Sunday, July 29, 2018

WESTERN FICTIONEERS CONVENTION COUNTDOWN! By Vonn McKee


I can’t believe that in only SEVEN weeks (September 14-16), we will be gathered in Oklahoma City for the 2018 Western Fictioneers convention! By request, we have more time scheduled for plain old socializing—a great opportunity for catching up with old friends and meeting new ones.
Here are a few highlights:


FRIDAY

     Enjoy several discussions led by our very own Fictioneers experts! A discussion of horses in western literature, straight from the horseman’s mouth (Jim Griffin). Diane Garland, Jacquie Rogers, and Ron Schwab will advise on keeping your fiction worlds spinning (very helpful when writing a series). We’ll take a look at the role of women lawyers and doctors in the West (Doris McCaw, Ron Schwab).


ROBERT VAUGHAN
JAMES REASONER


ROBERT VARDEMAN
A LIVING LEGENDS panel, where you’ll hear writing anecdotes from Western literature heavyweights James Reasoner, Robert Vaughan, and Robert Vardeman. Q&A follows.


     Later, we'll be treated to a docent-guided group tour of the NATIONAL COWBOY & WESTERN HERITAGE MUSEUM, followed by a down-home western buffet at our host hotel, Best Western Saddleback Inn. 

Best Western Saddleback Inn - OKC
SATURDAY

     Learn about Economics of the Old West from Edward Massey. Robert Vaughan will lead the Custer session (as well he should!). And Westerns can get be weird; just ask Troy Smith, James Reasoner and friends.


     “Legal Labyrinths: The Rights Side of the Law” was so popular at the last convention that we’ve asked Nashville attorney W. Michael Milom to encore. Expect a lively Q&A for this session! Tom Rizzo, JES Hayes, and Cheryl Pierson will reprise the Social Media panel, and Troy Smith will expound on “The Politics of Violence in Indian Territory.” Hopefully, Courtney Joyner will drop in with an update on the Western movie industry. We’ll close with an evening of entertainment and fine food.


SUNDAY

     We’ll gather for a Cowboy Church meeting, followed by an optional visit to the H&H Shooting Range.
     So how do you get in on all this fun?


REGISTER HERE AT THE WESTERN FICTIONEERS WEBSITE. Then, pay registration fees either by check or PayPal (instructions are also on the website). Book your hotel room by calling BEST WESTERN SADDLEBACK INN at 800-228-3903 and be sure to mention you are with WESTERN FICTIONEERS. (Unfortunately, hotel rooms for our block cannot be booked via the hotel’s website.)


     As your convention chair, I look forward to seeing you soon in OKC! I know you’ll have an amazing time.



All the best,


Vonn McKee

“Writing the Range”
2015 Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Finalist (Short Fiction)
2015 Western Writers of America Spur Finalist (Short Fiction)


vonnmckee.com
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"Twists and turns galore."
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Thursday, July 26, 2018

MAGGOT-RIDDEN WOUNDS




The Doctor's Bag

The blog about Medicine and Surgery in the Old West 

By Keith Souter aka CLAY MORE






The thought of a maggot-ridden wound makes most people cringe. Writers often pop such images into their tales for that very reason. The squirm factor can be effective in keeping the  reader reading. After all, a wound that has actual crawling maggots in it just seems so awful. It looks unclean and the reader may suppose that it is a bad sign.

The movies often have maggot-ridden scenes. Take Gladiator, for example. There is an early scene  with Maximus reaching to remove maggots from a gaping arm wound, only to be advised by his (soon to be) friend and fellow gladiator, Juba, to leave it alone. And indeed, the maggots clean the wound and it heals.

Aristotle's doctrine of spontaneous generation 
Maggots have had a bad press since antiquity. Aristotle proposed the theory of spontaneous generation, or abiogenesis. (a-bio, meaning 'without life', and genesis meaning 'origin of'). Essentially, it was a belief that living things grew from non-living matter. Maggots were seen to develop in rotting meat or in carcases. Similarly, the Egyptians had noted that frogs seemed to develop in the Nile mud after the annual inundation. 


