October 31, 2022
Our big weekend is coming up at the Phippen Art Museum just north of Prescott. This Saturday, November 5, Jana and I are speaking at the museum at 1 PM about our adventures co-writing the Hellraisers book and the dark secret Olive Oatman took to her grave.
October 30, 2022
Here's the prototype for a new product: The Bozecard Roadside Rack, full of beans and all the Old West characters you and I love, writ large.
I'm aiming it at the Phippen Art Museum opening next Friday. So look for it in the gift shop.
From Dust to Dust is a pretty accurate epitaph for my tombstone, since I am so enamored of impressionistic dust in Westerns and Western scenes, like this:
We're planning a big road trip next April with the Bortscheller grandkids. Deena mentioned her kids are the perfect age to travel because they are not yet teenagers. True-true-true-true-so true! So, I thought it was time to lay down grandpa's Road Trip Rules.
The Ten Grandpa Ha Ha Road Trip Rules
October 29, 2022
On our morning walk yesterday, Uno wanted so bad to go after a coyote. Fortunately he was on a leash and I kept him at bay. Later—off the leash—he encountered this.
Actually, it's Bev's dog Fluffy from up the road. And they do this dance every single time they meet.
Then, they do that attractive smelling of the rear deal about seven times. It must be some dog protocol thing.
Speaking of road rituals. . .
Grandpa Ha Ha's Road Rituals
We are taking our grandkids on a road trip next spring and the first thing I do is to remind everyone where we've been.
And. . .
Yes, I like to remind everyone of the history of road trips in our family.
One of the extra benefits of road trips is finding good postcards that capture the flavor of the locale you are going to visit.
Another Roadside Bozecard
There's many more rules, but we'll cover those tomorrow.
"Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason."
—Jerry Seinfeld
October 28, 2022
Took this last night of Uno outside the Jailhouse. Actually with that hang dog look Uno looks like he is IN the jailhouse, which is actually our pumphouse but we built it to look like an old jail.
The stone driveway was inspired by our 2003 trip to Spain when Thomas Charles was on a student exchange program in Valencia and we took a car trip and landed in the hanging village of Cuenca, and the entire town was paved with stones like this and I took that inspiration with me back to Cave Creek. Every day I would go for a walk down in the creek bottom and bring back flat stones and we built this driveway a la Cuenca, as I like to put it.
Muy Muy Mexicano
"Carlos Maraca Dressed to The Nueves"
Do you know how insane someone would sound if they time traveled from the present, back to the past, to report on what is going on in our world?
Your grandkids will sport disparate, jumbo tattoos all over their arms and legs, and the more different and weird the designs are, the more they will like it.
Your phone will kill the flashlight business and the Yellow Pages and the phone book itself. Oh, and your phone will kill the map store, the wall calendar and many radio stations, oh, and the CD, and the need for a wallet or a newspaper. Not to mention your attention span.
"The problem with Hollywood is, they've all read the book, they've been to these lectures. They know how to tell a story, but they don't have anything to say."
—Robert McKee, best selling author on story, character and script development
October 27, 2022
Went over to my neighbor's house last night for wine, snacks and a life solving session. While Bob Hoss and I we were talking about the future of everything I happened to look out his living room window and spied a very unuusal sunset shaping up over the Seven Sisters. So, we both went outside and I snapped this photo.
Call me a brain-addled-old Hippie, but is that the face of someone we all know in that cloud shape?
Daily Whip Out:
"Bob Dylan's Head In The Clouds"
Okay, some visually challenged persons in my family don't see it. Here's a drawing to give you a clue:
Daily Whip Out:
"Dylan's Head In Clouds Cheat Sheet"
Now do you see it? I'm glad we got that straightened out.
"You just kindah wasted my precious time, but don't think twice, it's alright."
—Bob Dylan
October 26, 2022
Yes, it's that day. Enough said, for this year.
Meanwhile, had a big pow wow with the folks at the Phippen this morning about the premiere of the book and the cascading collage.
Section Five of The Cascading Collage
And here are the rest of the quotes you will see on the walls at that fateful date in early November.
October 24, 2022
In the late fifties it was wall to wall Westerns on TV and, according to the below featurette, this created "headwork" for the hat-check girl. Check it out.
