The High Plains in Words; 2003-2004

This is Stacey Yates. The High Plains is and always has been a land of contrast. I see winters and blistering summers, close community and fierce individualism. Through history and drama, poetry and fiction, the men and women who ride about the High Plains have used language to capture the contrast that make our region and our people unique. Join me now as we look at the region's writings, old and new, on the High Plains and Words. Christmas at the Ranch is a little collection of Christmas stories by Frank Kelton, the author of more than 40 novels about life in Texas and seven-time winner of the Western Riders of America's Spur Award for the best novel of the West. The first story, which is also called Christmas at the Ranch, actually tells about Christmases at two ranches. The first is the Macarory Ranch, also known as the Jigger Y, which stretched across Upton and Crane counties of West Texas, where Kelton's father was the foreman. The other ranch was the Hackermore Inn, which was operated by his grandfather, North of Midland, Texas.

Kelton begins the story by saying he and his brothers were rich, not in money, because it was, after all, West Texas during the Depression, but rich because they got to do for free what many people would have paid money for, namely to live on a ranch with horses and cattle and cowboys. Christmases were modest in those Depression-era days, but Kelton says he and his brothers, like most people of the High Plains, were conditioned not to expect too much and to be grateful in whatever they received. The real pleasure of Christmas, as Kelton, came from being with family and playing with rarely seen cousins, so the Kelton boys always looked forward to Christmas. Christmas at home was simple and unstructured, but had a special glow all its own, the gifts were modest. Probably the greatest gift I have received in those days was a cowboy suit when I was seven or eight. Mother made me a pair of imitation shops out of brown oil cloth.

They looked like the ones that had in the Cowboys War when working the cattle in the brush, except these offered little defense against the Mesquite Thorns. I probably received a cap pistol too, but mainly I remember the shops. I already had the boots. I had worn boots as far back as I could remember. I was probably ten or twelve years old before I ever had a pair of regular shoes like the Town Boys War. What toys we received were usually bought with a view toward durability. We improvised a lot. When the weather was good, we built miniature corrals out of matchsticks and twigs on the south side of our house. Multicolored marbles became horses and cattle. In those days, most of the real cattle came in a minimum of colors, red and white for herfords, pure black for Angus. More recent times, crossbreeding has produced cattle of all colors, reminding me of those rainbow marbles. Sometimes, we lucked on to a large cardboard box. It became a wagon, though, without wheels. One boy would get into the box and let the others push him around the ranch's large yard. The screeching sound made by the box sliding across the gravel was not unlike a piece of chalk dragged across a blackboard.

Mr. Grant, the manager, founded a nuisance. As did his city-raised wife who hated every day she lived on that isolated ranch. One Christmas, just before he left on a holiday trip to Colorado. Mr. Grant brought us a bright red jumbo wagon and said he hoped we never again would push each other around in a cardboard box. That red wagon lasted for years. Kelton says the joy of Christmas always seemed to be followed by a letdown, as he and his brothers reverted to routine and caught up on their chores, like chopping a supply of firewood for the stoves. His father, on the other hand, seemed relieved. But Kelton never did look forward to Christmas with quite the same excited anticipation as his sons. For one thing says Kelton, livestock did not recognize the holiday and required as much attention on Christmas day as on the day before or the day after. Besides the first story, which gave the book its title, Christmas at the ranch also includes the best Christmas. An account of the Christmas Kelton spent at home, after bootcamp, but before being shipped to Europe to fight in the Second World War.

The third story, Christmas in Austria, is an account of a trip Kelton made with his wife to her hometown in Austria where they met in 1945. Christmas at the ranch was published by McWinney Foundation Press of McMurray University, as the first offering of the Texas Heritage Series. The High Plains and Word is a production of High Plains Public Radio. It is written and produced by Stacey Yates. The selection was read by Monty Downs of merely players in Amarillo, Texas. This is Stacey Yates. The High Plains is and always has been a land of contrast. I see winters and blistering summers, close community and fierce individualism. Through history and drama, poetry and fiction, the men and women who write about the High Plains have used language to capture the contrast that make our region and our people unique. Join me now as we look at the region's writings old and new on the High Plains and words.

Today we traveled in Nebraska for a reading from the Christmas of the phonograph records. Mari Sandos grew up along the Niagara River in the sand hills of Nebraska, the daughter of Swiss immigrants. The eldest of six children, Sandos grew up in poverty. As her father, Jewel Sandos, worked to develop a successful farm and orchard and to establish a sense of community in the harsh Nebraska climate. This story, the Christmas of the phonograph records, tells the story of one Christmas when Jewel spent almost all of a twenty one hundred dollar inheritance on a new phonograph and eight hundred records. Despite heavy debt and his children's need for overshoes, Jewel Sandos saw the phonograph as a way to strengthen the community of neighbors on the High Plains. And Sandos' tale is a moving account of the power of music to bring people together and allow them to forgive and forget, at least while the music plays. When we pick up the story, Mari's family home is still packed with neighbors who've come from miles around to hear the new phonograph.

Mari and her mother have been cooking nonstop to feed all the guests, but Mari and her brother had still hoped their father might go hunting for Christmas tree. We finally got mother off to bed in the attic for her first nap since the records came. Downstairs, the floor was cleared and the server girls showed their dancing school elegance in the waltzes. There was a stream of young people later in the afternoon, many from the skating party at the bridge. Father, red-eyed like the rest of us, limped among them, soaking up their praise, their new respect. By this time, my brothers and I had given up having a tree. Then a boy from up the river rode into the yard dragging a pine behind his horse. It was a shapely tree and small enough to fit on a box in the window out of the way. The youth was the son of father's worst enemy, the man who had sworn in court that Jewel Sandos shot at him and got our father 30 days in jail. Although everybody, including the judge, knew that Jewel Sandos was a crack shot and what he fired at made no further appearances.

As the son came in with the tree, someone announced loudly who he was. I saw father look toward his Winchester on the wall, but he was not the man to quarrel with an enemy's children. Then he was told that the boy's father himself was in the yard. Now Jewel Sandos paled above his bearding, paled so the dancers stopped. The room silent under the suddenly foolish noise of the big horned machine. Helpless, I watched father jump toward the rifle. Then he turned, looked to the man's gaunt-based young son. Tell your old man to come in. We got some good Austrian music. So the old man came in and sat hunched over near the door. When he left with the skaters, all of father's friends began to talk at once, fast, relieved. You could have shot him down on your own place and not got a day in the pin for it. One said, old Jewels nodded. I got no use for a whole outfit, but the music is for everybody. Eventually, Mari and her brothers did get the tree trimmed and the rest of Christmas week went by just like Christmas day,

with neighbors coming from 50 or 60 miles away to listen to the phonograph and dance. Jewels was splattered when a newspaper praised his work, settling the community and enriching cultural life. One day, months later, some of the best phonograph records were destroyed when the family's south pushed her way into the house. Mari was blamed for it, and in her story she says that was the worst whipping of her life. But the loss of the records hurt more, and much, much longer. In addition to his obvious part in this story, Sandoza's father, Jewels, was also the inspiration for her first and best-known book. Old Jewels is a biography of her father, and it shocked many readers with candid descriptions of her father's temper and frank accounts of violence between ranchers and settlers. The Christmas of the phonograph records was written late in her life and published posthumously, but it has become one of Mari Sandoza's best loved writings.

