Matthew Kerns's Blog: The Dime Library, page 17

2023 Western Heritage Awards

I always question if I can pull off a cowboy hat.

I'm not a Westerner. I'm a Southern boy, born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I traveled west with my family many times growing up, spending time drenched in the history of the American West and exploring both the towns and the wilderness of a large swath of "The West" from Montana to New Mexico. I've camped in the La Sals and the Bighorns as often as I have in the Great Smokies, and I'm as familiar with the sights of Thermopolis and Moab as I am with Nashville or Memphis.

But I'm no cowboy, and I worry about being seen as a poser, an outsider, a pretender. I'm thinking about this as I walk into the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, just as it opens at 10:00 AM on Friday, April 14th. The docents at the door are in pressed blue button-up shirts, Stetson hats, bolo ties, and tight, traditional jeans over tall cowboy boots. I'm in shorts, New Balance sneakers, and an untucked Hawaiian shirt. I'm here for a soundcheck, but the girl at the front desk doesn't know that. I imagine that to her, I look like the slew of tourists who pour into the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum from all over the country and all around the world. They come to learn about the cowboy, to learn about the West. They come to see Western art by some of the greatest painters that ever captured the spirit of the American West with pencil, pen, or brush. They come to see walls covered in paintings by Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, N. C. Wyeth, Frederick Sackrider Remington, and Charles Marion Russell. They also come to see the men who captured the spirit of the West, not on paper or canvas, but on the silver screen. In the same room as Will Rogers' movie posters and a life-sized depiction of John Wayne is a display case with the literary, musical, film, and television winners of this year's Western Heritage Awards. Right there, on a panel in the old Cowboy Hall of Fame, is my name.

MAGAZINE ARTICLE

"Texas Jack Takes an Encore."

Matthew Kerns, Author

Wild West Magazine/HISTORYNET, Publisher

Next to the display of that year's award winners is a computer, where visitors can look at every person ever awarded a Western Heritage Award, also known as a Bronze Wrangler. I look up Texas Jack Omohundro, who was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers back in 1994. When I look up Texas Jack, a second entry is displayed. My article.

This all feels unreal, and as I walk down the long hall towards the Special Events Center, where the Awards ceremony will be held on Saturday night, I keep expecting someone to tell me that this has all been some kind of horrible mistake, like when Warren Beaty and Faye Dunnaway mistakenly announced that La La Land had won Best Picture and had to then tell all of the beaming La La Landers to sit back down while the Moonlight people came onstage to accept what was rightfully theirs. I feel like I'm going to be La La Landed any moment, like an outsider wandering in a place he knows he doesn't belong, and someone from PriceWaterhouseCoopers is going to correct the error any moment.

I'm ushered onto the stage, where I'm given a very simple set of instructions. When Daphne is on stage accepting the award, you'll make your wage to stage right. When they announce you as the winner, you walk up to the podium, adjust both microphones so they are under your chin, read the remarks you submitted off the teleprompter, and follow the Rodeo Queen offstage.

I run through the speech I intend to give and walk off the stage. The winner who would be announced after me is waiting his turn to soundcheck, and I congratulate him on his award, trying not to show how intimidated I am. He is WK, or Kip, Stratton. Stratton is an Oklahoma native, and he's being awarded for the best book of Western poetry for his latest, Last Red Dirt Embrace. Kip is also a hell of a historian and wrote the incredible book The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film. He also wrote an article in Texas Highways about the Comanche Medicine Mounds, just south of Quannah, Texas. The article is an incredible one, and I assume it was in contention for Best Magazine Article along with mine. Kip's article was announced at the Tucson Festival of Books as a finalist for the Western Writers of America's Spur Award. Which I also won. I don't feel guilty about winning. I feel mortified. I read Kip's article before the Spur Awards were announced, and my immediate thought upon finding out I had won was, "But W.K. Stratton is a real writer!"

Kip is unassumingly friendly and congratulates me on my award as he's ushered onto the stage to run through the same set of instructions I was. I walk over to my wife, and we head into the museum so she can see the Remingtons, Russells, etc. I visited the museum last summer after speaking at the Will Rogers Museum in Claremore, but I'm excited to see the new exhibit on "Playing Cowboy," an exploration of the ways children have been playing cowboy for around 150 years. The museum doesn't explicitly spell it out, but as I look at full-size replicas of Woody and Jesse's costumes from Toy Story and a collection of cap guns throughout the years, I can't help think back on the first generation of kids playing cowboy, those boys and girls lucky enough to catch Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack in a local theater between 1872 and 1876.

Our visit to the museum done, we head into Oklahoma City proper, exploring the western wear shops in Stockyards City and enjoying lunch at what we have been assured is the best Vietnamese food in the American West. We check in at the Ellison Hotel, where we are staying for the weekend, and get ready for the kickoff party happening that night. My parents, who have made the drive from Chattanooga to OKC for the weekend, meet us at the hotel, and we drive over to the museum together.

