Mark Warren's Blog: Mark Warren Blog, page 3

The Demoralization of the Southern Woodsman

Here in the mountains of north Georgia it’s already the worse tick season I’ve experienced to date. It’s early June, and already I’ve removed from my body more ticks than I chalked up for all of last summer. I’m referring to the larger ticks that we can actually feel walking on us, as opposed to the deer tick which is so small we can’t detect its movement. (These latter ones–the size of the period at the end of this parenthetical–are the potential carriers of Lyme Disease; but the former can transmit other serious diseases as well, one of those being Mountain Spotted Fever.) With Lyme Disease studies show that the pathogens are transmitted from an attached tick to a host in about 24 hours. But there are conflicting studies that make claims for faster transmission. However, some diseases (I read about 20 of these in a current report I received from CDC) transmit from tick to host in a matter of minutes. All of this information should inspire frequent body checks by all of us.

Aside from the diseases that we can pick up while hosting a blood-sucker (like a tick), there is the lesser crime of the itch that lingers at the bite site. For a single tick bite–or even three or four–this is not a crucial consideration. But ticks are only one name on the list of itch-makers. More numerous are the bites of chiggers and mosquitos. Even stings–as from yellow jackets, hornets, centipedes, scorpions, and the like–can itch long after the pain has subsided. Of all these little invaders and warriors, arguably none takes a toll like the chigger.

In an emergency situation, when one is forced into an unexpected overnight stay in the forest for an indefinite time, there is quite a bit of work that needs to be done: shelter building, shelter waterproofing, more shelter waterproofing, acquisition of drinking water, establishing a fire, maintaining that fire, fuel gathering, foraging, cooking, etc. In summer, in our neck of the woods, if such a person sleeps on the ground, he is probably going to discover thirty or more chigger bites on the following day. If he piles up leaves for a mattress, double that number of bites. Depending on a person’s natural body chemistry and diet, the notches on the chiggers’ guns might exceed a hundred.

At that point, with so many active itches, a person could easily raise the white flag and simply surrender. Without a source for medicinal relief–like the ever-loyal jewelweed–this itch-victim might elect to lie down in a cold stream just to try to endure the misery. This much discomfort heaped on any poor soul all at once can be demoralizing. I’ve seen it happen.

Once on a self-imposed “survival trip” on Georgia’s coast, an eager friend wanted to accompany me. He was an experienced woodsman in north Georgia, but his time on the coastal plain was limited. On our first night he began constructing an improvised bed of Spanish moss inside a frame of four logs. When I informed him that Spanish moss was prime real estate for chiggers, he proudly showed me a cast-off sheet of plastic he had found. This was to be his barrier to keep the chiggers out.

So then I escalated from “suggesting” to “begging” that he not sleep on the moss. He held onto the smile and said, “I’m going to sleep like a baby.”

Well, I thought, some people are not notably affected by chigger bites. I remembered a summer camper of mine who had proudly boasted of 163 bites by the end of the session. Among his buddies it had become an insane test of manhood: Who could incur the most bites? But each time I asked the champion if he needed medication, he refused. He said the bites hardly itched. So . . . maybe my friend snoozing on the Spanish moss was one of these anomalies who was impervious to chigger hell.

He did sleep like a baby. But in the morning he began scratching like a demon. First a leg, then an arm pit, the back of his neck, the other arm pit, and, of course, the crotch. (Chiggers have no mercy.) Before long he was scraping fingernails across countless inflamed bumps that soon became bleeding welts. They were everywhere. It was a little like being with a crazed man whose entire faculties were turned inward to fight the war of the itch. He was, in a word, demoralized. For the rest of the trip he was not motivated to perform any chore, no matter how small. If this had been a real survival situation without a backdoor to safety, his bites could have tipped the scale against his chances at staying alive.

Because chiggers know and crave me, it should be no surprise that I pay a lot of attention to insect repellents. I’m talking about the kind that exist in the wild. In my book, Secrets of the Forest, Volume 1, I cover 18 sources. I’ve chosen one to brag on here. My most beloved of repellents is the green leaf of the pawpaw tree.

Before explaining its use, let’s first cover the safety aspect of ensuring that a specific plant’s juices will not affect you adversely. We can never predict allergic reactions. We have to learn about them, usually, by trial and error. There’s an easy test we can perform to gauge our compatibilities with species of plants.

Tear off a small piece of green leaf, mangle it until juicy, and rub it into a small patch un-callused area of skin, such as the inside of the forearm. Rub briskly to be sure juices penetrate. Immediately after rubbing you’ll see a redness from the abrasion alone. But this redness soon disappears. After 30 minutes, if the skin looks normal, pawpaw is for you. If a rash shows, drop it from your list of repellent possibilities.