The High Plains and Words is a production of High Plains Public Radio. It is written and produced by Stacey Yates. The selection is read by Montana Heisel of Nearly Players in Amorillo, Texas. This is Stacey Yates. The High Plains is and always has been a land of contrast, icy winters and blistering summers, close community and fierce individualism. Through history and drama, poetry and fiction, the men and women who write about the High Plains have used language to capture the contrast that make our region and our people unique. Join me now as we look at the region's writings, old and new, on the High Plains and Words. Our Reigns this week come from the book Pioneer Women, Voices of the Kansas Frontier by Joanna L. Stratton. In 1975, Joanna Stratton visited her grandmother in Topeka, Kansas, and as usual, spent time exploring the dusty trunks and boxes in the attic, which had fascinated her all her life.

Then, a college student at Harvard, Stratton was amazed to discover 800 autobiographical manuscripts written by women who were early settlers to the state of Kansas. The documents had been collected by Stratton's great grandmother, Lilla Damon-Rowe, a suffragist lawyer and publisher, and the first woman ever admitted to practice before the Kansas Supreme Court. Monroe had spent years gathering the stories and intended to edit them into a book. These documents told of women from the east, seeing the bleak flatness of the prairie for the first time, and of life in a sod dugout. They described encounters with Indians, prairie fires, wild animals, blizzards, cowboy shootouts, and stampeds of Texas long warns. They document the contribution of women to the settlement of Kansas. These were women, Stratton says, who carried their share of plowing, building houses, and defending the homestead. The family could not survive otherwise. The early female settlers of Kansas were also largely responsible for creating a sense of community and for establishing schools and churches.

From the outset, the settler's strong religious beliefs offered a spiritual respite from the daily hardships of wilderness living. With simple but unswerving faith, they turned to their ministers and God for strength and guidance to carry them through difficult times. How is it the pioneers preserved their cheerfulness? Ask Lilla Daymore? You cannot say that they imbibed it from each other. They were too far apart. You cannot lay it to the simple fact that they were acquiring homes, because as compared to what they had left when they came to Kansas, the huts and dugouts had to be glorified by idealism if they were to be called real houses. No, there seems to be only one source of their cheerfulness, of the sublime courage, of their indomitable determination to conquer and to surmount all difficulties, and that was their simple faith in God. They were not bothered by creeds and dogmas. They took the solace of religion as they breathed the pure air of the prairies. They were not superstitious, not fanatical, but held fast to the promises of the father, and their first efforts after getting located were to establish places of worship. In early haze, a union of mixed denominations met in an old courthouse for weekly worship. Their Catherine Cavendor, the daughter of an army officer stationed at the Fort nearby, attended her first service in the summer of 1877.

It was a simple, beautiful service, she explained, no gilded trappings, no blazing candles, sweet odor of flowers or tang of incense. Just the dusty old courtroom, but the presence of God was there with a few gathered in his name. Some of those sun-brown men and women and little children had driven miles across the prairie to be there. There were town folks and soldiers and ranchers and cabboys. We sat on long, hard benches, there was a little melodian or small organ and a choir sang the morning hymn. The sermon, according to a little diary of mine, was from the 105th Psalm, 42, 43, and 44th verses. The theme was that the prairie might be made to blossom like the rose. Haze has many beautiful churches today and the people tread different paths to meeting now. Each of the rivers of righteousness, Confucius says, flows into the lake of heaven, and those old union meetings bound hearts together with bonds no religious dogmas can sever. Lillidae Monroe died before she could complete her project of turning these pioneer women memoirs into a book. After her death in 1929, Lenora Monroe straten devoted years to the careful typing, indexing and annotating of the stories her mother had collected. Eventually, her life of family responsibilities and community involvement pulled her away from the women of the past, and the manuscripts were filed away and forgotten, until Joanna Stratton rediscovered them,

and made at her own task to tell these stories. The High Plains and Words of Productions High Plains Public Radio, it is written and produced by Stacey Yates. The selection was read by Robin Downs of Nearly Players in Emerald, Texas. This is Stacey Yates. It's time for a visit to the library to look at writings that capture the unique character of the High Plains and its people. Join me now for the High Plains and Words. Check into any school library in Texas, or the country for that matter, and you'll meet Hank the Cowdog, a wiry canine detective who's the creation of John Erickson of Perryton, Texas.

Erickson created this smelly, smart, elect detective in 1982, and with a display of High Plains' determination and independence, started his own publishing company to print his first book, The Devil in Texas. That book included two Hank stories, and Erickson sold it right from his pickup truck at cattle auctions, rodeos, or anywhere else Cowboys gathered. The original adventures of Hank the Cowdog was published the next year, after Erickson started receiving letters addressed to Hank. It's me again, Hank the Cowdog. I just got some terrible news. There's been a murder on the ranch. I know I shouldn't blame myself. I mean, a dog is only a dog. He can't be everywhere at once. When I took this job as head of ranch security, I knew that I was only flesh and blood. Four legs, a tail, a couple of ears. Pretty nice kind of nose that the women really go for. Two bushels of hair, and another half-bushel of Mexican sandbirds.

Yeah, that all up, and you don't get Superman. Just me. Good old easy-going Hank, who works hard, tries to do his job, and gets very little cooperation from anyone else around here. I'm not complaining. I knew this wouldn't be an easy job. It took a special kind of dog. Strong, fearless, dedicated, and above all, smart. Obviously, Drover didn't fit. The job fell on my shoulders. It was my destiny. I couldn't escape the broom of history that swept through. Anyway, I took the job. Head of ranch security. Gee, I was proud of that title. Just the sound of it made my tail wag. But now this. A murder right under my nose. I know I shouldn't blame myself, but I do. I got the report this morning around dawn. I'd been up most of the night patrolling the northern perimeter of ranch headquarters.

I'd heard some coyotes gapping up there, and I went up to check it out. I told Drover where I was going, and he came up lame all of a sudden, said he needed to rest his right front leg. I went alone. Didn't find anything. The coyotes stayed out in the pasture. I figured there were two, maybe three of them. They yapped for a couple hours, making fun of me, calling me ugly names, and daring me to come out and fight. Well, you know me. I'm no dummy. There's a thin line between heroism and stupidity, and I try to stay on the south side of it. I didn't go out and fight, but I answered a bark for bark, yap for yap, name for name. The coyote hasn't been belt-token out, yap-hanked a cow dog. A little before dawn, Loper, one of the cowboys on this outfit, stuck his head out the door, and bellowed. Shut up, that yapping you idiot! I guess he thought there was only one coyote out there. They kept it up, and I gave it back to him.

