Buffalo Bill look-alike becomes an airborne hero

Wherever I’ve lived, I think I’ve always been interested in what has happened in the past in that state, region or location. South, East, West, Midwest. Wherever. I am often amazed by the things that I’ve found. This month I’ve published a new essay about an Iowa-born performer who partly made his living from pretending to be another Iowa-born showman, the illustrious William F. Cody or Buffalo Bill. 

The wannabe impersonator, who ended up adopting the name of Colonel Samuel Franklin Cody, eventually moved to Europe, where he became the British equivalent of the Wright Brothers—that is, he invented some of the first powered aircraft, and piloted what is considered to be the first airplane flight in England. You can find the entire story in the February 2025 issue of The Iowa Source (Fairfield IA), but it’s also online here.

his pistol shot caused the weather vane to clang

Above Roy R. Behrens, Well-Healed. Digital montage, ©2021. 

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Robert Conot (recalling an incident in the life of Thomas A. Edison), A Streak of Luck. New York: Seaview Books, 1979, p. 118—

It was a case of the famous ogling the famous. One evening after he [Edison] and Fox, who roomed together, had gone to bed, a thunderous knock on the door shook them upright. In strode "Texas Jack" [John Wilson Vermillion, aka "Shoot-Your-Eye-Out" Vermillion], the top of his head brushing the door frame, his eyes bloodshot, and his hands on his gunbelt. Which one, he wanted to know, was Edison? When Edison manfully identified himself in a quavering voice, Texas Jack said it was a pleasure: he himself was the boss pistol shot of the West, and he wanted to meet the great inventor of the phonograph. Whereupon he pulled out his six-shooter and, firing through the window, caused the weather vane across the street to clang into a dizzy spin.

The Iowa Exploits of Buffalo Bill Cody

Iowa-born Wild West showman William Frederick Cody, famously known as Buffalo Bill, was fortunate not to have witnessed the final years of the Great War. He died on January 10, 1917, in Denver, Colorado, at age 70. His funeral was a major news event, as admirers worldwide mourned his passing. Ironically, despite the on-going conflict, condolences for his death were sent by both England’s King George V and Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Cody’s death was undoubtedly fresh in American minds on March 6, 1917, less than two months after the funeral. On that day, according to an article in the Marshalltown (Iowa) Times-Republican, a group of Iowa youngsters, who were walking down the street in Cedar Falls…more>>>

Iowa's Buffalo Bill

Oh, the farmer and the cowman must be friends

Dude (2019)

Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma! (1943)—

The farmer and the cowman should be friends,
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.
The cowman ropes a cow with ease, the farmer steals her
butter and cheese,
But that's no reason why they cain't be friends—
Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.

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The American poet Robert Penn Warren (whose voice I love to listen to) came from Southern roots, and some of his ancestors had served on the Confederate side during the American Civil War. In Warren's wonderful memoir (which I have just finished reading), Portrait of a Father (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988), he recalls a misunderstanding he had when, as a boy, he was visiting his maternal grandfather's home. Here's the story—

There was another remark among the daughters which seemed related to the notion that the old man [his grandfather] was a visionary. They had said, more than once in their protracted and loving diagnosis of their father, that he was a "Confederate reader." Or so it seemed. I would wonder what a "Confederate reader" might be. But as my vocabulary widened, it suddenly dawned on me that the old man was an "inveterate reader." In fact, he was. As long as eyes held out.

Mary Snyder Behrens | White Wish

White Wish (2005) © Mary Snyder Behrens

Above Selected work from a series of intricate handmade bundles (called Trammels) with undisclosed contents, about palm size, made in 2004-2005 by Iowa artist Mary Snyder Behrens. Copyright © the artist.

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Owen Wister (author of The Virginian) as quoted in Fanny Kemble Wister, ed., Owen Wister Out West: His Journals and Letters. University of Chicago Press, 1958—

They had a dance somewhere [in Texas]—one of the regulation dances where the babies are all brought and piled in a corner while their parents jump about to music. After the thing had got going full swing, some unknown person got the babies and changed all their clothes—putting the linen of Mrs. Jone's little boy upon Mrs. Smith's little girl, and so on. In the dim light nobody noticed, and all went home with the wrong baby. Next morning there was the devil to pay, and for a week the whole countryside was busy exchanging and identifying babies [p. 158]. 

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Texas life breeds sayings and doings enough to fill a volume. For instance, on the road to Brownwood there used to be a sign: "See Cross-eyed Jim before you sell your hides." The gentleman himself put it up, as that was the name he was known by; but today he would not care to have you call him by it, for he has become civilized. It is Texas fashion if any man has a deformity to name him accordingly. One Ace Brown had a hump back and was known as "Camel." A man lame from being shot in the leg is "Crip" Jones [p. 153].