May 14, 2025
When one thing ends another begins. Sometimes even as one thing is beginning, another ending forces a new beginning. Yes, I'm in there somewhere. . .
Daily Whip Out: "Amber Rider #3"I've been coming back to a familiar captivo.
Daily Whip Out:"Mickey Free On His Red-Eyed Honker"
Ever hear a donkey or a mule do their morning call out? Audibly, it's somewhere between a rooster and a choking grizzly.
"A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer."
—Novalis
May 13, 2025
Interesting that in fiction or movies there have been very few Native femme fatales.
Daily Revised Whip Out: "Apache Pout"Professor Paul Andrew Hutton sites "Run of The Arrow" and "Arrowhead," as examples of "bad In-din women" but I'm thinking more like "Body Heat" and "Chinatown" a real Native Noire would be a breath of fresh air. Okay, hold yer horses. . .
Meanwhile, many nationalities have portrayed the good, the bad and the ugly.
"The real problem is, people think life is a ladder, and it's really a wheel."
—Charles De Lent
Daily Whip Outs:"Apaches I Love, On Paper at Least"
Come to think of it, so many types never make it to the silver screen, like these guys. . .
"Success is resting on a rotisserie"
—Old Vaquero Saying
Recently, I got a chance to visit the James family farm north of Kearney, Missouri and while I was there, the director of the museum brought out the original ambrotype of Jesse James taken when he was just a lad. It is an amazing image to ponder.
What I was struck with was how innocent he looks and I wondered just how and why he turned into the most notorious and legendary outlaw America has ever produced. Or, as Allan Pinkerton basically put it, "The worst man in America, bar none."
Daily Whip Out: "Killer Angel"
For one thing, I knew Jesse had to have had a teacher, someone who schooled him on the finer points of brutality and living outside the law.
When the census taker visited the James farm in June of 1860 to count the family, Jesse Woodson James was twelve and attending school, together with his sixteen-year-old brother Frank and ten year old sister Susan. In the fall when Jesse turned 13 he was enrolled for another year of studies, not realizing at the time it would be his last. So, what happened and who was Jesse's teacher?
The Teacher
He was born in Hopkins County, Kentucky when his family—two brothers and three sisters—moved to Missouri where his father got a job working on a farm. He was a typical farm boy growing up outside of Huntsville, Missouri. His schoolmates remembered him as a well-behaved and a reserved child. In 1857, the Anderson family relocated to Kansas Territory, on the Santa Fe Trail and settled 13 miles east of Council Grove, Kansas. They didn't realize it at the time but they had moved into the epicenter of a flashpoint that would tear the country apart. The boy's name was William T. Anderson and, in short order, he would become known as "Bloody Bill"
Taking Sides On A Bloody Trail
May 25, 1863
Frank James is riding with a rag tag group of Missouri Bushwhackers. After a raid, they stop at his mother's farm north of Kearny and then move on north to a grove of trees not far from the homestead and began to play poker on a blanket, over the goods they have purloined from their Union neighbors.
Frank James' little brother, Jesse, age 15 is in the field tending to a crop of tobacco along with a male slave. Jesse does not hear the approach of militiamen, who sneak up on him and quickly catch him up by the throat, and dragging him back to the house. Jesse sees that the entire yard is swarming with armed civilians under the banner of the Clinton County Provisionals and the Clay County Unionists commanded by Captain Garth's Company I. These are not federal troops but local militia, responding to the call of Bushwhackers stealing their property and goods, and they are hell bent on tracking down and eradicating what they see as vermin.
Of course, Jesse's mother and step-father feign ignorance about Frank's whereabouts, but one of the militiamen procures a rope and throws it over a tree branch. Putting the rope around Samuel's neck they begin to hoist him up over the protestations of Mrs. James. Accounts vary on how many times they hoisted him up, but at some point Samuels breaks down sobbing and tells them where the Bushwhackers are (in one version, he leads them to the spot!). In a running fight, five of the Bushwhackers are shot and killed but Frank escapes. This is often sited as the turning point in Jesse's young life.
Soon enough, both Frank and Jesse are riding with William T. Anderson who they called the "Old Man." Bloody Bill was 25 years old.
How Dangerous Were These Youngsters?