Next time Loper came to the door, he was armed. He fired again into the air and squalled, something about how man couldn't sleep around here with all the dad dang noise. I agreed. Would you believe it? Them coyotes yipped louder than ever, and I had no choice but to give it back to him. Loper came back out on the porch, and fired another shot. This one came so close to me that I heard the hum. Loper must have lost his bearings or something, so I barked louder than ever to give him my position, and, you know, to let him know that I was out there protecting the wrench. That's John Erickson, reading from the original adventures of Hank the Cowdog, used here with permission from Maverick Books. Since that first investigation into the murder of a chicken, Hank the Cowdog has handled more than 40 cases set on a Texas Panhandle Ranch. The Hank the Cowdog books have sold more than four and a half million copies, and have become one of the favorite selections in children's libraries across the country.

The High Plains and Words is a production of High Plains Public Radio. It is written and produced by Stacey Yates. This is Stacey Yates. It's time to visit the library for a look at the writings that capture the unique character of the High Plains and its people. Join me now for the High Plains and Words. Lever and Henners grew up on a cattle ranch near the Oklahoma Panhandle town of Kenton. Her autobiography is one of those stories that finds a way to be funny despite its gritty subject matter. Girl on a pony tells tales of droughts, blizzards, sick livestock, the dust bowl, and the Great Depression, while paying most attention to the important things, family, friends, work, and community. While Henners digresses now and then to tell a story that came a little later, girl on a pony focuses on life between the two world wars, from 1925 when the family moved to their ranch just over the border in New Mexico to 1936 when Henners father died and the family began to scatter. It is not a linear tale with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Henners writes in topics, looking at the country, the cowboys, the women, and the children and their parents' attempts to civilize them.

Intersperse with her own poetry, girl on a pony deals with the hope and heartbreak of life on a ranch. In this section, Henners explains how she came to believe that the words don't panic may not apply to life on the High Plains. Our ranch was infested with snakes. Some were harmless sorts, useful for keeping down rodents. Some of the snakes were, of course, rattle snakes. We all watched for snakes at all times on, I believe, a subconscious level, and were hardly ever surprised by them. We killed the rattlers and let the others go. Once, when I was married to Walter, I was alone on the ranch with my three oldest children, Sandy Jean and Kelly. I had brought in the milk cows and I turned to the stacks of baled hay to get some to put in the manger. I leaned down to pick up a section of hay and realized that I was looking directly into the eyes of a rattlesnake, only inches from my face. The next thing I knew I was on top of the cow shed, I don't know if there is something about panic that clears the sight, but as I looked down I saw the snake still coiled on the bail of hay. I could see his rattles and even his fangs as he raised his head in hissed.

I climbed down from the barn and told Sandy to go get the little single shot rifle. I knew I had only one bullet. I had seen it tumbling about in a small drawer full of junk. I told Sandy where the bullet was, and she went into the house and came back immediately with the gun in the bullet. I shot the snake's head off. That day, panic drove me in a mad flight away from a snake, but one time, panic took me into a wild run toward a snake. Mother and I were behind the house getting the garden ready for spading. It was a bright, warm day, so I had brought Jean out and put her on a blanket in the sunshine. She was just old enough to sit alone. Mother thrust a pitchfork under a pile of dried weeds and lifted them up. A small rattler flashed out from under the weeds, crossed the blanket and ran up on my baby's lap. The snake attempted to crawl around Jean's neck, but Jean turned her head to look at the strange animal. The snake then wavered to the other side of Jean's face. Again, panic seemed to clear my vision and I could see my baby's head and the rattlesnake doing a little dance. Jean's head moving from side to side and the snake weaving back and forth. I crossed the garden in three bounds, reached down, still in full stride, and grabbed the snake right behind his head.

Then I threw him. I threw that snake so hard that he sailed, turning and twisting over mother's head and clear out of the garden. Mother's back was turned and she had no idea what was happening. She saw a snake writhing in the air as it passed over her head and she stood staring at the unbelievable sight. I hear people say, don't panic and that's dumb. Both those incidents with the snake could have been fatal for a snake bite in the face will almost always kill. Panic guided me to do the correct thing both times. And that, handers would say, was a pretty good way to live life on the high plains. You work hard always. Have a sense of humor most always. And when it's the right thing to do, you panic. Girl on a pony was published in 1994 by the University of Oklahoma Press. It is volume 61 in the Western Frontier Library. Next time on the High Plains and Words, we'll visit Holcomb, Kansas for a reading from Truman Capote's book, In Cold Blood.

The High Plains and Words is a production of High Plains Public Radio. It is written and produced by Stacey Hates. The selection was read by Montana Heisel, of nearly players named Marlottexas. Visit our website at hppr.org to hear this and other High Plains and Words. Or email Stacey Hates through the website with your suggestions for the High Plains and Words. This is Stacey Hates. It's time to visit the library for a look at the writings that capture the unique character of the High Plains and its people. Join me now for the High Plains and Words. In 1959, Truman Capote had already published several novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays, when an interest in journalism brought him to Holcomb and Garden City, Kansas. It was Capote's ambition to help create a new and serious literary form, the nonfiction novel. In Cold Blood is an account of the brutal murder of the clutter family in Holcomb.

The work of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation detectives who eventually brought the killers to justice and their subsequent trial and execution. Capote spent six years researching and writing the book, interviewing people from all over Finney County who, he says in the acknowledgments, provided the author with a hospitality and friendship he can only reciprocate but never repay. He also conducted lengthy interviews with the killers themselves, allowing readers to see the story through to the very end. In Cold Blood is not just a riveting account of a traumatic event, it is a snapshot of this High Plains community and how the murders of Herb and Bonnie Clutter and their teenage children, Kenyan and Nancy, forced this here to four peaceful congregation of neighbors and friends to endure the unique experience of distrusting each other. That Monday, the 16th of November 1959 was still another fine specimen of pessant weather on the High Wheat Plains of Western Kansas, a day gloriously bright-skied as glittery as Micah.

Often on such days and years past, Andy Earhart had spent long hunting afternoons at River Valley Farm, the home of his good friend Herb Clutter, and often on these sporting expeditions, he'd been accompanied by three of Herb's closest friends, Dr. J.E. Dale, Karl Mayer's, and Everett Ogburn. Today, this quartet of old hunting companions had once again gathered to make the familiar journey, but in an unfamiliar spirit and armed with odd, non-sportive equipment, mobs and pales, scrubbing brushes, and a hamper heaped with rags and strong detergents. They were wearing their oldest clothes, for feeling it their duty, a Christian task, these men had volunteered to clean certain of the 14 rooms in the main house at River Valley Farm. Rooms in which four members of the Clutter family had been murdered by, as their death certificates declared, a person, or person's unknown. They went first to the furnace room in the basement, where the pajama-clad Mr. Clutter had been found sprawled atop the cardboard mattress box.

