killer Kids of The Civil War

 June 30, 2025

   Working on a big feature for the September-October issue of True West. Got an ambitious montage going utilizing prints I have colorized and painted over of very young soldiers from both sides in the Civil War.

Killer Kids of The Civil War, Montage #1

Killer Kids

   After the battle of Centralia, rebel troops dallied with the dead Union soldiers and cut off their heads and played with them for some time, putting one head on another body and then when they tired of this they placed the severed heads on spikes and, mounting on horseback, wheeled around, waving the battered, expressionless faces into their comrades faces and and laughing.

   According to the author T. J Stiles, "the rebels walked among the dead, crushing faces with rifle butts and shoving bayonets through the bodies, pinning them to the ground. . .others slid knives out of their sheaths and knelt down to work. One by one, they cut seventeen scalps loose, then carefully tied them to their saddles and bridles. At least one guerrilla carved a nose off a victim. Others sliced off ears, or sawed off heads and switched their bodies. Someone pulled the trousers off one corpse, cut off the penis and shoved it in the dead man's mouth."

   It was a playground of juvenile atrocities. One 16-year-old bushwhacker was credited with killing the Union commander. The proud killer's name was Jesse James. His older brother Frank, 17, later remembered "We rode out of the woods low on our ponies, like Indians."

   They frolicked like this for some time until their commander, "the old man" told them to stop. They called their leader "The Old Man." William Anderson, also known as "Bloody Bill," was 23.

Daily Whip Out: "The Old Man"

"Bloody" Bill Anderson, age 23

   As Michael Fellman puts it in his masterful book, "Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict In Missouri During the American Civil War," "This was a war of stealth and raid, without a front, without formal organization, with almost no division between the civilian and the warrior."

   Civilians were caught in the middle. They often were attacked by troops who were sent to protect them and then again by pro-southern guerillas.

   The Union troops from Kansas were no better. In addition to "casual freebooting" these blue capped soldiers engaged in extortion and felt justified because they believed Missourians should be punished for their secessionist, slaveholding sins, and they subsequently raided, plundered and murdered with a special zeal.

   Heaven help a country when both sides believe the other are not only worthy of extermination but that it is God's will that their enemies cease to exist.

"The more things change, the more they remain the same."

—Old Missouri Saying

Stories About Heroes Like Buck Are Contagious

 June 29, 2024

   When I got the word—on Facebook!—that a Buck Dunton Art Show was closing at the end of this month, I immediately made plans to go into the Beast and catch one of my painting heroes before his art disappears back into the Taos Seven Cosmos.

   In case you are not familiar with Buck Dunton, here he is with his cat.

William Herbert "Buck" Dunton and Cat

A decent hat and a lazy cat but his paintings are absolutely, absurdly good. Here is the title wall of the show, upstairs in the Phoenix Art Museum.

   Masterful and so rich!

Buck paints his children.

   His ability to light up the foreground with dark, stylized backgrounds is comparable to no one. He just had this insane ability to formalize foreground figures. And the dude was from Maine! Ha. No offense, but we just don't think of Main-ites as Western painters, certainly not of this caliber. Anyway, glad we made the trek in, and by "we" I mean Kathy Sue and the Ds who joined us for breakfast at the Welcome Diner in The Beast.

   For that we thank Patricia, Deena's longtime friend who recommended it. Dan is holding our 50th wedding anniversary present which we didn't have a chance to give to them last weekend. It's a blow-up poster of Darlene in a Super Stock Dodge pulling out of the Sagebrush Drive-In on Hilltop back in 1963.

   It was an hour in and an hour out in triple digit heat, but you know what?

   The laughs and the inspiration were worth it. Also, I had the chance to drop by Arizona Art on the way back out to Cactusland and picked up $150 worth of scratchboard supplies. That led to this little ditty.

Daily Reworked Scratchboard:

"Oh, I think you can dance, amigo."

“We tell stories about heroes because of a simple fact about the human mind: Courage is contagious, and when you hear about someone doing something heroic, it makes you want to be a hero too. And these days, we could use more heroes.”

—Malcolm Gladwell

John Chisum and Susan McSween In Flagrante Delecto

 June 28, 2024

   I don't know about you, but some history just tickles me pink.