Under the tutelage of Bloody Bill, the Bushwhackers often wore stolen union uniforms and passed as Federals. It was not uncommon for them to ride up to a farm, call out the man of the house and ask his allegiance and when he saw the uniforms and said he was a Union man they would shoot him down. When they departed with the poor man's wife weeping over her husband's body the young partisan rangers would tip their hat to the lady because, of course, they weren't barbarians, they had manners!
One time they caught two troopers on the road, cut their throats ear to ear and then scalped them, tying the bloody scraps to their saddles. "Drunk on blood," as someone described them, they crushed faces with rifle butts, carved noses off, sliced off ears, or sawed off heads and switched their bodies for comic effect. One of them pulled the trousers off one of their victims and then cut off his penis and shoved it in the dead man's mouth. The teenager, Jesse James, had matriculated and completed his education in this culture of atrocity. Now he was about to graduate.
The Battle of Centralia
On September 27, 1864 Bloody Bill and about 80 men took over the small railroad village of Centralia, looting stores and discovering a barrel of whiskey that they hauled out in the street. Wild enough when sober they soon were roaring drunk. They robbed the passengers of a stagecoach and then stopped an express train on the North Missouri Railroad full of 125 passengers and 25 Union soldiers on furlough from Sherman's army, which had recently taken Atlanta. The passengers were robbed and the soldiers stripped and brutally gunned down with the exception of one sergeant who Anderson intended to keep as a possible hostage exchange. They then torched the train, tied down the whistle and sent it roaring down the tracks. They burned the depot and another train before leaving in the early afternoon.
At around 4 P.M. a detachment of about 147 Union troops from the 39th Missouri Infantry, led by A.V.E. Johnson arrived. They were mounted on horses confiscated from "disloyal persons." In other words they were riding horses they had purloined from secessionist sympathizers. They were armed with muzzleloading Enfield rifles, while the Bushwhackers are armed with multiple pistols.
Bushwhacker Dave Pool lured the detachment to an open field above a river bottom about three miles southeast of Centralia. The Union troops dismounted and formed a skirmish line. The rebels came out of the trees on the jump charging up the hill at about 225 strong. Two confederates were hit on the first volley, but most of the shots went high. The Federals never had a chance to reload.
"We were laying low on our horses, a trick the Comanche Indians practice and which saved our lives many a time."
—Frank James
It was over in a flash and most of the Union troops were slaughtered, with Jesse James taking the claim for killing the commander, although Jim Cummins later stated that several in the group took that "honor."
The Bloody Death of Bloody Bill
Major Samuel P. Cox a native of Gallatin, Missouri (a significant location in the later outlaw career of the James brothers) gathered 300 men to take down Bloody Bill and his vicious Bushwhackers. When he receives word where Bloody Bill is camped, Cox sets a trap near Albany, Missouri on October 27, 1864.
Daily Whip Out:
"Bloody Bill Caught Red-Handed"
"You're going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American boy."
The Boys Who Became Killer
So, were the James and Younger boys the exception to the rule? Hardly. Historians now estimate that some 100,000 Union soldiers were boys under 15 years old and about 20 percent of all Civil War soldiers were under 18. And by one count 27,000 people died in the Missouri-Kansas conflagration.
Jesse's Dark Turn
He came out of the war, severely wounded and it took him quite some time to heal. He joined the local Baptist church and a parishioner, Dr. W. H. Price, remembered him: "Jesse joined the Baptist church in this place, after he came out of the army, in 1866. I think he was baptized, and for a year or two acted as if he was a sincere and true Christian. In his early years, and after he came out of the army, he was quiet, affable, and gentle in his actions. He was liked by every one who knew him."
Born in that flash of anger that never goes away.
Now you know how Jesse James was educated to become a stone cold killer.
He is, at best, a composite, like one of those rough police sketches of a suspect described by multiple eye witnesses who can't agree.
"A distinctly American bandit has been remembered in a distinctly American fashion, through tourism, mass media, and show business."
—Erin H. Turner
May 11, 2025
Ever meet some crazy guy who always has a smirk on for every occasion?
Ever witnessed a vaquero on the border coming over a ridge in a cloud of dust?
Ever wished you could see a vaquero peering out from underneath his sugarloaf sombrero in hell?
—Old Vaquero Saying
Or, maybe, you'd like to see it more subtle. . .
Daily Whip Out:"Old Vaquero In Purgatory"
Words to live by.
Of course, not everyone appreciates my artistic efforts:
"BBB puts his infantile finger paintings all over the magazine. A child dabbling in watercolors instead of going to art school and learning how to draw."
