The adventure is under way. Welcome to the club. The Roundup will keep you up to date on CowBoy Heritage Club activities, special deals, and other events in the months and years ahead. In this first issue we take up where The CowBoy Handbook left off—more facts fun, and philosophy, with emphasis on fun.
When this club was in the planning stage (not that it isn't now) one dream was to someday have a trail drive with genuine Texas Longhorns. The club is not ready for that, yet, but the Great American Trail Drive is. See page 16 for details. One of the most impressive sights I've seen was a herd of 93 Longhorns the Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America brought to Dodge City in 1966. If you have never seen a large herd of these critters, check out this event. You have plenty of time and it's an experience from all three Golden Eras.
Left over from the Handbook author's notebook is an article on things lots of folks don't seem to know about hats in general and cowboy hats in particular. Our poetry department examines tumbleweeds. Other departments include a travel bulletin, Q & A, and advertising.
Unlike the National Geographic Society, we don't have millions of members and a big magazine. We do have the ability to respond to what you want-when we know what that is. So let us know.
Thanks to Crawford Clark, Jim Treat, Sammye Davies, Roger Duerr, Dennis Nun, Art Kuhr and to Sharon Neueswander for her family photos. Thanks to you for your patience.
Adios until next time.
Always your pal,
Bruce
Congratulations to Dave Villafala, a teacher in Cupertino, California. Dave writes: "I have used [The CowBoy Handbook] in my classroom to teach eleven year olds the history of cowboys. We have produced a musical called ('Cowboys, Cowboys, Cowboys." The book gave us the background information that helped us write the musical." There is no word yet on touring companies.
Since there is a remote possibility that some members may not have actually read the Handbook, here is how it uses those words.
The original plan was to have membership dues to cover printing and postage and to offrer a copy of The CowBoy Handbook as an incentive to join. But the book came along first, and somebody had the bright idea of giving free memberships for 1995 as an incentive to buy it. That's how those cards came to be in the books.
Either way, club members would have Handbooks and their cache of information and ideas to draw from and build on. That's the theory. Who knows how it will turn out in real life?
We rounded up an interesting and enthusiastic bunch of cow country characters (several of whom came willingly) for an Advisory Board. They are Todd Baum of Arizona and California, Crawford Clark of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Kansas City, Brian Dillman of Dodge City, Nebraska, and Texas, Tom Hutchins of Kansas and Texas, Linda Lanphear of Oklahoma, Colorado and California, James Treat of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska, and Don Ward of Texas.
To keep the club informed, we have this Lone Prairie Roundup. Its editorial reins are in the hands of Bruce Dillman of Kansas, Idaho, Colorado, Nebraska, and California. He published a newsletter a while back, and we hope he remembers how.
One of the privileges, nay, obligations of club membership is to let the editorial staff know how you respond to the Roundup. They will assume silence indicates complete satisfaction.
This is the place where you can ask questions, give answers, make comments, respond to comments, even buy, sell, or trade. Someday we may take it to the Internet, but we'll start on the Information Dusty Trail and send it out by Pony Express.
Being CowBoys-at-heart is the only thing club members have in common.Otherwise, we are a diverse group. Some are cowhands. Some are collectors. Some are city folks and such. We may seem a little elementary at times. We cannot assume there is anything that everybody knows.
LET US KNOW
If you have articles, poems, stories, drawings, information, opinions, or anything else of a cowhand nature that would inform or entertain (and fit this format), we encourage you to send them in. Although no money is involved at this point, you can achieve fame, glory, and the sense of satisfaction which comes from brightening someone's day. Send your creative cowhand works to
Although CowBoys are more than hats, boots, and buckles, those accessories do signify cowpuncher to a large portion of the world's population. Customs have changed in the past forty year·s, and today most people are uninformed or misinformed about hats in general (many don't know the difference between a hat and a cap or between front and back) and cowboy hats in particular. This article covers .some things that don't seent to be common knowledge.
People wore head coverings for protection, custom, and decoration. Good hats and caps keep heads warm (more than 60% of heat loss is through the head) and protect them from sun and rain. Long ago this practical use led to traditions of wearing headgear on particular occasions. For example, at Christian worship services women covered their heads and men did not. At Jewish services men covered their heads and women did not. On other occasions men had their heads covered outdoors and indoors under certain circumstances, such as when in uniform. Women could have their heads covered indoors or outdoors.
Felt has been a popular hat material for many years, because it can be formed into any shape, it is durable, it protects, and it can be cleaned.
Much of the early exploration of the Rocky Mountains was a direct result of the popularity of felt top hats (called beavers) made of beaver fur. Mountain men spent their winters in the mountains trapping beavers. When the fashion turned to top hats made of silk, mountain men went out of the trapping business, and beavers managed to stay in business.