Daily Reworked Scratchboard Whip Out:

"John Chisum Caught In Flagrante Delecto

With Susan McSween"

"Oh, grow up Bob!"

—Every adult female in Kingman, Arizona, circa 1965-2024 

The Historian and the Novelist Are Seeking The Same Thing—And So Are We

June 27, 2024

   Sometimes people criticize our efforts at True West with this complaint: "Just print the facts, man. I only want the facts!"  

   Sometimes we do just that, but, I'm sorry, the truth is not facts lined up. I know some of you think it is, but here's an example on why that isn't true. Ted Turner spent $90 million on "Gods And Generals," with the intent of getting the facts of Gettysburg right. He optioned a great book on the subject, hired a fantastic cast, filmed great battles with 8,000 extras, but, as a withering review put it, "it didn't have a point." It made back a piddly $12 million. And here is the reason: it didn't have a compelling story. In movies and books and history magazines we need to tell better stories! Has our history been picked clean? Hardly. Are there new ways into old stories? Yes, read Brad Courtney's groundbreaking research in the current issue on the many trails Doc Holliday went down before he landed in Tombstone and you will see what I mean.

   So, let's review: how do we fix our history problem? We need to tell better stories. That is the mandate, that is the trick, that is the future. I'll see you there. Or, will I? he said closing on a classic cliffhanger narrative, storytelling bit.

Daily Scratchboard Whip Out:

"A Cackling Old Vaquero"

(no doubt laughing at my presumptions)

Or, Put Another Way. . .

   "The point I would make is that the novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing: the truth—not a different truth: the same truth—only they reach it, or try to reach it, by different routes. Whether the event took place in a world now gone to dust, preserved by documents and evaluated by scholarship, or in the imagination, preserved by memory and distilled by the creative process, they both want to tell us how it was: to recreate it, by their separate methods, and make it live again in the world around them.

   "This has been my aim, as well, only I have combined the two. Accepting the historian’s standards without his paraphernalia, I have employed the novelist’s methods without his license. Instead of inventing characters and incidents, I searched them out—and having found them, I took them as they were."

—Shelby Foote

The Big Leaner Plus Dateline Flying A

 June 26, 2024

   Every morning Uno and I walk past this giant, leaning saguaro on the way up to Morningstar. Is it my imagination or is it leaning more than it was last week? 

The Big Leaner

   I'm not sure, but that sucker weighs about 5,000 pounds, so I have been walking by a little quicker than normal and I fully expect it to come crashing down any day now. Or, it could still be there a century or two after I'm gone. Either could be true. By the way, do you see Uno in the picture? 

His snout in the rocks, sniffing for game

Jugs Iced Free By BBB, Indeed!

   Meanwhile, back on Route 66 back in the day.

  Thanks to my band pard Rob "Rooster" Mathiasch, here are a couple golden oldies if you have ever worked in a gas station when it was full serve. Seems hard to believe from this vantage point, but there we were.

Dateline Flying A, 1961

The Service Station, 1957

  Crazy. How did Flying A have all those seemingly superior products, "100+ Octane!" "Veedol 10-30 all purpose oil!" and "Ms-3 by Dupont," and still go out of business? Well, sometimes you can have superior everything and still lose the farm. Just ask Ted Turner.

"It had a fantastic cast, jarring battle scenes and 8,000 extras. What it didn't have was a point."

—The devastating review of "Gods And Generals" which cost Ted Turner $90 million to make and distribute and it made back $12 million

Grankids Create Art, Saguaros On The Brain & Print Gets A Reprieve

 June 25, 2024

   Nothing makes a certain grandpa happier than seeing his grandkid's artwork.

"Mega Jaw" by Fenton Bell, age 5

And here is that budding artist

at his art station.

   Meanwhile, another talented grandkid, also an artist, turned 11 yesterday and he is pretty good at art himself.

Weston in G-Pa Ha Ha's Studio

   And, it must be said, I have had saguaros on the brain for a long, long time.

The Razz, Vol. II, No. 6, 1975

The Vinyl Effect

   It's about time. A prescient piece in the New York Times tells about the rise of certain niche magazines on printed paper—and they are thriving! Why? 

