Journal Notes

Roy Rogers would have been 100 years old Saturday. Several radio stations celebrated the King of Cowboy’s birthday by airing episodes of the popular program he did with his wife Dale Evans. It was fun to hear the western duo ride and sing their way out of various desperate situations. Their faith in God always played an important role in each program but one program in particular moved me to tears. The bad guy in the episode I’m referring to had challenged Roy to a gunfight and the outlaw’s wife paid a visit to Dale to ask her for help. Dale suggested they pray. It was a moving, sincere prayer about surrendering all to God. It was refreshing to hear and the notion of complete surrender just happens to be the subject of the Monday night Bible study I belong to. I was convicted. I surrender nothing to God. I feel like two people many times. One part of me once to serve the Lord and the other part of me doesn’t want to surrender anything having to do with my brother. I want to see the people who caused so much hurt punished and I war against waiting on the Lord to bring that about. This lesson is getting old. The battle will intensify this week because I travel to see Rick. Oh, how I hate seeing the suffering. I want justice, but God wants me to surrender that to Him. I’ll take Dale’s example and pray constantly. Thanks Roy & Dale – you’re positive message continues to resonate in 2011. Thanks for not compromising you beliefs. Help me God to lay this burden down and focus on rewriting Hearts West II.

Tom King was one of the best horseback riders in Oklahoma in the late 1890s. He was also a horse and jewel thief. Oh, and a woman named Flora Mundis. She is one of the twelve women I’m researching for a book about women outlaws of the Midwest. I’m always amazed when the Old West figures I’m writing about so parallel what I have witnessed in my own life. Before dressing in men’s clothing and robbing ranchers of their horses she worked at her own saloon in West Guthrie and was always adorned in stunning gowns. Men flocked to her side and she reveled in the attention. Doc Jordan was one man that was not charmed by her. All her attempts to gain his affections were a waste and she made him pay for it. Now, here’s the parallel – in mid-1892, Flora swore out a warrant for Doc Jordan’s arrest, charging him with assault with intent to rape. He hadn’t touched her but few people believed the teary-eyed beauty would make up such a story. He tried to tell the citizenry of West Guthrie she was a liar but no one wanted to listen. Rather than turn himself in to the authorities and risk being lynched by a mob who promised to do just that, Doc Jordan left the territory. While he was gone the truth came out and the case was eventually dropped. After that, no man in his right senses would patronize Flora’s place. So she stashed her gorgeous wardrobe, donned cowboy garb, and began stealing horses. There is no record of the extent of her lifting, rebranding, driving, and selling of stock, but during the spring of 1893, she allegedly took horses from field and pasture, off the streets of towns, anywhere, disposing of them across Hell’s Fringe. Floris Mundis aka Tom King was killed in late 1894 trying to rob a bank near Tombstone, Arizona. Lawman Heck Thomas told of the woman’s ultimate demise to a reporter for a Kansas newspaper and added that Flora had accused several men of the same crime she accused Doc Jordan. The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Ain’t it the truth, Al.