Felters put wet fur fibers under heat and pressure until the felt is formed. Hatters put felt on forms and steam it so it softens and takes the shape of the form. When it dries, it retains that shape. (Mad hatters were common in olden days when they used mercury to process felt. The mercury vapors affected their brain cells, and the hatters went mad. Wool felt is getting better, but fur is still preferable, and beaver content improves the durability.
X's vary from maker to maker, and they do not necessarily indicate a specific percentage of beaver fur. In the 1950s buyers thought a XXX beaver Stetson had 30% beaver fur. The ten-X model was pure beaver and retailed for $100.
However, you might see the following stamped on a sweat band: "XXXXX," "Beaver Hats," and "One Hundred Percent Imported Coney Fur." What does that mean? The X's mean nothing. "Beaver Hats" is the brand. "Coney Fur" tells the tale. Coney means rabbit. So it's a hat made of rabbit-fur felt. Unless it says "Beaver," don't assume Xs mean beaver fur. "XXX quality" and similar phrases don't count. To determine its quality, you must feel felt. Feel felt enough, and you can tell the difference between the good stuff (fine, soft, smooth) and the not-so-good (coarse, hard, rough).
Nowadays you can get hats with as many as 00 Xs. Does this mean they are 1000/o beaver? No. It means they retail for $1100.
One person's 30-year-old 3X beaver hat burned up, and he found out 3Xs thirty years ago ($20-$25) equals 7Xs ($2I0-$240 )today.
It has often been said that a cow-boy would spend a month's pay for a good hat, one he could use to fulfill all the regular hat duties and fold it up and use it for a pillow at night. We've come a long way baby. That month's pay was about $30, and if you fold up today's hats, many of them are so stiff they will actually break.
Frederic Remington depicted many cow-boys wearing hats dented in the "Montana peak" or "Smokey Bear" style with the brim up against the crown in front. Put this together with some information in the 1894 Montgomery Ward catalog ("stiff brims, guaranteed not to flop '), and we can reasonably guess that some of these fine foldable hats tended to be just a mite floppy in the brim. This would be particularly noticeable when riding a horse at high speed. The brim could either flop up or down. Down would prevent the rider from seeing anything, so up was preferable. Charlie Russell, depicting in a different part of the country, had different kinds of hats. He tended toward low- brimmed models, often with "bonnet strings" (chin straps) to keep them from flying away when caught by the wind.
The fashion today seems to be extra-stiff. The advantage is that the hat holds its shape under all normal circumstances. The disadvantages are ( 1 ) it feels like cardboard and (2) if bent too far it will literally break. In the 1950s and '60s the average man and woman in the street got away from the hat custom. Hat sales dwindled, and hat-cleaning establishments folded. Cowboy hat prices soared during the Urban Cowboy craze of 1980-81, and they are still high. Not only are new hat prices high, but used hats are also pretty steep, unless you know where to look.
Within the past five years I have acquired 15 pre-owned cowboy hats of various sizes, shapes, and qualities, from straw to 7X beaver. My total outlay for this collection is $63.11 plus tax. The prices ranged from fifty cents to ten dollars at garage sales, thrift stores, auctions and antique stores. At flea markets and antique stores you can find prices ten times my average of $4.21, or more. At Western and Cowboy shows they will be higher. I grew up with hats, memorized Western wear catalogs, and sold hats in a Western wear store, so I can recognize good hats which had bad owners, even when they don't look too good. Some people rely on buyers' ignorance, so beware of
The "Montana peak" was a popular style with cow-boys in Texas in the 1880s. Styles changed, but Remington preserved that model in bronze. Now people are interested in "authentic" stuff, and what could be more "authentic" than a hat styled just that way? So some dealers have gone so far as to take any old hat, turn on the tea kettle, and steam a Montana peak into it. I've seen this trick in California in antique stores and at a fancy Western collector's show. One didn't even use a cowboy hat. He took a man's fedora from the 1940s or '5Os ($5 to $25 value), put a Montana peak in it and a $65 price tag on it.
You can guard against tlris trick. First be aware that any hat from the I880s has probably already been collected. Second, look at the crown, and you can see where the previous creases were before the dealer reshaped it. A crease in a hat crown gathers dust and dirt over time, and this dirt won't go away unless the hat is cleaned, so you will be able to see a darker color outlining old creases. Ridges around creases will not go away unless the hat is reblocked, so look carefully and you can see old ridges.
