Wyatt Earp

At home in Los Angeles, 1923. I was really struck by this photograph when I stumbled across it. He would have been 75 and he still looks like he could kick your ass any time he felt like it.

Boyz in the Hood

There were three of them here yesterday morning. I was able to take these pictures from the deck and not alarm them much. They had followed a group of does up the hill (it IS that time of year) and they were on their way back down to the Bayou Gulch bottoms, pausing along the way to nosh on sumac leaves. The little arroyo just east of the house is their usual travel route. 
A couple of days earlier, I saw a larger buck with a much larger rack than any of these, in the same area. He was ambling along with a group of eight does. He had lost half of the antler on one side of his head (I assume in seasonal jousting) that gave him quite an ungainly appearance.  The does didn’t seem to mind.

Hot Links

A systematic study of stenciled hand prints in European Upper Paleolithic cave art (like in the picture above) indicates that most of them were likely made by women. This comes as a surprise as most have assumed that this rock art was associated with hunting magic and was executed by men. Dale Guthrie call your office.

A seven year-old boy discovered a dugout canoe in a lake bed in Ocala, Florida while taking a scuba lesson. It hasn’t been radiocarbon dated yet, but the fact that the interior of the canoe had been hollowed out by burning might indicate that it is prehistoric. Finds of canoes sunk in lakebed and riverbed sediments aren’t all that unusual in the Southeast. I saw one in a museum in Arkansas last month. I recall an article in American Antiquity a few years ago that told of around 30 or so canoes that had been found in a systematic search of a lakebed, also in Florida. If I remember correctly, some of those were almost 2,000 years old.

Archaeologists in Greece have found evidence of wine production that dates to 6,000 years ago and is believed to be the earliest evidence for wine making in Europe.

A researcher working in the Dragoon and Peloncillo Mountains of Arizona, has found caches of Apache artifacts in some rockshelters there. Radiocarbon assays from some of these have given dates from around AD 1450, showing that the Apache had migrated into that area much earlier than previously thought. Steve and I just had a discussion on the dating of the Navajo/Apache migration last week.

The Land Of My Soul

It was a crisp 16 degrees when we set out, the headlights of the truck shining on the black ice coating the roadway, with the soft fog buffering the white glare of the freshly fallen snow blanketing the landscape. It was slow going pulling the empty stock trailer so it wouldn’t fishtail on the slick pavement, but an hour later, we turned off the highway onto a dirt flat overlooking the Big Sandy River, and were quickly swallowed into the frenzy of activity in the first morning light.

A set of portable pens the size of a basketball court had been erected the day before, and sat empty in preparation for the work ahead. A variety of muddy pickup trucks and stock trailers were parked nearby, out of the way of the semi tractor-trailers lined up to begin loading. Emerging from these vehicles or sitting astride horses were more than a dozen people of various nationalities – sheep herders from Ecuador, Nepal, Peru, and Mexico – Basque sheepman, truck drivers and a lamb buyer from neighboring Idaho, a local veterinarian, and state brand inspector. It was shipping day, time to ship the year’s lamb crop to market. Rain and snow in the few days prior had prohibited us from sorting the sheep beforehand, so the herds had been combined and would come into the corral in one large bunch, with the sorting to occur at a series of gates off the alleyway leading to the loading chute. The sheep would enter the alleyway, with two sorting gates allowing older cull ewes to be separated into a second pen, and our herd to be cut into a third, with the main ewe herd proceeding down the alleyway and back out into the sagebrush, while market lambs would take a right turn and head up the loading chute into the waiting semis.

We waited in the cool morning air, shaking hands and visiting among the group, and petting the herding dogs when they approached in greeting, while the herders went to retrieve the herd. The dim morning light struggled to peek through the heavy overcast skies, but when the bunch of 8,000 head of ewes and lambs crested the ridge to the east and began flowing down the hillside, the sight was breathtakingly beautiful. Each of the sheep combined with the others so the herd seemed as one fluid movement, covering the landscape between the pens and the ridge in graceful unison, with their thousands of hooves making only a muted muffle as they shuffled through the snow. There were nearly two dozen guardian dogs amid the herd and around it in every direction – soldiers on the move, prepared for battle. Five of the guardians stayed ahead, scouting for danger as the herd moved forward. As the herd came closer, herders joined in on foot or horseback to continue to propel the flock in its forward movement.

