Friday, November 9, 2012

A Revolution In Rural Transportation

 
When I seemingly had more free time, I used to occasionally publish articles in various journals.  This posts has its origins in one such article, which came about, as a concept. right about the time that I became to busy to really keep at that endeavor, so I never wrote it.  Perhaps, if worthwhile, I'll develop this blog entry into an article later.  I'd also note that this is a topic which I've actually posted on here before.  And its a topic I consider every year during hunting season.  The topic of back country travel, and indeed travel in rural areas in general.

 

Now, in 2012, we can hardly conceive of how recent the revolution in rural travel has been, or even how little rural travel occurred not all that long ago.  While I've never accommodated myself to them (I'm sticking with the 4x4 for road and the horse or shoe leather for everything else) the ATV, or "four wheeler", is seemingly everywhere.  Or at least its more places than it arguably should be.  But not all that long ago, even the automobile didn't go most places.

And, indeed, people didn't go most places, truth be known.

On one of my other blogs I attempt to catalog Wyoming's history on a daily basis.  On occasion, that notes people going here and there early in the state's history, for one reason or another.  To give a bad example today, October 31 (the day I started, but not finished) this entry is the anniversary of the 1903 Battle of Lightening Creek, a freakish event related as follows:
1903  The Battle of Lightning Creek occurred in Weston County Wyoming when Sheriff William Miller and a party of men under his leadership, having already arrested twelve Sioux in the area for hunting violations, engaged in a firefight with Sioux under Chief Charley Smith.  Miller, Deputy Louis Falkenberg and Chief Smith died in the battle.  Nine Sioux men alleged to have participated, and twelve women, were later arrested by Crook County Sheriff Deputy Lee Miller, but they were released for lack of evidence.
Now, nothing in this entry says anything about how Sheriff Miller and his party, nor how Chief Charley Smith and his party, arrived at Lightning Creek.  But the answer is pretty evident to most, they rode horses there. But this somewhat obscures what the reality was of that era, while illuminating at the same time.  And what that illuminates is that rural travel was by horse.

 

Now, that would hardly seem to be an illumination. But, in this modern era, few people really know what that meant.  It's common to assume, "well, of course, everyone traveled by horse"  But, in fact, most people did not travel by horse during the horse era.  And not only in the 19th Century horse era in North America, but during the horse era in almost all (but not quite all) societies everywhere. That his, during the eras in which the fastest mode of travel across the land was the horse, most people walked.

This is as true of Wyoming as anywhere else, as surprising as it may seem, and what that meant to average life is difficult for most of us to now really grasp.  Perhaps, however, before looking at that, it would be helpful to look at why that was true.

As folks with horses know, you really can't keep a horse anywhere.  For that reason, only rural people or aboriginals can keep an individual mount relatively easy, although certainly not without cost.  Some people like to imagine that in the pre automobile era they would have somehow kept a horse in town and rode where they drive today, or perhaps they'd have kept a buggy in town and have driven a team or single draught animal to pull it.  This is a really common depiction in films.  Some fellow lives in town doing this or that, needs to go somewhere, and hitches up his wagon.

 

But in reality few people could or did keep horses in town, which does not mean that there were not horses in town.  Average people, however, didn't do that.  If a person kept a horse in town, and worked in town, there was a specific reason for that.  Why was this true.

Well, those who own and keep horses probably instantly know.  Horses are expensive, and they have to be fed.  Additionally, they die.

Feeding a horse, in and of itself, would have been a very difficult endeavor any average person, even in a small Wyoming town of the late 19th or early 20th Centuries.  A person's yard, and yards were much smaller (as a quick glance around at most older neighborhoods in Wyoming demonstrate) certainly doesn't provide adequate forage for a horse, even during the summer growing season.  So any in town horse has to be fed.

Today horse owners feed their horses in the winter, at least, depending upon the forage they have available in their pasture.  Buying hay is certainly an option, but an expensive one.  It would have been more problematic in the late 19th Century, however, than now, as hay was not really a significant Wyoming crop until after the disastrous winter of 1888.  Indeed, at that time ranchers began to cut hay for cattle, not for horses, but the pattern of working horse usage also began to change, due in large part to barbed wire.  From early in the state's history up until around 1900 most ranchers simply turned the remuda out for the winter, where it fended for itself, grew semi wild again, and then was rounded back up in the Spring.  Only a few saddle horses were kept in.  After the range started to be fenced, and after cattle started to be fed, it no longer was as practical to simply turn horses out, as they were both needed to do winter work that hadn't previously existed, and it wasn't as possible for them to range where they might need to go.

 

In town terms, of course, what that meant is that anyone keeping horses in town, and of course there were some who did, had to find a source of hay to feed them all year long.  Not a cheap thing to do.