I'm ushered towards a table, where I and my guests are registered as VIPs, with special wristbands to verify that status. I am also given a magnetic lapel pin to show that I am an award winner for this event, one of the honorees this party is being thrown for. We walk back towards the Special Events Center, which has been turned into a lavish ballroom, and head towards the curtained-off VIP section. The SEC is dominated by five enormous triptychs painted by Wilson Hurley. They depict four stunning scenes of the American West. Hurley started in 1992 with "The New Mexico Suite," showing New Mexico's Sandia Mountains as viewed from the Rio Grande near Albuquerque. Completed the next year, the "Arizona Suite" is a view of the Grand Canyon from an unusual lower level looking upward. 1994's "The California Suite", depicts the sun setting over the ocean over Point Lobos on the Pacific Coast near Carmel. "The Utah Suite," completed in 1995, is a magnificent view of Monument Valley under a cloudless sky. The last of the triptychs is the "Wyoming Suite," a spectacular view of the lower falls of the Yellowstone River. I feel like I can hear the deafening roar of the falls as I stand beneath the 16' by 46' trio of paintings. I feel small—as insignificant under these monumental depictions of the West as I do in the real thing. And that's the point, really, of Hurley's paintings and all great western art—to show us just how much more the West writ large matters than any of us.

I belly up to the bar, or at least to the small table where they are giving away samples of Pendleton whisky. I'm usually more of a bourbon man, myself, but the slightly less refined character of the Pendleton seems incredibly appropriate in the context. My next stop is at the actual bar, where I grab a bottle of Coors banquet beer, which is likewise appropriate in that this year's winner of Western Visionary Award is beer scion Pete Coors. I look around the room, but I don't recognize anyone. Except that guy looks vaguely familiar. I walk over and listen for a moment before I recognize the man as Patrick Morrison, who, like his famous father, John, is better known under the pseudonymous surname of Wayne.

I also see Kip again, and in our brief conversation, find him to be as intelligent and thoughtful as his writing suggests. No one has commented on my hat or called me out as a phony, a fake, or a fraud. A dude. This hat is a Stetson Hutchins, a 3X wool-blend hat with a pinched-front crown. It is at the lower end of the scale of fine western hats. Eagle-eyed observers might recognize this as the same Stetson worn by Matt Smith as the 11th incarnation of The Doctor in Doctor Who. "I wear a Stetson now," Matt's Doctor says as he dons his cowboy hat, "Stetsons are cool." If a Time Lord from Gallifrey can pull off a Stetson, I think maybe a Southern boy can too.

I keep walking back to the table with my wife and my parents. I'm nervous, and despite the impression I seem to give to just about everyone I talk to, I am painfully shy, at least when it comes to introducing myself to strangers. I don't introduce myself to Patrick or any of John Wayne's other children who are mingling in the crowd. I don't congratulate Pete Coors or Red Steagall. I don't even thank Wyatt McCrea, member of the museum's board of directors and grandson of actor Joel McCrea, who played Buffalo Bill Cody in a 1944 movie about the world's most famous Westerner and greatest showman.

I'm standing at the corner of the bar when I see the most famous man at this weekend's festivities. Lou Diamond Phillips has been a mainstay of Westerns since the late 1980s, when he played Lincoln County Regulator José Coby Frey Chávez y Chávez in Young Guns, a movie that ranks behind only Tombstone in the Western canon of young men like me who grew up in the 80s and 90s. Phillips' big breakthrough role was as Richie Valens in La Bamba. When I was young, my brothers and I watched and rewatched a VHS copy of La Bamba at my grandparent's house, and Phillips' depiction of Valens combined with Michael J. Fox's guitar-slinging as Marty McFly covering Chuck Barry's Johnny B. Goode pushed all three of us into serious study of music and musicianship.

A steady stream of VIPs pour over to take a selfie with LDP and tell him how much La Bamba or Stand and Deliver or Young Guns or Longmire means to them. He graciously talks to each person, smiles for their selfies, and is pleasant and approachable with everyone. I ask the bartender for another Banquet beer and scan the room. When my gaze returns to where Lou Diamond Phillips is standing, I notice that the long line has momentarily abated, so I shake off my awkwardness and walk over.

"Mr. Phillips," I say, "I hate to bother you, but I just wanted to introduce myself." I tap my award winner lapel pin. "I'm Matt Kerns and I won for Magazine Article. I just wanted to congratulate you on your induction into the Hall and say how much I enjoyed Tinderbox."

When I said the final word, there was a slight change in his stance. He turned to face me fully and stepped in to be heard over the sound of Dan Miller’s Cowboy Music Revue playing on the stage.

"Holy shit," he says, "you read my book!"

The next few minutes are a blur. People are once again lining up to thank, congratulate, or take a selfie with Lou Diamond Phillips, but we are, for what feels like a long time, engrossed in conversation. We talk about his book, his collaboration with his wife, who illustrated it, the nature of their partnership, the challenges of pitching a science fiction adaptation of a Hans Christian Anderson story, the Hero's Journey, and my own writing. He doesn't seem perfunctory at all. He seems engaged and happy to talk about his book and the work he's doing on a sequel. He seems completely content to converse, nonplussed by the people waiting for a piece of his time and a measure of his attention. He thanks me for the compliment about his book, saying that coming from one author to another it means a lot to him.

I wander back to the table, where I must look obviously starstruck. I tell my wife and parents about our conversation. "Did you give him a book?" my wife asks.

I bring a couple of copies of my books with me when I travel, mainly so I can give them away to people I meet. Selling books is all well and good, but knowing people read them is the real dopamine hit for me. "I think I have one in the car," I say. "Well then, go get it."

