clint Eastwood. And no wonder: the lawlessness of the time provided plenty of drama, and the lonely windswept territories, mountainous and arid, provided the cinematic backdrop. The image is indelible: A lonely cowboy clopping across the plains. Cue the Ennio Morricone soundtrack. Ironically, the era that has provided more than 100 years’ worth of celluloid fantasies lasted only 30 years.
In fact, the era known as the Wild West, or the American Frontier, began after the Civil War in 1865 and ended around 1895. The...
Buy Camels in the mid-1800s
~ by E.L. Hamilton
A folk tale from the Old West has it that in the 1880s, the Arizona territory was haunted by a menacing creature known as the Red Ghost. The red-eyed creature was said to be 30 feet tall, had trampled a woman to death, and charged a man who tried to capture it.
“Eyewitnesses said it was a devilish looking creature strapped on the back of some strange-looking beast," Marshall Trimble, Arizona’s official state historian, told Smithsonian magazine in 2015. Years later, a rancher shot a camel grazing in his garden. On the dead camel’s back, the rancher found rawhide straps, evidence of a past rider. The Red Ghost was dead. But wait a second. A wild camel? In Arizona?
14 Facts About Daniel Boone
~ by Lucas Reilly
Daniel Boone was a frontiersman who helped introduce the United States to a little place we like to call Kentucky. He was famous for his extraordinarily long hunts and his navigation skills. ("I can’t say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days," he reportedly said.) The myth of him as a rugged gun-toting pioneer, however, doesn't match history. Get to know the real Daniel Boone.
HE WASN'T SOUTHERN.
Boone was born and raised in eastern Pennsylvania, about 10 miles from the modern city of Reading. Granted, in the 1730s, this was close to the frontier, and Boone—who was raised by Quakers—was given his first gun...