The Lean In vs. The Lean Back

   Digital content forces you to lean in to see your phone. It's harder on the eyes, your muscles feel a little tighter. A printed coffee-table book or a niche magazine is a lean back. You can lean back on your sofa, open it and relax. Also, according to the article, people are tired of being on their phones, paddling through "the fire hose of online content."

"The screen experience is just so reductionist. It just flattens the world, so that a Pulitzer Prize-winning story feels the same as spam. Some things deserve better."

—Stephen Casimiro of Adventure Journal

The Takeaways

• A minimalist cover

• A flat binding meant for stacking or shelving

• Deep stories

• Beautiful photos

• An aura of timelessness

• Never underestimate the intelligence of the reader.

• Quality. Quality. Quality.

   Okay, got it.

A Walmart in Deming, New Mexico

In Praise of The Long View

"The view is better from a greater age. Suddenly, you see the entire line—where things were, where things are going, where they veered out of control. The long view. And I think the mistake we make—certainly the mistake I made—was to think too small, too safe. I think that life was meant to be big. I think that people were meant to be big. I don't mean through gesture or demands: I mean big of heart and impact. We are here for a very short run of the timeline, and if a mark isn't made, if people aren't helped or moved by what we've done, then we haven't mattered. Show up to matter, not to be liked. Show up to be big. Investigate your heart and the hearts of others to find out what the big thing needed at that time might be."

—Marlon Brando

The Long View from Cactusland

Our History Problem: It's Our Job to Fix it

 June 24, 2024

   If you love history like I do, we have a serious problem. Interest in American history has never been lower. Schools are afraid to even teach it and when they do it's mostly facts and dates. Or, worse—political concepts!

   How do we fix THAT?

Spur Cross Saguaro In Monsoon Cloudscape

   I am going to tell you exactly how to fix it, but first we need to go back in time for a little history lesson.

   In 1963 a skinny kid with big ears looked out the window of the New Building on the MCUHS campus in Kingman, Arizona and made a wish. His wish was that someone would come to his school and tell him how to be an artist. And, if someone would show up and do just that, the boy promised that if anyone asked, he would travel as far as he could to tell the secrets he had been taught.

   No one came.

 Twenty-five years ago on September 18, 1999 three crazy friends bought a dying magazine. We were going to reignite interest in the Old West. We were going to rebuild what had been lost when Joe Small launched his big idea.

"Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength."

—Sigmund Freud

The Duke & A Fluke

 June 23, 2024

   Someone in Hollywood had the very bad idea to create a fake saguaro and place it on the edge of a wash so the Duke could pose as a cowboy for a publicity photo. 

Fake Saguaro & The Duke

(note the Duke's horse can't even

stand to look at it)

   This goofy saguaro is so bad it couldn't make it into a Roadrunner cartoon. 

  Why is this so laughable? Because arrogant outsiders—read that Hollywood Art Directors!—think they know what passes for a saguaro and they have no clue. Here is a real saguaro.

Note the differences. It's not even funny.

   Well, maybe a little funny. Okay, funny enough to make it into my Saguaro book. Along with this guy.

Greg Scott And His Patented Cac-Tie!

"You can't make up anything funnier than real life."

—Old Cartoonist Saying

The Ds Passed the Fifty Year Mark Yesterday

 June 22, 2024

 The Ds, that would be Dan and Darlene Harshberger, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary by having a big party down at Rustler's Roost in Tempe last night. 

Table Place Name Setting Where I Sat

(the Ds have always called me Robert)

   It was fun catching up with some of the youngsters I never get to see and also a few of the oldtimers, like Faye Widenmann and Bryce Ware of Kingman fame. After dinner we stepped outside on the patio for a sunset shot and I grabbed this of everyone along the wall.

The Ds out front of the anniversary party

 

   It was 117 degrees yesterday, so that's why everyone looks a little toasty.

"Kingman boy makes good. Stays away."

—Sign on a roadside culvert

The Secret to Failing More & Are We Witnssing The Return of Print?

 June 20, 2024

   It's another hot one.

Uno at The Top

    Meanwhile, down at the bottom of the hill, around noon, it's gets a little nuclear.

Daily Scratchboard Whip Out:

"Saguaros Ripple In The Heatwaves"

Failing to Succeed

It's easier than you think.

