All My Life I've Been a Cowboy in My Heart
o/` "And it's good to see the bad guys on the run
While our modern day heroes show 'em how the west was won
On their trail 'til they bring the last one down
We could use a few more cowboys here today
A few more days of reckoning and a lot more hell to pay
Where that debt is owed there ain't no middle ground" o/`
----- "Code of the West" performed by Clint Black
An argument came up about the "authenticity" of some elements of my writing.
Most of you have been with me long enough to know that the town in which I grew up was a place outside of time, where the 20th century never quite reached. People still brought their wagons drawn by horses to church on Sunday, the men still went about openly armed, and it wasn't unusual to see as many horses as pick-ups in the school parking lot. We had a Deadline and, if you were a good townie (I wasn't), you knew better than to cross it. Justice was as often administered by the six shooter and the rifle as it was by the courts...and if the criminals made it to the courts, they had to face our local "Hanging Judge" Brown who was notorious for maximum sentences and no mercy rendered regardless of circumstances. Chain gangs maintained the roads in and out of town and should one escape, posses were rounded up from the local citizens --- on horseback. All of us knew what went on above the three saloons in town, and it wasn't room rental! The sheriff and his deputies spent most Saturday nights breaking up potential gun and knife fights on Main Street...and the sheriff had a woman across the Deadline, one of the most prestigious "ladies" in town who ran one of the best bordellos in the region that side of the Mississippi.
The house I lived in as the new bride of a rancher had no plumbing; there was an outhouse out back and a hand pump at the sink to bring water from the well. I worked the fields, herded the cattle, branded and castrated calves, fed the extra hands we needed come harvest time, and helped stack the bales after they'd seasoned in the sun. In winter, my home was heated by a single wood stove and I spent hours scouring the hillside for wood to burn in it. Come spring, I processed the honey we sold with a hand press while the rest of the family gathered it out of the hives. I rode our irrigation ditches on a plough horse with a Winchester in order to ensure no one else diverted our water rights or trespassed on the planted fields. To me fell the task of beating the sage for strays and bringing them back down into the herd. It was hard, grueling work.
So yes, I know about life in the Old West. The Old West isn't dead and anyone who says so has never been there.
The house I grew up in
My mother bought the house with the pittance the Army paid us for my father's death in the line of duty. Not much has changed except it originally had grass down to the sidewalk without the raised railroad tie border. My mother, with no father to oversee our dating habits, had a bunch of thorn bushes planted beneath our windows. It didn't stop me or my sister from sneaking out but it did give us second thoughts a time or two. Those were removed when they started intruding on the mailbox (fastened to the drain spout on the porch, I don't think it's there any longer). The window to the left of the door as you're looking at the house was my sister's room; mine was in the rear corner. My mother rents it to a family friend now.
The house my grandmother owned
When my grandparents bought this house, it was a nasty shade of puke green. The neighborhood consisted of four streets behind them and one in front of them; you could see the mountains if you stepped out into their back yard. Later, they painted it barn red and planted roses out there on the front step. Next to the front step was the milk box (I doubt many of you know what that is for). We still got our milk in glass bottles from a dairy; the empties went in the box and every morning the milkman would collect them and bring by a new batch. I liked hiding small things --- pebbles, sticks, a toy --- in there for retrieval later. The hand rail wasn't there back then because no one needed it and the tree you see out front was just a sapling. The juniper bushes were low to the ground and sometimes did so poorly we doubted they would ever grow into proper bushes. There were two globe willows out back. I spent more time at this house than I did my own and would have liked to keep it, if it hadn't been foreclosed upon as she was dying.
Looking down on the town
This is the town of Montrose, as seen from the cemetery where my grandmother was buried. It's not difficult to imagine that the town looked much the same one hundred years ago (in fact, there's a similar photograph in the courthouse which pretty much proves that point). I'm not sure what keeps the town going --- it is growing, slowly --- since the days of the big family owned cattle ranches are pretty much gone and everyone knows that agriculture of all types is in trouble. The cemetery is on the rim of a formation called a hogback ridge and the gates close at dusk but the cemetery itself isn't fenced in. There's an old quarry just off the rim and below that is the high school stadium. We used to drive our vehicles or ride horses down that trail through the old quarry and then party behind the stadium during Homecoming. It was also the prime make-out point (not that I ever knew anything personally about that).
Sunset on the hogback
I've never seen prettier sunsets --- not even over the ocean --- than the ones I've witnessed out west. You can still see the mare's tails in the clouds which indicate a fair evening and further down is some of the old fence line surrounding the quarry.
