December 2011 Blog Posts (59)

A One-Horse Town Down to Two People--Messex, Colo., Has Been Largely Abandoned, and Its Only Residents Like It That Way; 'We Get Along OK'

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/a-one-horse-town-down-to-two-people.html

Excerpt:

"The tenuous survival of Messex shows how long it can take for a town to die. The last big news here came in 1867, when a stagecoach driver was scalped,…

For those interested in "cowboy" music and poetry festivals, here's Dave Stamey's "Endless Concert Tour" list:

http://us.mg4.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?rdsc=100&rand=659557196

                                                      YODELING

Yesterday I watched a good old black and white Gene Autry movie in which he was yodeling in a song. By the way, it was very rudimentary and poorly done. I’ve heard it may have started by people hollering or yodeling as a way of communicating across the hollers in the south. Many years ago I wanted to teach myself how to do it. A guy told me to sing “go old lady, go old lady, go old lady….” to learn the rhythm. After a…

December 29, 2011

Deena Bean got me five yoga sessions for Christmas and I attended my first one in a long time. Debbie Payne met me at the door with open arms and we hugged. The studio is about a block from the True West World Headquarters so that is sweet. Really felt good to go again.

We had a big pow wow on Tuesday regarding our Wall of Truth. Here are my notes for the meeting:

The Wall of Truth

• What we do is…

December 29, 2011

I'm going to run this photo in my editorial for the next issue of True West. Here's what I know about the photo. The driver is my grandfather Bob Guess. His wife, Louise, is in the back and the baby is my aunt Sadie Pearl. She was born in September of 1915 and her daughter, Tap Lou thinks Sadie looks to be about six months old, so the photo possibly was taken in 1916. The location of the photo is also up for grabs but Tap told me her mother was born…

I was going to look at some parts for an old military jeep I’m trying to restore. We came upon a beautiful old restored covered bridge built in 1905. It was initially constructed by farmers to get their goods to market. The covering was designed to protect timbers. It is now in the Natl. Register of Historic Places. There are about thirty others in the State, most built after 1950. But this bridge crossing the Grays River is the oldest one in the State of Washington.

There is…

December 28, 2011

I woke up at midnite last night mulling an idea. As sometimes happens to me, I finally got up at two and went out to the studio to write the idea down. Actually, I typed it out in an email to myself at work.

Dire Warnings

To heed, or not to heed



The warnings were dire. Airplanes will fall out of the sky. Elevators full of people will plummet to their deaths. Remember the Y2K hysteria of 1999?…

Jeff Smith was discussing something that I have pondered the short time I've been here. What time period was this organization formed to talk about? What's West? And is it geared toward the Southwest or do  the Oregon Trail settlers to the Pacific Northwest also get included? Are there any written guidelines to help new members know what is wanted from organization members?

                                                        A COMPANY TOWN (lock, stock and graveyard)

Port Gamble sits near the Entrance of Hood Canal in NW Washington. The entire town is National Historic Landmark. In the mid-1800s industrialist determined that the great expansion of the west, especially California and…

Perhaps this bodes well.

http://www.deadline.com/2011/12/amc-renews-hell-on-wheels-for-season-2/

December 23, 2011

The Deen is flying in tonight with her fiance Mike. They're landing at 11 from LA, getting out to the homestead at midnite. The Boy, Thomas Charles, will be picking them up and bringing them out. Great to have the family together for Christmas.

Of course, I miss my mom and dad and grandparents at this time of year. Here's another photo from the Tap Lou Duncan Weir collection of my mother Bobbie. Photo is from about…

I was buying a used Chevy engine in a salvage yard years ago. The engine I bought was sitting on a blanket that I recognized as a wool Hudson's Bay blanket with four colored stripes of blue, yellow, red and green. It also had the four black points sewn into it. I knew this was valuable, so I told the salvage man I wanted to sit the engine in the bed of my pickup on the blanket and he agreed. This would have been disgarded as a rag otherwise. It turned out to be an authentic four points all…

December 22, 2011

Just got some great photos of my my grandparents from my cousin Tap Lou Weir. This is my grandfather, Bob Guess, his wife, my grandmother, Louise and their first born daughter Sadie Pearl at Steins Pass, New Mexico. Love the hat.

And here's my mother, Bobbie…

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all the fine folks here on this forum. May God Bless you with a Healthy body and guide you in everything you do!

December 21, 2011

For some reason our December issue is outselling anything we have done in years (in some outlets we are selling double what we normally sell). Many on our staff didn't like the cover (too busy). Why, do you think this nondescript image of a gunfighter did so well?…

December 21, 2011

We've got a kid who is getting married in March. This person of interest plans on using the back yard for the ceremony so Kathy got the landscapers out this morning giving them all orders to trim and clean. One of the things that is going to get pruned and cut down to size is a cactus that has totally gotten out of hand.

We planted it in 1986, or so. Here I am with my daughter Deena, with our dog Dusty standing next to it (actually,…

                                            WHERE’S THE DOG? ITS WASH DAY!!

I just ran across a photo of an unusual device which my grandmother talked about many times. Her mother brought theirs out west on the Oregon Trail in the latter 1800s. It’s a dog-powered clothes washing machine. Wash day was always on Monday. That’s when everyone did the wash. I don’t know why but even later on in my family Monday was always ‘wash day’. The rub was that the dog learned this also. On Sunday…

December 20, 2011

My Westerns Channel producer, Jeff Hildebrandt, met me in front of the True West World Headquarters this morning at eight and we drove up to Prescott in the early morning fog. Here's the conditions at Humboldt, just before we got to Dewey:

We…

December 20, 2011

My Westerns Channel producer, Jeff Hildebrandt, met me in front of the True West World Headquarters this morning at eight and we drove up to Prescott in the early morning fog. Here's the conditions at Humboldt, just before we got to Dewey:

We…