what traveling with a wagon train was really like

Above Fred Stone was a famous Vaudeville performer, one of the best. He was also the best friend of Will Rogers. Among his many achievements, he played the Scarecrow in the 1902 stage production of the Wizard of Oz. He is shown above with David Montgomery, who was cast as the Tin Woodman.

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Fred Stone (in his autobiography), Rolling Stone. New York: Whittlesey House, 1945, pp. 3 and 5—

The day they were married, my father and mother hitched their team to a prairie schooner and joined the procession that was trailing out across Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado…

We went into Garden City, Kansas—so called because there wasn’t a garden within a thousand miles—with a train of seventy-three prairie schooners. People were traveling together for protection from the Indians, for there were still Indian raids over the prairies, and buffalo, bear, and deer were plentiful. But though I saw lots of Indians at Garden City, they were all friendly, and the only marauders father had to contend with were the white men who tried to steal everything in those covered wagons, from the bedding to the wooden wheels. So when father stood on watch all night, with a shotgun in his hand, it was not because any redskin was going to bite the dust. It was because some of his fellow travelers were as apt as not to take his prairie schooner apart in the night if there was anything in it they fancied.

the timely accidental death of actor james dean

James Dean / publicity photo / public domain

Alec Guinness, Blessings in Disguise. Pleasantville NY: Akadine Press, 2001, pp. 34-35—

When we got there [at an Italian bistro in Los Angeles]…there was no table available. As we walked disconsolately away I said, “I don’t care where we eat or what. Just something, somewhere.” I became aware of running, sneakered feet behind us and turned to face a fair young man in sweat shirt and blue jeans. “You want a table?” he asked. “Join me. My name is James Dean.” We followed him gratefully, but on the way back to the restaurant he turned into a car park, saying, “I’d like to show you something.” Among the other cars there was what looked like a large, shiny, silver parcel wrapped in cellophane and tied with ribbon. “It’s just been delivered,” he said, with bursting pride. “I haven’t even driven it yet.” The sports car looked sinister to me, although it had a large bunch of red carnations resting on the bonnet. “How fast is it?” I asked. “She’ll do a hundred and fifty,” he replied. Exhausted, hungry, feeling a little ill-tempered in spite of Dean’s kindness, I heard myself saying in a voice I could hardly recognize as my own, “Please, never get in it.” I looked at my watch.”It is now ten o’clock, Friday the 23rd of September, 1955. If you get in that car you will be found dead in it by this time next week.” He laughed. “Oh, shucks! Don’t be so mean!” I apologized for what I had said, explaining it was lack of sleep and food. Thelma Moss and I joined him at his table and he proved an agreeable, generous host, and was very funny about Lee Strasberg, the Actors’ Studio and the Method. We parted an hour later, full of smiles. No further reference was made to the wrapped-up car. Thelma was relieved by the outcome of the evening and rather impressed. In my heart I was uneasy—with myself. At four o’clock in the afternoon of the following Friday James Dean was dead, killed while driving the car.

Harold Lloyd's walking wooden hobby horse

Above World Cinema poster depicting American film star Harold Lloyd (designer and date unknown).

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S. Howard Bartley, A Bit of Human Transparency. Bryn Mawr PA: Dorrance and Company, 1988, p. 73—

[Hollywood film star Harold Lloyd designed a wooden] walking hobby horse large enough for adults to ride…[It] looked much like a regular hobby horse except it was not on rockers. As the rider would lean forward the horse would tilt forward, pivoting (or rocking) on its front legs. This would lift the rear end of the horse and lift the hind legs off the floor. They would swing forward to reach what would now be the perpendicular. As the rider would then lean back, the front end of the horse would lift off the ground and in tilting back the front legs would swing to a new position. The pivot for this second phase of action (tilt) would be the hind legs. So as the rider would alternately tilt forward and backward the animal would carry its rider across the floor. 