I head to the car and come back with a copy of my book. I feel awkward, like a guy trying to hand a cassette with his band's demos to Mick Jagger, but my appreciation for Lou's graciousness outweighs my reticence to put myself and my book out there. I'm not handing this to him in hopes of him making a Hollywood blockbuster out of it, but because he was kind, and I wanted to thank him for the kindness. When I walked back into the VIP section, he was once again surrounded by selfie-takers, well-wishers, and fans. I waited for a break and handed him the book.

"Sorry to bother you again, but I just wanted to say thanks and congratulations again and give you a copy of my book."

Once again, as if by magic, I had his full attention. He was grateful and gracious and once again kind. I went to shake his hand, and he pulled me in for a hug, congratulating me on my award and my success. "You're a very nice man," I remember saying. "I liked you as an actor, but I admire the hell out of you as a nice man."

https://youtu.be/ZMhGAbI8RKs

Lou reached out and put a hand on my chest. "I've admired people before, and they weren't always kind. It doesn't take anything and it means so much. I've really enjoyed talking to you, and I'm so glad you introduced yourself."

I walked back to the table. "It turns out," I told my family, "that Lou Diamond Phillips is a hell of a nice guy."

We headed out, my parents back to their hotel and my wife and I to eat at Milo, the restaurant attached to our hotel. We're waiting for our order, and I'm enjoying a negroni when my wife nods towards the hotel door. "Lou Diamond Phillips just walked in."

I'm determined not to bother him again, so I say nothing as he walks in with his father and a pair of guests and sits at the table next to us. One of the guests heads up to their room, and the other steps out with Lou's father for a cigarette. Lou Diamond Phillips is sitting at the table next to me, and he is reading the back blurb on my book. He could have left it at the event, or in the car, or on the seat next to him, but he was earnestly checking it out. My resolve to leave the guy alone faded, and I stepped across the aisle next to his table.

"Matt!" he said, "Good to see you again." He held up his copy of my book.

I told him I had my copy of his book in my room, and asked if he would sign it for me.

"I would love to," he said. "I'm here, you're here, we should sign each other's books!"

I sat back down with my wife, pleased and determined that I wouldn't bother Lou Diamond Phillips for the rest of the weekend.

The next day we poked around Oklahoma City, braving the wind to explore the city.

The Western Heritage Awards is a black-tie event, and I was duded up in a black tuxedo with a paisley-print black vest, cufflinks, and a Stetson that was the opposite end of the spectrum from the cheap Hutchins I was wearing the night before. This was a black Stetson Last Drop, a limited edition version of the 100X Presidente. It is part of a limited run of 100 hats, designed to honor the 100th anniversary of the legendary "Last Drop From His Stetson" painting and advertisement by legendary cowboy artist Lon Megargee, which depicts a kindly cowboy kneeling to give his horse a drink of water from his upturned hat. Other than a very nice watch that was a Christmas gift from my father, this is probably the nicest piece of clothing I own.

I see Kip in the cocktail area and we talk about how surreal this whole thing is. I meet Filipe Masetti Leite, who has won for Best Western Documentary and Casey Rislov and Zachary Pullen, the author/illustrator team behind The Rowdy Randy Wild West Show, winner of Best Juvenile Book. We talk until we notice that the crowd is now heading into the SEC. We go in and meet my parents at our table, where I also get to meet Blaine Smith, who manages Graphics and Presentation for the Museum, and was one of the judges that decided my award. Blaine and his wife fall into easy conversation with my wife and I, which makes it a complete surprise when the event suddenly begins.

Intros fly by, Mo Brings Plenty speaks and emcees. Micki Fuhrman is awarded for her wonderful album Westbound and Michael Martin Murphey and his son Ryan perform their own award-winner, Blues for 66, a track about America's most important road that winds through OKC. Bobby Ingersol was presented with the Chester A Reynolds Award, and Andrew Giangola won for Outstanding Non-Fiction book for his Love & Try, a look at professional bull riding. Mary Clearman Blew won for Outstanding Western Novel, and our new friends Casey and Zach took home their award for Outstanding Juvenile Book. A video introduction of Red Steagall by Reba McEntire played and he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Anouk Krantz won for her book of photography, Ranchland: Wagonhound, and then Daniel Webster "80 John" Wallace was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners. 80 John was born into slavery and died a millionaire, and is one of the many great black cowboys who isn't remembered as well as he should be.

As the video for 80 John is playing, I'm standing on stage right, having figured out from a quick trip to what I believed to be the right of the stage that this was in fact stage left, I walked through the maintenance hall behind the stage and saw Mo Brings Plenty talking with country duo Brooks & Dunn in the small backstage room that functioned as a green room. I emerged at stage right while 80 John's family accepted his award, and before I knew it, cowboy poet Waddie Mitchell and Jennifer Rogers-Etcheverry, granddaughter of Oklahoma's Favorite Son Will Rogers, are on stage.