One kind of native pawpaw inhabits floodplains. It might grow up to 30 feet but generally stands from 10 to 15 feet tall. Its leaves get large, up to a foot long. The widest part of the leaf is nearer the tip than the base (oblanceolate), and this helps it stand out for one who is searching for pawpaw. The best identifier is the insecticidal aroma in the leaf. Rub and sniff and you’ll discover the smell of green bell pepper . . . or tomato vine.

Usually, when you find one of these floodplain trees, you discover a colony; so there will be an ample supply. For a barrier to sleep on, take a few leaves from each tree to minimize stress to any given tree. To apply directly to the body (after the allergy test), wad up a few leaves and rub them into the skin. Each time a handful of leaves feels used-up, rather than throw them away, stuff them into a hat, into socks, pockets, and waistbands, or inside a shirt.

The shrubby pawpaw, which favors slightly higher ground in our mountains, contains all the same insecticidal properties. It grows 3 or 4 feet high. Its leaves are also oblanceolate but only about half the size of its creekside cousin’s leaves. The shrubs do not make colonies.

Both varieties produce edible fruit that is surprisingly sweet, tasting like a mix of banana, mango, and pineapple. These oddly shaped fruits ripen in late August here in Southern Appalachia. Though you’ll commonly see fruit develop on the shrubby pawpaw, you’ll seldom get to harvest it, because wildlife takes it before it becomes ripe enough for us humans. The taller trees on bottomland remove deer from the equation. That’s where to look for the fruit.

After enjoying the fruit, be sure to save the seeds. They can be dried by sun and crushed into powder as a scalp application to kill lice.

As long as I’m bragging about pawpaw, let me mention that its dead wood is one of our most user-friendly materials for fire by friction, especially using the hand drill. Also, a narrow strip of green inner bark (beneath the outer bark) can be cut off a living branch to be used as “instant cordage.”

Fire . . . rope . . . food . . . repellency. Not a bad list of resources from one tree. You can check out the "Secrets of the Forest" books here: www.secretsoftheforestbook.com

The Wyatt Earp Kid

By the time I was nine years old, my collections of magazine and newspaper articles about Wyatt Earp had grown to 3 boxes. My bookshelves had become a beginner’s library of the Old West. Books now outnumbered comic books.

I never stopped to ask myself why I was so passionate about this research, but that passion for history only escalated. It became obvious to those around me, and that was an asset. People began to supply me with articles they had run across. Everyone knew that I was the “Wyatt Earp kid.” Most adults thought it the typical infatuation with a TV idol, but my closest friends knew better. They understood that this was something deeper.

One particular exchange between my mother and me became a repeatable regular. She would see me busy at work, which usually involved me sitting at my desk making pen and ink drawings for my ambitious anthology of illustrations depicting every notable event in the life of Wyatt Earp.

My mother would smile and watch me for a time before saying, “You were just born in the wrong time, weren’t you, Mark?”

Without hesitation I always answered, “Yes, ma’am.”

At that time I never realized that such a scenario would have meant I’d never have met this good woman. But she never felt hurt by my answer. She got it.

By the way, those drawings (a stack of papers the size of an unabridged dictionary) they were rendered on the oldest yellowed paper I could find. Rough-textured stuff without a hint of smoothness. My drawing implement was an old-fashioned dipping pen with a split nib that I lowered carefully into a well of India ink. I deemed this to be authentic. So crude was the process that, physically, it felt like trying to move the point of a straight pin across the surface of a carpet. Hundreds and hundreds of tortured scratchings. A passion. All these illustrations … all my boxes of papers … my entire library … decades down the road it would all go up in flames in a house fire.

In the winter of my 13th year, when most of my friends were discovering sports, girls, and the not too distant dream of owning a car, they must have been a little confused about my birthday party. For the occasion I invited 7 males with instructions to bring cap guns and holsters. I handed out scripts and coached them in a reenactment of the Gunfight Behind the O.K. Corral, informing each of his assigned shots, wounds, or death scene. It was easily the high point of my year. And as I look back on it from seventy, that unique birthday may have been my best.
Adobe Moon

Wyatt in the Movies

With the first book of my new historical fiction trilogy on Wyatt Earp spreading out into the world, I am meeting a lot of people at author events, many of these folks with questions about the real story of the Earps vs. the movie versions. These questions are pretty easily answered, and it surprises the public at large that movie makers feel no particular allegiance to the absolute truth. After all, screenwriters, producers, and directors are creating entertainment . . . not giving a history seminar. What surprises the public most is the revelation that the so-called O.K. Corral fight was spawned by a clandestine deal brokered by Wyatt to Ike Clanton and a few of his crooked cronies. In short, Wyatt offered Clanton the reward money if Ike gave up the location of a group of stage robbers who had killed two men on the coach.

