The American cowboy; Pilots of plain and pass

The lonely skies shoving down on his shoulders and the dust of a continent taking his throat. He left his brand on the front tier of our history. I squinted ahead into savagery. Civilization dogging his heels and we give him to you who can take him straight. The American cowboy. Oh oh I saw her just a little only a little from my mistake. Radio television the University of Texas presents the American Council. A series of programs reflecting the true place and picture of this significant historical

figure. This unique folk hero. The American cowboy has produced and recorded by radio television the University of Texas under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcast. Today AM program 12 pilots of plane and to pass. That. Feeling. In the hearty hoopla of the Wild West show the palpitating poke at the paperback novel in the flickering fantasy of the silver screen. These things are always and forever tangled. Oh boy. Indian stage coaches and the Pony Express. But leave the circus tent or the rodeo grounds. Close the book Turn off the projector or the TV set. Clear your mind

of loose legend and your eyes of romantic color and look for these fabled ingredients. You will not find them mixed together in a magic mishmash. You will look for each in its own place and in its own time the stage coach first. No no not there. Not that way. This is 1849. It will be 12 years before the civil war begins. Sixteen years before the Cowboys and their herd start up the trails from Texas look to the west if you please to Sacramento City California. And they are to quote Captain William and George Benny in six horses amid the carnival world but not in big boots and scraggly or braided beards and some bottles and flaming sword office and Raven hopes and craven soul pipes there beneath the signs that read eating is done here.

Tip top accommodations for men and beasts. Rest for the weary and storage for trucks there on this September morning sits James Burke with an Oh Rancho wagon holding a bull whackers like you Marine for Mexican Mustangs skittering with stage fright and calling to everyone within earshot. All of. The. Young birch is saying more than that the bandings tell us he is really say all aboard for the maiden trip. All aboard for the very beginning. All aboard for everything which will be regarded in days to come as West American staging. No Cowboys abode not yet minors Forty-Niners with dreams in their eyes and gold in their very blanket rolls guns boots picks and shovels and ten hands hairy faces and war hoops wild horses my master rain the cat. For those who missed that first trip there were dozens of others hundreds of others yet to

come. Open your copy of the Pacific news during the latter months of 1850 and there you may read an ad Burford in company lines of Express Mail stages. Halan crimbo proprietors are now running every morning to San Jose and every morning a well-known It's a thing worth looking into. It most assuredly is. It most assuredly is a splendid looking coach Mr. Crandall came around the horn you say. Yes around Cape Horn by clipper ship just this June and Abbott Downing and company coach that is it from Concord New Hampshire. The only perfect passenger vehicle in the world. I can well believe it sir. Let me call your attention sir to the stout frame of well-seasoned that to trim decking and those panels of clearest popular as C where there's a ship I have no doubt and

as tidy and graceful as a lady if you'll forgive me Mr. Grant. And if you'll forgive me no more straight lines in her body than the lady on the ship. Was. Week to. Film the keiki mountains loaded with passengers and express the driver with one foot to arms both shoulders and all fingers working his body swaying like a sailors to the motion of a ship. His leader's dancing at the brink of then NATION. Wheel striking sparks out of the granite flicking chips and displace while the passengers stared out over the blue tops of planes chewing their cigars to a pulp. They say their driver right Reagan horrible stories of people Christ going to worry about their likely guilty but what we'll get is right.