Aristotle 384-322 BC

This theory survived for two thousand years until the Italian doctor and 'father of experimental biology,' Francesco Redi challenged the concept of abiogenesis. 


Francesco Redi (1626-1697)

He performed some rather elegant experiments on maggots and flies, which he published in 1688 as Esperienze Intorno alla Generazione degli Insetti (Experiments on the Generation of Insects). He concluded in this series of experiments  that flies laid eggs in decaying matter and that larvae (maggots) hatched from them and ultimately turned into adult flies. He did it using jars into which he put identical quantities of meat or fish. In one group the jars were covered with gauze, which let air in, but secluded entry to flies. The others were left open and exposed to flies. No maggots developed in the fly-excluded jars, but the others produced maggots, then a cocoon stage, from which adult flies emerged.





As you can see from the illustrations he used in his book he accurately described the life cycle of the fly, which undergoes a complete metamorphosis from egg to larva, to pupa, to imago or adult fly. 
Of course, Redi had to be careful about how he described this, because the church was so powerful and several men of science had paid dearly for declaring scientific theories that the church considered to be heresy. 

Biogenic generation
Accordingly, it was another two centuries before Louis Pasteur, a French scientist finally blew a hole in the theory of abiogenesis. 




Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)

To do this Pasteur prepared some  sterile nutrient broth and placed equal amounts in two flasks with swan shaped necks.  He broke the neck of one flask and left the other. The broth in the broken necked flask quickly became cloudy as micro-organisms grew in it. The other remained sterile, until he eventually broke the neck, when it also eventually became cloudy. The cloudiness was due to the presence of microorganisms. 




One of Pasteur's swan- neck flasks

The S shaped neck had prevented dust particles and microorganisms in the air from reaching the broth, until the neck was broken. 

Instead of the abiogenesis theory of spontaneous generation, we then had the theory of biogenic generation. 

Maggot-ridden wounds 
Although maggots have the association with decay, yet over the centuries it had been observed  that maggot-infested wounds  often did better than expected. 

The Mayans used to cover wounds in cloths soaked in animal blood and dried in the sun. When they started to pulsate, as maggots hatched and moved about, they believed that the wound would heal. Often it would. 

Aborigines in Australia used to actively put maggots into wounds to heal them. 

The french military surgeon, Ambroise Pare (1510-1590), one of the most notable surgeons of the Renaissance described the benefits he had seen in maggot-infested wounds. Similarly, the French surgeon, Baron Dominique-Jean Larry (1766-1842), observed that blue fly maggots seemed to remove necrotic or dead tissue from wounds and speeded up healing. 

During the Civil War maggot-ridden wounds were thought to be a bad sign of infection and soldiers were understandably distressed to see maggots in their wounds. Wars have always been times when medicine and surgery have been given opportunities to make advancements. This happened in a prison stockade in Chattanooga, where Confederate surgeons were not given supplies of bandages and dressings, or adequate amounts of chloroform (which was used to bathe wounds to clean them). Their  patients who had often developed gangrene were forced  to leave the wounds unbound and fly-infested, whereas Union surgeons de-maggoted their patients' wounds. Much to their astonishment  the maggot-ridden Confederate wounds cleared up far quicker and more effectively than the so-called cleaned and dressed wounds. Indeed, death rates were significantly lower in the Confederate patents. 

Dr William Williams Keen (1837-1932), observed that maggots certainly did not hamper recovery in many cases. He said that despite their revolting appearance, they were not detrimental to the healing process. After the war he studied in Paris and London and e would go on to become the first neurosurgeon in the USA.  




Dr William Williams Keen (1837-1932)

Doctors in the Great War also saw the surprising effects of maggot-ridden wounds. Dr William Stephenson Baer (1872-1931) was an American surgeon  serving with the American Expeditionary Force in France. In 1917 he treated two badly wounded  soldiers who had lain injured on the battlefield for seven days. Their wounds were totally maggot-ridden and at first he feared for their lives. Yet on examination and after clearing the maggots away, he found that the underlying tissues were clean, free of pus and that healing with granulation tissue was occurring. He said: " ...the wounds showed the most beautiful pink granulation tissue that one can imagine.” Both soldiers healed  swiftly and recovered completely.