   I have failed at so many things it's not even funny. Well, actually, it's a little bit funny, if you think financial ruin is a belly buster. For your amusement, here are a few of my more spectacular fails.

   Dan Harshberger and I started a monthly Arizona humor magazine in 1972, not realizing the state already had a daily humor publication called the Arizona Republic.  Our publication—excuse me, our magazomic—The Razz Revue, lasted four years and made zero money. The last time I looked, The Arizona Republic is still publishing.

Volume I Number 1 is worth $55 today

(I own three of these, so there's one

day's worth of retirement meals right there)

   I had a checkered radio career in the eighties and nineties. I went on KSLX in Scottsdale, as a guest on the morning show to plug my book "Low Blows." When I got off the air I was offered a job, which turned into the Jones & Boze Show. That lasted eight years but then we ran out of gas and we were fired and I went back to cartooning for a couple years and then we were rehired by our old manager, Reid Reiker, who told us to work our magic on a new radio station he named Young Buck (which was a jab at Buck Owens who owned KNIX). We worked hard at rekindling our original chemistry—this time billed as Jones, Boze & Jeanne—but at about the ninety day mark, the Seattle owners fired Reid and brought in a new management team, led by general manager Bob Chase, who took us out to lunch and said, "Your show bums me out. It's not funny."  A short time later, I said "Besa me culo," on the air and we were all fired.

   In 1999, two crazy friends of mine and I decided to buy a failing magazine. After paying way too much for it, we proceeded to lose $30k a month, until both of my partners bailed and two women saved the magazine, Kathy Radina and Carole Compton Glenn. It has been a very bumpy ride, but in two months I will celebrate my 25th year behind the wheel of this careening vehicle called True West. In the last six months, our competitor, Wild West, went out of business, along with a dozen-or-so other titles in the history field. Everyone has warned me to bail, but today I read a very thought provoking piece in the New York Times about small, niched magazines making a comeback. Why?

"We’re all exhausted from our screens. We want something to savor.”

—Stephen Casiniro

   I call it the vinyl effect. As one of the new, small publishers puts it, "In the scheme of things, we have a small audience who we want to serve really well, with the best scholarship and the best imagery. Our magazine is designed to be collectable, not disposable."

"Every time history is retold, it moves a little."

—Old Vaquero Saying

   In the end, I failed so many times, I actually succeeded because the one thing I learned is, get knocked down five times, get up six. True, I'm on my 18th knockdown, but you get the picture. My only regret is that I didn't fail more.

   Is it possible to fail your way to success? I think so. In fact, I know so.

   We associate Babe Ruth with record-setting home runs, but did you know he struck out 1,330 times in his career and that he held the record for most strikeouts for 30 years?

   So what have we learned?

   If you want to be a successful you need to strike out more. Put another way, you need to jump off more cliffs and figure it out on the way down. Everything you want is on the other side of fear. If you want new ideas, read an old book.

   Why?

"Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little."

—Tom Stoppard

Saguaros: The Reigning Royalty of the Sonoran Desert

 June 19, 2024

   I've been infatuated with saguaros most of my life, and my earliest attempts to capture them on paper stretch back beyond the half-century mark.

Early Saguaro Whip Outs:

"Heatwave Highway" 1972

   This was an opening spread in the Razz Revue for my cartoon character, The Doper Roper.

   Meanwhile, I have also been a sucker for photos with saguaros in them, you know, like this.

Babes, Buicks & A Saguaro With Uplifted Arms Seemingly Exclaiming 'Have Mercy!'"

   What's interesting about this photo is those mountains in the background look like California mountains and if so, that saguaro is probably a tad out of their home range (saguaros only grow in Arizona and a small part of northern Mexico). I've heard reports of saguaros on the California side of Lake Havasu, but that is usually considered a fluke and a semi-reasonable stretch. We even had one saguaro at a motel in Kingman (probably transplanted) out on Highway 93, but since we are on the Mojave Desert and not the Sonoran Desert where the vast majority of saguaros dwell, this is another exception to the exception.

Speaking of Exceptions. . .