They talk for a moment about Texas Jack, and then they announce me as the winner of Outstanding Magazine Article for my piece in Wild West Magazine. I walk on stage, thank the presenters, and make my way to the podium. I talk for just a few moments about Texas Jack, the man who brought the cowboy into the spotlight and kept it there, reflecting on the fact that without Jack, we wouldn't be standing at a cowboy museum at all. I add a little anecdote about Texas Jack rescuing a child as a cowboy and that child growing up to be the Wild West showman that gave Will Rogers his first job in show business. I thank the museum for the honor and hightail it out of there.

https://youtu.be/q8lE4czjHlY

I see the Rodeo Queen holding my Wrangler, and we walk to the stairs heading offstage. At the top of the stairs she hands me the award and congratulates me. I take the bronze Wrangler statue from her, and am instantly struck by how substantial this thing is. It's an easy twenty pounds of bronze. I'm ushered out of the SEC to have my photo taken with the award. I know that Kip is inside receiving his own award, and I'm sorry to miss his acceptance. He confided in me earlier that he is going to end his own short speech with a little Comanche.

I also miss Robert A Funk being inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners, and when I return to my table, Bobby Carradine and Grainger Hines are announcing Filipe Masetti Leite as the winner for Outstanding Documentary. Leite is a Brazilian, and my wife and I feel an instant affinity, as our daughter-in-law is also from Brazil. My wife has spent the last year or so mastering the Portuguese language fluently while I have picked up a smattering of words, and my wife congratulates Filipe and his wife in their native tongues when the event ends.

Red Steagal wins again, this time for Outstanding Western Lifestyle Program, and then Walter Hill is awarded for Outstanding Theatrical Motion Picture. Hill doesn't know this, but one of the movies he directed, Brewster's Millions with Richard Pryor and John Candy, has been my go to sick movie since I was a child. If I have a fever and am trapped in the house, the remedy was always Brewster's Millions and The Price is Right. That says nothing of his long career as one of Hollywood's best storytellers, both as a writer and director, and I'm incredibly gratified when he stops to congratulate me later in the evening.

Brooks & Dunn come out to present Pete Coors with the Western Visionary Award, and Pete talks about the importance of The Code of the West. On our tables are metal cards, the size of a business card or credit card, with the tenets of the Code:

Live each day with courage

Take pride in your work

Always finish what you start

Do what has to be done

Be tough, but fair

When you make a promise, keep it

Ride for the brand

Talk less and say more

Remember that some things aren't for sale

Know where to draw the line

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Bob Wills, the King of Texas Swing, is inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers, and his daughter Carolyn graciously accepts on behalf of his family. Graham Roland accepts the award for Outstanding Fiction Drama for his work on the premiere episode of Dark Winds, the tv series based on the books and characters of legendary Western writer Tony Hillerman. Longmire writer Craig Johnson announces Lou Diamond Phillips as this year's inductee into the Hall of Great Western Performers, and Phillips takes the stage.

Kicking off with his famous phone phrase from Longmire, "It’s another beautiful day at the Red Pony Saloon and continual soiree," Phillips accepts the award with what I now believe to be a trademark gracious ease. His whole speech was good, but I was especially touched when he remarked, "I would ask you, if your heart speaks to you, talk to your representatives and please reconsider the corporal punishment for special needs kids." He is talking about Oklahoma Hosue Bill 1028, which would have banned corporal punishment for kids who have a disability as defined by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and eliminated the parental waiver that allows spanking of those kids. The bill failed to pass in the OK House, with one prominent Republican quoting Proverbs in opposition. "He that spareth his rod hateth his son."

"Our kids don't need the rod. They need our love, our support, our help and our compassion," Phillips says on stage, very clearly speaking from the heart. "So, think about that ... and if this speaks to you, talk to somebody about it." It doesn't seem like a political request at all, but a father pleading for what's best for children like his own. It's a brief moment of gravity in the evening's proceedings, and the audience responds with loud applause. Lou wraps up his acceptance, and heads off stage. As he passes by our table, he stops, leans over to me, and says "Matt, that was a great speech, congratulations." I shake his hand and congratulate him. Once again, I'm struck by the fact that Lou Diamond Phillips is a very nice man.

Mo Brings Plenty wraps up the celebration, and the crowd disperses, leaving me to haul my newly acquired bronze back to the car. We head back to the hotel and I go to change out of my tuxedo while my wife heads to the bar. I come back down a few minutes later and she is sitting at the bar next to Walter Hill. We have a few drinks, and I talk briefly to Carolyn Wells, the family of 80 John, and Mo Brings Plenty as they wander in and out of the bar area. I catch up with Kip Stratton again and am lucky enough to get him to sign a copy of his now award-winning book of poetry.

I head back to my room and put my black Stetson back in its box. The event is over, and not once did anyone tell me that I was wearing the wrong hat, that I was a poser, that I was a fake, that I was a dude. Maybe when you win a Western Heritage Award from the Cowboy Museum, you can wear whatever hat you want. Maybe it's just a hat.

I'd like to thank my wife for making the trip to Oklahoma City with me, and my parents for being part of a truly wonderful weekend. I'd like to thank the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum for the honor of the award, and all of my fellow award winners and inductees for their time and their own work. I'd like to thank Blaine and his wife for their conversation, Kip Stratton and his lovely guest for being downright great folks to talk with, and everyone else who made the whole thing so great.

And Lou Diamond Phillips, for being a very nice man.

Part 6 - Texas Jack: Legends of the Old West

https://youtu.be/EBMM2XRkwBM

Episode 6 of 6 of the Texas Jack podcast series I wrote for Legends of the Old West.

