I’ve been working feverishly on a new book due to be released next fall entitled Love Lessons Learned by Women of the Old West. It’s been quite the education and since I’ve been focusing on teachers this month I thought I’d share a few things women like Calamity Jane and Agnes Hickok (Wild Bill’s wife) have taught me. Here’s what men wanted from women in the wild west: One – They wanted women to understand that they don’t care about clothes. Their own or anyone else’s. All they needed was a pair of Levis, one pair of boots, and another pair of better looking boots. That’s it. Two – Don’t talk to them while they’re trying to watch a boxing match or bear wrestling. Very simple. Match is over, they talk. Match is on, they don’t talk. Three – Hey, I’m sorry, but some men see a beautiful sunset and think, “You know the whiskey is better at the Long Branch in Dodge City than it is at the Oriental in Tombstone.” Four – Have a sense of humor. Without a sense of humor a relationship lasts about as long as John Wilkes Booths’ stage career. Five – Love them unconditionally. Help them out of the testosterone-induced fog they sometimes dwell in and lead them into the light. With the exception of bear wrestling these lessons seem applicable today. I had a wonderful time working on this title and am confident readers will enjoy it as well. I dedicated the book to George Brett. You’ll have to wait until the book is out in late 2013 to find out why.

The indisputable reality of classroom disorder presented a valid case against appeals for an end to birching. Birching was a form of discipline used by school teachers in which a birch rod was used on a bare bottom. Many frontier school houses were not a stable of docile lambs as television and motion pictures about that time period would like us to think. Many of the children were downright brats-hostile, ungovernable and prone to violence. In addition, the assembly in one room of pupils ranging in age from five to sixteen, with some strays even in their twenties, was an invitation to trouble. Under these circumstances the teacher was more warden than instructor, their routine more physical than intellectual. Some school boards in selecting new teachers made it a rule to pick a strong, stoutly built individual because they believed “baseness and vulgarity prevailed among the older boys.” Biting, eye-gouging and slug and scuffle matches were favorite sports, but boys saved the most barbaric excesses for strangers. “Let a boy from one town visit another and he was fortunate if he escaped with his life. The intervillage feuds made it incumbent upon the boys of one town to stone, beat, thrash such a casual visitor.” Faced with such ruffians, many teachers did not last a week, some not even a day. “In the Coloma, California district,” one pioneer noted, “the boys have driven off the last two schoolmarms and liked the one afore them.” Some parents and school board members took macabre delight in the encounter between a new teacher and the “boys,” some of whom were 175-pound six-footers. For schoolmarms such confrontations were a horrific ordeal. Margaret Banes, a school teacher in the San Bernardino area recalled: “I stormed up and down… This pathetic pretense of courage, aided by the mad flourishing of my razor strap, brought forth… the expression of respectful fear on the faces of the young giants.” However, while Miss Banes’s pantomime succeeded in cowing heavyweights who were old enough to go to sea, other schoolmistresses encountered continual discipline problems. One of these, a Miss Vega, taught public school in Sacramento. On October 8, 1870, the young woman, said to be in feeble health, punished four boys for unruly behavior by shutting them in the school building after class was out. Finally, when she released them, Miss Vega is said to have given the boys “a slight reprimand.” Their response was immediate; they stoned her to death.

There’s another new book on the way. Here’s a little about the exciting title. Author Chris Enss goes behind the lipstick and petticoats to reveal the real women who outran the law and upended gender stereotypes across America’s Heartland in her latest book Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw Women of the Midwest. Readers will meet Flora Mundis, expert horse thief and jail breaker; murderess Elizabeth Reed, the first and only woman hanged in Illinois; Belle Black and Jennie Freeman, who shot their way through hold ups and alongside the men of the Wyatt-Black Gang; and Anne Cook, bootlegger and madam, who killed her own daughter in cold blood. Illustrated with historical photographs, Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw Women of the Midwest uncovers the true lives long veiled by the glamour of dime novels and sensational tabloid accounts. Cozy up (if you dare) with these women, both sensuous and sinister, as they rampage across the Midwest. Chris Enss has written more than twenty books on the subject of women of the Old West, including Hearts West: Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier and Sam Sixkiller: Cherokee Frontier Lawman. Bedside Book of Bad Girls: Outlaw Women of the Midwest was published by FarCountry Press will be available in book stores October 15, 2012. Visit www.chrisenss.com for more information about the book or to schedule an interview.