Dr Baer went on to become the founding chairman of orthopaedics at John Hopkins University and a surgical innovator in both hip and spine surgery. He also followed up his work from the Great War and did research on thee use of maggot therapy (Maggot Debridement Therapy, or MDT) in the control of persistent wound and bone infection. In 1931 he wrote a paper, The Treatment of Chronic Osteomyelitis with the Maggot (Larva of the Blow Fly). It is considered one of the classic papers in surgery.

Maggot therapy
Not all maggot-ridden wounds will be clean, though. The problem is that the blow fly that lays the eggs is a vector, that means a carrier of disease. If it has contaminated mouthparts or feet, then it can cause the infection in a wound. If no infection is present, then the lava that hatch may indeed act as scavengers to eat up any necrotic tissue, kill organisms in the wound and absorb pus to allow healing to take place. 

Dr Baer actually grew larvae on a windowsill in the Baltimore Children's Hospital as he researched on the use of maggots in chronically infected wounds. Unfortunately two patients died from tetanus, which made him realise that the maggots had to be sterile. He managed to develop a technique of producing larvae in a sterile environment, after which the 1930s saw a huge rise in the use of maggot therapy. Lederle laboratories in New York  started to produce sterile maggots ands were able to supply hospitals.




Maggot therapy then fell into disuse when the sulpha drugs and then modern antibiotics were discovered and  became an essential part of modern medicine.  However, because of the developing worldwide problem with antibiotic resistance, chronic infections are again a problem and there has been a resurgence of interest and active research into the maggot and its abilities to clean wounds. 


***


If you are interested in reading more about medicine and surgery in the frontier days, including the work of Doctor George Goodfellow, then you may find The Doctor's bag useful. It is a collection of my blog posts, published by Sundown Press.







The novel about Dr George Goodfellow, the Tombstone surgeon to the gunfighters





The novel about Ned Buntline, the King of the Dime Novelists


Buy The Dime Novelist

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

MURDER, CONSPIRACY, or ACCIDENT? #WesternFictioneers




Colorado Springs, Colorado that lovely resort town started in 1871. The founding fathers, with Wm. Jackson Palmer being the primary leader, did not allow the manufacture of 'spirits'. The property owners needed to be of good moral character. Palmer also donated land to build churches, having been raised a Quaker. Despite the founding fathers good intentions, both Helen (Hunt) Jackson and Isabella Bird, upon arriving in late1873, didn't think much of the new town.

Night closing on Pikes Peak (c) by the author
The town also experienced a death, in late 1873, that to this day is still an unsolved murder case. Below are the 'facts':

On November 3, 1873 W.H. (Judge) Baldwin met his demise by person or persons unknown. He may even have met that demise by his own actions.

His body was found in the well at Green and Stitzer’s slaughterhouse. After his body was recovered from the well, at 2 PM, it was noted that his pocket had been turned inside out and the money he that had been on his person the night before was missing. His horse was tied to the fence outside and his hat and shoes were found on the floor about five feet from the well. There was a bruise on his face near one eye.

Those are the facts reported in the local paper about his death. However there are some additional facts which may have some bearing on the his death:

The water in the well where the body was about five and a half feet deep and the well itself about four feet square.

The night before Baldwin was seen in town and was said to be intoxicated. Others said he was only slightly drunk. He told the bar keep in the billiard hall where he'd been drinking that he going home. (This probably meant his sheep ranch north and east of downtown Colorado Springs in the Templeton Gap area.) He was seen leaving the Billiard Hall with a man name Blondin. Blondin returned about 2 ½ hours later, alone. Later Blondin was arrested for intoxication, but slipped away around daylight. (In 1873 the city did not have a jail.)