Some dealers don't know what they have. A hat with "Carlsbad" stamped in the sweat band had a tag, "Carlsbad, New Mexico?" Catalogs from the 1920s, '30s, and '40s show a Carlsbad style. These days it is better known as the Hopalong Cassidy style.
So you have a sombrero, new or used. How do you take care of it? Do you want to? Some folks want the "authentic" character that a lot of sweat, dust, and dirt give a hat.
Suppose you acquire a good-but- mistreated hat. You don't like the shape, it has an ugly band, and it's bent out of shape; but it's a good hat, several-X beaver, and it has potential.
First, take the band off You'll feel better. I once saved $5 by not buying a feather band I would have thrown away anyway. You can replace it with something more to your liking.
Tre easy way to shape up a hat is to have it cleaned and blocked. (The best-known hat-leaning story is about the fellow in Hollywood who told the cleaner, "I need this hat cleaned. They're auditioning for a new singing cowboy over at Republic." Also in the shop was young Leonard Slye, who thought mebbe he would mosey over to Republic himself. He did, and they changed his name to Roy Rogers.) In the old days hat cleaners were everywhere. Now they are hard to find. You'll probably have to send it off, and you're looking at a rninimum of $45.
Then there is the do-it-yourself way. If the hat is dusty, brush it. Get a hat brush if you can. A good Western wear store will sell you one. Some will even sell you separate brim and crown brushes. Brush your hat counter-clockwise. Much of the dust and dirt will brush right olf: If there is oil or grease, use fuller's earth or apply dish detergent and water with an old toothbrush. Then rinse the brush and apply clear water to the spot. Let it dry.
Water won't hurt good fur felt, that's why we wear hats to protect us from the rain. Water can shrink a cheap wool felt, so be sure you're working with good felt before you use much water. One way to clean and reshape a hat is to wash the whole thing. Washing gives the best results when you dry your hat on a block the proper size and shape. If the hat is in such bad shape that anything is an improvement, you can wash rt with a detergent like Woolite, Ivory Liquid, or Conklin's Spring Dew, rinse it well, shape it, and let it dry at room temperature.
Shape your felt trats with steam. A tea kettle will do. So will a clothes steamer. One way is to boil water in a spaghetti-sized pot and place the hat upside down over the pot so steam rises and covers the brim and the front of the hat. (The danger to this method is that if you wander away and forget it, the water boils away, your hat burns up, you choke on the smoke, and the odor is awful). When the felt is pliable, shape it the way you want and let it dry.
To be continued in the next issue when we take up Horse Opera Hats.
But what's the real story?
When the cowhands trailed their herds across the plains, where were the tumbleweeds? In Europe.
Tumbleweeds (plants which, when mature, break off at ground level and tumble wherever the wind blows them) come in several varieties. Some are pigweeds (Amaranthus), and there is even a tumbling mustard, but the most common tumbleweed on the Western plains is the Russian thistle (Salsola pestifer or Salsola kali or Salsola iberica ). Russian thistle seeds came to North Dakota in the late 1800s hiding in flax seed from Eurasia. The grasses of the Great Plains grew such thick sod that there were few weeds of any kind on the lone prairie.
When farmers came and plowed the land, they opened the way for weeds, which compete with crops for water and soil nutrients. Russian thistles suck up lots of moisture and, while young and green, provide nourishing feed. In fact, young Russian thistle hay helped livestock survive during the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s.
Tumbling tumbleweeds are an impressive sight on the plains (unless you're a farmer). They get to be several feet across, and roam wherever the wind takes them until they hang up against a fence or in a ditch. The weeds' idea is to spread seeds as they bounce along, so new tumbleweeds will grow next year, especially in ditches and along fences.
Aside from metaphor, there aren't many human or livestock uses for dried-out tumbleweeds. However, humans, can be creative. One woman advertised to the Eastern market that she had a "Tumbleweed Collecting Permit" and offered to sell genuine tumbleweeds for $40 each.
Another type of tumbleweed inspiration is poetic, and our resident poet put pen to paper to perpetrate the following.
Between cowtown days and the "Gunsmoke" era Dodge City was fairly peaceful, and references to the wild frontier were discouraged. One exception was the premier of the Warner Brothers film, Dodfge City, in 1938.
This movie is highly rated in many film guides, so I looked forward to seeing it on TNT last fall. It was fun-the Warner Brothers stock company in "Robin Hood goes West." It is a great example of what Hollywood does to history.
Setting the tone, an announcement before the movie said it had been colorized-and it is a Technicolor film. The flick opens on a train just after the Civil War. Col. Dodge and some of his cronies are on their way to his new town. ("What will you call it?" "I haven't decided." "What about Dodge City?" "Why not?") Riding alongside the train are Errol Flynn and his cronies. They wave to the passengers, then have a man arrested for hunting buffalo without a state permit. We skip five years.
