Journal Notes

I have copies of sample chapter booklets for anyone who emails and lets me know they’d like a copy.  Marshall Bill Tilghman is my favorite Old West lawman, but Sam Sixkiller is right behind him. 

A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life. — Henry Ward Beecher.   The future of libraries was the topic of conversation at the Authors on the Move event I attended this past weekend.  Will there even be such things as libraries in another ten years?  I can only hope so.  Technology and the economy are threats to the life of libraries across the country.  Libraries in the Old West got their start by pioneer women who wanted to compile all the reading material they had brought with them over the plains.  They wanted the material housed in a central location for everyone to enjoy.  Calvin E. Stowe, a professor and librarian at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, was chiefly responsible for the development of largest academic library in the world.  His wife, famous educator Harriet Beecher Stowe, believed her husband was destined to do create libraries.  “I was married when I was twenty-five years old to a rich man in Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Arabic and alas in nothing else,” she wrote in her memoirs.  “My husband had a large library of books and a great deal of learning but nothing else.  What else could he do?” A panel discussion was held at Authors on the Move between two best-selling authors about the future of libraries.  The two writers were so enamored with themselves that an answer was barely touched upon.  They spent a great deal of time bragging about themselves and their rise in the literary field.  Several at the signing left midway through their mutual praise fest.  Convinced the pair would eventually get back on topic, I stayed.  The speakers ended the commercial for their work with a challenge for authors and library lovers in the audience to consider what we need to do to help libraries remain relevant.  I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know it’s an important question.  Libraries like the one in Dodge City, Kansas are thriving.  Cathy Reeves is the head librarian there and has seen to it that her library continues to be a necessity.  Maybe we need to send enthusiastic, driven women like Cathy to speak at major book signings and conferences like the event I participated in this weekend.  She could answer all the questions asked and share her innovative ideas.  Those who attended the event could actually learn how to save a library instead of listening to two authors go on and on about how much better their work is than the Twilight series of books.

One should rather die than be betrayed. There is no deceit in death. It delivers precisely what it has promised. Betrayal, though … betrayal is the willful slaughter of hope

It’s hard to imagine that mother and dauther teams were scamming business owners out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1893.  That’s the kind of thing I thought only happened today and not so much with businesses but in divorce cases.  The mother is always right and the father is always pond-scum.  Pond-scum that ends up paying everything they have to visit with their children who will probably grow up to hate him because the children have been primarily raised by pain-killer addict mothers who teach the kids that their fathers are worthless.  And if that doesn’t work let’s tell the courts he raped you….but I digress.  It happened in Chicago, New York, Boston and San Francisco – Jennie Freeman and her daughter Fannie pretended to be hit by cable cars, trucks (like the one in the photo) and horse drawn carriages.  Doctors for the rail line companies they would sue for damages would call on the scammers and examine their so-called injuries.  Often times Jennie would claim Fannie was paralyzed.  The company hired doctors couldn’t figure out how they always made their symptoms seem so real.  It wasn’t until a private detective rented an apartment above the Freeman’s place in Chicago that the truth was learned.  Through a hole in the floor the investigator spied on his downstairs neighbors.  He caught them soaking their feet in freezing cold water.  Jennie and Fannie would leave their feet in the water until they became numb.  The company doctor would arrive after the water treatment and when he examined their limbs of course mother and daughter couldn’t feel a thing.  The private investigator exposed their scam and the women went to jail.  That’s how it should be when liars are exposed.  Now of days we just let them go free so they can pretend to be victims.  Jennie and Fannie were eventually shot and killed by unknown assailants.  Authorities suspected the men who shot them were hired gunmen working for the rail lines.  I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

If this were only 1881 and I could finish this war the way Earp did.  Here is today’s heartache.  It’s a statement from a cold-hearted woman who has no care for anyone but herself and no vision beyond her own grief.  Her mother died a year or so ago.  My niece is a liar and I’ve diaries and phone conversations to back this claim. “My father is not a good man.  He is sick.  The last time I saw him he was wearing an orange jumpsuit, shaking profusely, hand-cuffed and pale.”  Her father is my brother.  My brother is indeed sick.  He has Parkinson’s Disease.  He was wearing an orange jumpsuit because he was accused of something he never did.  He was shaking because he has Parkinson’s Disease.  He was pale because he has Parkinson’s Disease.  Not a good man?!  I’ll fight to my death before I let anyone accuse him of anything horrific again.  And with all the resources at my disposal I will make sure the world knows what was REALLY done and I’m not alone in that.  When the truth comes out ALL of it will come out.  You think that would make a difference but I know it won’t.