Also in late 1873 there was a movement to drive out all the 'liquor sellers’ in Colorado Springs. One woman after notice of Baldwin's death, wrote to the paper and said the following: 'Baldwin was generous to a fault, children recognized him as a friend but was the victim of a disease.' She also said ” if the vendor of liquor has sons, when he looks at them, let him think of the sop which was made unsteady by his hand, of the brain which was crazed, of the struggle in the bottom of the well… The poor man…was trying to reform”

The Root & Reef saloon, one of the liquor sellers, had their court case thrown out on November 22. It seemed the witnesses who testified could not remember if they drank in the saloon or not. (The town was going through some pretty tough growing pains.)

Evergreen Cemetery, near Potter's field photo (c) by the author
Below is some additional information on Judge Baldwin:

He was born in 1825 in Massachusetts. His full name was William H. Baldwin. He was a ‘judge’ by virtue of judging a sheep contest at one of the territorial fairs. When drunk he would stand in the street and give speeches about General Jackson, the laws of the Constitution and the rights of man. After the elections in September of 1973 his new speech was “I’ll tell ye, boys, I’ll tell ya; I worked hard for ye, accordin’ to th’ rights o’ man and th’ laws o’ the Constitution. I’ll tell ye, boys —the New Town’s got it.”

There was also the story that he had been scalped while in South America, and was ever ready to show the scar to anyone who wanted to see it. He arrived in the region in 1868 and started life as a sheep herder. (Sheep were a major part of the early economy.). Later that same year he was shot in the leg and head by a band of Indians and left for dead. About four months before his death he had about 1,000 sheep but sold them to buy liquor. He also, at the time of his death, had a ranch worth about $1,000.

To this day there is speculation as to what really happened that night of November 3, 1873. Many pieces of information and facts are probably lost to time. The town was new and trying to establish itself as a wonderful place to live. Was it a conspiracy, murder or just an accident? We may never know, but the story still intrigues those who read it. He is buried somewhere in the Potter's Field section of Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs. 


Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History
Member of National League of American Pen Women,
Women Writing the West,
Pikes Peak Posse of the Westerners

Angela Raines - author: Where Love & History Meet
For a list of Angela Raines Books: Here 
Photo and Poem: Click Here 
Angela Raines FaceBook: Click Here



Friday, July 20, 2018

Western Comics Focus: 1872


by Troy D. Smith


If you're anything like me, waiting a year for the cliffhanger conclusion to the movie Avengers: Infinity War is torture. Of course, you can always turn to the comics. And, though it's been many a moon since I wrote on here about the topic, I recently stumbled across something that combines the Avengers with the genre we all love: the Western.

1872 was released in four issues in 2015 (it is now available as a single graphic novel.) There was a somewhat convoluted storyline spread across all Marvel comics at that time called "Secret War," which as a side result had alternate histories and parallel universes melting together in flux. In the midst of all this, someone apparently said "hey, let's do the Avengers as a western."

And so they did. 1872 was written by Gerry Duggan and drawn by Nik Virella.



It is set in the town of Timely (which was the original name of Marvel Comics), which is located near the Kirby River (Jack Kirby co-created about half the Marvel characters). The evil Governor Roxxon has ordered the river dammed and diverted in order to work his silver mine (Roxxon Corporation is the shadowy company behind a lot of the shenanigans in the Marvel Universe.)



Roxxon has placed his operative Wilson Fisk (alias The Kingpin) as mayor of Timely, to make sure Roxxon's interests are not interfered with. Wilson is opposed by newspaper editor Ben Urich (in the comics, reporter friend of Daredevil and Spider-man).

The sheriff is the idealistic, and naive, Steve Rogers. Rogers's deputy Bucky Barnes was killed recently by Wilson's men, leaving behind a beautiful widow named Natasha (alias the Black Widow) who is itching for revenge. Also in Timely: the marshal's friend Tony Stark, an alcoholic inventor (wracked with guilt over the ways his repeating rifles were used in the war). There is also the town doctor, a frail man named Bruce Banner. The women of the town are marching for equal rights, led by Carol Danvers (alias Captain Marvel.) Lurking at the edges: a vigilante named Pastor Frank (alias Frank Castle, alias the Punisher).