Flynn is driving a herd of cattle to Dodge and bringing several wagon loads of settlers. Among these are Olivia de Haviland and her brother. He gets so bored that he routinely gets drunk and fires his revolver in the air. Flynn lets him get away with this until he finally stampedes the herd, and the brother gets killed.
All sorts of things are goiyrg on which irrvolve our CowBoy heroes, They get to Dodge City and find it under the control of a ruthless cattle buyer (the same guy who had hunted the buffalo), and there is no law enforcement. Flynn's crew gets into a saloon brawl to end all movie saloon brawls. Some local citizens make Flynn the sherift' and he tames the town, but he can't get evidence to convict the bad guy, so he. . . But you might get a chance to see it sometime, so I won't spoil the ending; for you.
Dodge City is fun, but "Like many movies, history was sacrificed for showmanship." That quote comes from the television program, "100 Years of Hollywood Westerns," on NBC in December of 1994. Among the other highlights were these lines: "William S. Hart was the first strong, silent hero" (actually everybody in movies was silent then). "The Hollywood formula for a Western: Beautiful women,Good Guys, Bad Guys, and (sooner or later) gunplay." "In the world of motion pictures the day of the gunfighter is never over." "In the 1960s with The Wild Bunch bad guys become heroes. Violence becomes art." "No one is more idolized than the town (?) sheriff like in Abilene, Wild Bill Hickock (he was town marshal) and Dodge City, Bat Masterson" (they got that one right). "Little girls loved them [Westerns], too." —Jane Seymour. "Little Big Horn in South Dakota" (Montana may be interested in that). "Red River perpetuated the myth, but it was historically accurate." "The rest is pure Hollywood."
l
In The Man Who Shot Liberty, Valance a newspaper man says, "When fact becomes legend, print the legend." From the U. S. Postal Seivice, the people who brought you the 32-cent stamp, came "Legends of the West," a colorful set of 20 29-cent postage stamps. Besides making sure that females and ethnic minorities are represented, they went for big-names and put brief biographies on the back, most of which trivialize the subject. The people are all pictured out under a bright blue Western sky, even Wild Bill Hickock holding a poker hand.
Considering that people don't tend to look closely at postage stamps or read the backs of them, these aren't too bad. The older Bob Wills (29 cents), Hank Williams (29 cents), and Buffalo Bill (15-cents) stamps are preferable.
News of the Great American Cattle Drive (page 16) brought Robert Day's novel, The Last Cattle Drive, to mind. Published in 1977, it is the story of a contrary old 1970s Western Kansas rancher who drives 250 cattle to the Kansas City Stock Yards, because he thinks the truckers want too much money to haul them. Like the G.A. Cattle Drive, he took back roads and county roads. Not being keen on public relations, however he gets his herd and his his crew of three into some wild situations. The Last Cattle Drive is fun, and the author knows the territory so well that the University Press of Kansas now publishes it. "The last (whatever)" is dramatic phrasing, and it can be misleading. The Mohican tribe, for instance, has a hard time being taken seriously today because James Fenimore Cooper wrote The Last of Ihe Mohicans more than 150 years ago. There have been many "last trail drives." That really means the last one. . . until the next one.
If you find yourself anywhere near Topeka before May 29, 1995, head for the Kansas Museum of History and its special exhibit on cow-boy boots. During cowtown days Kansas had more boot makers than any other state, and many made boots for end-of the- trail cowhands. This exhibit shows rare, early boots, it has special and fancy boots and it has a display explaining how boots are made. The museum's permanent exhibit features transportation (this being a state on many major trails) and the piece de resistance is a railroad train (Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, of course), two cars and a locomotive. One car is a 1927 drovers car for cowhands to ride while taking cattle to market, the other is a superintendent's office/living quarters on wheels, and the engine is an 1880 Baldwin with a diamond smoke stack, which has been restored to better-than-mint condition.
Overall, this museum has a good feeling to it-interesting exhibits, some outstanding, tastefully displayed-and the price is right. There is no admission charge. You will be a guest of the State of Kansas and the Kansas Historical Society.
The Kansas Museum of History is at 6425 S.W. 6th Street. Take Wanamaker Road north off' I-70, turn left at 6th Street (the first street north of I-70) and follow the signs to the museum. It's open Monday through Saturday from 9:00 to 4:30, Sunday 12:30 to 4:30, closed New Year's Day, Easter Sunday, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day.
Lone Prairie Roundup
Lone Prairie Roundup, Fifth Issue
The CowBoy Handbook
Home Corral