Rod Miller's Blog, page 3

Really Stupid Words, Chapter 23.

And now forsomething completely different.

Thisedition of Stupid Words does not involve words at all. It does involvelanguage, but not spoken language. It involves waggling two fingers on eachhand in what is known as air quotes.

I guesssomebody, somewhere, sometime, decided that waggling fingers like thatresembles printed quotation marks. It’s a reach.

It’s amystery to me why and how it caught on, as the gesture serves no real purpose.

Still, somepeople feel obligated to waggle, thinking that waggling with their fingers addsemphasis to what they are saying with their mouth. It doesn’t. It’s more adistraction, really. For many, an annoyance.

Besides, thehuman voice is perfectly suited to add emphasis, no fingers required. There’svolume, there’s inflection, there’s pacing, stretching, stress, intonation,cadence, pitch, timbre, tone, even silent pauses. I’m sure there are other waysto emphasize what you’re saying, but waggling your fingers to make air quotesneed not (and, to my way of thinking, should not) be among them.

If everyou are tempted to waggle your fingers when speaking, remember how the lateChris Farley showed how stupid air quotes are with his character BennettBrauer. You can look it up.

The Parcel Post Bank

In my lastpost about a then-pending trip to Vernal, Utah, (which turned out a success, Imight add) I mentioned a bank there, built from bricks sent through the UnitedStates Post Office. That mention merited interest among some readers, so Ithought I would expand on it a bit.

Above is aphoto I took of the bank (still standing and still a bank) with its brick facade. As you see, they are ordinary lookingbricks. But how they got there is anything but ordinary. Here’s the story, asquoted from a sign on the sidewalk across the intersection from the bank. Othersources generally agree with this telling, although you’ll see a huge differencein numbers, and numbers that don’t add up, as you read on.

How Far Would You Carry a Brick for Seven Cents?

Thebuilding located diagonally from you . . . [was] originally the Bank of Vernal.Did you know that this building was shipped to Vernal through the US PostOffice brick by brick?

Allof the decorative brick, 5,000 packages weighing 50 pounds each, were sent fromSalt Lake City, Utah, by parcel post because it was half the rate of normalfreight.

S

alt Lake City is only 3 hours away by automobile. In 1916, it tookapproximately 4 days to receive a parcel post shipment. The brick first had totravel 309 miles by the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railway to Mack,Colorado. It was then transferred onto the narrow gauge railroad of the UintahRailway. From Mack, it climbed 63 miles north, up the steepest railroad gradein North America into the desert mining town of Watson. From here, the brickwas loaded onto 17 six-horse wagons for the 2-day and 60-mile ride throughDevil’s playground and over the Alhandra River Ferry to Vernal.

Imagine,all of that work for only seven cents postage per brick!

A historyof the United States Postal Service adds these details (and discrepancies):

JohnB. Cahoon of the Salt Lake Pressed Brick Company recalled that his companyshipped 15,000 bricks to Vernal via Parcel Post. The bricks were individuallywrapped in paper and packed ten to a wooden crate to meet the maximum allowable50-pound limit for packages. In total, the bricks filled 1,500 crates andweighed about 37½ tons.

USPShistory also goes beyond the bricks:

TheBank of Vernal’s bricks weren’t the only unusually large shipments received atthe [Vernal] Post Office that summer. Cheap postage rates contributed to aconstruction boom. Many building materials, including cement, plaster, nails,and other hardware, poured into town. Meanwhile, all the merchants in townreceived merchandise for their stores via Parcel Post. In September 1916, atrain carload of twelve tons of canned tomatoes—9,720 cans packed in 486cases—arrived at the Vernal Post Office for area stores.

There arestill plenty of canned tomatoes on grocery store shelves in Vernal, but theydid not get there by mail. All those Parcel Post shipments to Vernal promptedchanges in postal regulations, and you can’t do that sort of thing anymore.

 

On the Outlaw Trail.

You couldstick a pin just about anywhere in a map of Utah and there would be someinteresting aspect of Old West history that happened there. The northeasternpart of Utah below Wyoming and next to Colorado is no exception. Brown’s Hole(Brown’s Park, if you prefer) and Diamond Mountain are there. And the OutlawTrail, leading from Hole in the Wall in Wyoming to Robbers Roost in Utah, runsthrough the Uinta Basin and most every outlaw in the history of theIntermountain West frequented the area.