The action is set in motion by a Cheyenne warrior named Red Wolf (you can read about Red Wolf comics in a previous column.) Red Wolf wants to destroy the dam and restore the river to its course, for the sake of his people and of the river itself. He is captured, though, and Marshal Rogers must defend him from a lynch mob. When Rogers and Red Wolf become troublesome, Mayor Fisk calls in a gang of gunfighters, led by Bullseye. The gang includes Otto Octavious (alias Dr. Octopus). He doesn't have eight arms, but he is armed eight times...





This is just the set-up- I won't say much more, in case you want to read it for yourself (and you should). I will say this: at the beginning it looks as if Steve Rogers and Tony Stark are going to be the main heroes (Captain America and Iron Man, after all), and Red Wolf will be a supporting character... but instead, the Cheyenne becomes the center and driver of the plot, and the main hero. That's nice to see. The ladies -including Elektra as one of the hired guns -also hold their own.



It's a quick read, and a fun one. Check it out.



Friday, July 13, 2018

Bighorn Sheep

If your characters lived anywhere near the Rocky Mountains, they would have encountered the Bighorn Sheep. Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis) are the largest wild sheep in North America. Males, or rams, can weigh over 300 pounds and stand over three feet tall at the shoulder, while females, or ewes, are roughly half this size.

Bighorn sheep are grayish brown to dark brown with white patches on their rump, muzzle, and the backs of their legs. They have fur rather than the thick wool present in domesticated sheep. In the Winter they grow a thick, double-layered coat that may be lighter in color. 



Wide-set eyes give the bighorn sheep a large angle of vision. They also have sharp hearing and a keen sense of smell. This means a bighorn sheep can sense danger at a long distance. They have specialized hooves and rough soles which provide a natural grip on the steep rocky slopes and ledges where they make their homes.


As the name suggests, the sheep grow true horns that they retain throughout their life. Rams have large horns that can weigh up to thirty pounds, which is the average weight of all the bones in the ram’s body. These horns tart curling around the ram’s face by the age of eight years and eventually forms a spiral. Ewes have smaller horns that only curve slightly, starting at around four years of age.



Bighorn sheep feed on lower elevation grasses, clovers and sedges in Spring and Summer, and browse on mountain shrubs in Fall and Winter. They have a complex, four-part stomach that allows them to gain nutrients from hard, dry forage. The sheep will eat large amounts of food very quickly, then retreat to the cliffs and ledges to thoroughly re-chew and digest the food away from any predators. In Spring and early Summer, they descend to lower elevations to eat tender grasses and eat the rich soil to obtain minerals not found at higher elevations. These minerals are essential in restoring nutrients depleted by lambing and by the poor Winter diet.

Bighorn sheep live in social groups, with the rams forming bachelor herds of two to five animals and the ewes and lambs forming another herd of up to fifteen. In the Winter, ewe herds will sometimes combine into mega-herds of up to 100 strong. Lambs are born in the Spring and can walk soon after birth. They nurse for about six months. Young rams will leave their mother’s herd between two to four years of age, while young ewes remain with the herd for life. They live around ten years in the wild.

Mating occurs in the Fall, when the rams rejoin the ewes and fight each other for dominance. They use their huge horns in this battle, with males actually ramming head-on to determine which is the stronger. The combatants rear up on their hind legs and pitch towards each other at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour. The resulting crash can be heard a mile away. The ritual is repeated until one ram gives up and walks away.





The history of the sheep is similar to that of the Native Americans who encountered our European ancestors. As ranchers and homesteaders began to move into the mountain valleys, they brought with them domestic sheep – and their diseases, to which the Bighorn Sheep had no natural immunity. They also fell victim to hunters, who received high pay for their prized meat and horns. By the mid-1880s and early 1900s, the population was declining rapidly, and continued to do so until the mid-20thCentury. Your character might notice the decline, or he or she might be among those causing it. Either way, it would be an interesting historic tidbit to include in a story.