Also available on Spotify:

And Apple:

All of the Legends of the Old West podcasts are available at https://blackbarrelmedia.com/legends-of-the-old-west/

Texas Jack: America's First Cowboy Star by Matthew Kerns is available at:

Part 5 - Texas Jack: Legends of the Old West

https://youtu.be/HEJniZ0Xc9s

Episode 5 of 6 of the Texas Jack podcast series I wrote for Legends of the Old West.

Also available on Spotify:

And Apple:

All of the Legends of the Old West podcasts are available at https://blackbarrelmedia.com/legends-of-the-old-west/

Texas Jack: America's First Cowboy Star by Matthew Kerns is available at:

Western Heritage Awards Live Stream

https://wranglernetwork.com/events/western-heritage-awards/

The Western Heritage Awards, presented by the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City and broadcast live by Wrangler Network.

I (Matthew Kerns) am receiving the Western Heritage Award for my cover story, Texas Jack Takes an Encore, in the April 2022 issue of Wild West Magazine.

Fellow nominees this year include beer magnate Pete Coors, legendary Western musician Red Steagall, and world-class actor Lou Diamond Phillips. The event's emcee is Mo Brings Plenty, Lakota actor and musician best known for his portrayal of "Mo" in the television series Yellowstone.

The Western Heritage Awards cover two days of events on Friday, April 14th, and Saturday, April 15th, in Oklahoma City. Saturday night's awards ceremony will be broadcast live by Wrangler Network.

Facebook event here: https://fb.me/e/YbiUxl7A

Part 4 - Texas Jack: Legends of the Old West

https://youtu.be/LeWzI6gyUYA

Episode 4 of 6 of the Texas Jack podcast series I wrote for Legends of the Old West.

Also available on Spotify:

And Apple:

All of the Legends of the Old West podcasts are available at https://blackbarrelmedia.com/legends-of-the-old-west/

Texas Jack: America's First Cowboy Star by Matthew Kerns is available at:

First Broadway Review

On March 31, 1873, after three months of touring and stops in 31 different cities, the Scouts of the Prairie starring Texas Jack, Buffalo Bill, Ned Buntline, and Giuseppina Morlacchi made their Broadway debut at Niblo's Garden. As they had at every stop, eager theatergoers crowded the floors and balconies to see the famous western heroes. And just like in all of those cities, critics were scathing.

This review is from the April 1st edition of the New York Daily Herald.

“The Scouts of the Prairie” at Niblo’s.

The long-promised production of “The Scouts of the Prairie” at Niblo’s was accomplished last night without accident. A densely crowded house greeted the heroes of the drama, and as these were also the genuine heroes of many a feat on the Western prairies, a piquancy and interest were given to their appearance seldom felt upon the appearance of real actors.

The drama, of which we understand Ned Buntline is the author, is about everything in general and nothing in particular. Every act ends with a fight between the scouts and the Indians—the first act being still further embellished by a characteristic war dance. The Indians, as well as the scouts, are the genuine article.

The real hero of the piece is Cale Durg, the part represented by Ned Buntline, the American Bulwer. Mr. Judson (otherwise Buntline) represents the part as badly as is possible for any human being to represent it, and the part is as bad as it was possible to make it. The Hon. William F. Cody, otherwise “Buffalo Bill,” and occasionally called by the refined people of the Eastern cities “Bison William,” is a good-looking fellow, tall and straight as an arrow, but ridiculous as an actor. Texas Jack, whose real name, we believe, is Omohundro, is not quite so good-looking, not so tall, not so straight, and not so ridiculous. Mlle. Morlacchi, as Dove Eye, is only an insipid forest maiden, but the worst actor of the lot is Senorita Carfana, the representative of Hazel Eye, a young white woman who is very tall, very straight, and very virtuous. She is worse, even, than Ned Buntline, and he is simply maundering imbecility. Her first appearance is ludicrous beyond the power of description—more ludicrous even than Ned Buntline’s temperance address in the forest.

To describe the play and its reception is alike impossible. The applause savored of derision, and the derision of applause. Everything was so wonderfully bad that it was almost good. The whole performance was so far outside of human experience, so wonderful in its daring feebleness, that no ordinary intellect is capable of comprehending it—that no ordinary mortal can discuss it at any length with good taste and good temper.

Buffalo Bill was called before the curtain at the end of the first act, when he made a speech that was neat and appropriate, as well as short. The entertainment began with a farce by Ned Buntline called “The Broken Bank,” probably the worst ever written, and certainly the worst acted atrocity ever seen on any stage.

Part 3 - Texas Jack: Legends of the Old West

https://youtu.be/0JtbpLmZja0

Episode 3 of 6 of the Texas Jack podcast series I wrote for Legends of the Old West.

Also available on Spotify:

And Apple:

All of the Legends of the Old West podcasts are available at https://blackbarrelmedia.com/legends-of-the-old-west/

Texas Jack: America's First Cowboy Star by Matthew Kerns is available at:

Part 2 - Texas Jack: Legends of the Old West

https://youtu.be/hDeC3CO-oHQ

Episode 2 of 6 of the Texas Jack podcast series I wrote for Legends of the Old West.