—Jerry Weddle
May 10, 2025
Artists live for Happy Accidents. They are literally goof-ups that end up being better than your original intention.
Original Loosey Goosey Wash forHad a couple happy accidents on this gouache study trying to capture beatific light in the encroaching dust of a slot canyon. It definitely wasn't what I intended but it was so much better than what I thought I wanted. Thus the term: Happy Accident. Had to stop and do an insurance scan just in case I ruin it with the floating apparition of a Majacava Beauty I want to put in the middle of that light. You know, like this:
Daily Whip Out:"Everything He Wanted Was On
The Far Side of Divisadero"
I know what you're thinking: "Hey, aren't you a little old to be playing in the mud like a two-year-old?" Well, if you're thinking that, go ask Minnie.
Source analysis: When a band is performing, it often grasps the attention of everyone around since bands are loud and both visually and audibly entertaining. If something “is beating the band,” it is being done so greatly that it is visually and/or audibly overpowering the band. This hyperbolic expression compares an occurrence to a band to capture the extent to which something is being done. If the rain is beating the band, for example, it must be raining so hard that it is loud and/or visually shocking.
—Ava Oliver, USC Digital Folklore Archives
on their wedding day 1918
Oh, and Minnie is my Norwegian grandmother
from Thompson, Iowa
"Kun-du-stuk-en-usk?"
How I heard my grandmother say,
"Can you speak Norwegian?"
"Snakker du norsk?"
—How you apparently say, "Do you speak Norwegian?"
Lost In Childhood Translation?
"You know how in baseball they throw the ball into the crowd after they win a game? That's not allowed in bowling. I know that now."
—Old Mother's Day Joke
May 9, 2025
My son, T. Charles, sent me a Storyteller Tactics deck of cards with helpful hints on how to create better stories. So, this morning I read this one card with interest: combine disparate photos and images and give them demented back stories.
A madame at Fort Griffin, Texas, in 1876, she operated a disorderly house for a time but got tired of the grind and became best known as an adept gambler, once fleecing a young Bat Masterson of his entire bankroll and his pants. She allegedly made him mount up without them. She was attractive but stern and described by oldtimers who "knew her" in the biblical sense as having "sparkling black eyes and always comporting herself in a genteel manner." Tiring of men in general and cowboys in particular, she retired in 1897 and joined the Episcopal Church and became known for her social welfare work. She died at Deming, New Mexico in 1934.
Free-ways Named In His Honor
On the San Carlos Apache Reservation in the 1870s the U.S. Army was charged with writing down the names of each tribal member who was eligible to receive rations. The problem the soldiers had was in the Apache culture, it’s rude to ask an Apache his name. Plus, their names are often hard to pronounce, much less spell. This led to the soldiers giving the Apaches creative monikers such as Mickey Free (a popular, fictional, Irish character in a book one of the soldiers was reading) and Curly, who was probably anything but. Some were descriptive—Cut Mouth—and some names were not creative at all, like A-1. But one of the most enigmatic names given was Fun. Was he? One can only hope.
Daily Whip Out: "Fun"One Can Only Imagine
Fun was arrested in the aftermath of the Cibecue affair of August 30, 1881, but he was freed when Al Sieber came to his defense. Three other mutinous scouts were executed. He was always very popular at the dances and fathered numerous children. Fun retired from active service in 1925 and received an "Indian War" pension and lived out his life in Apache high style with his extended family on his ranch near McNary in the White Mountains. The Southern California rock band The Beach Boys immortalized him in their hit song, "Fun, Fun, Fun."
—Poached and bastardized from Dan L. Thrapp's Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography
"The problem with most history is that so much of it is simply not true."
—Old Grizzled Historian who absolutely hates my flights of fancy
May 8, 2025
I was looking for something else, of course, when I ran across a great Dan The Man cover that got away.
I can't remember exactly why we didn't run with this, but it was a huge mistake. File this under a Classic Cover That Should Have Been.
And speaking of Miss Grumpy, as some of you may know, I work really hard at being happy. From my point of view (it's late in the game, no time to lose, get your ass in gear!) the greater part of being happy is exercising a smile muscle, or two. For starters, I believe you have to wake up in the morning and choose to be in a good mood (see Voltaire quote, dead ahead). Beyond that, well, science is starting to fill in the gaps.
Three Scientific Ways to Be Happier
"The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood."
—Voltaire