J.E.S. Hays
www.facebook.com/JESHaysBooks

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Ranger Jim's Ramblings for July

I'm going to wander away from my usual topics for this month's posting. Instead, I'll be talking about my recent road trip to the convention of the other western writers' group that shall not be named, or more specifically, my visit to the Battle of the Little Bighorn battlefield, and the reenactment of the battle, put on every year over three days of the weekend in June closest to the 25th, the date of the actual fight. The reenactment is organized by the Real Bird family, members of the Crow tribe.

First, the battlefield. It covers a much larger area than I expected. I also visited on a gray, rainy day, which lent itself well to the location.Except for its size, it's pretty much what you've seen in photographs, the rolling hills, the monuments marking where fallen soldiers were found, and the large monument on the hill where Custer allegedly fell. I say allegedly with a reason, which I'll get to in a moment.

Sadly, even on a miserable day, the battlefield is really overrun with visitors. Unlike Gettysburg,  the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, and other battlefields I have visited, Little Big Horn did not have the atmosphere of dignity and respect I have felt at those locations. It seemed more like an exhibit at a theme park, which is too bad.

Now, the reenactment. As expected, the Indians have a different take on the battle than what most of us have learned in the history books. The program itself was kind of a Reader's Digest condensed version, most of it dealing with events that led up to Little Big Horn. The only part of the battle that was reenacted was Custer and his remaining men's final moments, told from how the Indians say the fight ended. Interestingly enough, the great-grandson of Major Reno was one of the reenactors playing a soldier this year, so he "died", unlike his great-grandfather.

According to the Indians, Custer never made it to the top of the hill where his supposed "last stand" took place. Instead, he was wounded and disabled on the bank of the river, where he was then speared through the heart, then his heart cut out. After that, a Sioux woman stabbed him in the ear with a knife, so he "could hear better in the next world." The Indians also claim, when survivors from the battle were interviewed by historians in 1908, their version of how Custer met his fate was dismissed because "it didn't fit the timeline." Of course by then, Custer's legend was already well fixed in place, mostly due to the efforts of his widow, Libby, who was determined to make him a hero, and to heck with facts.

Also, the reenactment was kind of like a Hollywood B movie western, where everyone just falls down dead, no bloodshed. According to Jim Real Bird, who I spoke with, they had to water down the reenactment because people thought it was too bloody. For example, in the past the used a pig's heart to simulate Custer's heart being cut out, but people complained. What did they think, that no blood was shed? So, they had to tone the reenactment down.

I leave it to you, the reader , to decide whose version of the events at the Little Bighorn are closer to the truth. Obviously, we'll never know.

Next month, Cody, Wyoming, and the Buffalo Bill Western Heritage Center.

Ranger Jim

Monday, July 9, 2018

A brief history of the corncob pipe by Kaye Spencer #westernfictioneers #AmericanHistory





On July 9, 1878, Henry Tibbe, a Dutch immigrant woodworker, received a patent for an improved corncob pipe (also spelled 'corn cob')..

According to legend, the corncob pipe was invented in 1869 when a farmer-neighbor where Tibbe lived near Washington, Missouri...

...whittled a pipe out of corn cob and liked it so much he asked Henry Tibbe to try turning some on his lathe. Because the farmer was well-pleased with the results, Henry made and sold a few more in his woodworking shop. Tibbe's pipes proved to be such a fast selling item, he soon spent more time making pipes for customers than working with wood, and began full time production of corn cob pipes1...


Collection of corn cob tobacco pipes (not Tibbe's) 
from Science Museum Group (credit below)
Hence, Washington, Missouri eventually became known as the "Corn Cob Pipe Capital of the World". The Missouri Meerschaum Company - the world's oldest and largest manufacturer of cool, sweet-smoking corn cob pipes - began the tradition for which Washington became famous2. Tibbe became so successful that in 1907, his company became the Missouri Meerschaum Company.

