Howdy,
My name’s Jim
Griffin, and I’ll be the regular 2nd Thursday of the month
contributor on the Western Fictioneers blog.
As a brief
introduction, my main loves, not in any particular order, are horses, dogs, (especially
small dogs), the Texas Rangers, and New Hampshire, particularly the southwest
corner, otherwise known as the Monadnock region. Now, some of you are no doubt
scratching your heads and saying, “horses, dogs, Texas Rangers, all right. But
what in the world does New Hampshire have to do with anything Western?” The
answer is, not much, except for this. The first use of branding to identify
livestock, which just about everyone assumes started with the large
free-roaming longhorn cattle herds in Texas and then spread throughout the
West, actually was in New Hampshire. And the livestock branded weren’t cattle,
but those critters anathema to the old time cattleranchers, sheep. Yes, sheep…
woolies…mutton. Branding sheep in New Hampshire and later other parts of New
England started back in Colonial times, even before the United States existed
as a country. Just like western cattlemen grazed their herds on common land,
identifying ownership by brands, in colonial New England animals, mostly sheep
and swine, were pastured on common land, usually called the town common. Unlike
the typical image of a nice patch of green land surrounded by neat white houses
and a white-steepled church, the common or green was usually either dusty or
muddy (depending on the weather and time of year) from grazing and rooting
livestock, and trash-strewn besides. But we can still thank the farmers of New
Hampshire for introducing branding to the New World. And of course some New
Hampshire folk headed West to help settle the frontier. Several fought at the
Alamo, and many in the Civil War. As people from New England’s land, never very
fertile to begin with and extremely rocky, played out, plenty of New Englanders
headed West to start again.
Now on to things
more Western. I’ve had horses most of my life, and can’t imagine having to live
without one. I still think the infernal combustion engine is the creation of
the devil, and the world would be better off with fewer cars and more horses.
Maybe we’d all learn to relax a bit more and get along with each other better,
too, if more of us rode horses. It’s hard to stay angry when you’re on the back
of a good horse.
As far as the Texas
Rangers, I’ve been fascinated by the organization since I was a kid. Have a
friend who just retired from the Rangers, and got to know enough about them
that I’m considered an amateur and unofficial historian of the outfit, although
I sure don’t claim to be an expert. I’ve collected a whole passel of Texas
Ranger artifacts over the years, which are now in the permanent collections of
the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum in Waco, Texas. It’s a great museum to
learn about the Rangers. If any of you are down Waco way be sure to stop it,
and see some of my stuff. Most is in the Texas Rangers in Popular Culture Gallery,
and the items get rotated in and out.
And that’s the
lead-in for the chance to mention my books. I’ve got two series of Texas
Rangers novels in print, plus one stand alone book, and some more in the works.
Not to mention a whole bunch of stuff all over the web. And of course stories in both Western
Fictioneers anthologies, and am one of the contributors to the WF Wolf Creek
series. My novels completely traditional Westerns, no avant-garde edgy stuff or
western mixed with science fiction ala The Wild Wild West. You’ll find
straight-shootin’ good guys, nasty bad guys, brave women, smart horses, and
plenty of fist-fighting action and shooting in my stories. You won’t need to be
afraid to let your kids (or your mama) read most of ‘em.
One other passion of
mine is traveling all over the West, although I don’t have the chance to do
that as much as I used to. My first trip west I was headed to a job in San
Diego, and at an overnight stop in Midland, Texas my hosts offered to take me
on a trail ride to let my horse stretch his legs, since he’d been riding in a
horse trailer behind my ‘65 Impala for three days, and the previous stops only
had small corrals for him. Started the ride, and after a couple of miles of
sand and more sand I finally had to ask where was the beach? Here, where
there’s sand, there’s usually a beach. Not in west Texas.
Other big surprise
was when I first saw the Rocky Mountains. Kept wondering why they didn’t look
all that high, not much higher than a lot of the mountains here in northern New
England. Then it hit me that when you first see the Rockies you’re already a
mile or more above sea level. So, a 12,000 foot mountain seen from 6,000 feet
altitude on the plains doesn’t look much higher than one of our 6,000 footers
seen from 700 feet above sea level.
So, enough of this
introductory stuff. Next time around I’ll promise to talk Rangers, horses,
books, and maybe even a dog or two. Not all at the same time, of course. And if
any of you have any questions on the above subjects, I’d love to hear ‘em.
Jim