Finishing there, they moved on to the playroom in which Kenyan had been shot to death. The couch, I relic that Kenyan had rescued and minted, and that Nancy had slip-covered and piled with pillows, was a blood splattered ruin, like the mattress box. It would have to be burned. Gradually, as the cleaning party progressed from the basement to the second floor bedrooms where Nancy and her mother had been murdered in their beds, they acquired additional fuel for the impending fire, blood-soiled bedclothes, mattresses, a bedside rug, a teddy bear doll. The men worked from noon to dusk. When the time had come to burn what they had collected, they piled it on a pickup truck, drove deep into the farm's north field, a flat place full of color, though a single color, the shimmering tawny yellow of November wheat-field stubble. There, they unloaded the truck and made a pyramid of Nancy's pillows, the bedclothes, the mattresses, the playroom couch, sprinkled it with kerosene, and struck a match. Of those present, none had been closer to the clutter family than Andy Earhart.

We were friends for 30 years, he said some time afterward. Everything herb had, he earned, with the help of God. He was a modest man but a proud man, as he had a right to be. He raised a fine family, he made something of his life. But that life, and what he'd made of it, how could it happen? Earhart wondered as he watched the bonfire catch. How was it possible that such effort, such plain virtue, and overnight be reduced to this, smoke thinning as it rose and was received by the big annihilating sky? Early in the investigation, the murder of the clutter family seemed like a perfect crime. But a former cellmate of one of the killers gave detectives the crucial lead, and within two months, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith had been returned to Garden City to stand trial. They were both hanged for their crime five years later, at the state penitentiary, in Lansing, Kansas. The High Plains and Words is a production of High Plains Public Radio. It is written and produced by Stacey Yates. The selection was read by Bruce Schentin, of Nearly Players in Amarillo, Texas. Visit our website at hppr.org to hear this and other High Plains and Words. For email Stacey Yates through the website with your suggestions for the High Plains and Words.

This is Stacey Yates. It's time to visit the library for a look at the writings that capture the unique character of the High Plains and its people. Join me now for the High Plains and Words. There is a legend that when God created the world, He got sleepy while crafting the High Plains and decided to rest, leaving the region fairly flat and empty. When He woke, He found that the clay had hardened and settled. Instead of starting over, the legend says, God said to Himself, I'll just make people who like it that way. For those of us who make our homes on the High Plains, this makes perfect sense. So many friends and neighbors say it's nice to visit a valley or wooded region, but they get a little claustrophobic if they stay too long. In describing the High Plains to outsiders, words often seem inadequate. For how can one explain a view that stretches for miles and yet is not empty?

One of the best descriptions of the Texas Panhandle region is in Richard Falon's book, Texas Wild, the land, plants, and animals of the Lone Star State. This book is non-fiction, natural history, but it is not a dry catalog of facts. It is a written photograph. This selection deals with the region's Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado called the Llano Estocado, or staked plain. The plain tilts slightly away from the Rockies, like a big marble table. If you had an enormous ball, say 300 feet high, you could set it down west of Clovis, New Mexico, and it would roll steadily southeastward across the staked plain for perhaps 150 miles and drop off the Caprock near Dickens, Texas. It would, that is, if it were light enough not to sink into the ground, and heavy enough not to be blown off course by the wind. The slope of the land is about nine feet to the mile. This is just right to make water flow nicely through irrigation channels.

30 or 40 miles west of the Texas border in New Mexico, the highest points along the western edge of the staked plain lie a full mile above sea level. The rivers which built this big table and ceased to exist millions of years ago. The Llano Estocado is no longer being built up. Instead, it is wearing away, but very gradually, since the cement-like cover of the Caprock makes erosion slow. Slowly, the eastern and western edges are crumbling, washing down into the Pecos River on the west and the Brasos and Red Rivers on the east. The Prairie Dogtown fork of the Red River has made the beautiful Paladir Canyon reaching back many miles into the plain. And the Canadian River, crossing the Panhandle north of Amarillo, has cut a broad shallow trough all the way across it. Part Valley, Part Canyon, the trough is only a few hundred feet deep, but 10 to 20 miles from rim to rim. It is known as the Breaks of the Canadian. Seen from far away on the plain to the east, the Caprock escarpment is like a big smooth bluff on the western horizon. Headlands jut out into the lower plain, and canyons cut back into the Llano Estocado. The country below the rim is rough and scrubby with mosquets and junipers and yuccas.

When people say they live up on the Caprock, they mean they live on the staked plain. Climbing the Caprock has always been a kind of ceremonial event. It isn't very high, just a few hundred feet, but it is an abrupt, highly visible shift from one kind of country to another, and there is no doubt that life on the staked plain is somehow different from life on the lands below. Perhaps the difference is no more than this. You are always conscious of being there. Among hills and valleys people take their surroundings for granted, but that flat world overwhelmed by the sky cannot be shaken off. You can no more forget you are on the Llano Estocado than you can forget you are at sea. Tradition says that mountain dwellers all over the planet are clannish, closed mouth, and suspicious of outsiders. This may or may not be true, but it is certainly true that no place on earth resembles mountains less than the Llano Estocado.

And here the people are markedly open and sweet tempered. They enjoy telling strangers about their land and their way of life, and they talk well. Their easy courtesy is so noticeable everywhere that you end up wondering if indeed there is a cause and effect relationship between this spacious world and the character of its people. Texas Wild, the land, plants, and animals of the Lone Star State, was written by Richard Falen and published in 1976. The High Plains and Words is a production of High Plains Public Radio. It is written and produced by Stacey Yates. This is Stacey Yates. It's time to visit the library for a look at the writings that capture the unique character of the High Plains and its people. Join me now for the High Plains and Words. Langston Hughes was a poet, a playwright, and a novelist. He was one of the shining stars of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. His poetry first attracted attention in 1921 and identified him as a writer to watch. His contemporaries said at the time that he would one day write a novel which would have to be read.

That first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon Gold Medal for Literature. Set in Stanton and Southwest Kansas, Not Without Laughter is about Sandy Rogers, a young black boy who like Hughes himself is raised by his grandmother. The book is described as an awakening to the sad and beautiful realities of black life in a small Kansas town. That's a good description. Parts of the book are sad. Like the time Sandy starts fifth grade for the first time in Stanton's main school with white kids, and the teacher seats all the students alphabetically except for the black kids who have to sit in the back. Sandy endures, however, and is one of the top students in the school that year and beyond. His grandmother, Anne Hager, as he calls her, is determined that he get an education, make something of himself, and make a difference for the black race. The other women in Sandy's life are his mother, Angie, who is more absent than present because she is either traveling with Sandy's father or devoting all her attention to awaiting his return, and his anteriet, whose relentless pursuit of a good time is a constant worry to Sandy's grandmother.

After Anne Hager dies, Sandy goes to live with another aunt, Tempe, who is also anxious for him to do well, although she thinks the way to do it is to be as much like white folks as he can. In high school, Sandy studies Latin, ancient history, and Shakespeare, and on his own reads poetry and novels, and the books of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. Sandy has come to love learning, and is determined to make good on Anne Hager's dream for him. But every now and then, a young man needs a little recreation. There were no community houses in standing, and no recreation centers for young men, except for the YMCA, which was close to you if you were not a white boy. So, for the Negro youth of the town, Cudge Winsor Spool Hall was the evening meeting place. Their one could play billiards, shoot dice in the back room, or sit in summer on the two long benches outside, talking and looking at the girls as they pass.