Harold Lloyd in Safety Last (1923)

Iowa's Buffalo Bill Is the Man in the Moon

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Vincent Starrett (Chicago Tribune book columnist Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett), Born in a Bookshop: Chapters from the Chicago Renascence. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965, p. 154—

My only other clear memory of Washington days is a visit to Keith's Theater, where I heard and met the famous old minstrel James Thornton and his wife Bonnie. The rest of the bill was a bust as far as I was concerned, but the opportunity to meet the man who had written "When You Were Sweet Sixteen"—to say nothing of "My Sweetheart's the Man in the Moon" and "The Irish Jubilee"—was too good to miss…But I was sorry to have missed an encounter, a few weeks earlier, between Jimmy and Colonel William F. Cody. The theater manager told me about it with great glee. Cody also had been eager to meet an old favorite, and Jimmy had been brought around to his box. The manager made the introductions. "Jimmy," he said, "I want you to meet the famous Buffalo Bill, who is an admirer of yours." "Glad to know you, Mr. Bill," said Jimmy, shaking hands solemnly. "What part of Buffalo do you come from?"

The secret handshake?

Buffalo Bill: Never Missed and He Never Will

Montage © Roy R. Behrens 2017

Above Title slide for Iowa's Buffalo Bill: Never Missed and He Never Will, a presentation sponsored by Humanities Iowa. For information on how to schedule this event for Iowa libraries, community centers and other public-accessible venues, as well as how to fund it through an HI grant (surprisingly easy), go to the Humanities Iowa website.

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William F. Cody (1846-1917), better known as “Buffalo Bill,” was born near Le Claire, Iowa, in Scott County, just north of Davenport. By the end of his life, he had become what some have called “the most famous American in the world.” 

He had been a Pony Express rider, an Army scout, a buffalo hunter for the railroad, and the founder and central attraction of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, which traveled throughout the US and in Europe for thirty years. This talk is an overview of Cody’s life, both tragic and heroic. It was tragic because of the role he played in the near extinction of the American Bison (he himself is said to have killed nearly 3000 buffalo in eight months), and, more deplorable, in the subjugation of Native Americans. 

If his life was heroic, it was because of his later support of the rights of Native Americans, his friendship with many of them (most notably with Sitting Bull), and his link with such colorful characters as Annie Oakley and Wild Bill Hickok. As a Wild West performer, it is thought that Cody probably played to a collective audience of more than 50 million, including at various Iowa towns. This is a face-paced and entertaining 60-minute talk, illustrated by projected vintage photographs, film clips and animated graphics.

Buffalo Bill Cody in Cedar Falls IA in 1912

Greetings from Buffalo Bill

In an earlier post on William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, we shared the story of his only visit to Cedar Falls IA, in 1912, as recalled by Stella Robinson Wynegar. Below is a different account by her son.

Claud R. Wynegar, The Century and I: Memories of Cedar Falls and Beyond. Pacific Palisades CA: Seamount Publications, 1999, p. 51—

I do not remember the year [it was 1912], but I was a small boy when the Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill Circus came to town. They put up their tents out West First Street in Mularkey's pasture [sic, Mullarky's pasture, now called Riverview Park, at Ellen Street and South Park Road]. It was in the summer. I was alone and I got to the grounds early. I had a seat in the open air tent to watch the "battles" between the white men and the Indians, and a lot of fancy riding and roping of horses.

Buffalo Bill was on a horse with a shotgun. Someone ahead of him would throw a glass ball into the air and he would shoot at it and break it into small pieces. There was number of tents. I looked into all of them. It was a show a bit difficult to describe. There were a few wild bison, quite a few cowboys, Indians in native costumes, a few concessions where souvenirs were sold and food stands. It was the first circus I ever saw.

Later in the afternoon my mother drove out in our buggy to get me. While looking for me she met Buffalo Bill and had a nice visit with him. No doubt that was the beginning of my interest in the American West, and it has always stayed with me. I own some Remington bronzes, some western pictures and books about the people who were part of that era.
 

Typographic Poster | Samuel Garwood

Typographic Poser | Samuel Garwood

Above Poster by Samuel Garwood, graphic design student, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa (2015), in celebration of the typeface Helvetica.

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James Joyce—

Come forth, Lazarus! But he came fifth and lost the job.