A good friend sent me this. I just can't remember which one.
Yes, he lost some humping tendencies, but all in all, he is much more even tempered.
Cowboy Gear Question
In most photos of the old style vaqueros they don't often wear scarves. Por que?
Meanwhile, the Texan cowboys in old photos wear scarves and the Mexican vaqueros do not. What the hell is the deal there?
Meanwhile, closer to home.
The ride and the office are gone
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."
—Voltaire
October 23, 2022
It started in a barn with blue lines (and white socks).
The Blue Line Beginning of
The Cascading Collage
Followed by a flurry of sketches. . .
And, then Mark McDowell and Brent Bond, of Cattletrack Arts Compound, created five big sections of board to fit within that blue line and we went through some gyrations until we ended up here.
And here is a short film on the process from Ken Amorosano.
The Making of The Cascading Collage
This crazy and ambitious project will premiere on November 4, at the Phippen Art Museum outside Prescott, Arizona.
Be there, or be square.
October 22, 2022
Thanks to my third-grade-school-mate, Bill Blake, I got to witness one of the last, oldtime dances at the Wikieup School House on the Big Sandy. It was the summer of 1957 and the queen of the dance was a young cowgirl named Roxie Stephens.
As an impressionable ten-year-old, there were oodles of cakes and a couple fiddles—no drums—and no drinking allowed in the schoolhouse. But, many, if not all, the cowboys went outside for a nip and sure enough there was a fight between two young cowboys between two pickups and I got to witness the KO punch.
Okay, that photo above, is actually of Angie Dickinson, back in the day, but in my memory, that's how Roxie looked.
Whenever I see old photos of cowboys I am always taken back to those wonderful memories of the Big Sandy and the strapping vision those young bucks cut.
These great looking guys with the double-gun-belts are not Big Sandy Cowboys but I say, close enough for government work. A favorite line, by the way, of a Big Sandy cowboy I worked with at the Highway Department.
The Kaboys of Mohave County
In my memory, this is how they looked, as rough as they come.
Of course, when I was growing up, Mohave County wasn't just full of cantankorous cowboys.
October 21, 2022
Yesterday, Uno and I drove down to Cattletrack to put the finishing touches on the Cascading Collage. The Collage Boys, Brent and Mark, set up a painting station outdoors with two sections at a time propped up at a 45 degree angle, as I requested. When I finally got there and saw the task before me, I kind of had to agree with Uno.
There were tours going thru the compound and a film crew was also working on the property, so I didn't feel comfortable leaving Uno loose, so I worked with my left hand and held onto his leash with my right.
An hour and a half later, we were finished and we posed for this formal shot.
The Phippen Art Musem Show and this collage will premiere on November 4th at 5:30 P.M. and you need to RSVP at twmag.com if you want to avoid a $20 cover charge.
And, if you'd like to get a preview of the art in the show, here are all 66 pieces:
The Hellraisers & Trailblazers Art Show
I'll see you there! It may be a total disaster but I firmly believe in what Joseph has to say:
"Any disaster you can survive is an improvment in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! this is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow."
—Joseph Campbell
October 20, 2022
Good morning from the cave that Cave Creek is named for.
Daily Whip Out: "Free Barrels On"
The irony is that if you went back 150 years, the Apaches who lived in that cave probably knew Mickey Free.
Another irony is my phone killed the phone book.
"Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top."
—Ed Abbey
October 19, 2022
This coming January we, at True West magazine, will celebrate our 70th anniversary of continuous publishing. We are asking our writers, contributing editors and our readers to tell us about their favorite Old West photos. Here are a couple examples to get you going.
"In the True West Wyatt Earp issue (2001) there is the 'OKII Shoutout at Schieffelin Hall' article. There is an image of Ron Fischer standing over Allen Barra and I think this photo, perhaps above all others, demonstrates the huge shift in the field I saw from the Glenn Boyer years to the modern era."
—Erik J. Wright, contributing editor, Tombstone Epitaph
"Unlike Camilius Fly, I was ready and I took the photo."
—BBB, comparing the most famous gunfight in the history of the West to the nitpickers and footnoters who staged the second confrontation, which ironically was over the events at the first event
