yee-haw

Head 'em out, move 'em out-- Rawhide... oops where'd that come from? Probably the assortment of things rolling around in my head that influence who I am, where I might go and what I dream about-- when I'm lucky. For me at the top of the list, that's westerns-- books, movies, tv shows when I was growing up.

I think it pays to now and again think about what those elements are in our own lives. What subconsciously influences how we see the world? Sometimes those are good influences for quality living and sometimes not.

From the time I started picking out 'grown-up' books for myself, I read piles of westerns-- everything by Zane Grey, who is still the king of western writers from my viewpoint. What did I look for in a western book? Location was paramount. It should have descriptions of the western landscape, maybe a small town, romance was good with a strong woman heroine, and then the hero. Well he had to be strong, if not from the start, at least eventually. He was often tall but if he wasn't, he was wirily muscular-- at least eventually. He knew his way around and if he didn't, he quickly learned it. He wasn't a man who sought violence, but he knew how to deliver it when required.

Zane Grey did all of that in any of his books. He and many other authors of his time truly knew the country of which they wrote. When they described the heroine riding her horse down a stream, that stream was there, and they made you feel you were too. To some degree their stories did depict the West as a time period but it was a limited time. One that still fascinates people around the world today.

The main thing, with what Grey wrote, was the land healed, hard work healed and doing what was right, even when difficult, healed. Is that too simplistic? Maybe but sometimes simple philosophies are not wrong. Right or wrong, it undergirded his books.

Owen Wister wrote one of my favorite stories of the West, The Virginian, and it had in it all the necessary parts as well as some humorous descriptions of the people and times. It was written by a man who was living in the time of which he wrote. I have heard that he changed the book to give it a more romantic ending, not as realistic, when Theodore Roosevelt requested it after reading a first draft. I am glad he did as that honeymoon sequence ranks right up there at the top of any of my fantasies. And fantasy it will have to remain at least in this lifetime.

The Virginian talks about the Western culture which I remember my own father describing to me from when he grew up in South Dakota. Things like barn dances where the children would stay up in the lofts to watch the adults. Things like my grandfather carrying the gun I still have when he made a run for it from a posse. Now what the heck was he having to run from, who knows. That part didn't get relayed to kids. Probably some minor thing; but a lot, who lived in those parts and that time, did have connections to the Butch Cassidy gang which I am sure my grandfather never would have... but you never know for sure.

The heritage my father described, a world I never knew except through a few photographs (some of which I shared here) and his stories, as well as my own reading so many years ago definitely still impact my thinking, my concept of an ideal world, my romantic dreams.

(cover from an old Zane Grey collection of books, owned by my daughter. The quotation is from the book. My daughter told me it was one she had claimed for herself. Since the thought suits my thinking also, I had added it to the photograph I took of that dust jacket)