Main Street
Those are all original Western store fronts and many of those businesses have been there since the founding of the town. For some reason, Montrose is one of the few western towns I've come across which never had a major fire and thus never had its business district destroyed.
The Fox Theatre
The current building dates from the early 1930s and is a traditional art deco style building inside and out. The floors inside are hardwood and the chairs of wood and velvet upholstery. Heavy velvet curtains separate the two downstairs theaters from the lobby and the lobby has a tiled mosaic wall. The upstairs theater, called the Penthouse, is poshly decorated in velvet and satin and has its own concession stand which, when I lived in Montrose, would even serve beer and small appetizer trays. For a long time, aside from the drive-in, it was the only movie theater in town. A few years ago the family who owns the Fox also built a modern theater on the edge of town.
City Hall and Elks Lodge
This is one of the oldest brick structures in the town. A secondary, more modern (circa 1920s) city hall was built kitty-corner to it around a plaza about two blocks down from this location.
Montrose County Courthouse
The photograph doesn't really do it justice. It's a two square city block sandstone structure with a domed ceiling surrounded by beautiful lawns and cottonwoods which are hundreds of years old. You can't really see it from here, but the old hitching posts for the buggies and horses are still intact...and still in use, for that matter. I wish we had had time to go inside; the floors are black and white marble quarried from Marble, Colorado and the banisters are polished wood over one hundred years old. Its windows, by the way, were intentionally designed to reflect back the sky and the mountains.
Montrose County post office
This building was added somewhat later (1920s to 1930s, I believe). They kept in mind the town's heritage and gave it a vague western false front. The Spanish tiles were imported from Mexico. When I lived here, the handicapped accessible ramps didn't exist. Those were put in to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act in the late 1990s. Yes, that is my truck parked there.
The Townsend House
The Townsends were one of the founding families in Montrose and they still live there, although not in the house itself. The house is notable for that and for its beautifully preserved Victorian architecture, including the carriage house and servants' quarters.
Montrose High School
It was Montrose County High School at one point in its life. Much of the original brick structure has been remodeled to obscure the original lines of the building. It was, when I attended, a simple two story brick schoolhouse with a gym on one end and a cafeteria on the other. The clock tower didn't exist and none of the trees had been planted out front. This was originally the front entrance to the school; today it's located in what was the rear of the building on an annex. You can't get into the school at all now without going through a whole bunch of security checkpoints. There's actually very little left of the school as I remember it.
While our modern day heroes show 'em how the west was won
On their trail 'til they bring the last one down
We could use a few more cowboys here today
A few more days of reckoning and a lot more hell to pay
Where that debt is owed there ain't no middle ground" o/`
----- "Code of the West" performed by Clint Black
An argument came up about the "authenticity" of some elements of my writing.
Most of you have been with me long enough to know that the town in which I grew up was a place outside of time, where the 20th century never quite reached. People still brought their wagons drawn by horses to church on Sunday, the men still went about openly armed, and it wasn't unusual to see as many horses as pick-ups in the school parking lot. We had a Deadline and, if you were a good townie (I wasn't), you knew better than to cross it. Justice was as often administered by the six shooter and the rifle as it was by the courts...and if the criminals made it to the courts, they had to face our local "Hanging Judge" Brown who was notorious for maximum sentences and no mercy rendered regardless of circumstances. Chain gangs maintained the roads in and out of town and should one escape, posses were rounded up from the local citizens --- on horseback. All of us knew what went on above the three saloons in town, and it wasn't room rental! The sheriff and his deputies spent most Saturday nights breaking up potential gun and knife fights on Main Street...and the sheriff had a woman across the Deadline, one of the most prestigious "ladies" in town who ran one of the best bordellos in the region that side of the Mississippi.
The house I lived in as the new bride of a rancher had no plumbing; there was an outhouse out back and a hand pump at the sink to bring water from the well. I worked the fields, herded the cattle, branded and castrated calves, fed the extra hands we needed come harvest time, and helped stack the bales after they'd seasoned in the sun. In winter, my home was heated by a single wood stove and I spent hours scouring the hillside for wood to burn in it. Come spring, I processed the honey we sold with a hand press while the rest of the family gathered it out of the hives. I rode our irrigation ditches on a plough horse with a Winchester in order to ensure no one else diverted our water rights or trespassed on the planted fields. To me fell the task of beating the sage for strays and bringing them back down into the herd. It was hard, grueling work.
So yes, I know about life in the Old West. The Old West isn't dead and anyone who says so has never been there.
