| I have no idea why the mere words "Wild West" | | | | brought back memories of "Bonanza," and then |
| and "Old West" conjure up such images of | | | | Sutter's Fort in Sacramento, close to where the |
| adventure, but they do. When I was a young boy | | | | California Gold Rush began in 1848, another part |
| we played "cowboys and Indians" and fought who | | | | of Wild West lore. |
| got to be sheriff. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday | | | | There is only one problem with all this. Much of |
| were practically household names to us. I read | | | | what I had seen in all those movies was a |
| German author Karl May's books about the Wild | | | | romanticized, glorified and rather one-sided |
| West and relished the adventures of Old | | | | Hollywood version of the Old West. There were, |
| Shatterhand and his friend, the noble Indian chief | | | | of course, cowboys and Indians and tents and |
| Winnetou. Although May, who had written his | | | | guns and the cavalry. But it wasn't all gun-toting |
| cowboy and western adventures in the late | | | | cowboys and tomahawk-throwing Indians. The |
| 1800s, never ventured farther West than Buffalo, | | | | real Old West was quite different and much more |
| his books felt real and we loved them. Later, I | | | | down-to-earth. It was an exceptionally turbulent |
| watched the television series "Bonanza" and many | | | | period of time when the Western part of the |
| others like it, fascinated by all those stories of the | | | | United States was settled between the Civil War |
| old west and how people lived in those pioneering | | | | and the end of the century. Much has been |
| days. | | | | written about the Old West, but it was mostly by |
| As a young adult I still loved Westerns and was a | | | | writers who did not actually have first-hand |
| big fan of Sergio Leone's "spaghetti Western" | | | | experience. Those who actually partook of the |
| films like the "Man with No Name" trilogy, "Once | | | | Old West experience were usually too busy to |
| Upon a Time in the West" with Henry Fonda, | | | | write about it. |
| Charles Bronson and Jason Robards, and, of | | | | I still love Westerns, but these days I am much |
| course, movies with the incomparable John | | | | more interested in reading how the Old West |
| Wayne. I enjoyed the hilarious humor and drama | | | | really was. I have a small library of books |
| in Westerns with Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill. | | | | describing life back then, including all the adventure |
| Later I fell in love with movies like "Tombstone" | | | | and hardship - the good, the bad, and the ugly. |
| with Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer and, especially, Sam | | | | Many of those books are painstakingly compiled |
| Elliott. All of them showed the old West in the | | | | from various newspaper and eyewitness |
| same way. Cowboys, Indians, the Cavalry, old | | | | accounts. Some are a bit dry. But occasionally you |
| West clothes, old West outlaws, old West | | | | come across a real memoir, the story of a real |
| lawmen, old West guns, and the towns it all took | | | | lawman of the Old West, one of those rugged |
| place in. | | | | characters who was chasing outlaws and trying to |
| When I moved to California and drove through | | | | keep the peace. This is when it all becomes more |
| the country I passed through Cheyenne and | | | | than just history, when the Old West comes alive |
| Laramie, Wyoming and those two places, | | | | with cattlemen's associations, hired guns, |
| together with several other Western towns, | | | | horseback cowboys, cowboy action shootouts, |
| personified the Wild West to me, like Dodge, | | | | gunfighters, stampedes. It all took place, and it's |
| Santa Fe, and so on. It was almost magical. I saw | | | | terrific reading about it in the words of someone |
| the Cartwright family's recreated Ponderosa ranch | | | | who was actually there. |
| near Incline Village on Lake Tahoe and that | | | | |