And good weather, these benches were crowded all the time. After months of bookishness and subjection to Tempe's prim plans for his improvement, Sandy found the pool hall in easy and amusing place in wish to pass the time. It was better than the movies, where people on screen were only shadows, and it was much better than the Episcopal Church, with its stoop-shorted director, for here at Cudges, everybody was alive. And the girls who passed in front, swinging their arms, and grinning at the men were warm-bodied and gay. While the boys rolling dice in the rear room, or playing pool at the tables were loud mouth and careless, life sat easily on their muscular shoulders. Adventurers and vagabonds, who passed through standing on the main line, were to often drop in Cudges to play a game or get a bite to eat. And many times on summer nights, reckless black boys, along way from home, kept the natives entertained with tales of the road, or trips on the side poolments, and a far off cities where things were easy, and women generous. Then often arguments would begin, boastings, proving and fending or telling of exploits with guns, knives, and razors, with cops and detectives, with even women and wicked men, out bragging and outlying one another, all talking at once.

Sometimes they would create a racket that could be heard for blocks. To the uninitiated, it was seemed that a fight was imminent, but underneath, all was good, natured, and friendly. And through and above, everything went laughter. No matter how belligerent or loot their talk was, or how sorted the tales they told of dangerous pleasures and strange perversities, these black men laughed. That must be the reason, thought Sandy. While probably stricken no Negroes like Uncle Dan Gibbons lived so long, because to them, no matter how hard life might be, it was not without laughter. Sandy leaves Stanton eventually for Chicago, where his mother is waiting for news of his father in Europe for the First World War. Angie wants Sandy to forget about returning to school, and work as an elevator operator to help with expenses. In the end, it is wild and Harriet, now a successful blues singer, who insists Sandy stay in school, so he can be what his grandma Hager wanted him to be. Not without laughter has remained in print since its original publication in 1930.

The High Plains and Words, the production of High Plains Public Radio, is written and produced by Stacey Yates. The selection was read by Gabriel Lawrence. This is Stacey Yates. It's time to visit the library for a look at the writings that capture the unique character of the High Plains and its people. Join me now for the High Plains and Words. The early 70s was a time of fuel shortages and trucking strikes, when the cost of transporting cattle to market could seriously impact a rancher's profit. That's the background for the last cattle drive by Robert Day. In Day's story, Kansas rancher Spangler star Tukley says he's not putting up with the high prices demanded by truckers for taking his herd of more than 250 steers to market. So he decides to get them there the old-fashioned way, driving the herd from Hayes to Kansas City. He's assisted in this mission by Jed Wilson Adams, an old cowboy of few words, by his wife Opal, a brisk and business like woman who is the only one to ever stand up to Spangler, and by Leo Murdoch, a big city kid working as a teacher in Gorham.

Leo narrates the story of the drive, which turns out to be his own right of passage. The cattle drive starts out as a wild idea. Of the four, Jed is the only one with any real experience driving a herd that size that far. But the idea takes hold, and no one is more excited about the drive than Leo. He had taken a summer job working for Spangler, and found that he really liked being a cowboy, even if he did make a fool of himself almost every day. During his summer on the ranch, he has acquired a horse of his own, his first gun, and a funny black-eared heifer, who likes trying to hide from the cowboys. The last cattle drive is occasionally poignant, always irreverent, and sometimes downright raunchy, but it is a hilarious look at the clash between urban and rural lifestyles. We pick up the story on the morning of the first day. Everyone has had their job to do, gathering gear, seeing to the livestock, and planning the route.

The stress of it all has caused Opal, much to her husband's displeasure, to start smoking again for the first time in two years. Spangler had been up all night finding tools and lights and saddle gear that the last 20 years had helped her scout to ranch and had scattered throughout his properties. Around midnight, he was in the irrigation section, looking for a good scissor jack that Bobby Lair had traded him for an old international truck that hadn't run for seven years. He found it. An hour before he had been north of Gorham, looking for the spare tire to the horse trailer, he found it. The back of the truck was piled high with cattle cubes, rolls of wire posts, three by three signs reading cattle drive in progress, and at least two cases of greengabel scotch. Jed was waiting for us when we drove through the south gate of the ranch. Light was cracking in the clear east and sky, but we didn't know what time it was. All the watches had been stood deep in the glove box for safekeeping. It'd be daylight that counted.

Jed was ready to go. Opal was ready to go. Therefore, Spangler and I were ready to go. The horses were saddled, the steers were up in the pasture by the south gate. Jed loaded Angel, the spare horse. Opal turned the truck and trailer around and pulled out into the road. She stopped, got out, looked at Jed, and Spangler and me as we mounted and rode to the back of the pasture. The steers stirred. The east was alive with light, brimming over the horizon. The west was starry, but lo and up saved for the black line down low. What's that bingey heifer doing in here, Spangler roared as he spotted the black-eared heifer backing into a fence post. I said, I'll shoot her. We aren't going to take that black-eared heifer to Kansas City. I should have shot her a long time ago. Opal gave me that pistol. Opal said that a Spangler shot the heifer. All the steers would go bats and we'd have a fine mess right here at the start. She opened the gate, got back in the truck and lit up a cigarette, spare horse-winning. Some steers ambled out of the gate and started the wrong way. Opal got out of the truck and turned them. They jogged down the road a bit and mood. Others followed.

We stirred in our saddles, who coaxed, whistled, began to talk to him. At first feeling silly, but finally deciding it was for real. We were on our way. Of course, the way turns out to be even more complicated than anyone imagined, as the herd is beset by whiskey pushing well-wishers, a Hollywood film crew, politicians, police, a tornado, and a news helicopter. In the end, they make it all the way to the Kansas City stockyards, only to be told the cattle are no longer considered prime. What happens next is, like most good stories, both tragic and comic. The High Plains and Words is a production of High Plains Public Radio. It is written and produced by Stacey Yates. The selection is read by Monty Downs of Nearly Players in Emerald, Texas. This is Stacey Yates. It's time to visit the library for a look at the writings that capture the unique character of the High Plains and its people. Join me now for the High Plains and Words. The Texas Panhandle Town of Herford was the site of a prisoner of war camp during and after World War II, the Prisoner's Italian. Donald Mace Williams' book, Italian POWs and the Texas Church, the murals of St. Mary, is the story of a remarkable exchange between seven of these Italian prisoners and the parishioners of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Umbarger.

In late 1943, after Italy had changed sides in the war, the US transferred all non-collaborationist prisoners, those who refused to reject Mussolini, to the camp in Herford. Prisoners there were, for the most part, well-treated until the spring of 1945, when condition of American POWs returning from Europe caused a public outcry, and the US military ordered prisoner rations reduced. In less than three months, prisoners at the Herford camp lost an average of 22 pounds each. It was this siege of hunger that inspired a small group of Italian prisoners, led by Second Lieutenant Franco de Bello, to accept an offer from the priest at St. Mary's to decorate the church with murals and wood carvings. The prisoners were not paid for their work, but every day of the project they were treated to a hearty meal by the people of Umbarger.