The world is full of cowards. Now of days they hide behind Facebook accounts. Advanced technology enables owners of various sites to see who visit and it shows what they are looking for. For example cowards working at a hospital in Liberty, Missouri or going to school near Branson, Missouri can be seen snooping around a website. The new security system I have on my website will not allow cowards to leave anymore threats unless they post their name and email address. That they will not do. I believe if Bob Ford were alive today he would be a Facebook user who blocks his account so Jesse James couldn’t contact him. Ford however would be reading James’s website entries every chance he got. That’s because Ford was a coward, knew he had done wrong and just wanted to know when life as he knew it would come to an end. I’m not a fan of Jesse James, but I like this analogy. Jesse James is perhaps the most beloved murderer in American history. He and his gang shot bank clerks in cold blood, killed passersby who looked the wrong way, and derailed trains and robbed the passengers as they lay injured. But none of that mattered. To many alive at the time James was a post-Civil War hero, satisfying the thirst of many defeated Confederates to get in a few last shots after the war. James, a handsome bearded man with blue eyes and a narrow face, was fashioned as a modern-day Robin Hood, though later historians were at a loss to find any evidence of charitableness. As a Confederate guerrilla and later as a bank robber, James came close to a violent death several times. But as long as he had his own guns, he always seemed to survive. During the war he was badly wounded in the leg and his horse was shot out from under him. Just after the war federal soldiers shot James in the lung and left him for dead. He lay on the ground for two days until a farmer aided him. When he was ambushed robbing the Northfield, Minnesota, bank in 1876, three of his gang were killed, three were shot and captured, and only Jesse and his brother, Frank, escaped. His luck ended in 1882, after a local sheriff got 21- year-old Robert Ford, a less notorious outlaw, to join James’s gang to try to capture him. Ford and his brother easily joined up and were staying with James and his wife in St. Joseph, Missouri, that April, planning their next bank robbery. Early on the morning of the third, James, who had just come inside from feeding the horses, took off his jacket and, because he trusted his friends, his gun belt. He had climbed up on a chair to pull some cobwebs from a picture when he heard the cock of a pistol. As he turned unarmed, Robert Ford shot James in the head with a .44-caliber pistol that James had given him as a present. James body was put in a $260 casket – paid for by the sheriff who had recruited Ford – and sent by train the few miles to his hometown of Kearney, in Clay County, Missouri. His open casket at the Kearney Hotel drew thousands, jamming the small town with their horses, and even passengers from trains that made unscheduled stops on their way through. A collection to benefit James’s wife and two children gathered less than $10, but that was only the beginning. Personal effects of the house were sold for about $250. The owner of the house, a St. Joseph city councilman who thought he had rented it to Thomas Howard (an alias of James’s), sold bloody floor splinters for 25 cents apiece. A year later James’ mother opened her home to visitors, also for a quarter. Of the more than twenty movies made about Jesse James, the first was financed by his descendants in 1920. Meanwhile Bob Ford was pardoned by the governor. Ford toured Eastern cities reenacting the shooting, but the show was booed in the Midwest. Later, in a mining camp in Colorado, Ford was shot in the neck and killed by a man with a sawed-off shotgun seeking revenge for the death of Jesse James. What a fitting end to a coward.

The final revisions for the Sixkiller book has been sent to the editor and the second chapter of the book about outlaw women of the Old West is complete. I’m a little less behind than I was but still running to catch up. On Monday I’ll start working on the changes for the second edition of Hearts West which is due by the end of November. I seem to forever be facing an outrageous deadline. The message in the history of the subjects I’m fortunate enough to write about is not lost in the busyness however. Ma Barker is the subject of the outlaw book. I know she and her four sons were criminals but their loyalty to one another fascinates me. Ma lived in a small home north of the railroad tracks in Tulsa and acted as a “front” for her boys with the law. She took them in when they came home to “cool off” after the robberies and her home became a key point for making contact with other members of the Barker gang and its interlocking membership with other gangs; such as the one run by John Dillinger. Ma made spurious bond once or twice to free her sons so they could “jump bail” and disappear. Officers were unable to prove anything against her. With the criminals who visited her flitting out of town before law enforcement could arrive – due to the communication system of the underworld – it was impossible to obtain necessary evidence. No matter what the police did they couldn’t get her to squeal on her sons and they couldn’t get the Barker brothers to “rat out” one another. Ma’s final hours were spent defending her boys – the youngest one in particular. At 6:50 in the morning on January 16, 1935, Special Agents surrounding the home she and her son Fred were living in near Lake Weir in Florida. The police demanded that everyone inside the home “come out with their hands up.” For a few minutes there was no response then a voice from inside the cottage called out “all right go ahead.” Thinking the comment was an indication that the people in the house were going to surrender, the police waited anxiously for the criminals to exit. The front door slowly opened and the muzzle of a machine gun appeared. Without warning a fuselage of shots ripped into the Agents standing nearest the home. The authorities answered the gun fire with tear gas bombs, rifle fire and machine gun fire. When the gunfire ceased at 11 a.m., authorities cautiously entered the home. More than 1,500 rounds of ammunition had struck the building. Fred’s body was found sprawled on the floor with eleven machine gun slugs in his shoulder and three in his head. Ma Barker was lying dead in a heap by the front door with a machine gun in her hand. A portion of the drum of ammunition in her weapon had been exhausted. She had been hit only once by a bullet. Ma Barker was fifty-five years old when she was killed. She laid down her life for her loved ones. I can appreciate that. I’d do the same for my brothers. Sometimes I’m convinced that’s what it’s going to come to.