Robert only regulated a little on this rotten opposition driver that is no longer getting a rock upgrade from various brick to the general thing. Bardic bowling now the world case airwaves are all as it was matter of fact a lot of travel over there not a flaw from our guild or the road it was sort of the elite of the day going to rattle of our heart that when they go around the market or look over the words you go on getting our son to Riker's mother's life and one of your more ordinary let alone world where you would have to have a blood on your brain the Janks of the. Week to. 1856 for stagecoaches you have to keep looking at California 3000 miles of states like one hundred and ninety five

coaches and stage wagons owned by one corporation alone. But. Not a single state boys are coming across the eastern boundary of this new state. The overland mail is still being carried in from Salt Lake and beyond on the backs of mujhe and men. As a banning put it there remain the whole so-called wild west without as typifying stagecoach. In California there was the stagecoach without its wild west not where the Cowboys where they end in. Where is the Pony Express. Don't be impatient. You haven't long to wait. Not for the Indians anyway just till the end of August 1856 when Jared Robins curly Jerry driving the downstage from Pitt River Ferry southward through 20 miles of water less waste land is expected at the hop Creek Station. And here he is. Love shore bars sometimes come in yonder. Sure what's right is a parrot like Curly Jerry with the stage now just to tame

and help the poor feller a whole carcass full engine air. The stage which meant the engine was now to meet the great American wilderness pilots of the mountain passes were to be joined in the legendary brotherhood of pilots of the seven deserts in the Great Plains. Phineas banding so expansive was his vision that he could see without jealousy. The end of his brainchild the coach and six. He could see the passing of power from the ribbons of leather to the ribbons of steel. JOHN RENTOUL idea tell the horses what to do. Talk to him through the ribbon. I monk sometimes so the story goes. He gave whiskey to his horses and water himself. Thus becoming accidentally sober enough to handle him and he brooded team. Admiral John Butterfield. To cherry ke him. Great Chief Butterfield.

Do Cherry ke him great father of swift wagon. Sharpening holiday and all the other with whip and break with profanity and artistry with chains and buckles and thorough braces they were soon to clatter head on into the impossible stages cannot be driven across the seven deserts in 25 days nor in forty days nor at all. It never has been done. It never will be done and they will do it. All those 30 first 1847 uproar in the pueblo of San Diego. Now you know from San Antonio. Day. 30. Day. October 8th 1858 pandemonium in the streets of San Francisco. Really really. Bizarre. Scene less.

But. They're tying the two sides of the continent together with stagecoach wheels. But where is the Pony Express. Look ahead not quite two years into April 1860 look for the places where the hoofs of the fabulous pony went clattering. The settings were of the plains and deserts the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada goes. There was color in war paint and feathers. There were scenes of buffalo herds solid masses extended as a little tufted Mesa bending over the horizon. There were scenes of flooding rivers and torrents driving rain giddy whirls of snow and sleet or tumbling hail stones. But you must look quickly if you were to see the pony and its rider. Pony Bob has them. Jim Moore Howard Egan the fourteen year old Bill Cody and all the others. Eighty picked Roughriders and all for the pony does not linger alone there. See a distant figure in the sage brush.

A blast from a horn to announce his coming and the writer is at the station. A fresh horse prancing excited eager to go look out blacked out a shore on the prop for example. Better get the horn in no time. And off they go. For. Two minutes to change horses. Ten days to cover 2000 miles. Nineteen months to ride into and out of the life of the West. For the pony made only one hundred and fifty roundtrip popularize he was swift as he was he lost money with every horse by October of 1861. He was God and they hearty youngsters of little way to crouch so lightly in his saddle must bide their time must wait for the circus and the rodeo and the movie and television screen was to join

the stagecoach drivers. The Indian and the cowboy. Pilots of the plane and the plants Radio-TV the University of Texas has brought you program number 12 all of the American cowboy. Today's broadcast is based on source materials from the Texas history library including the Pony Express by Arthur Chapman and six horses by Captain William and George. You bet. A bibliography is available on request. The American cowboy is produced and directed by Bill Burke from Scripps by Mary Dee Benjamin. Original music by Eleanor page. The series is under the supervision of Robert F. shank and with Arsinoe us as Associate Producer. Our narrator is

Horton and Wayne Smith. Dan Langfield speaking. Pilots of the plane and past was produced and recorded by radio television at the University of Texas under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio Center and is being distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the NEA E.B. Radio Network.