Also available on Spotify:

And Apple:

All of the Legends of the Old West podcasts are available at https://blackbarrelmedia.com/legends-of-the-old-west/

Texas Jack: America's First Cowboy Star by Matthew Kerns is available at:

The Murder of Tip Vincent

1950

On May 11th, 1950, a work crew in Rawlins, Wyoming, excavated a lot to lay the foundations for the new Rawlins National Bank on the corner of 5th & West Cedar Streets. In the afternoon, the foreman noticed that his workers had stopped working and were standing in a rough circle, staring down at the ground. He walked over and saw what they were looking at. A whiskey barrel had been buried, and in their work, the barrel had been uncovered, and its macabre contents revealed: the bones of a man, his skull missing its top portion. News quickly spread through the town, with citizens whispering to each other about the man in the whiskey barrel coffin. The news brought first members of the Chamber of Commerce, which had previously been located at the site, and then 85-year-old Lillian Heath, Wyoming's first female doctor. She confirmed what the Chamber of Commerce men suspected—she knew the man in the barrel.

1878

Seventy-two years earlier, as the scientific world converged on Rawlins in preparation for the solar eclipse, Texas Jack and his guests Doctor Amandus Ferber and Count Otto Franc von Lichtenstein complained that the hotel rooms they had reserved by telegraph weeks earlier were double and even triple booked, forcing the three to share a single room. "After many introductions to reporters and Jack's numerous friends at almost every station," wrote the Doctor in a letter to Forest & Stream magazine, "we found ourselves at the Railroad Hotel, which was so crowded on account of the eclipse that, although we telegraphed for rooms, we three were put up in one little room like herrings." Restless in the small room, Jack headed to the saloon for refreshment, where he learned that a famous inventor was also sharing one of the rooms in the hotel.

" After we retired and were asleep a thundering knock on the door awakened us," wrote Thomas Edison in his journal, "Upon opening the door a tall, handsome man with flowing hair dressed in western style entered the room. His eyes were bloodshot, and he was somewhat inebriated. He introduced himself as `Texas Jack’—Omohundro and said he wanted to see Edison, as he had read about me in the newspapers." Both Edison and the man sharing his room had been warned of bad men near Rawlins, and were afraid that this was one of them.

The sound of Jack's voice had roused other occupants of the packed hotel. "The landlord requested him not to make so much noise and was thrown out into the hall. Jack explained that he had just come in with a party that had been hunting and that he felt fine. He explained, also, that he was the boss pistol-shot of the West; that it was he who taught the celebrated Doctor Carver how to shoot. Then suddenly pointing to a weather vane on the freight depot, he pulled out a Colt revolver and fired through the window, hitting the vane." The show of marksmanship did little to calm the fears of the inventor. " It was only after I told him I was tired," Edison wrote, "and would see him in the morning that he left. Both Fox and I were so nervous we didn’t sleep any that night. We were told in the morning that Jack was a pretty good fellow, and was not one of the `bad men,’ of whom they had a good supply."

1950

Dr. Lillian Heath arrived at the construction site in Rawlins in 1950 and confirmed what some of the locals already believed. The bones and partial skull in the whiskey barrel uncovered by the construction crew belonged to one of these bad men. This particular bad man was an outlaw known as Big Nose George. Some said his real name might have been George Warden, or George Manuse, but it turned out to be George Parrot.

He had been lynched by an angry mob of two-hundred or more Rawlins locals in 1881, his body dissected, and his brain studied for clues that might explain his various criminal misdeeds. Heath was just 15 years old in 1881. Her father got her a job as the medical assistant to two doctors, Thomas Maghee and John Eugene Osborne, and those men had claimed Big Nose George's body and carried out the dissection. When they had removed the top of the outlaw's skull to examine his brain, she remembered, the removed portion of the cranium had been handed to her. She kept it as a memento, using it as a doorstop for many years. Her husband had repurposed it as an ashtray. She handed it to the county coroner, who brought it together with the lower part of the skull from the whiskey barrel. The pieces were a perfect match.

[image error][image error]1878

When Thomas Edison woke the next morning and told people about the cowboy who knocked on his door in the middle of the night and fired a gun from his window and claimed to be the best pistol shot in the West and called himself Texas Jack, he was shocked to learn from locals that John Omohundro was everything he said he was. If Edison was too busy with his work to pay attention to dime novels, stage shows, and newspaper reports about one of the most famous plainsmen in the world, friend and costar of Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Cody, the people of Rawlins were not. Edison went to find Texas Jack, only to learn that the scout was up before sunrise, headed south with his party to hunt in the Sierra Madre mountains of present-day Medicine Bow National Forest. Jack hired a local man named Henry "Tip" Vincent to help him guide the party. Jack knew the area, was familiar with the local tribes and their languages, and was confident of his abilities as a hunter and guide—but he knew the men paying him wanted the find the best hunting and the best fishing and the most spectacular scenery Wyoming had to offer, and he knew the best way to ensure the success of the trip was to lean on a local expert. He was told that Tip Vincent was his man.

The three weeks that Jack and his guests spent in the wilderness of southern Wyoming proved that Jack's choice was well made. Reports to Forest & Stream magazine by Dr. Ferber and travel diaries kept by Otto Franc recount daily events like "Tip and Jack go out to look for a shady camp, they come back at 10 o'clock and report a good place 8 miles up the creek," and "Jack and I go out hunting but a thunderstorm soon compels us to return without game; Dr. and Tip come home with plenty of trout." Jack and Tip fell into an easy friendship. Franc describes a typical day's meals: "When we travel we have only 2 meals a day viz: Breakfast & Supper & consequently plenty of appetite; after the meal we light our pipes, sit around the fire & listen to the Indian & hunting stories of Tip & Jack."