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Alec Guinness, My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor. New York: Viking Penguin, 1997, p. 135—

The raising of Lazarus from the dead is the subject of today's Gospel. The current sub-supermarket translation has Christ asking, "Where have you put him?"—as if Lazarus might be a basket, and later, "Lazarus, here! Come out!"—as if calling a terrier digging in a rabbit warren.

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Robert Byrne—

Cogito ergo dim sum: Therefore I think these are pork buns.

Pictorial Font Design | Desirée Dahl

Pictorial font (2014) © Desirée Dahl

Above Design for a pictorial font by University of Northern Iowa graphic design student Desirée Dahl (2014).

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Alec Guinness, My Name Escapes Me: The Diary of a Retiring Actor (New York: Viking Penguin, 1997), p. 156—

On waking this morning I thought how lovely it would be to have a tame bird again. There has been Percy, a South African grey parrot who lived with us for about twenty-five years, gave us a lot of laughs and painful nips, could recite about the first two lines of a Hamlet soliloquy—"O what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Is it not monstrous that this player here"—except that he substituted "parrot" for "player," followed by gales of laughter; he also ripped sitting room curtains to shreds. 

Theatre Poster | Michelle Watson

Theatre poster © Michelle Watson 2011

Above Theatre poster designed by Michelle Watson, completed while an undergraduate graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Stanley Elkin, Early Elkin (Flint MI: Bamberger Books, 1985)—

We read, I've told my classes, to die, not entirely certain what I mean but sure it has something to do with being alone, shutting the world out, doing books like beads, a mantra, the flu. Some perfect, hermetic concentration sealed as canned goods or pharmaceuticals. It is, I think, not so much a way of forgetting ourselves as engaging the totality of our attentions, as racing-car drivers or mountain climbers engage them, as surgeons and chess masters do. It's fine, precise, detailed work, the infinitely small motor management of diamond cutters and safecrackers that we do in our heads…I haven't said it here, am almost ashamed to own up, but once I opened books slowly, stately, plump imaginary orchestras going off in my head like overtures, like music behind the opening credits in films, humming the title page, whistling the copyright, turning myself into producer and pit band, usher and audience.

Theatre Poster | Erich Bollmann

Theatre poster © Erich Bollmann

Above Theatre poster designed by Erich Bollmann (Los Angeles), completed in an undergraduate graphic design course at the University of Northern Iowa.

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Mary McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1957), p. 5—

It is our parents, normally, who not only teach us our family history but who set us straight on our own childhood recollections, telling us that this cannot have happened the way we think it did and that that, on the other hand, did occur, just as we remember it, in such and such a summer when So-and-So was our nurse. My own son, Reuel, for instance, used to be convinced that Mussolini had been thrown off a bus in North Truro, on Cape Cod, during the war. This memory goes back to one morning in 1943 when, as a young child, he was waiting with his father and me beside the road in Wellfleet to put a departing guest on the bus to Hyannis. The bus came through, and the bus driver leaned down to shout the latest piece of news: "They've thrown Mussolini out." Today, Reuel knows that Mussolini was never ejected from a Massachusetts bus, and he also knows how he got that impression.

Charlie Chaplin | Derek Miller

Above In a class about designing digital images, I asked my students to invent "interpretive portraits" of extraordinary men or women from the past, sung or unsung. I didn't know who they would choose, since our generations are increasingly familiar with vastly different views of the past, the present and the future. Most of the time, I don't think they get my jokes (these days, even my obvious humor is dry), and, likewise, I sometimes don't have a clue about what they're alluding to. So, it is reassuring when someone in the class chooses a subject, in this case the British-born American film comedian Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977), whom we both know and admire. This zingy and fittingly colorful portrait of Chaplin was designed by Derek Miller.

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Robert Hatch, in the Reporter (November 25, 1939)—

There were two sides to Charlie [Chaplin's film character], as there are to most clowns. The first was Charlie the fantastic cock of the walk who kidded our sacred institutions ans solemn paraphernalia with merciless acumen. He kept a slop bucket in a safe and investigated a clock with a can opener. He slapped bankers on the back, and pinched a pretty cheek when he saw one. He had nothing but wit, grace, and agility with which to oppose the awful strength of custom and authority, but his weapons were a good deal more than sufficient.