 

Among themwas Matt Warner, the bandit who introduced Butch Cassidy to the outlaw life,and subject of my historical novel, OUTLAWMAN: The Life and Times of MattWarner.

On July22, I will be in Vernal, the heart of the Uinta Basin, where Matt Warner wasarrested for murder following a gunfight where he killed two men and woundedanother, speaking at the Uintah County Library. (Uintah and Uinta are bothcorrect spellings, depending on circumstances, but that’s a story for anotherday.) I’ll be speaking about Warner’s life and times, reading a few selectionsfrom the book, and visiting with people about one of the Old West’s mostnotorious outlaws, who later became a respected lawman.

If you’reanywhere near the area we’d love to see you there. There’s a lot to do and seein the Uinta Basin, including a bank on Vernal’s main street built back around 1916from 37 tons of bricks—every one of which arrived in town with a postage stamp,via parcel post. That, too, is a story for another day.

It’s a Kick (starter).

A whileback, publisher Silverado Press invited me to be part of an anthology ofWestern stories by some of today’s top authors (and me). It sounded like aninteresting project, so I signed on. That’s the cover of the book above.

Butthere’s something unusual about this book—not so unusual these days, I suppose,but certainly new to me. Readers—potential readers—will fund the publicationthrough something called Kickstarter. I guess how it works is that interestedreaders buy the book in advance, contributing at various levels of support foradded perks and benefits.

As I said,I don’t know the ins-and-outs of how it all works, but here’s a link thatshould answer all your questions and tell you how to get involved.

Silverado Press Presents WesternStories by Today’s Top Writers.

You’ll seethat the editor, Jeff Mariotte, has assembled a stellar cast of WesternWriters. And me. Take a look. You might like the idea of helping publish abook.

Reruns.

Not longago, yours truly appeared on LA Talk Radio in a wide-ranging, penetrating,perceptive, enlightened, astute, scintillating, incisive, informative, in-depth(or so I’m told) interview with Tom Swearingen, guest host for the “Rendezvouswith a Writer” program.

Life beingwhat it is, it’s altogether likely that not all of you were able to tune in tothe live broadcast.

Not toworry. LA Talk Radio has made the program available all over the place so youcan tune in. Being something of a Luddite, I don’t pretend to know what allthis stuff is or how it all works, but you (or your grandkids) probably do.

Here areseveral links you can click on to take you to either an audio only or a videoand audio recording of the interview. Thanks for listening. Or watching.

Video:
LA Talk Radio Facebook Page
YouTube

Audio:
LATalk Radio Audio
Podbean
Spotify
Amazon Music

Stamey under the sky.

Blue skyand Dave Stamey. What better way to spend a summer evening?

On July 19 at around 6:00 pm, legendary Western singer, songwriter, and entertainer DaveStamey will step up onto a hay trailer parked in Cameron Wilkinson’s horsepasture in Mapleton, Utah, and cut loose with a rollicking evening of goodmusic and good times.

Stamey’spasture performances have become a summer tradition as Cameron invites Dave andall comers to congregate for a festive, informal celebration of cowboy tunes.The modest $22 charge ($11 for the little ones) to get through the gate allgoes to the artist as he wends his way across the West filling auditoriums and performingat more formal venues. But, lucky for us, he always finds a way to detour tothe foot of Maple Mountain for these galas among the graze.

If you’rewithin driving distance of Cameron’s place on July 19, or find yourself in theneighborhood for any reason, this will be the place to spend the evening.Contact Cameron at bronc.cw@gmail.com to let him know you’re on the way and to get moredetailed information. It’s an evening that shouldn’t be missed. I know—I’vebeen there before, and I’ll be there again. Hope to see you there.

Tune in.

June 20 willbe upon us before you know it. Please mark the evening of that day on yourcalendar, in your date book, on your phone, or wherever else you keep your lifefrom descending into chaos.

At 7:00 PMthat day (that’s MST, my time; it’s 6:00 PST, 8:00 CST, 9:00 EST, and howeverArizona sets their clocks these days) I have been invited to appear on LA TalkRadio’s “Rendezvous with a Writer” series. Tom Swearingen, a cowboy poet ofrenown, will be hosting the show. We’ll be talking about reading, writing, someof my books, perhaps some poetry, and who knows what all. I suspect that by theend of our hour, we’ll have covered all 26 letters of the alphabet.