With the southern portion of their trek completed, the four men traveled back towards Rawlins, stopping at Beckman's Ranch. While Furber and Franc proceeded into Rawlins, Jack and Tip stayed at the ranch to take care of the pack train. While the other two men emptied a keg of lager in Rawlins, Texas Jack asked Tip if he would come with them for the next portion of the trip: six weeks in the Wind River range. When the full party reconnected in Rawlins the following day to resupply, Tip asked Jack if he could leave the party for two days on urgent business.

"Tip asks for a vacation of 2 days," wrote Franc in his journal. "He is detective for the Union Pacific Railroad & the Co. wants him to follow the trail & if possible to locate a party of train robbers that has committed depredations along the line near Rawlins for some time. He will overtake us at Lanckin's ranch; I loan him my Sharp Rifle as I shall have no use for the same until after we start from the ranch, until then my light Winchester Rifle is serviceable enough for any antelope or Deer that we might meet." Tip took Franc's .50 caliber Sharps Rifle, promising to return it to Franc when he joined the party at August Lancken's place.

1881

Big Nose George, the man whose remains were both interred in a whisky barrel and used to collect cigar ashes by the husband of Dr. Heath, did not accept his fate easily. He first entered a guilty plea, but days later changed his plea to not guilty. In November of 1880, a jury was sworn, and two days later George again changed his plea—back to guilty. A motion was filed for arrest of judgment and sentencing, and the court took this under advisement but eventually denied the motion. Death by hanging was the punishment for those found guilty of murder in the state of Wyoming, and Big Nose George was sentenced to hang on April 2, 1881.

Ten days before the scheduled execution, George tried to escape from the local jail. He somehow managed to keep his pocket knife while being put into the jails, and he used the knife to saw through the rivets on the heavy leg shackles that bound him. He waited until the nighttime and hid in a closet, waiting for Robert Rankin, the sheriff and jailer, to walk past. As the man made his nightly rounds, George leaped from the closet and struck Rankin in the head with his heavy wrist shackles, fracturing the man's skull. Somehow, Rankin turned and delivered a blow to the side of George's neck, knocking him against the wall. Rankin was then able to call to his wife for help. Grabbing her husband's pistol and the extra keys, Rosa Rankin entered the cell block, closing and locking the grated door behind her to prevent an escape. With her husband's pistol in her hand, she convinced the outlaw to return to his cell. Her husband was then able to leave the area, and Dr. John Osborne treated his injuries. The local blacksmith was called to re-rivet the shackles onto Big Nose George's ankles—the attempted escape had failed.

That night men began to appear outside the Rawlins jail. At first, one by one, and then arriving in groups of two or three, until eventually, two hundred men stood silently in the midnight air. Inside the jail, the sheriff had laid down to recover from his wounds and likely concussion, and it was his deputy who heard the knock at the door. When he asked who was there, the reply said simply, "Friends." The deputy replied to the friends that it was late and they weren't allowed in the jail, at which the door was forced open, and the deputy and a guard assigned to watch Big Nose George were advised by the four or five men who entered the jail to take a walk. George was escorted from his cell and down the street to a telegraph pole across from the J.W. Hugus Company Store. Someone ran to get Doctor Osborne, who had returned home after treating the sheriff for his injuries, to make sure that the noose did its work.

An empty kerosene barrel was rolled in front of the pole, and George was forced to stand on it while the rope was tied to his neck. The other end of the rope was thrown over the cross-post of the telegraph pole and the barrel was kicked out from Big Nose George's feet. Then the rope broke and George fell to the ground gasping for air. While a member of the crowd dragged a ladder from behind the Company Store, George succeeded in loosening the ropes that bound his hands behind his back. A stronger rope was tied around his neck and he was now forced to climb the twelve foot ladder, which was then yanked out from under him. He finally managed to untie his hands, and as he swung, he grabbed the telegraph pole, clinging to it for his life. No one in the crowd left. Slowly, under his own weight and that of the heavy shackles around his feet, Big Nose George was unable to hold himself to the pole and his grip gave way, tearing off one of his ears in the process. When they were satisfied that he was no longer alive, the crowd faded into the night. The body remained at the end of the rope for a few hours before the undertaker removed it.

1878

At August Lankin's ranch, Texas Jack, Dr. Furber, and Otto Franc waited for Tip to join them. A day passed and then two. Franc wrote in his journal, "we were entertained in right hospitable western style without daring to offer a cent of money in pay. in fact the whole ranch is placed at our disposal so that we almost feel like proprietors of the same instead of as guests. the mountains contain deer & mountain sheep & rock rabbits by the thousand so that we shall have something to pass our time with while we are waiting for Tip." The next day Franc fell ill while hunting alone, and feared that he would die. He had given himself up for gone when, "I heard the clatter of horses hoofs & looming up through the darkness came a man on horseback with another saddle horse beside on a dead run towards me. in a moment he was beside me. this gave me new life & I, forgetting that I was half dead, I jumped in the saddle &, keeping in advance of the other man, I made a bee line for the ranch as fast as my lively pony could run." After a day to rest from the ordeal, Jack and his guests discussed the situation. They could wait for Tip no more. Mr. Lancken agreed to fill in for Tip, helping Jack on the northern portion of the hunt.