Had it not been for the time I was blessed to spend researching the life and career of Roy Rogers my association with the name “Roy” would not be good. I was married to a “Roy” once. I thought he loved me. I’ve gotten that wrong more than once. Anyway, Roy Rogers was an extraordinary man. I traveled to Victorville in Southern California in 2004 to begin the research. I spent several days at the Rogers/Evans museum. The family gave me the opportunity to go through several boxes of Roy’s personal items. Among his things was a 1949 edition of Modern Screen magazine. Roy had written an article about working with his wife, Dale Evans that appeared in the periodical. I found it very romantic. “I am writing this in my portable dressing room at Republic Studios, where we are shooting Susanna Pass,” the article began. “Right next door is the dressing room of the girl who is playing opposite me in the picture and – what do you know? – once more she’s Dale Evans. It’s just like old time.” Rogers was referring to Republic Studios and the fact that they had relented on the decision to separate Roy and Dale as a romantic team in the King of Cowboys Western series. He continued: “It fits right into the plan of life we’d talked about when we were married – the plan the studio busted all to bits when it decided that a married couple made a poor romantic team on the screen. And, in addition to Dale and myself, there are three other members of our family who are plumb delighted: Cheryl, our oldest, who’s eight, Linda Lou, who’s five; and Roy Jr., who’s 27 months old and whom we call “Dusty” on account of he generally is. All five of us are deeply grateful to the thousands of fans who wrote us at Republic and convinced the studio that it was wrong about separating us. That plan Dale and I made when were married a year ago was centered around our home. We decided we’d guide our careers so we could spend as much time as possible together – as a family. Yes, sir, it’s just like old times – and I’m sure thankful to the fans, to Modern Screen, and to everyone who brought my Dale back to me. Just think – three and a half years, up to the time of our marriage, we made 24 pictures together! I don’t have to tell you that we got so we could sail through a scene, no matter how tough it was, because we were comfortable with each other, knew just how the other worked. And then, just because we moved even closer together in our personal lives, we had to split up professionally! But that’s all over now. I’m a happy man again. Dale is right next to me – and all I have to do is look through the window to see Old Trigger tied to a post. There was a postscript from Dale: “I knew it!” she wrote. “I knew he’d have to get his Old Trigger into this somewhere.”

After traveling for weeks to promote books and research future books, I arrived home with laryngitis and a firm grasp of how to handle myself in the emergency exit row of any airplane. I’ve been going so much and spending so much time in various airports that I when I got off the plane in Sacramento I wasn’t sure exactly where I was. This is exactly the reason I didn’t want to continue doing standup comedy. I didn’t like being on the road so often. It’s lonely. Nothing is as romantic as you think it’s going to be. Of course that’s not an original notion. Pioneers lured west had the same thought. What those poor souls didn’t realize…. The West was haunted by loneliness and its twin sister, despair. One aspect of the frontier has been dodged persistently to satisfy the vagaries of folk drama: the isolation and loneliness of families who lived there. There was no place lonelier than the frontier. The legal proviso that a homesteader stay on his claim – often extending for miles around – practically excluded human contacts. There was nowhere to go, no one to see; no casual visitors, no passers-by. The prairie itself, a bleak flat expanse unrelieved by so much as a single tree, emphasized the settlers’ sense of physical separation from the human community. Winter intensified their isolation, shutting them indoors for long periods and leaving them without even the meager comfort that the sight of another living creature might bring. The separation from neighbors and relatives was especially distressing; adding to the bleakness was the absence of an occasional social event that would involve some happy commotion. There were only dismal evenings, the endless drudgery and the restless behavior of cooped-up children, who were often prevented by bad weather from making the long trek to school. Frontier life was most depressing on those who by nature were gregarious. The sense of abandonment was most keenly felt by homesteaders who came from small European villages, where social gatherings and folk dances were a tradition, where life was hard but not lonesome. This sense of abandonment drove many settlers insane. I feel like that so often. But I’m home now…still lonely but surrounded by my own things and familiar with all the emergency exits. That’s something anyway.