The herd came to a halt just before the entrance to the pens, with the lead sheep pausing, heads up and erect, inspecting the layout before being escorted in by their canine guardians. The herd surged and moved through the open gate as a wave of water over a riffle, filling the pen in a matter of minutes.

The men stationed themselves from the loading chute, along the gates and alleyway, and throughout the large pen to keep the herd always moving forward. They laughed, hollered, whistled, cussed, and told stories, working hard all the while. They would work from dawn to nearly darkness, coming and going as duties demanded.

As they worked, I took photos and greeted many of the guardian and herding dogs that came through. I could only spend a few hours at the pens before I had to hit the road for a previous commitment on the other side of the state. As I turned to leave, I decided to take one last walk around the outside of the herd. I called “hey girls, morning girls,” as I walked, and as I made the last turn of the curved pen, a distinct voice arose from that of the others. I looked in that direction and was thrilled to see Assistant Sheep, the lead sheep of our small herd, as she raced to the fence to greet me, raising her nose to mine as we touched heads in greeting.

When the semis were filled, a caravan of trucks would backtrack 15 miles south, to weigh the trucks on a certified scale. The weighs would be calculated with the negotiated sales price agreed to weeks before, and a telephone call would have the money wired from the buyer’s account to the seller’s before the trucks would be allowed to leave. The veterinarian had looked over the entire loading process, as had the brand inspector, and they leaned on the hoods of their trucks doing paperwork to certify the health of the animals and transfer ownership.

By the time I drove back through the rangeland, darkness hid its wonders, but I knew that under that starry sky, herds were bedded with their guardians and herders, waiting for that first light to begin making their way south to the desert for winter grazing. And as I turned my truck into our driveway, I turned the wheel so the headlights swung across the pen below the house, where I could see my sleeping herd, resting from their day’s journey home.

Those who know me well know I call this sagebrush rangeland the land of my soul. Today my soul was nourished, and my heart was filled by the simple beauty of these animals and humans who share their lives in this great land.

An Heirloom

A couple of years ago, I posted about my mother’s family’s history of manufacturing patent medicine. That post showed a 1930s photograph with a Nash’s Chill & Liver Tonic advertising sign, and I said I had long wanted to find a bottle. I mentioned this in an off-hand remark to my cousin Clifford Toney when I was in Arkansas over the summer and he surprised and delighted me by sending me a bottle (and box!) earlier this week. The bottle is even still full. You can click to embiggen this picture to read the label, and if you do you’ll see this stuff will fix you right up.

My father has told me his grandmother used to dose him with this stuff when he was a little boy in the 1930s, and he can still remember how awful it tasted.

This all started with my great-great grandfather, William Travis Nash (1852-1919). He was born in Alabama, and came to Jonesboro in 1871 when his father Augustus S. Nash moved his family there and went into the mercantile business. I’ll have a lot more to say about Augustus in another post later on.

Bill Nash apprenticed as a pharmacist working for a relative, and in 1875 opened the Nash Drug Company in Jonesboro. He both manufactured patent medicine and operated a retail drug store. He and his wife Louisa (1854-1950) had six children: Effie, Augustus, Flora Louisa (my great-grandmother), Wiley, Majorie, and Sidney. Four of them – Augustus, Flora Louisa, Wiley, and Sidney – became college-educated pharmacists, something fairly unusual at the time.

The Nash Drug Company flourished and he branched out in other businesses: he was a director of the Bank of Jonesboro, president of the Jonesboro Roller Mill, and a director of the Jonesboro Building & Loan Association (where I had my first bank account).  Sons Augustus, Wiley and Sidney took over the drug business from him in 1915, and changed the name to Nash Brothers Drug Company.  They operated this business at least until the 1940s. A family story says they missed the boat financially when they turned down a buy-out offer from Abe Plough, a rival drug manufacturer in Memphis. His company later became the pharma giant Schering-Plough.

I visited their graves in Jonesboro City Cemetery. Bill and Louisa’s headstones are either side of the monument and the headstone to the right is for their son Sidney. The smaller double headstone in the right side of the picture broke my heart.