William's book paints a clear picture of the stark contrast between the Italians and the Texans, and of the harsh world in which the prisoners found themselves. It was strange that Bello and his countrymen should turn up as prisoners in such a setting as the Herford camp. The Italians scarcely existed among the civilian residents of the Texas Panhandle, who, except for the settlers of three or four enclave such as Umbarger, were predominantly scotch Irish in influence, with the ways and speech that their forebears had brought with them from Arkansas and Tennessee. Those residents who had any image of Italians at all thought of them most likely as uneducated, cheerful, sweaty, garlicky, and funny. But Bello's compound mates, being officers, had to have had at least two years of college. They tended more toward an articular gloom than ebullience, and at least in the case of the many North Italians, looked nearly as Anglo-Saxon as most Amarilloans, and would have found Texas chili and tamales intolerably spicy. The prisoners, though not on the whole religious, came from a holy Catholic tradition.

The Panhandle was as heavily and developmently Protestant as Ulster. As such, it seemed almost alien to the largely Catholic Umbarger rights. Whereas in Italy, any village might have a thousand-year old bell tower, and be surrounded by vineyards cultivated for centuries. Children of the Panhandles' first European settlers were still in midlife, and much farmland was being plowed for the first time as farmers drilled wells to bountiful irrigation water. In Italy, the prisoners had seen the sky always shaped and domesticated by hills and by tile-roofed edifices. Here it was the sky that controlled the empty countryside, for days and succession unimpeded by even a cloud. When the sequence did break, it was with sudden attacks of wind, rain, hail, dust, or snow. An amazing violence to have come out of such sterile air. The captors had had a reason for putting these representatives of an old civilization in the middle of this new powerful land. Escape would be hard and unrewarding, though not impossible as several of the prisoners proved.

In the absence of that reason, irony would have served as well. That's Donald Mace Williams, reading from his book, Italian POWs and a Texas Church, the murals of St. Mary's. The time spent decorating the Umbarger Church was a welcome respite to the Italian prisoners, and many cried when it was over, for the people of Umbarger had treated them not only to nourishing food, but to friendship and respect. They also encountered great kindness from people within the military, like Sergeant John Coil, who drove the Italians to the church every day, and helped them smuggle rabbits back into camp to supplement the diets of other prisoners. Eventually, conditions in the camp improved, spurred on in large part by the intervention of Bishop Lawrence Fitzsimon of the Amrilo diocese, who wrote U.S. lawmakers after observing how hungry the prisoners were. By January 1946, most of the prisoners had been returned to Italy, leaving behind works of art reminiscent of the Renaissance, an enduring reminder of their time in the Texas Panhandle. Italian POWs and a Texas Church is an enlightening narrative of one small part of High Plains history, and it is also a story of warmth and friendship in unlikely circumstances.

The High Plains and Words is a production of High Plains Public Radio. It is written and produced by Stacey Yates. This is Stacey Yates. It's time to visit the library for a look at the writings that capture the unique character of the High Plains and its people. Join me now for the High Plains and Words. George Shannon is the author of several books for children and adults. His background as a children's librarian and as a storyteller is clearly evident in his writing. In all his books for children, including Climbing Kansas Mountains, Shannon pays great attention to the links between oral storytelling tradition and written versions of folklore. His stories are perfect for reading aloud. Shannon grew up in a small town in Kansas that sounds very much like my father's hometown where I used to love visiting my grandfather.

Shannon drew on those memories of Kansas for this wonderfully imaginative story. I read it with my son, Choi St. Yates, who did the reading for this program. Climbing Kansas Mountains begins on a hot summer day when a little boy, Sam, who narrates the story, says there was nothing to do except wish for the swimming pool. Nothing to do that is until his father suggests it's time for the two of them to climb a Kansas mountain. Sure, says Sam, and watch pigs fly. Sam thinks his father is crazy. After all he says, everyone knows Kansas doesn't have any mountains. His father had even helped him make a flower-dough map of Kansas that barely had a bump. Still, he decides anything is better than just staying at home and time alone with his father with no brothers is a special treat. But he asks, doesn't his father remember that map? His father simply smiles and says, you'll see.

But all I saw was the same old thing, house after house in the tiny park, Uncle Roy's cafe in the grocery store. We passed the school with its broken slide, then the old yellow house where I learned to walk. All the way through Toronto, one straight street, everything in the distance always wrinkled from the heat. Sam and his father drive all the way through town and across the railroad tracks to the grain elevators where Sam's father works, and at last Sam understands. These are the mountains you were talking about, he asks. Elevator mountains filled with wheat. And Sam's father replies, why not? The thing that makes a mountain is a high quiet view. So Sam and his dad climb the inside steps of the grain elevator, going up as high as eight houses stacked like blocks. When we got to the top, we didn't say a word. We could talk anywhere, but couldn't see all this anyplace but here.

Everyone I knew, every garden, every house was way down below, with cool, wide sky between there and me. The school would have fit in my desk at school, and our house was hiding under trees like a sneaky cat. Fields of wheat still gold and others cut to brown were all as small as our own little square of beans at home. There were squares I smeared as fancy pants and squares plowed up like coral. Squares of squares and swirls and stripes all hung together like a tablecloth, but with remnants of rodents instead of red. All flat like the table in the dining room. A table grown so big it has no edge. A table so big the trees in town are at screen centerpiece. A table so big it has a mountain of wheat for a giant to eat. A table so big. When Sam's father asked if he is ready to go home, Sam says yes. Ready to drive across the table and through the centerpiece, making his own got you grin to match the one his father had about the Kansas mountains.

From then on Sam and his father have a special secret joke about driving across the table to the mountains and back. The High Plains and Words is a production of High Plains Public Radio. It is written and produced by Stacey Yates. The selection was read by choice Edward Yates of Emerald, Texas. Visit our website at www.hppr.org to hear this and other High Plains and Words, or to email Stacey Yates with your suggestions for the High Plains and Words. This is Stacey Yates. It's time to visit the library for a look at the writings that capture the unique character of the High Plains and its people. Join me now for the High Plains and Words.

The history of Texas is rife with legends, tales of explorers and conquistadors, soldiers and trappers and cowboys and Indians. In 1924, Jay Frank Dobie assembled many of these tales in his collection, Legends of Texas, which was published by the Texas Folklore Society. Dobie writes that of all the tales he found while researching this book, None has more native originality than the story of Stampede Mesa, which is a ghost story set on the Southern High Plains in Crosby County. This tale was written by John R. Craddock, who says there is no more popular subject for speculation and anecdote among cattle folk than Stampede's, and that there is always a little mystery about a Stampede. Craddock writes cattle drivers would all agree that a better place to hold a herd will never be found. Water is close by, grazing is almost always good, and steep bluffs to the south mean the Herds Night Guard can be reduced by half.