I suppose a movie maker cannot bring himself to let Wyatt stoop so low. How can the heroic protagonist get away with talking terms in the dark of a Tombstone alley with the likes of Ike Clanton? Such a shadowy contract would destroy the intended image for a “movie Wyatt.”

Yet, in our time, a police detective might be praised for using a confidential informant. It’s a case of the ends justifying the means.

The Earp-Clanton deal was portrayed once – and only once, as far as I know – in the movie Doc. But this movie’s agenda was all about exposing Wyatt Earp as an opportunist politician and an unsavory lawman without ethics. Try to imagine any of the other Earp films showing such a scene and getting away with it. Kevin Costner? Kurt Russell? Randolph Scott? James Garner? This is probably why, in Doc, a relatively unknown actor (at the time) was chosen to play Wyatt. We, the movie-goers could allow ourselves to see a stranger lower himself in such a manner. Poor Harris Yulin. He’s a very fine actor and, in my opinion, did an excellent job with the material he was given in Doc. But the result was our first villainous Wyatt . . . and a script, no doubt, influenced by Frank Waters’ book, which also contrived to embarrass Wyatt and dismantle the Earp legend.

Perhaps the more interesting question I get is this: Which actor best played Wyatt? Or Doc? Or Bat Masterson?

No actor, in my opinion, has nailed Wyatt’s demeanor. I did admire Kevin Costner’s approach. There was a lot he got right . . . after Lamar, Missouri. (Before Lamar, Costner’s Wyatt showed hints of a wide-eyed, “golly-gee,” gangling youth. Never was Wyatt a “golly-gee” kind of guy.) But after his wife’s death, we see Costner’s Wyatt turn grim, bluntly honest, and terse to the point of being asocial. This true to life performance is probably what sank the movie. (Which might illustrate the prudence of a screenwriter’s tweaking of the truth.) This movie used Wyatt’s Lamar tragedy as the springboard for his personality change. In fact, this pivotal point is intended to apologize for Wyatt’s annealing into the stoic persona that follows.

I don’t believe it happened that way. Wyatt was always Wyatt.

James Garner’s Wyatt in Hour of the Gun was tough and determined, two legitimate qualities well-portrayed. But the distortion of the Earp-Holliday relationship dominated the movie. It was a good device for a script, but it was far from history. We have a dissolute Doc serving as Wyatt’s conscience, constantly appraising Wyatt’s motives and feelings. This interaction put Wyatt’s image off balance, always defending himself against Doc’s barbs.

Kurt Russell’s Wyatt was, for my money, too expressive, emotional, and lively. The real Wyatt couldn’t claim creativity as an asset. He was too straight-ahead. Kurt’s roller-coaster performance made for a great movie character; it just wasn’t Wyatt’s character.

The BBC production of The Wild West includes a feature-length Wyatt Earp segment. Liam Cunningham presents a chillingly good representation of Wyatt, though the actor’s physical appearance is so far off the mark that it is difficult to sustain the image as one of Wyatt. (A similar reaction is experienced watching robust Victor Mature play consumptive Doc Holliday in My Darling Clementine.) Mr. Cunningham traded some of Wyatt’s toughness for sophistication. Perhaps not accurate, but this may be what makes the film so watchable.

The PBS American Experience program, Wyatt Earp, though a documentary and not a feature film, must be mentioned. Here we don’t have an actor to appraise, but we hear in the first ten minutes one of the best character sketches of Wyatt ever recorded on celluloid.

For a Wyatt portrayal, I’ll have to give my nod to Mr. Costner, at least for the second half of Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp. I fervently wish that the epic story they tried for had succeeded. It had almost everything: freight hauling, laying down the rail lines, buffalo hunting, the emergence of the cowtowns, the search for a better life in Tombstone, and the Shakespearean tragedy that followed. It could be argued that the movie Tombstone excelled in the last two items on that list, but the ending was hyped up into an Earp revenge ride that bordered on Armageddon, if judged by the body count. Rambo goes West.

For Doc Holliday portrayals, it’s an easy rating for me. Val Kilmer gave us one of the most delightful and charismatic characters of any Western. It didn’t hurt that he had some of the best lines of any Western, too. He won over a lot of movie-goers, who would later be curious about the real Doc. (This is a big plus for Tombstone.) However, Mr. Kilmer’s Doc was not history’s Doc. Dennis Quaid, in Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp, probably gave us our best look at the man. Seldom have I seen a portrayal that made me completely forget who was playing the role. I never thought about Dennis during the movie. I thought about Doc.

As for Bat Masterson . . . we’re still waiting on that one. No actor has made a serious attempt at that role. Either that or he was terribly miscast and had no prayer in the endeavor. Bat had a lot of personality. Perhaps Kurt Russell should have tackled that role.

Who should have been given the chance at playing Wyatt? I remember mulling over that decades ago and coming up with a very stoic Jeff Bridges. The next year Wild Bill came out. I knew that after playing Hickok, Mr. Bridges would never accept an Earp role. Too déjà vu.