 I mentioned that Bill and Louisa had six children, and this monument is for two still-born infants, another son and daughter, in 1881 and 1883.

Big Spring

On another field trip taken while in Arkansas last month, Connie and I drove to the Missouri Ozarks to see the Current River near the town of Van Buren. When I was a kid our family did lots of camping and canoeing here before it became a National Scenic River and the National Park Service started taking over.

One of our stops was at Big Spring, that feeds the Current just outside of Van Buren. You can see Connie taking a look at it in the picture above.

 Here’s a closer view of the vent. The signs there say it has an average flow of 288 million gallons a day, that makes it the biggest spring in Missouri, and I guess gives it a greater flow than Mammoth Spring in Arkansas that we visited back in the summer. This part of Missouri is just a giant sponge with springs everywhere.

A pretty spring creek carries the water about a quarter-mile to a confluence with the Current River. I remember paddling up this creek to camp near the spring, while on a canoe trip with some high school friends in 1970. You can see beds of watercress growing all over the creek bed in this picture.

 This picture of a heron fishing in the creek was my consolation wildlife shot. I was lined up to take a picture of a whitetailed doe wading in the creek, delicately nibbling on watercress, when a cavalcade of fat people riding Harley-Davidsons roared by and she leaped over the bank in terror.
It wasn’t especially hot that day, maybe mid-80s, but that area had to be the most humid place I have been in years. Sweat poured off of us the second we left the car. That made conditions right for this mist that appeared as we were leaving.

Larry Benoit RIP

Legendary whitetail hunter Larry Benoit, of Duxbury VT, is dead at 89. he exemplified the Yankee blue- collar woodsman- hunter, and despite it being a how- to, his How to Bag the Biggest Buck of Your Life, a delightful read as well as a practical manual, would have made my book of books if not for the strict 100 book limit, and willbe in any future addition (yes, ADdition)…

He even got an obit in the NYT, respectful if weirdly tone- deaf about rural America:

“Today, trophy buck hunting has elements of competitive sport, some of
them high-tech. Some hunters use video cameras to learn the traveling
and behavior patterns of deer, and, after a kill, many have antlers
officially measured; “trophy racks,” they are called.” Yes, that they are quaintly called…

 Benoit’s own style was forthright and colloquial; there is a feeling of him sitting down and talking effortlessly with his collaborator Peter Miller:

“…. if you aren’t in shape to dog a mountain buck and follow him for 15
miles, then walk out of the woods and be ready to do it the next day,
and maybe the day after, and maybe for a week, then just be an armchair
buck hunter. Don’t go out in the woods and kill yourself.”

 If you must learn deer hunting from a book you could do a lot worse than to read and meditate on this one.  HT “Lucas Machias”.

A Rowan Oak Bonus

I was going to put this in my post last week on Faulkner’s Rowan Oak, but I had so many photos in the post already that Blogger was getting balky and I was afraid I would lose the whole thing.

After I had finished walking through the house, I went back to my car, got my unipod, and started taking exterior pictures of the house and grounds. As I was walking around, I looked down at the ground frequently (I can’t help it – I’m an archaeologist) and saw lots of historic artifacts lying around. They were just the sort of ceramic and glass fragments you would expect to see around a house largely occupied in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They have been having a drought in that part of the country, too, and the grass had given way to bare spots on some portions of the lawn. You can see some in the picture above.

 So, I look down into one of the bare spots and there is this nice prehistoric chert flake lying there. I got the attention of the Ole Miss student who was selling tickets and got him to come over so I could show him what I had found and where I had found it. Turned out he had a minor in anthropology, and had attended an archaeology field school the previous summer, so he knew exactly what I was talking about. While we were talking I found another flake (of quartzite) a couple of feet away. The student took them and said he would give them to the curator and explain their significance.

Faulkner was fascinated by Indians historic and prehistoric, and they are a prominent theme in his fiction. I don’t know if he was aware he had a prehistoric site in his yard, but I am sure he would have been pleased if he did.

“Preppy”?

Reader  Matthew remarks in comments below on my being such a “preppie” in my youth. Well, yeah, but life goes on and reality intrudes. Children become unexpected adults.  And no matter how you strive, “Golden lads and girls all must/ As chimney- sweepers, come to dust…”