A wide variety of distribution companies, authors and press services attended the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association convention this weekend. Numerous book store owners, librarians, and book buyers for museums and special interest gift shops were on hand to learn about the new books being released and to stock up on material they know will sell at their businesses. My mission, in addition to signing books at the event, was to find out what does sell well. Big changes are transpiring in the publishing world. Many people are by-passing printed material and opting for books that can be read on their Kindles and I-Pads. I wanted to know where they predicted the market was headed. I did find out what books sell better than others and what book buyers are craving but more importantly I learned that nothing will ever take the place of good, old-fashion personal contact. Books are more likely to be carried at a store if the author reaches out to speak with the business owners and buyer. Owners of smaller book stores want to feel they matter as much as the chain stores. It’s interesting how it comes down to the simple art of consideration. All the advanced programs in the world won’t replace that. I was off to the airport after the event and while waiting for my flight I spent some time working on a letter to send lawyer I hired to represent my brother. I write him once a year on the anniversary of my brother’s sentencing. I can’t let there be a year go by without reminding this lawyer of what happened – even if he only considers it for a second or two. “Dear Mr. Hobbs, Six years have passed since you convinced me to persuade my brother to say he was guilty of a crime he didn’t commit. I’ll regret forever making him take a plea. I was told you were a defense attorney and I paid you an unimaginable fee for work in that area. I realized too late you do little more than negotiate plea agreements. If you had been forth coming with the truth at the start I would have been in a position to make a different decision. You were less than honest in your representation. I will always think of you as a disreputable man. Apart from my own ignorant actions in this matter, I recall your duplicity every time I see my brother’s bloated, broken face. I know you don’t but you should want to make this right.” My brothers are my brothers to the bone. Some of the booksellers I met this weekend who visit my website shared with me how well they think the book about Rick is going to do. It doesn’t really matter much to me anymore. He’ll still be just as gone and I’ll still be just as much to blame.

In the course of rewriting the Sam Sixkiller book I’ve neglected a host of things. Sleep, meals, answering the phone, answering the door, checking the mail… I continue to shower, although the big Texas hair has been shoved into a Dodge City baseball hat today and I am wearing my favorite perfume. What? Lancome Miracle goes well with jogging pants and a T-shirt. The deadline for the Sixkiller rewrite is October 31. I need to add 15,000 more words to the text. I know for sure that I like having written more than writing. I’m working on two other books in addition to the Sixkiller title too. And just when I think I can’t take on anymore until this deadline is met, I’ve got to travel to Portland, Oregon for a booksellers convention. It’s my own fault. I over commit. I started this insane schedule years ago when Rick was raped during a prison transfer. I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing him being beaten and hurt. I’ve created this mess and I just have to ride it out now. Within the last month I received word that I am now an official member of the Western Writers of America. I can’t help but think that might a mistake. I’m just an author that likes to research and write about the history I find. The majority of the people involved in Western Writers of America are scholars and award winning authors of historical events. I have a feeling I’m in way over my head. I will be attending the convention the group hosts in the fall of next year in New Mexico, but know I’m going to feel wildly out of place. I hope it will be a good education. The collection of professionals that attend these events are impressive. I just don’t want to be treated like a bastard at a family reunion. With the exception of my involvement with the Single Action Shooters Society, I’ve never experienced anything but that kind of treatment when I’ve joined writers groups. Will Rogers once said, “Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.” When I attend the WWA convention I’ll be the only one in the room ignorant on every subject. I can’t tell. Are my insecurities showing? I can’t worry about that now I guess. I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Right now it’s back to Oklahoma to find more Sam Sixkiller adventures.

It is said that “change is inevitable – except from a vending machine.” Often times I think I’m just as stubborn with change as a vending machine. The website has been changed but the sentiment in the daily journal will remain the same. I miss my brother and will probably always write about that. He has value. I won’t forget him and I’ll fight to my death to never let those who falsely accused him forget him either. Oh, the sharp knife of a short life. Three very good friends of mine – Chris Frank and Tim and Joyce Smethers – lent a hand with the new video posted on the site. It was a wonderful learning experience and the closest I’ll probably ever come to being in a real western. Thanks to Chris and the Smethers for helping to check an item off the bucket list. I’ve been working day and night on the edits for the Sam Sixkiller book. The deadline is October 31. What a pleasure it has been to write about such a great lawman. I’m amazed at how fearless his was in the face of notorious bad guys like Dick Glass and Alf Cunningham. The book about this courageous Cherokee Indian will be in bookstores June 2012.