I begin the new week in much the same way I ended the old, cranky. The reasons for my cranky attitude are virtually limitless. In addition to hot flashes that rival anything Dante could imagine are the less than witty comments made by health care professionals about my age. One example: “Hot flashes are typical for a woman your age.” There’s nothing helpful in that diagnosis but the doctors seem especially proud for having made it. It’s imperative I leave the doctor’s office immediately after such keen observation or I’d be forced to insert the point of my Tony Lama cowboy boot right in the doctor’s…uh…let’s say prescription pad. I can’t help but wonder if this is such a natural progression of life why there’s no Barbie doll to represent that stage. We could call her Hot Flash Barbie – press Barbie’s bellybutton and watch her face turn beet red while tiny drops of perspiration appear on her forehead. She comes with a hand-held fan and tiny tissues. I’ve noticed a few whiskers emerging as of late. Maybe they aren’t really chin hairs just stray eyebrows. Whatever they are I can style them easier than my own hair which always looks like it’s been trimmed with a Bic lighter. And then there’s the issue of finding a quality bra that fits. When I was in my 20s I was told to look for a bra that both lifts and separates. Now I’m just looking for one that lifts. I cannot bring myself to take bra-sizing tips from the nineteen year-old working at Victoria Secret however. I simply cannot take advise from someone who purchased their breast as recently as last week. It was suggested recently that I take a trip to the ocean, maybe go for a swim. I’m sure that won’t help my cranky disposition. I could snap a thumb off getting this frame into an ill-fitting, spandex suit. I think the life expectancy of a woman my age decreases substantially swimming in the ocean too. You think the lifeguards try hard to rescue fifty year old women? My guess is they see a fifty year old woman with a few chin hairs in an ill-fitting, spandex suit with a pair of broken thumbs and they decide to stay on shore. I can hear them saying something like, “She’s lived a long life. Let her go.” I know that in the overall scheme of things these aren’t real challenging issues but I’ve had my fill of those. My brother Scott is struggling with serious health problems now. He’s been in the hospital and doctors are unable to figure out what’s wrong. I don’t want anything to happen to him. And then there’s my brother Rick. It’s been more than eight years since he was taken away. The bad guys continue to go unpunished. I count the lawyer who pretended to represent us in the case as one of the bad guys. I used to regard all lawyers with respect bordering on reverence. Not anymore. Like Pamela Anderson, the legal profession started out with good intentions, just somewhere along the line it got really scary. Speaking of Pamela Anderson, I bet she doesn’t take advice from the Victoria Secret gals either. But then I guess she doesn’t have to.

I’m never too far away from the thing that breaks my heart.  In my day to day job I come across items that trigger the deep hurt I thought was dammed up for a few hours at least.  One of the chapters I’m working on for a new book loosed a flood of emotions yesterday.  Anne Cook was a homesteader in Lincoln County, Nebraska in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  She was also a prostitute, bootlegger, embezzler and murderer.  She was truly a disturbed character obsessed with amassing a fortune.  She abused her children, particularly her adoptive son.  When a mob boss moved into Lincoln County threating to claim a portion of the bootlegging and prostitution market for himself, Anne’s reaction was one of outrage.  She quickly put into play an evil plan she had for getting rid of her competition.  The plan involved her adoptive son.  The nine year old boy was to volunteer his services to the mobster (make money runs for the man, deliver a gun or two) for a couple of days and then report back home.  At that time Anne would take the boy to the sheriff’s department where he would lie and tell law enforcement that the man he was helping out molested him.  Anne promised the fellow outlaw that she would make the boy testify to the act in court.  Realizing he would never be able to escape the backlash from such a claim the bad guy left town.  All the guns and muscle the outlaw had wouldn’t stand a chance against such a hideous allegation.  I marvel at the power that false allegation has and believe with all I am it is more powerful than any man-made weapon.  The mind that decides to tell this kind of lie is particularly twisted and devious.  John Steinbeck once wrote “I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. . . . The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?”  If after all the years of fighting against such a soul ends in victory for her I don’t think I’ll be able to go on.  When my brother goes so will I.  There’s no way to live here if the heart of the innocent can be so easily snuffed out and such horror is applauded. 

It’s known as the old wooden bucket delusion. Pioneers believed the best tasting water came from old wooden buckets. If they had lived as long as they thought they would sipping the swill contained in those wooden buckets they would have been outraged to learn that people are now paying $2 and $3 for bottled water. The stone well and wooden bucket are romantic symbols of country life of the 1860s, evoking nostalgia for the purity of spring water and derisive snorts at the chemical “manipulation” of modern tap water. However, our confidence in nature’s ability to purify should be balanced by an appreciation of man’s ability to pollute. The well water was indeed clean in the beginning, but settlers inadvertently contaminated it. For practical purposes the well was dug close to the farmhouse, which itself was close to the barnyard, stable, pigsty, coop and cesspool. With not even a pretense of drainage, the well exposed to all sorts of noxious matter seeping through the ground. Slush from the kitchen, festering matter from privies, and seepage from animal wastes posed a growing danger to the water supply and filled the air with vile odor. A number of health experts warned that much of the sickness and unexplained “misery” of the pioneers could be traced to polluted wells, but they were ignored – even by some physicians. “I knew a doctor,” said Oregon farmer M.T. Eales, “who had a cow-barn, a privy and a well all within one hundred feet of his kitchen.” I couldn’t help but think about that while visiting the Old West town of Berlin. The home on this journal page had a barn, privy and a well in close proximity to one another. There were rain barrels around the property too, but contrary to poplar belief, that wasn’t as good for you as one might think. While not exposed to seepage contamination, it developed its own peculiar infestation from dust and flies. I never would have made it as a pioneer. I at least like the illusion of getting a drink of water that isn’t teaming with bacteria. I don’t think I’d be able to pull that off with a horse drinking from the same container. Guess my love of the Old West only goes so far.