Nevertheless, says Craddock, few bosses would dream of holding their herds on what is now known as Stampede Mesa. Early in the fall of 89, an old cowman named Sawyer came through with a trail herd of 1,500 head of steers. While he was driving across Dockham flats one evening, some six or seven miles east of the Mesa, about 40 odd head of Nester Cows came bawling into the herd. Closely flanking them came the Nester, demanding that his cattle be cut out of the herd. Old Sawyer, who was as hard as nails, was driving short-handed. He had come far. His steers were thin, and he did not want them ginned out anymore. Accordingly, he bluntly told the Nester to go to hell. The Nester was pretty nervy, and seeing that his little stock of cattle was being driven off, he flared up and told Sawyer that if he did not drop his cows out of the herd before dark, he would Stampede the whole bunch. At this Sawyer gave a kind of dry laugh, drew out his six-shooter, and squinting down it at the Nester told him to Vamous.

Nightfall found the herd straggling up the east slope of what on the moral would be christened by some cowboy, Stampede Mesa. Midnight came, and with scarcely half the usual night guard on duty, the herd settled down in peace. But the peace was not to last. True to his threat, the Nester approaching from the north side slipped through the watch, waved a blanket a few times and shot his gun. He did his work well. All of the herd except about 300 heads Stampede over the bluff on the south side of the Mesa, and two of the night herders caught in front of the frantic cattle that they were trying to circle, went over with him. Sawyer said little, but at sun-up he gave orders to bring in the Nester alive, horse and all. The orders were carried out, and when the men rode up on the Mesa with their prisoner, Sawyer was waiting. He tied the Nester on his horse with a raw-hide lariat, blindfolded the horse, and then, seizing him by the bits, backed him off the cliff. There were plenty of hands to drive Sawyer's remnant now. Somewhere on the hillside they buried, in their simple way, the remains of their two comrades, but they left the Nester to rot with the piles of dead steers in the canyon.

And now, old cow-puncers will tell you that if you chance to be about Stampede Mesa at night, you can hear the Nester call in his cattle, and many assert that they have seen his murdered ghosts stride a blindfolded horse sweeping over the headland behind a Stampede herd of phantom steers. Herd bosses are afraid of those phantom steers, and it is said that every herd that has been hailed on the Mesa since that night has stampeded, always from some unaccountable cause. Critic writes that although some will say the ghosts of this story are simply wind-blown tumbleweeds, there are many honest folks who believe the tale. He says that once you know the story, you cannot look at the white scar of the old trail branded onto the Mesa without some strange emotion. The High Plains and Words is a production of High Plains Public Radio. It is written and produced by Stacey Yates. The selection was read by Monty Downs of Nearly Players in Emerald Texas. Visit our website at hppr.org to hear this and other High Plains and Words, or email Stacey Yates through the website to hear suggestions for the High Plains and Words.

This is Stacey Yates. It's time to visit the library for a look at the writings that capture the unique character of the High Plains and its people. Join me now for the High Plains and Words. Ralph Moody grew up on a ranch in Colorado after his family moved there from New Hampshire in hopes Charles Moody's health would improve after years of working in a woolen mill. He turned that experience into the first of a series of books about his family, Little Bridges, which details the family's struggle to turn a dry, deserted ranch into a home and a livelihood.

This story is told through the eyes of young Ralph, who grows from 8 to 11 over the course of the book, and his childish storytelling illustrates the stark reality of life on the High Plains. The Moody family has it tough from the moment they arrive in Colorado. The house and barn on the ranch they've purchased turn out to be almost falling down, and they nearly lose their new horse when he falls through a railroad trussle. This striking thing about this book is Moody's ability to create a sense of determination and optimism as the family battles windstorms, drought, illness, and fierce battles over water rights. Moody manages to open a window on a time when families truly pull together and even small children play a crucial role in a family's survival. Most of all, Little Bridges is the story of how young Ralph Moody grows into a man under the guidance of his wise father, Charlie Moody. Ralph begins the story by saying he never knew his father very well until they moved to Colorado.

I ask Stephen Buckley, who grew up in Colorado himself to read this selection. When we pick up the story, Ralph has been showing off and has told his sister a lie that their father wanted him to use one of the horses to pull broken railroad ties out of a gulch. When she tells their mother, he decides he's already going to be in trouble for line, and he might as well have the fun of taking the horse out and trying to move the ties. So he sticks to his story. The cross ties didn't all as easy as I thought they would. I forgot to take anything along for hitching them to Nancy's single tree and had to use an old piece of barbed wire. I was walking on the downhill side of the cross tie when we tried to go over the bank at the head of the gulch. Suddenly the tie started to roll toward me, and I had to dive out of the way. I skid my nose and the barbed wire tore a big hole in my overalls, but the tie missed me, and Nancy seemed glad to stop and rest. I was trying to haul it over the bank when it got dark. I was afraid father would get home before I did.

It would be better for me to go right home and tell mothers that I lied. If she spanked me first, she probably wouldn't give me another one right on top of it. Mother didn't spank me though. She gasped and looked at me as if I'd been rattled snake ready to strike, and she made me stand with my face in the corner. I stood there while the rest of the youngsters had their supper with Tibet, then for at least an hour afterwards. At last I heard father drive into the yard and listen to every sound as he put the team away and came to the house. He stood out in the open doorway for a moment before he spoke, and when he did his voice was very quiet. What has happened, ma'am? It was a four minute before mother said anything, and when she did, her voice was as quiet as father. Charles, the timeless calm wind, this boy must have a father's firm hand. I never heard mother's voice like that, and I never heard her call father Charles. I thought my heart would pound itself to pieces while she was telling him what I had done. Hard as father could spank, he never hurt me so with a stick as he did when mother stopped talking.

He cleared his throat and didn't make a sound for at least two four minutes. When he spoke, his voice was deep and dry. I knew we must have been coughing a lot of the way home. Son, there is no question, but what you have done today deserves severe punishment. You might have killed yourself or the horse, but much worse than that you have injured your own character. Ma'am's character is like his house. If he tears boards off his house and burns them to keep him warm and comfortable, his house soon becomes a ruin. If he tells lies to be able to do the things he shouldn't do, but wants to, his character will soon become a ruin. Ma'am with a ruined character is a shame of the face of the earth. That was a lesson Ralph would never forget. There were many more in store for him, and the day would come when he would need them all. The High Plains and Words is a production of High Plains Public Radio. It is written and produced by Stacey Yates. You can hear this and other High Plains and Words by visiting our website at hppr.corg.

This is Stacey Yates. It's time to visit the library for a look at the writings that capture the unique character of the High Plains and its people. Join me now for the High Plains and Words. When Spring comes to the High Plains, it brings with it some of the fiercest and often deadliest weather, even this rapidly changing climate ever produces. In the introduction to his book Shingling the Fog and other Plains lies, Roger Welsh says Plains people created tall tales about this land to make the burden of living in his harsh country seem lighter. And he says, telling wild tales about the land and the climate magnifies their own achievement in overcoming them. Welsh began working on this collection of Plains hyperbole, after hearing a so-called Frontier Historian say there had been little cultural interaction on the Great Plains because there was no time for telling stories and singing songs. Welsh disagreed emphatically, believing those who triumphed over harsh conditions did so, not in spite of, but because of their ability to laugh and create and share.

