November 17, 2006
Fred Nolan just Emailed me with some good news:

"Just heard from Texas Tech U Press that TASCOSA, ITS LIFE AND GAUDY TIMES will be published Spring 2007, 384 pages, 7 x 10; 139 b/w photos, 1 map; $39.95 cloth; ISBN 978-0-89672-604-8.

"And the whole thing only took seven years."

If you want to check it out, go here:

http://www.ttup.ttu.edu/BookPages/0896726045.html

"Here, for the first time, is the true, detailed, down-and-dirty story of Tascosa, the “cowboy capital of the Texas Panhandle” and “the hardest place on the frontier.” Here at last are the facts that connect the stories of the “beef bonanza,” Pat Garrett’s “Home Rangers,” the 1883 Cowboy Strike and the relentless, undeclared war that ensued between the corporation
ranchers—Charlie Goodnight, “Alphabet” Lee, Al Boyce of the XIT and the rest of them—and the tough, dangerous fraternity of rustlers manipulated by Tascosa town boss Jesse Jenkins, a thirty year conflict that precipitated as gory a procession
of violence and death as any frontier town ever witnessed."

Fred also had something to say about one of my recent postings:

"I liked your prairie fire painting a lot. Here's a description from the Tascosa book of one that burned about as fast as a horse could run (!!!) :

"In November 1885, while a gang of XIT men were plowing fireguards on the
north line of the pasture, their cook 'let the fire get away from him at their
camp. …The wind was blowing from the west and headed the fire right down the
south side of the Beaver. The next night the wind changed and blew a gale from
the north. The grass was very rank and dry and burned about as fast as a
horse could run. This fire swept the ground clean from the Beaver to the drift
fence and from the New Mexico line 100 miles east.'”

Oh that is too good. I'm going to lift that, especially this part: "the grass was very rank and dry and burned about as fast as a horse could run." Too rich. I've been working more on the big fire set piece and this morning put in a horse and rider, being out run by the fire, skipping and jumping ahead:



I'm working up the remaining scenes for this sequence and plan to finish this weekend. J.D. and I put in another session on the chicken house last night. Got a bunch of chicken wire put on the roof. Our neighbor Tom came by with his dog, and Peaches took the opportunity to get into it with him. Attacked, then Buddy Boze Hatkiller jumped in. Took all three of us to get them apart. Peaches also had a mouth full of cholla from getting into it with them on the road prior to this altercation. Quite a metaphor for Iraq, don't you think?

"Productive achievement is a consequence and an expression of healthy self-esteem, not its cause."
—Nathaniel Branden