Follow these links to tune in to watch or listen live on June 20:
* Listen to the audio on LA Talk Radio’swebsite. (Click “Listen Live” on right side.)
* Watch on Rendezvouswith a Writer Facebook.
* Watch on LA Talk Radio Facebook.

If youmiss the live broadcast, there is still hope. Follow these links:
* LA Talk Radio Facebook.(Video.)
* Rendezvous with aWriter Facebook. (Video or audio.)
* Podbean. (Audio only. FromPodbean you can choose Spotify, IHeart Radio, and so on.)

Whateverall that means. Tune in. Watch. Listen. Don’t miss a chance to see me open mymouth and let random syllables spill out and dribble down the front of myshirt. See you June 20. 

What’s in there?

There’s a mannamed Justice who made himself a judge.

There’s amadam named Mercy who makes him nervous.

There’s athree-legged dog named Twah.

There’s a barroombouncer named Al, short for Alice.

There’s adim-witted town marshal named Luther.

There’s aphrenologist, a milliner, and a medicine show.

There’s ariverboat gambler and a Philadelphia lawyer.

There arerents to pay, taxes to collect, and percentage payoffs.

There aredisagreements, disturbances, tribulations, and trials.

There’s acourtroom in the saloon and card games at the brothel.

There’snever been a town like this one.

Andthere’s never been a novel like this one.

Justiceand Mercy is nowavailable in paperback and coming soon in eBook.

There’s alot to smile at in its pages.

My Favorite Book, Part 30.

Certainthings from the Old West are so firmly embedded in history—both scholarly andpopular—that they are ever-present. You don’t have to look far to find a book,magazine article, movie, documentary, or debate about the gunfight at the OKCorral, Wild Bill Hickok, the battle at the Little Big Horn, Buffalo Bill Cody,the siege at the Alamo, Crazy Horse, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, GeorgeArmstrong Custer, Sitting Bull . . .

And, aspopular a subject as any of the above, Billy the Kid.

I recentlyre-read a book on that subject I had enjoyed before: To Hell on a Fast Horse – Billy theKid, Pat Garrett and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West by Mark Lee Gardner. The book tracesthe histories of William Bonney and Pat Garrett, both as individuals and theirshared history. While widely researched and carefully documented, the book—unlikeso many nonfiction books—is not a dense parade of names and dates and facts.

Gardnerdoes not paint Billy the Kid as a tortured, misunderstood, widely loved victimof circumstance. Neither does he portray him as totally uncaring, cold-blooded,ruthless, and imbued with evil. Garrett gets the same multi-faceted treatment,covering his heroics and relentless pursuit of justice, as well as hisgambling, drinking, and economic shenanigans. We come to know both men as fullyformed, complex human beings, driven by and responding to (as we all are) complicatedand sometimes conflicting forces.

Theviolence of their lives is chronicled in vivid detail, as are the friendshipsand romantic relationships of the Kid and the sheriff. Throughout the pages ofthis engaging account, readers are left to form their own conclusionsconcerning the mysteries surrounding the lives and deaths of two of the OldWest’s most compelling men, forever entwined in our history and imaginations.

The Great American Novels.

Not longAgo, The Atlantic magazine ran a feature titled “The Great American Novels.” The editors (with lots of help) compileda list of the best works of book-length fiction published in America between 1924and 2023 and came up with 136 titles.

It is aninteresting list. I have heard of most of the books listed, but there wereseveral that had escaped my notice altogether. In all, as near as I can recall,I have read but a paltry 28 of the 136 books. I guess I have to broaden myinterests.

Of thebooks I have read, seven of them made lasting impressions on me, and I haveread most, if not all of them, more than once. These are:

·  DeathComes for the Archbishopby Willa Cather

·  AFarewell to Arms byErnest Hemingway

·  TheGrapes of Wrath byJohn Steinbeck

·  TheCatcher in the Rye byJ.D. Salinger

·  SlaughterhouseFive by Kurt Vonnegut

·  AWinter in the Bloodby James Welch

·  BloodMeridian by CormacMcCarthy

I don’tsuppose it is a surprise that four of my seven favorites from the list are setin the American West. One of those, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, isamong my all-time favorites, worthy of several readings (with more to come) onmy part.

There’s alot of good reading out there. Try as I might, I’ll never get to it all. Howabout you?