People who did keep horses in town essentially had two options.  They could stable them at home, or in a livery.  The few people who did stable a horse at home were well off.  There is, in Casper, at least one very old, early 20th Century, home that has a carriage house.  That would indicate that at least the original owner of that house in fact did keep a horse or horses, in town, for a carriage.  Unfortunately, I no longer know the history of the house's ownership, as I once did, so I can't recall why that person was likely to do that, if I ever knew.

 Grand Central livery in Casper, from Wyoming Tales and Trails.

Livery stabling was more likely, but that was also not inexpensive.  A livery boarded horses and every town had one or more.  Casper's Livery was the Grand Central, located downtown on what is now Yellowstone Avenue.  Liveries also served the purpose of allowing the rural employed to board a horse for a day, if they needed to come into town, as well as allowing town people to keep a horse if they needed to.  Photographs of Western liveries generally show that they were not all that large, which demonstrates that at any one time they were not housing vast numbers of horses.

So, if people didn't keep horses, what did they do?  Largely, they walked.  Henry Fairlie, in his famous essay The Cow's Revenge, gives some of the fascinating details on that.  In larger and industrial cities, the number of miles a person walked on a daily basis was staggering by modern standards.  "Mechanics", those individuals employed as skilled machinists and the like, often walked as far as seven miles one way just to get to work, and walked the same distance back to get home, after days that were endless by current standards.  This is not to laud 19th Century industrial conditions, but as Fairlie noted in his essay the necessary expenditure of calories at the time makes our current modern effort to artificially replicate that seem fairly pathetic in comparison. Of course, for a town the size that Casper, or Cheyenne, or Laramie then were, walking to work, whatever that work was, would not have been much of a burden, or wouldn't have seemed like one.  For many years at that, I walked to and from work, which was a distance of about 1.5 miles, and I used to (and sometimes still do) ride a bicycle to work.  In the late 19th and early 20th Century that would have simply been routine and unremarkable for anyone living in a smaller town or city.

Also, of course, quite a few people lived above their places of employment.  This is starting to become common once again, but was very common, even in smaller towns, at that time. Several of the older buildings in Casper, for example, have a second story apartment.  And by apartment, I mean sufficient living quarters for an entire family.  This was quite common for shopkeepers, but it wasn't uncommon for some other professions.  Doctors often operated out of their houses early on, and the term "office hours" meant that they kept "office hours" for an office in their house.  At least one lawyer I knew as a kid worked out of his home, and this was as late as the 1970s.  Houses were simply more public than they now are, in the pre automobile era.

Many more people than, as opposed to now, worked in rural occupations everywhere, however, and it's really rural travel that we started out writing about.  Even after World War One statistically half of all Americans lived in "rural" areas, although that statistic is deceptive as rural doesn't equate with working on a farm or ranch.  People who live today, for example, in Shoshoni or Meeteetsee live in a "rural area", statistically, even if they have nothing to do with farming or ranching.  Be that as it may, certainly working on a farm or ranch, or being part of a farm or ranch family, meant having access to horses.  And, for that matter, residence in a very small town, and there were many very small towns, probably meant that there was a greater need to own a horse no matter what you were doing.

So what was rural travel like for those folks?  In watching movies, a person gets the impression that if you wanted to go from here to there, or hunting or fishing, or just go somewhere, you went out the front door, jumped on your highly compliant already saddled horse, and off you went.  But that's not correct either.  Much more work was often involved in a trip of that type than that.

To illustrate what I mean, perhaps there it's best to cite a couple of written examples.  A few  years ago Wyoming Wildlife, the journal of the Wyoming Game & Fish Department, ran an article about a notable  figure who went on an extended hunting/camping trip with his family around the year 1900.  I've now forgotten who the figure was, but he was a Wyoming figure.  Photographs were included.  What was remarkable was that the family of about four had been requiired to take several saddle animals and a wagon, in order to get out, ot the out back.  It was a remarkable effort that took weeks to undertake.

Likewise, Theodore Roosevelt, who was admittedly rather wealthy and therefore probably not the best example, wrote a Colliers article about going hunting in Wyoming while he was a rancher in Medora South Dakota.  The trip likewise involved a wagon and several hands, and took weeks.  Indeed, in order to supply themselves the hunting party had to hunt all along the way, even though their plan was to go into the Big Horns to hunt elk.  A trip of that type turned into a rolling hunting trip just to make it.

Yet another example is provided in the book by B. B. Brooks on his life up until about 1920.  Brooks, who started off as a well educated prospective rancher and trapper and who became Governor took a hunting/fishing trip from his home in Natrona County to Fremont County.  I've forgotten the year, but it would be in approximatley 1900.  This trip with his family involved several horses and a wagon, and ultimately ended up discovering an unnamed lake in the high country of Fremont County.,  Again, it took weeks.

