Cave Creek Crazy Arms And Deadwood Swearing Revisited

 July 20, 2026

   My son Thomas asked me about a cache of saguaro prints in my studio and why the saguaro has such twisted arms. So, I told him.

The History of Crazy Arms

   When we first moved to Cave Creek in the mid-eighties, I would sometimes go down into the creek bed below our house and sketch the saguaros up and down the trickling stream. Unlike the tall and stately saguaros up on the ridges, the ones that were closest to the water invariably had contorted and twisted arms. My neighbor, Tom Augherton, told me this is because in the winter time, the frigid air off of the creek affects the growth of new saguaro limbs, twisting them in odd directions, almost like a tortured soul trying to escape a freezing situation.

   Thanks to my good friend at Cattletrack Arts Compound, Brent Bond, for taking one of those sketches and producing this special art print:

"Cave Creek Crazy Arms"

photopolymer relief and linocut, edition of 38

12" x 11.5" image on 15.5" x 14.25" paper

$200

   You can get your artprint right here:

Cave Creek Crazy Arms Artprint

   This is a repeat from a blogpost in 2017 on the accuracy of the swearing in Deadwood:

Youthful Depravity
The fact must come home to every observer that Deadwood's rising generation is very depraved. Go where we will our ears are greeted with profanity and obscenity from almost baby lips, while our vision is assailed by sights of the most lamentable character. These urchins are not all of that peculiar class known as "hoodlums" for whom ignorance is some excuse, as many of them receive the kindest and best instruction at home, but from too lenient parents who allow their children to wander through the city, visiting haunts of iniquity where are exerted those pernicious influences which sooner or later deaden the most acute sensibility, destroy all sense of right and morality and inspire to an emulation of the worst characters of the town.

--Black Hills Daily Pioneer-January 26, 1881

   Every generation thinks it's smarter than the last and wiser than the next. And, by extension, I think every generation thinks they more or less invented swearing. Why is this? Because nobody can remember their grandparents swearing. My grandkids have never heard me swear and if I do my job right, they never will. So these babies get to grade school and hear the inevitable swear words and they are excited and appalled ("My grandparents don't talk like this!") So they assume it's new. I think it's safe to say, this has been going on for about three to ten thousand years, and as long as there are grandparents, kids will grow up believing that swearing is a flippin' new thing.

"I am not young enough to know everything."

—Olscar Wilde