Enter to now to win a copy of

Thunder Over the Prairie

The initial dream was to be a stand-up comic. I’d grown up watching Totie Fields, Joan Rivers, and Phyllis Diller and couldn’t imagine anything better than making people laugh. I worked my way through college at the University of Arizona doing stand-up, and it was there I learned how easy the aforementioned women made it look. Different from prizefights that pit people against one another in the presence of paying spectators, comedy pits the fighter against the paying customers, with silence as the killer and the detonation of laughter as the victory.

You tried hard to forget the sets when no one even chuckled and relived the sets where the audience was happy and doubled over laughing. I’d had a couple of those kinds of sets and was feeling pretty good about my chosen vocation when it happened.

I settled into my seat on a bus I was taking from one part of Tucson to another and started working on a few new jokes when the guy sitting in front of me turned and pointed at me and said in a loud voice, “Oooo, you are so funny.” I smiled, thinking he’d obviously seen one of my routines. I got up and said, “Thank you, thank you so much.”

A few moments later, that same guy turned to the woman sitting next to him and said, “Oooo, you are so funny.” The man said the same thing to everyone on the bus. I was the only idiot who got up and said, “Thank you, thank you so much.”

Life is a long lesson in humility.

Somewhere along the way, I decided to give up the life of a stand-up comic and accept an opportunity to write about the history of the American West. Which is not as much a departure as one would think.

One of the books I had the privilege of writing with my friend Howard Kazanjian (Executive Producer of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Return of the Jedi) was Thunder Over the Prairie: The True Story of a Murder and a Manhunt by the Greatest Posse of All Time. The murder took place in Dodge City, Kansas, in 1875, where future legends of the Old West, Charlie Bassett, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and Bill Tilghman were the lawmen and set off to track down the killer.

Not long after the book was released, I received a call from Emmy Award-winning director and screenwriter Walter Hill. He was the talent behind one of my favorite Westerns entitled The Long Riders. Hill wanted to let me know how much he liked the book and that he wanted to option it and adapt a screenplay based on the work. I was thrilled, but my mind raced back to the guy on the bus who told me, “Oooo, you are so funny.”

The problem, of course, is that once you’ve been publicly humbled by a man complimenting an entire bus like he’s handing out mints at a restaurant, you develop a very specific kind of emotional callus. So, when Walter Hill says, “I love your work,” a small voice in your head immediately whispers, “Yes, but does he say that to everyone?”

I resisted the urge to ask him if there were other authors in the room he’d like to compliment before I got too excited. Instead, I did what any seasoned, battle-scarred former stand-up comic would do – I stayed seated.

Because whether it’s a comedy club, a crosstown bus, or a phone call from Hollywood, I’ve learned one very important rule: never stand up and say “thank you” until you’re absolutely sure you’re the only one they’re talking to.

I’d like to think I’ve learned a little something from all of this. This month, you have a chance to win a copy of Thunder Over the Prairie. If you’re interested, you can visit www.chrisenss.com and enter. And if you happen to win… well, feel free to say, “Oooo, you are so funny.” I promise to stay seated.

I am filled with thoughts about my brother Rick today. In federal prison for a something he did not do, he suffers from Parkinson’s Disease, his eye-sight is failing, and he still has no teeth from when he was beaten several years ago. I know that retribution is sure for his ex-wife and her daughter who caused such devastation. I pray in the near future the courts will deal harshly with them. I can’t be preoccupied with that however because the Lord tells me that vengeance is His. I am two people it seems. One who wants the bad guys to suffer horribly and the other who longs to keep my focus on the only thing that matters, Jesus Christ. I know I’m not the only one who wrestles with such things. I gain strength from the stories of others who have fought this battle. Men like Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale. Stockdale was a prisoner of war for seven and one-half years during the Vietnam war, four of them in solitary confinement. Despite repeated torture, he maintained secret communication with other American POWs and was a leader in setting the policy and standards for the prisoner’s resistance to their captors. Stockdale was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1976 and was a candidate for Vice President of the United States in 1992. At all time Stockdale carried with him something he called the ‘field manual for soldiers.’ In it was a handwritten pages which read as follows: “The essence of good and evil lies in an attitude of the will. There are things which are within your power, and there are things which are beyond your power. Within your power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion; in a word, whatever affairs are your own. Beyond your power are body, property, reputation, office; in a word, affairs not properly your own. Concern yourself with what is within your power. The essence of good consists of things within you own power; with them there is no room for envy or emulation. For your part, do not desire to be a general, or a senator or a consul, but to be free; and the only way to do this is a disregard of things which do not lie within your own power.” If only I could be as eloquent.