Rather obviously not everyone had weeks to devote to such endeavors and it would be completely untrue to suggest by this that only those with lots of time, and perahps lots of cash, engaged in outdoor activities.  Many average people did as well. But what that does mean is that for people who lived in towns such endeavors were almost certainly normally quite close to town.

Pioneer Wyoming rancher, Dick Latham, with antelope.

Another thing that this should make plain is that inter state travel was not what we might imagine.  Today it's a well known aspect of life in the rural West that traveling enormous distances in any one day are routine, far more so than elsewhere.  I've driving, for work, from Casper Wyoming to Lewistown Montana, and back, in a single day and I don't regard that as particularly abnormal. Generally, if a trip is 300 miles or less, I regard it as a one day deal.  If a trip is only 100 to 150 miles one way, I regard it as a short trip.

This would not have been the case, however, in the pre automobile era.  150 miles on a horse is a three day trip, normally, if a person is really pushing it.  Four days, or five, would be more likely.  There are examples of riders riding 100 miles or more in a day, but they're noted examples simply because they are extreme.  The Army standards was "forty miles a day on beans and hay", a rhyme which is not only notable because it is a rhyme, but because 40 miles is a long ways to riding on a horse.  It'ts particularly a long ways to ride if you have to do it day after day, as it becomes very hard on the horse.  Cowboys, then and now, generally never rely on one horse.  The 19th Century standard was seven horses to a man.

Travel long distance was normally by train, if a rail line existed, and quite frequently it did.  Wyoming had a few 19th and early 20th Century rial lines that carried passengers which are now completely absent, and the nationwide existance of rails to trails programs provides ample proof of that.  Most business or commmon people, if they needed to travel, took a train, if they could.

A nice example of how this worked is provided in Davis' book Goodbye Judge Lynch, about law in Big Horn County Wyoming.  Prior to the railroad coming in a practical trip in and out of the basin took weeks, not days.  And as a result, there was really no law in the basin, particularly as the distant sheriff of Johnson County, who had to travel by horse over the Big Horns to get there, could not really be there for any practical policing.  The railroad changed all that however and a person could then get there from many Wyoming localities in a day, or no more than two. This certainly made a huge differeance to lawyers, who could then actually defend cases in Big Horn County even if they lived in Natrona County, or Fremont County, or Laramie County.  It also made a big difference to the court too, as the judge didn't have to engage in an expedition to get there, even if he still had to travel a circuit from his home.  Indeed, harkening back to a much earlier era, it's interesting to note that East Coast circuit judges of colonial and early US history were in a mounted occupation, as the judge, and the lawyers, rode together from town to town in a circuit to adjudicate their casees.

All that must have come to a crashing halt on September 27, 1908, when the first Model T left the plant at Detroit Michigan, correct?  Well, no.


This is not to say that the Model T's introduction wasn't a big deal.  It was.  Automobiles, and motorcycles had of course been in manufacture for some time prior to the Model T (the first Harley Davidson came out in 1903), but they were extremely expensive and beyond the means of most people.  Model Ts were much more affordable, and indeed had been designed to be.  Ford's hope was that Most Americans could buy one, and he came darned near close to realizing that goal.  The car, and very rapidly modified examples that became early pickup trucks, were a huge success.  And no wonder. For the first time, people living in towns could buy a vehicle that didn't require storing a horse to move it, and which simply sat idle, ready for use, when not in use.

The extent to which cars spread very rapidly after the Model T, and because of the Model T, is almost impossible for us to imagine today.  Starting in 1908, by World War One the simple, and frankly rather primitive, car was everywhere.  The impact it had on town and city travel was enormous.  Fairly quickly after its introduction, and indeed even before it, the phenomenon of driving into the country, or "touring" became quite popular  So popular in fact that more expensive models of automobiles, and there were a tremendous number of automobiles, offered "touring cars".  Americans rapidly became car crazy, although the evolution was not entirely welcome everywhere by everyone.  In farm regions cars were at first not particularly welcome, as they were conceived as a threat to livestock.  Once farmers realized, however, that owning a car. . . or truck, allowed them to get to town and back quickly, that soon changed.

 

In an area like Wyoming, this change was impressive.  For the first time ever it became easy for people living in a town like Casper or Laramie to travel some distance outside the town for a day.  And early cars were very high centered, almost like 4x4 trucks today, and very low geared.  Indeed, although they were 2x4 vehicles, they were quite well suited to rural travel.

 Ranch Truck, Big Horn County Montana, 1939.