The northern hunt filled the next six weeks, and Texas Jack, Gus Lankin, Dr. Furber, and Otto Franc hunted across the expanses of Wyoming, heading towards Wind River and following it through the Wind River Canyon to where it was called the Big Horn River. They hunted and explored the area, carefully watching for members of the Bannock tribe that were rumored to be on the warpath. Jack pointed out to his guests the tracks of ponies crossing the area without the markings of a travois pulled behind them, a sure sign that warriors were nearby. This caution turned to fear when smoke was seen rising to the north, but further exploration revealed that it was not smoke from tribal fires, but steam from the large hot springs of present-day Thermopolis.

"Arriving at the place," wrote Franc, "we find it to be a mammoth hot sulphur spring. it comes out at the foot of a hill where it forms a basin 25 feet wide & of great depth; the water is darkened & very clear, the outlet is a swift running stream 6 feet wide & 2 feet deep it runs 250 yards & falls over a bank 75 feet high into the Wind River, in falling it forms several sulphur pillars of fantastic design, for a great distance around the ground is formed of sulphur sediments showing that the outflow changes its course very often. the water is very hot, so that we could not hold our hands in it. the spring throws out a thousand or more gallons in a minute. on the opposite of the river are the remains of another now-extinct mineral spring. it is in the shape of a dome of transparent matter &of yellow & crystal clear icicles."

With the weather cooling, the group made its way back through the Wind River Canyon, to Lankin's Ranch, and finally to Rawlins where they were told why Tip had not joined them. Tip and Carbon, Wyoming, Deputy Sheriff Bob Widdowfield were called to investigate who was tampering with the tracks of the Union Pacific Railroad. Several days earlier, a Union Pacific train reported that a survey crew was nearly struck on the bridge where the track crossed Medicine Bow River. Railroad officials reported that no survey crew was currently assigned to that portion of the track, The next day, the section foreman and his crew inspected the track and discovered that a gang had pulled spikes and removed fish plates, using a long run of telegraph wire tied to the loosened section of track so that it could be yanked away to derail a train and rob it of cash meant to pay rail workers in Rawlins.

Sure that the gang must be close, Tip Vincent and Bob Widdowfield tracked them south towards Rattlesnake Canyon near Elk Mountain. The intrepid lawmen walked into an ambush in the canyon, and Tip was shot no fewer than twelve times in the back as he made for high ground. Members of the gang stole Widdowfield's coat and the boots Tip was wearing. When a search party discovered the bodies, they found an old Army musket next to Tip's body, the new Sharps rifle he had borrowed from Otto Franc taken by the gang. County officials offered $10,000 as a reward for the capture of the men who killed Tip Vincent and Bob Widdowfield, and the Union Pacific Railroad offered to double that amount the week later. Otto Franc wrote of Tip that "his murderer will perhaps never be known or punished as the wilds of Wyoming give abundant shelter to that class of men; the Territory abounds with bands of horse thieves but it is very seldom that one of them is brought to justice."

1881

It is likely Franc would have been right, but for the greed that led the gang to attempt their ill-fated train derailment in the first place. Dutch Charlie Burris was the first to get caught, having gone back to the Black Hills of the Dakotas and shot through the arm in an attempted robbery before being captured and sent back to Wyoming, where a large group of citizens forcibly removed him from the train and hung him from a telegraph pole. Soon enough, another gang member made a fatal mistake. A string of stagecoach robberies in Montana had just culminated in a particularly lucrative heist when a man drinking at a Montana saloon bragged about his wealth and having gotten away with murder down in Wyoming a few years back. Word reached the sheriff in Rawlins, and the stagecoach robber was soon arrested and placed on a train bound for Rawlins and justice. Just as they had done to Dutch Charlie, locals greeted this man at the train station, tied a rope around his neck, tossed the rope over a telegraph pole and told him that they would not hesitate to execute him right now if he didn't confess to his crimes, including the murders of Tip Vincent and Robert Widdowfield. The man hesitated and the rope was pulled tight. His hesitation disappeared. He confessed. He and his gang had killed those men, and his name was Big Nose George Parrot.

1950

The portion of the skull that Dr. Heath had used as a doorstop and then an ashtray for almost seventy years confirmed that the remains in the whiskey barrel belonged to Big Nose George.

Newspapers around the country now told readers about another gruesome memento. Dr. John Eugene Osborne—one of the two doctors who had performed the dissection of George's body and the man who attended injured Sheriff Rankin and made sure George was dead after the lynching—had gone on to serve in the Wyoming Territorial Legislature, had chaired the Territorial Penitentiary Building Commission, and been elected mayor of Rawlins in 1888. He was elected the third Governor of the state of Wyoming, and later as a member of the House of Representatives in the Fifty-fifth Congress.

After the dissection of Big Nose George, Osborne sent the outlaw's skin to be tanned and subsequently turned into a medical bag he carried as a doctor and a pair of two-toned shoes that remain on display at the Carbon County Museum in Rawlins, Wyoming. Dr. Osborne wore them at his inauguration.

Part 1 - Texas Jack: Legends of the Old West

https://youtu.be/Odyn5fiEeKA

Episode 1 of 6 of the Texas Jack podcast series I wrote for Legends of the Old West.

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