Dictionary.com explains meerschaum as: a mineral, hydrous magnesium silicate, occurring in white, claylike masses, used for ornamental carvings, for pipe bowls, etc. The original of the word is German c. 1775-1785 and it literally translates to 'sea foam' (frothy appearance).

You're wondering how we went from corncobs to meerschaum. Well, Henry Tibbe's corncob pipes were light-weight and porous and the cool smoke that emanated from them reminded him of the more expensive meerschaum pipes, so he came up with the name "Missouri Meerschaum".

Tibbe and a friend who was a chemist created a plaster-based substance (similar to plaster of paris) to coat the outside of the corncob bowls, and in 1878 Tibbe patented the process3. The reason he invented this process was out of necessity as corncob pipes burned out easily, and this plaster coating fireproofed the bowl and also made sanding the bowl smooth once it dried, which made the lathe work possible4.


Henry Tibbe's patent for improved corncob pipe
(credit below)

To read more about the Missouri Meerschaum Company and to view images, click HERE, HERE, and HERE.
Corn-cob pipe - public domain image (credit below)
Corn Cob Smoking Pipe photo by TJSweden (credit below)
From the 1920s through the 1940s "...when corncob pipes were very popular, Missouri Meerschaum shipped about 25 million pipes each year. Pipe smoking decreased in popularity during the latter part of the 1950s, but today the company still produces well more than a half-million pipes per year5."


General Douglas MacArthur and his
custom-made Missouri Meerschaum corncob pipe
(credit below)

Popeye and his signature corncob pipe
(credit below)

My maternal grandfather (b. 1899) smoked a pipe, but I don't remember much about his pipe(s). It seems to me they were a dark, rusty-red-brown with slightly curved black stems and quite polished and shiny from being handled. I doubt they were meerschaum corncob pipes.

I'd enjoy reading your corncob pipe stories and anecdotes. I hope you'll share them.

Until next time,

Kaye Spencer - Lasterday Stories


Website/Blog
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References and Resources:
1. “The Meerschaum Company.” Missouri Meerschaum Company, 2017, corncobpipe.com/hist. Accessed 07 July 2018.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. arno665. “Another Dutch Invention: the Modern Corncob Pipe.” Dutch Pipe Smoker, 13 May 2013, https://dutchpipesmoker.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/another-dutch-invention-the-corncob-pipe/. Accessed 07 July 2018.

5. “Missouri is the Home of the Famous Corn Cob Pipe.” Buffalo Reflex.com, Home of the Buffalo Reflex, 27 June 2018, buffaloreflex.com/heritage/missouri-is-the-home-of-the-famous-corncob-pipe/article_44b5ef28-7999-11e8-b582-2bbc80541292.html. Accessed 07 July 2018.

IMAGES:
**Science Museum Group. Collection of six corn cob tobacco pipe, pipe bowls and stems. A12213. Science Museum Group Collection Online. Accessed July 7, 2018. https://collection.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/co157239.
**Frotz at English Wikipedia, Corncob-pipe, marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia.org.
**"Henry Tibbe's Improved Corncob Pipe Patent." Patent Images. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/81/f6/67/4438744ac7f411/US205816.pdf. 09  July 1878. Accessed 07 July 2018. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Corncob-pipe.jpg. 11 July 2015. Accessed 07 July 2018.
**Corn Cob Smoking pipe photograph by TJSweden, Corn Cob Smoking Pipe, distributed under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license. Wikimedia, Wikimedia.org. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Corn_Cob_Smoking_Pipe.JPG. 19 April 2007. Accessed 07 July 2018.
**Author Unknown. Douglas MacArthur smoking his corncob pipe, marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia.org. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Douglas_MacArthur_smoking_his_corncob_pipe.jpg. 15 September 2017. Accessed 07 July 2018.
**Author Unknown. Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves, distributed under a CC BY 2.5 license. More details on Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia.org.  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Popeye_the_Sailor_Meets_Ali_Baba%27s_Forty_Thieves.jpg 1 September 2013. Accessed 07 July 2018
.