Texas Cowboys: Memories of the Early Days - Paperback

by Jim Lanning (Editor), Judy Lanning (Editor), James Lanning (Editor)

"The stories these cowboys tell are exciting and lively. Reading the book is like meeting them face to face and sharing in the active lives they led." --Plano Profile "The illustrations in this fascinating book are outstanding. The Lannings have given us a well-edited book that can be a greatly-appreciated gift." --The Pacific Historian "For all the insights into the lives and attitudes of the cowboys, however, the greatest charm for many readers will be not in the tales but in the telling. . . . These men and women, many of whom rarely if ever fidgeted at a school desk, show a natural and comfortable sense of language, its rhythms and infinite possibilities . . . these voices from the past are a delight to hear." --Southern Quarterly, Vol. 24, no. 3 "If you are a fan of history and cowboys, you may enjoy this collection. Crotchety cooks, goosy broncs and spooky steers populate the pages, and some of the adventures are so wild that you wonder just how in blazes these people lived to tell the tales." --The Lariat "All in all, I liked the book very much, and so will others who have an enthusiasm for the Texas Range Cattle Industry, and for those who served it in its heyday." --Colin Rickards "All of the accounts are more than readable; they are very interesting vignettes of trail drives and Indian scares, rustlers and stomps' or stampedes . . . The book is highly recommended as accurate Americana." --Old West "This book is a contemporary selection of 33 interviews with old cowboys, culled from a herd of 400 in the Texas Rangelore Collection of the Library of Congress . . . Crotchety cooks, goosey broncs and spooky steers populate the pages, and some of the adventures are so wild that you wonder just how the blazes these people lived to tell the tales." --Quarter Horse Journal "These oral histories from old Texas cowhands and ranch workers tell . . . what everyday life in Texas was all about. The stories are plainly told, dignified, and timeless." --Fort Worth Stockyards Gazette "This is primary source material of very high quality and fascinating reading." --Abilene Reporter-News "Whether it's stage robberies, breaking and catching wild stock, or just daily ranch life . . . this book gives you a good sense of what life was like." --Quarter Horse Journal

Back Jacket

Bland beef washed down with Arbuckle coffee, dusty trails where cattle strayed, and camaraderie on the prairie all had a share in the favored way of life for early cowhands. The thirty-three Depression-era interviews presented here were culled from the WPA-Federal Writers' Project. They faithfully show how old-time Texas cowhands lived and how they felt about their glamourless existence. These were the men and women - blacks and Mexican Americans as well as Anglos - who helped ranchers as renowned as King, Kenedy, Slaughter, and Waggoner shape the open rangeland into economic empires. Their stories, as they themselves told them, are beautifully enhanced by early ranching photographs.