But imagine this: a thirty year old Jeff Bridges adopting the demeanor of Nick Nolte in Extreme Prejudice, and there you have it – the consummate Wyatt Earp on film.

Mark Warren

On Meeting Wyatt Earp

In 1955, when The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp appeared on the television screen, I already considered myself an historian. I watched the show not as a kid craving a Western but as an impassioned analyst who wanted to see what they got right in the stories. By then I had several times devoured Stuart Lake’s 1931 book, Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal, which was the only published Earp biography written by someone who had actually sat down to interview Wyatt before he died. Lake was the historical consultant for the TV series. Every Tuesday night at 8:30 pm I filled my one-TV-program-a-week quota set by my parents, watching the show, each time staying with the credits to the end to see my favorite entry: “Historical Consultant, Stuart Lake.”

One thing I learned very early in my career: No matter how introverted or private you are … tell people about your passion. A case in point. When I was 10 years old, one afternoon – to my surprise – I was summoned to the home of the neighborhood witch. I had no idea why. I’d never seen the inside of her house. When I left her strange-smelling parlor and reentered the normal world of sunshine and birdsong I carried in my hand a magazine I would never have known existed. Inside its covers was a grand article on Wyatt Earp. This was the first of many papers that would fill boxes containing all-things-Earp.

When I was 12, a girl 4 years my elder called me on the phone. (This in itself was unheard of – a teenaged girl calling me.) Her father was a pilot. She told me, “You’re going to need to get down to the airport and wait at the Delta entrance. Hugh O’Brian is coming through town. Daddy says you should be there at 20 till 1. Can you get there?”

After a stunned moment of silence my reply must have sounded desperate. “I’ll get there!”

My good mother knew what this meant to me. She told me to get in the car, and off we went. There I stood alone outside the airport entrance as my mother idled in the waiting line of cars nearby. There was no one else waiting but me. At a quarter to 1, a big black limo pulled up and out stepped TV’s Wyatt Earp in a dark suit similar to the ones my father wore to work. Forcing myself into action I stepped forward and introduced myself. He shook my hand and smiled. Then I heard myself say, “Can I help you carry your bags?”

He had plenty of help, but he picked out an appropriately sized briefcase and handed it to me. It was a gracious move. Hugh O’Brian was known to take a personal interest in the man he portrayed, so we walked the long corridor side by side and talked the entire time about some of the decisions Wyatt Earp had made – most notably – the killing of Frank Stillwell, who had assassinated one of Wyatt’s brothers and maimed another. I was impressed with Mr. O'Brian's knowledge. At the departing gate I surrendered the luggage and we shook hands again. Then I retraced my steps down the long terminal to find my mother. That long walk back "alone" seemed somehow important to me, and I think my mother had anticipated that.
Mark Warren

My Grandfather's Badge

Ten years before I was born, my grandfather had been the sheriff of Fulton County, Georgia.

As a young boy of five, I knew him simply as the tall, white-haired man who helped me to know I was loved in this world. By then he was serving in our modest town of College Park as a city councilman, though I had no idea what that meant, even when – on a rare occasion – I accompanied him to one of those meetings. He always dressed in a white shirt and blue-gray tie, black suit and vest with a silver pocketwatch chain that hung in an arc across his belly. The most memorable item among his daily accoutrements was a roll of dollar bills he always carried in his trouser pocket. That wad of money was almost the size of a coffee mug. Every now and then – on a special occasion, like a birthday or holiday – he peeled off one of those bills and slipped it my way. Something a child never forgets.

As much as I loved him, in my 6th year something changed that caused me to look more closely at who he was. I had checked out a book from my elementary school library and read the so-called “biography” of Wyatt Earp. The story reached down inside me and gripped my soul as no story ever had before. Why? Courage has always fascinated me, and whether or not it was courage or lack of fear (two very different ideas) that governed Wyatt Earp’s actions, he had my attention.

When I showed the book to my grandfather, he walked me back into his bedroom – a twilit place I had seldom visited – and stood me before a chest of drawers. Sliding open the second-from-the-top drawer he lifted out a bronze-colored Colt .45. It was the Bisley model, the last Colt’s to retain any similarity to the “Peacemakers” of the Old West. Next he lifted out a gold shield – the one he had worn as sheriff. From that moment on, that dusky bedroom became for me a time machine.

After that brief glimpse into the not so distant past, every time I visited my grandparents’ home, my mission was set. Once my mother and her parents were preoccupied with conversation I worked at becoming anonymous, eventually slinked away to the back of the house and entered that semi-dark room. There in the dead quiet I carefully pulled open the drawer on my own, rose up on my toes, and peered down at the relics. That’s how it all began for me.

Not only was I interested, I was connected.
Mark Warren The Long Road to Legend