The other Charlie was a beggar for sympathy and an apostle of pity. He pitied everything that stumbled or whimpered or wagged a tail, particularly he pitied himself. There has never been a portrait of self-pity so vivid or so shocking as Charlie with a rose in his hand.

Wild West Indians in Paris

© Roy R. Behrens, Indigenous Nativity (2004). Purchase online.

I've been reading about Native Americans in connection with a talk I give for Humanities Iowa on Iowa-born Wild West showman William F. Cody. It seems clear that throughout his life, the convivial scout had a propensity for the pleasantries of "firewater" in large amounts. Earlier in the 19th century, according to James Welch in Killing Custer (NY: Norton, 1994), "the white man's water" was a brew of "tobacco, capsicum, molasses, peppers, and alcohol mixed with river water and whatever else could produce a fire in the belly" (p. 26).

In 1889, Cody took his Wild West show (including a number of Native Americans) on a performance tour of Europe, concurrent with the World's Fair in Paris. It was the Eiffel Tower's premiere, and all sorts of celebrities attended, as is vividly described by Jill Jonnes in Eiffel's Tower (NY: Penguin, 2009). The Native Americans enjoyed enormous popularity with the French public. According to Jonnes, their performances were so well known in Paris that—

the clowns at the Cirque d'Été [summer circus] had worked up a parody called Kachalo-Ball. The real Wild West Indians instantly gave it cachet by attending the show in groups each night, cheering wildly as the French clowns satirized their riding and their wars and attacks. When the clowns took to dancing their version of Sioux war dances, the visiting Native Americans laughed so hard they had tears running down their faces.

Ventriloquism for Dummies

Howdy Doody Patent No 156,687 (1950)

In the late 18th century, a British entertainer named James Burns, known as "Shelford Tommy," persuaded a freight carrier to empty his wagon in order to search for a child whose cries for help seemed to be coming from inside the load he was hauling.

During the same period, when a York shoemaker was accused by fifty witnesses of having tossed a crying baby into the river, he defined himself in court by producing a second crying baby, which he then shockingly beheaded—but which, upon closer inspection, was shown to be only an inanimate doll.

Both Burns and the shoemaker were experts at ventriloquism, the act of making it seem that a voice or other sound has emanated not from ones own larynx, but from some other adjacent entity. A person who does this professionally is called a ventriloquist or "belly speaker," a coinage that comes from the merger of two Latin words, venter (belly) and loqui (to speak). More

Alec Guinness, Hiccups and the Pope

In an autobiography, British actor Alec Guinness (aka Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars) recalled a very odd audience with the Pope in Blessings in Disguise (Pleasantville NY: Akadine Press, 2001), p. 46—

[In 1958, four days before the death of Pope Pius XII, British actor Alec Guinness was allowed to join an audience with the Holy Father, in a group that consisted primarily of plastic surgeons. Guinness stood “near the end of the line next to a middle-aged American couple,” where] I didn’t grasp what the Pope said to me...but I assumed it was about surgical alterations to the face and not about theatrical make-up; but I did catch every word said by the Americans. They both kneeled to kiss the Fisherman’s Ring, and then the man burst into loud sobs, the tears coursing down his face. The Pope [who was suffering from hiccups] patted him, took his hand, saying the Italian equivalent of “There! There!” and the man grasped his white cassock. The wife explained her husband away with a motherly smile. I imagined her to be a woman who would not have permitted him to buy his own shirts, socks or underpants. “He’s so moved, Your Holiness,” she said. “It is such an honor to meet you. Isn’t it, dear? He’s always like this on great occasions. Aren’t you, dear? Oh, he’s very moved! And just think, Your Holiness—we’ve come all the way from Michigan!” The Pope mastered a hiccup. “Michigan?” “Sure, Michigan.” “I know Michigan,” the Pope said, and managing to free himself from the plastic surgeon’s grip he raised a hand in blessing: “A special blessing on Michigan!” Those were probably the last words of English he spoke. The entourage sped him away from the audience chamber. His private doctor followed, glowering at each of us in turn as he passed.