"A keen observer of Carnegiea gigagantia would find plenty of fake saguaros in western movies. My Darling Clementine, filmed in Monument Valley scattered a few very fake saguaros in a place that really didn’t look like Tombstone. They also appear in Spaghetti Westerns filmed in Almera, Spain. In actuality you live in Saguaro Central. They only grow in Arizona and Sonora (as far south as Navajoa on the road to Alamos) the ones around here an all in bloom and setting fruit."
—Greg Scott

Saguaro Central

   Yes, I do live in "Saguaro Central" and it's hard to look in any direction from my house and not see a forest of magnificent saguaros.

Sunrise On Ratcliff Ridge

   And, I have illustrated said ridge more than a few times. . .

Daily Whip Out:

"Ratcliff Ridge Back In The Day"

(circa 1988 when Ed Ratcliff lived in a trailer)

Daily Whip Out:

"El Pendejo Lands at Opodepe"

   Then, there's also all the cousins and shirttrail relatives to the saguaro.

  A mighty transplanted saguaro, at left, and his bony hillbilly cousin near the wall in our backyard.

   Frankly, I am thinking there is a book in here.

"A winner is just a loser who tried one more time."

—George M. Moore Jr.

Ex-Surfer Girl Sheri Riley Jensen Rides Last TW Wave

 June 18, 2024

   She is going to be missed.

Sheri Riley Jensen

   Back in the day, she was a bonafide surfer girl so obviously she has some major status in my world. But her biggest claim to fame is she is one of the very best sales people True West has ever had, bar none. She is retiring after a 16 year run and we are going to miss Sheri Riley Jensen. Here's how she puts it: "The moment I walked into the True West office in June 2008, I knew something special was about to happen to me.

"My 16 years at True West have been an adventure, an experience, and an opportunity to work with a group of people who are passionate about the history and preservation of the Old West. Our editors, writers and the entire True West team under the helm of our own BBB, are an incredible talented team that I have had the privilege to be a part of.

"My Dad was a big lover of the old Westerns and I was always hearing stories about the colorful characters of that time, which helped me fit right in at True West. Whenever someone tried to pull one over on my Dad he would say "Jesse James rode a horse and had a gun when we was holding up people!"

"I will never forget the friendships I have made and though I will miss working daily with the team, I know I will continue to see greatness in future issues with exciting stories and tales of the Old West.

"Thank you BBB, the entire TW team and our advertisers for all of your support throughout the years and making my time truly special.

"See you all on down the trail!"
—Sheri Riley Jensen 

Welcome to Cactusland: In Praise of the Mighty Saguaro!

 June 17, 2024

   As a bonafide Desert Rat I can totally relate to cactus tenacity and their stubborn work ethic. And, I agree with Hope:

"A cactus doesn't live in the desert because it likes the desert; it lives there because the desert hasn't killed it yet."

—Hope Jahren

Saguaro Century Sentries

   The grand daddies of them all are the saguaros, considering it takes at least 35 years for them to grow one arm! So, when you see a big boy sentry, he—or she—has been standing there almost as long as our country has been standing. Also, I have been admiring them and sketching them for a very long time, like this bad boy down the hill from our house towards the creek.

  

Daily Whip Out: "Crazy Arms"

1986

 Here's another sketch from 37 years ago.

Daily Whip Out:

"Big Daddy Saguaro Off Scottsdale Road"

1987

   One of the things that shocked me when we first moved out to Cave Creek is how many artists fail to capture the basic structure of the saguaro. For one thing most artists emulate a tree especially as the arms take off from the main stalk. But the saguaros in my back yard have gnarly joints with a decisive rib departure, like this.

Daily Whip Out: "Saguaro Joint-ure"

"I'm not a cactus expert, but I know a prick when I see one."

—Old Vaquero Saying

Daily Scratchboard Whip Out:

"Ratcliff Trailer House"

circa 1992

(yes, there is a jackalope hidden in the foreground)

Daily Contact Sheet, circa 1978:

"Saguaros Galore"

"A cactus is merely a very aggressive cucumber."

Daily Scratchboard Whip Out:

"Saguaros In Moonlight"

And, they proliferate in my border work.

Daily Whip Out: "Saguaro Ridge Rider"

   You might say, I have a thing about them and you'd be right.

"The desert works overtime to deny the cactus life, but still it blooms."

—Old Vaquero Saying