In Shingling the Fog there are stories about hard times, big men and strange critters, but my favorite stories are the ones about the weather. Most of the tales in this book were collected in the northern plains of Nebraska and Kansas, but they all ring a bell for anyone who's made their home on the prairie, like the one about the hotel keeper who said to an easterner who had just arrived and asked if the wind always blew this way. Oh no, sometimes it blows real hard. Or the one about the man who never needed a hat rack, he just put his hat against the wall and let the wind hold it there. Some of the weather stories have almost a whistling in the dark attitude to them, for no one who has seen the damage of tornadoes which tear across the plains each year can doubt their deadly and destructive force. And yet, many of these tales depict twisters as mischievous, even friendly spirits. Not content to drive straws into trees and carry hats for distances of 50 or 60 miles, these mischievous twisters turned crockery jugs inside out, blew the hair off a man's head.

Played the trick of pushing corn through a nauthole in a corn crib, turned 200 gallon cisterns inside out, and even picked up a 17 mile stretch of Missouri Pacific Railroad track with a train on it, turned it completely around without disturbing so much as a tie, rail or spike, and then set it down again, so that the passengers and crew were amazed to find themselves arriving in Wichita, the town they had left less than an hour before. On June 6, 1912, a cyclone passed near Stillwell, Oklahoma. One of the early settlers in the community had dug a wide deep well and had curved the walls with pieces of native rock. Miss Fortune dug the steps of the pioneer until the point was reached where the mortgage was due and he was about to be dispossessed when the cyclone crossed his place. The twister pulled up the old well as a derrick would lift a straw and carried it several hundred feet where it was left firmly planted but upside down near the farmer's barn.

He plastered it inside and out and he's used it ever since as a silo. From the old well, gushed a geyser of oil, the farmer now as a summer home in the Adirondacks and a winter home in Palm Beach. In Kansas, the great funnel clouds that every spring comes sweeping up from the southwest did their peculiar damage, like bending the steel beam of a plow back between the handles without moving the plow from where it had been left in the field. But like Jesse James, the twisters also seem to have a soft spot in their hearts for the poor pioneer farmer. One such tornado seized a plow left in a field and plowed a farm for a pioneer woman who had been recently widowed. Another helped two men who wanted to exchange houses but keep the same land by switching the houses, moving even the wells and sellers. And a third helped a new settler by taking the materials he had gathered and building him a house, right down to digging the seller, laying the bricks, mounting the windows so carefully that not one was broken, painting the completed house, including, of course, the trim, and then even having the good taste to visit the local art shop, pick up some appropriate paintings and hang them neatly on the walls.

The weather's stories and shingling the fog also cover the dust, the heat, the cold, and the drought. All stories to make anyone who lives on the high plains smile and think of a few stories of their own. The High Plains and Words is a production of High Plains Public Radio, which is written and produced by Stacey Yates. Visit our website at hpbr.org to hear this and other High Plains and Words. Or email Stacey Yates through the website with your suggestions for the High Plains and Words. This is Stacey Yates. It's time to visit the library for a look at the writings that capture the unique character of the High Plains and its people. Join me now for the High Plains and Words. Spanish explorers called a vast canyon they discovered while searching for cebola in the seven cities of gold, paladurro, meaning hard staff. They named the area after the dense wood juniper trees that grew there. These explorers were called conquistadors, and while they contributed greatly to the development of the Texas Panhandle and explored Oklahoma and Kansas as well, they are in many ways a mystery, especially their leader, Francisco Coronado.

This historical mystery is the background for David T. Horsley's new novel, Conquistador, winner of the Austin Riders League's first place award for Western fiction. Conquistador begins with Eleanor Grissom, a woman struggling to maintain her family's paladurro canyon ranch after the death of her parents and her brother's struggle with Gulf War syndrome. While rescuing some cows stranded on a high rock, Eleanor comes across some very old bones and unusual artifacts. She takes them to Dr. Rubin Mendoza for more information and learns these relics could actually have been remnants of the journey of Francisco Coronado through the Texas Panhandle. That's when things really start to get interesting, as strangers arrive in Emerlo, intent on turning paladurro canyon into a theme park and showing an inordinate interest in Eleanor's ranch. To protect the historical site, Eleanor and Rubin Mendoza park themselves nearby to keep an eye on anyone snooping around the dig.

Author David Horsley reads what happens during this long day of watching and waiting when Eleanor asked Dr. Mendoza to explain why relics of Coronado's expedition would be such a big deal. For starters, Mendoza said Coronado is an important figure in American history. He was the first European to visit this area and his entrata opened the way for two and a half centuries of Spanish dominance. But for such a central figure, we actually know little about the man. We don't know what he looked like. We have only educated guesses about his precise route through the southwest. A striking fact given the numerous diaries kept by members of his expedition and all the stuff they dropped. This site, if it is Coronados, would be a bombshell in academic circles. I guess I'm historically naive, Eleanor said. I've never given much thought to Coronado. You're not alone. Appreciation for the conquistadors is a cultivated thing. Think of them as the heroes of their day. Proud, well-born, daring.

Imagine stepping into a wooden boat and sailing over the horizon in 1535, when in living memory the horizon was a thing of dread. It was an astounding act of courage, similar to our astronauts' first trip to the moon. Maybe even bigger than that. Imagine sending several hundred of America's cultural heroes to Mars in a homemade wooden rocket, then returning them all safely, having conquered and converted the Martians to Christianity. That's the kind of enterprise we're talking about. So much of our culture today was shaped by the conquistadors, he said. Trace the title to this ranch back far enough, and it goes through Mexico and originates with a Spanish land grant centuries ago. Or consider my family. My people were natives in northern Mexico and the Spanish conquered them, enslaved a few, subdued and converted the rest to Catholicism, forced us to learn their language. The reason I'm Catholic and speak Spanish today is indirectly attributable to the very man whose dagger handle we dug up yesterday.

It was strange to Eleanor to think of her ranch as part of Mexico, that alone part of Spain. Mendoza continued, can you see the subtle magnificence of that fact? The hubris and arrogance, the splendid esonus entricity of what those men accomplished? It boggles the mind. He looked at Eleanor, who stared back at him behind her dark glasses. At least it does mine. Eventually, it becomes all too clear to Eleanor why Coronado's expedition was so important as the story unfolds into a tale of conspiracy and even kidnapping, in which it's almost impossible to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Conquistador is an exciting novel in its own right, but especially satisfying for those of us who love the high planes and the colorful quirky characters who live here. The High Plains and Words is a production of High Plains Public Radio. It is written and produced by Stacey Hates. Visit our website at hppr.org to hear this and other High Plains and Words.

For email Stacey Hates through the website with your suggestions for the High Plains and Words.