The house I grew up in
My mother bought the house with the pittance the Army paid us for my father's death in the line of duty. Not much has changed except it originally had grass down to the sidewalk without the raised railroad tie border. My mother, with no father to oversee our dating habits, had a bunch of thorn bushes planted beneath our windows. It didn't stop me or my sister from sneaking out but it did give us second thoughts a time or two. Those were removed when they started intruding on the mailbox (fastened to the drain spout on the porch, I don't think it's there any longer). The window to the left of the door as you're looking at the house was my sister's room; mine was in the rear corner. My mother rents it to a family friend now.
The house my grandmother owned
When my grandparents bought this house, it was a nasty shade of puke green. The neighborhood consisted of four streets behind them and one in front of them; you could see the mountains if you stepped out into their back yard. Later, they painted it barn red and planted roses out there on the front step. Next to the front step was the milk box (I doubt many of you know what that is for). We still got our milk in glass bottles from a dairy; the empties went in the box and every morning the milkman would collect them and bring by a new batch. I liked hiding small things --- pebbles, sticks, a toy --- in there for retrieval later. The hand rail wasn't there back then because no one needed it and the tree you see out front was just a sapling. The juniper bushes were low to the ground and sometimes did so poorly we doubted they would ever grow into proper bushes. There were two globe willows out back. I spent more time at this house than I did my own and would have liked to keep it, if it hadn't been foreclosed upon as she was dying.
Looking down on the town
This is the town of Montrose, as seen from the cemetery where my grandmother was buried. It's not difficult to imagine that the town looked much the same one hundred years ago (in fact, there's a similar photograph in the courthouse which pretty much proves that point). I'm not sure what keeps the town going --- it is growing, slowly --- since the days of the big family owned cattle ranches are pretty much gone and everyone knows that agriculture of all types is in trouble. The cemetery is on the rim of a formation called a hogback ridge and the gates close at dusk but the cemetery itself isn't fenced in. There's an old quarry just off the rim and below that is the high school stadium. We used to drive our vehicles or ride horses down that trail through the old quarry and then party behind the stadium during Homecoming. It was also the prime make-out point (not that I ever knew anything personally about that).
Sunset on the hogback
I've never seen prettier sunsets --- not even over the ocean --- than the ones I've witnessed out west. You can still see the mare's tails in the clouds which indicate a fair evening and further down is some of the old fence line surrounding the quarry.
Main Street
Those are all original Western store fronts and many of those businesses have been there since the founding of the town. For some reason, Montrose is one of the few western towns I've come across which never had a major fire and thus never had its business district destroyed.
The Fox Theatre
The current building dates from the early 1930s and is a traditional art deco style building inside and out. The floors inside are hardwood and the chairs of wood and velvet upholstery. Heavy velvet curtains separate the two downstairs theaters from the lobby and the lobby has a tiled mosaic wall. The upstairs theater, called the Penthouse, is poshly decorated in velvet and satin and has its own concession stand which, when I lived in Montrose, would even serve beer and small appetizer trays. For a long time, aside from the drive-in, it was the only movie theater in town. A few years ago the family who owns the Fox also built a modern theater on the edge of town.
City Hall and Elks Lodge
This is one of the oldest brick structures in the town. A secondary, more modern (circa 1920s) city hall was built kitty-corner to it around a plaza about two blocks down from this location.
Montrose County Courthouse
The photograph doesn't really do it justice. It's a two square city block sandstone structure with a domed ceiling surrounded by beautiful lawns and cottonwoods which are hundreds of years old. You can't really see it from here, but the old hitching posts for the buggies and horses are still intact...and still in use, for that matter. I wish we had had time to go inside; the floors are black and white marble quarried from Marble, Colorado and the banisters are polished wood over one hundred years old. Its windows, by the way, were intentionally designed to reflect back the sky and the mountains.
Montrose County post office
This building was added somewhat later (1920s to 1930s, I believe). They kept in mind the town's heritage and gave it a vague western false front. The Spanish tiles were imported from Mexico. When I lived here, the handicapped accessible ramps didn't exist. Those were put in to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act in the late 1990s. Yes, that is my truck parked there.
The Townsend House
The Townsends were one of the founding families in Montrose and they still live there, although not in the house itself. The house is notable for that and for its beautifully preserved Victorian architecture, including the carriage house and servants' quarters.
Montrose High School
It was Montrose County High School at one point in its life. Much of the original brick structure has been remodeled to obscure the original lines of the building. It was, when I attended, a simple two story brick schoolhouse with a gym on one end and a cafeteria on the other. The clock tower didn't exist and none of the trees had been planted out front. This was originally the front entrance to the school; today it's located in what was the rear of the building on an annex. You can't get into the school at all now without going through a whole bunch of security checkpoints. There's actually very little left of the school as I remember it.