Bad Ass Bovine

Pam and Cole Tindol sent this to me recently. They raise rough stock for rodeos at their place in Wheeler County, Texas. I'm feeding "Puddin" and Pam is on the trailer and Scott Abernathey is behind me.

Happy Trails...

Atchison, Topeka and The Santa Fe - Henry Mancini - 1966

I,as dozens of small towns on the rail line, am a product of the AT&SF Railway. Trains have always been handy, a luxury, and dear to my heart. I've ridden from here to Chicago and from Los Mochis, Sinola, to Chihuahua City, Chihuahua, Mexico via railway.

Sick/Ghost

The worst thing about being sick is being the ghost in your own machine. I wonder what my witch doctor in Amarillo would think about that?

This is a picture I took recently of an old line shack camp about 20 miles West of Canadian, Texas on the South side of the Canadian River. When I was a youngster I recall the wooden pens on the North end of town where local ranchers would corral their cattle once they got them to town in order to load them on to wooden cars and ship them via the ATSF railroad North to Kansas City or Chicago usually.

These shacks were a resting camp for cowboys driving their herds from their ranches to the stock pens in Canadian. Their horses were quartered in the back and the front two rooms were for the cowboys to bunk.  

My friend Kelly Ward and I played in those old stockyards many a time. We invented a game of tag where we chased one another but our feet could not touch the ground. Both of us could only walk/run on the board fences and close or open gates to foil which one was chasing the other.

In those days local children had more freedom to explore and expand their imagination without worrying about somebody with a cell phone calling 911 and reporting "kids running a muck on the train tracks," or "kids with shotguns on first street shooting pigeons."

Common sense disappeared shortly after those old wooden stock pens did and paved streets arrived.

Happy Trails...

Pink Floyd - Nobody Home (The Wall Movie)

Jimmy Lynn Jones

Pattie's Acre

Pattie’s Acre

Autumn leaves were filling the air,
There on Brokenstraw Creek;
Her eyes decried, “Come get your share,”
There was no need to speak.
Lazy silk clouds rolling by,
On an October breeze;
I never felt any more at Peace,
Than that day at Brokenstraw Creek.

I took her hand in mine,
And she smiled a bit;
If ever we were one,
No doubt then that was it.

In dreams & times like these it seems,
When I now feel old, lost, and weak;
I wish we had stayed and shared our last days,
Near the waters of Brokenstraw Creek.
I’d find a fossil or two,
By the banks of Brokenstraw Creek…

© 2013 All Rights Reserved
By
Steven C. Whipple
&
Pattie Ann Smith

Mexico - Souther Hillman Furay Band

Don't Stop Believing - HD - Acappella Multitrack

Horse Shit and Cryptologists

Hey Dreamers!!
I'm tired of Wolf Blitzer, Megan Kelly, et al of telling us after they interview a political figure: "What they really said." Poetry is for dreamers and lovers not cryptologists. And, I for one, don't like politics polluting my dreams. (or lovers)... Especially those who tend to lean to the left.

Home

"I lived on the plains of North Texas for four years. It is the only place I have ever felt that I really belonged, that I really felt at home. But I belonged. That was my country ------terrible winds and a wonderful emptiness."
                                Georgia O'Keefe

I can do without the wind but I love the emptiness too.

Curiosity and Creativity

"RealityCheck . . . Breakthrough ideas are usually generated by a combination of knowledge, experience and, above all, curiosity about all things."  Tom Rizzo

Sparks of creativity are gifts and not to acknowledge or utilize those blessings are selfish if not downright chicken shit. Emily Dickinson only published three or four poems in her life but when she died her sisters found a chest in her room which contained over 4,000 poems. She cheated those around her. Damn you Emily!!!

But then, I suppose, there are folks like Al Sharpton/Barney Franks who won't shut up or go to their room and stay there quietly like Emily did. Damn them!!!

"Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe - read by Basil Rathbone

A beautiful 2 minute love story read by the master. About 2 minutes is all my love stories lasted anyhow, "In this kingdom by the sea."

Meanwhile back at the ranch...

I didn't run out of things to write about, I've just been pouting and attending to other matters. But it's time to move on dreamers.

"I'll Follow You" (Live) Shinedown captured in The Live Room

VII Images

Gene Autry Childress, Texas 1937

 

 

 

Hemphill Co. Texas WW II Bond Poster

St. Francis the Last  

 

Granddad Oscar & Thad Osborne 

VI Pics

 

 

Images V

 

The following images are of things that have been collected by me or trusted to my care by other like minded folks who recognized (?) some sense of value. Part of my collection contains historical worth, other items are of personal or sentimental value, and  a lot of other stuff should probably have been thrown away long ago.  

 

The images are in no particular order yet, except Jack Clements' 1964 Little League Baseball Club and the photo following it is one he sent me last month when he turned 83 years old. His wife Idris will be 80 in a couple of weeks. I still have both of them 49 years later.

 

These 30 or so jpeg files are included because they were handy & not because they were unique beyond reason. But I do have much to share such as 50 year old handwritten letters and an original picture of my great grandmother, Sara Emma Ruth Haynes Lee, taken in 1873 when she was 6 months of age.

 

 



Images IV

III

Images II

Images of Collection I

James McMurtry - Out Here in the Middle

jwb

jwb http://swansongrp.com/pics/219/jwb/ss_great_northern.jpg swansongrp.

Reasons or excuses...

I started to make up a big lie and say I've been too busy to run my mouth online but the truth is I had other mines to tap. I'll post something later when I think of something clever to say. The link under this sentence is pretty good if you like Clean Country Living and being good all the time. It's worth the effort.

Rope and Wire  

Image by Sherman Simpson

Leaving Dallas in '76 with part of big D in the back seat of my old green '67 Mustang.