This didn't, however, necessarily make long trips really easy.  Early newspaper articles from Wyoming are full of tales about locals driving long distances, such as between Cheyenne and Casper, and note that the trip took one or two days.  It now takes under three hours.  Of course, the trip was being made over roads that were really wagon roads.  It took some time before improved paved highways, at first very narrow, came in.  Indeed, interstate highways were non existant until after World War One, when an Army experiment gave them a boost by demonstrating that cross country automobile travel was possible, if extremely difficult.  After that an interstate highway system, the remote predacessor to today's Interstate Highways, started to come in, with the early highways named.  The highway across southerin Wyoming was the legendary Lincoln Highway. 

 Ranch truck, 1939.

Ford built the Model T up until 1927, an impressive twenty year long production run. By that time, more modern cars with some improvements had entered the scene. As the 1920s and 1930s arrived, cars became more recognizable to us today in terms of their features.  The Great Depression killed off the vast number of car companies that existed up until that time, and fewer more productive companies remained, such as Chrysler, Chevrolet, Ford, Studebaker, Willys, Kaiser and Hudson.  By modern terms, the cars remained surprisingly suitable for dirt road travel, although they were much less the "truck" that the Model T had been.  An even later car, a 1954 Chevrolet, I once had was quite easy to drive on dirt roads as a rule, and I often took it fishing while I owned it, something I'd never do with any later car I owned.  Given its relatively low gears, heavy weight, and low horsepower high compression engine, it was also pretty good in snow.  It's no wonder, therefore, that you see photos of hunters with deer strapped over the hoods of their cars.  The cars could get a fairly far out, as long as the driver wasn't crazy about it.

 
1954 Chevrolet Four Dour Deluxe Sedan.

 1954 Chevrolet Deluxe in wintertime conditions.  While I'd hesitate to drive it in conditions like this, the car exhibited pretty good winter characteristics, save for the lousy vacuum wipers and the iffy personnel heater.

None of which meant that wintertime and really outback travel was easy.

As a rule, up until sometime after World War Two, families that owned a car; owned a car.  That is, they owned one car.  Most of those cars, even in the rural West, were cars, not pickup trucks, although pickups were always more popular in this region than in others.  Prior to World War Two, however, even those trucks were two wheel drive, not 4x4.

That fact is really significant in terms of the ease of travel.

Prior to the 4x4 vehicle, much of Wyoming was either periodically, or completely, closed during the winter.  We travel from town to town now when nobody, or only the foolhardy, would have attempted it prior to seemingly everyone owning 4x4 vehicles.  And if they did try it, tire chains were in order.  We still see tire chains, of course, but not like we once did.  Even as a kind in the 1960s and early 1970s I can recall tire chains being fairly common on cars.  Now I usually only see them on 4x4 trucks, and only when conditions are really awful out back.

And people just didn't drive to the back country after the weather started getting bad.  It just wasn't really possible. 

The impact of this was vast.  Ranches, for example, had started using trucks almost as soon as they were available, but the trucks were 2x4, not 4x4 trucks, up until after the war.  This meant that they couldn't go where 4x4s can.  Wintertime feeding operations, therefore, retained a lot of hay wagons.  Horses continued to haul sheepwagons up to summer pastures, and sheep tenders were horse drawn as well.  In the winter, ranches that had distant pastures, and sometimes even mountain pastures, kept a cowhand there all winter long.  He couldn't be driven in or out, he just stayed and came down in the spring.  The less motorized operation meant that more cowboys needed to be employed than current are.

 Heavy truck in Army use, 1917.

For outdoorsmen, this meant that seasons shut down, except those close to town, once the heavy snows came.  Nobody was fourwheeling in and out of a high country elk camp after the snows.  It couldn't be done.  Even prarie travel could be difficult.  People gauged the weather and stayed in accordingly. 

Most long distance travel continued to be by train, which are much less plagued by snows.  If, for example, a person wanted to go from Casper Wyoming to Lincoln Nebraska, they were likely to take the train, not drive.  Now, of course, you can't take the train, although you can probably take a couple of airplane commuter hops. 

Even summertime trips weren't as easy.  It's routine now to find people who will drive a 4x4 far into the backcountry to fish, for example.  But they can due that due to the 4x4 and would be much less limited, or at least have to take alternative travel, if they lacked one.  Many now will take ATVs even further, and it's not uncommon to see somebody haul an ATV up into the hills with a 4x4 truck.

The 4x4 truck, and for that matter the all wheel drive car, is a byproduct of World War Two.  It wasn't until the war that they were anything more than a specialty item.  The U.S. Army began to develop the 6x6 truck in earnest in the 1920s when no suitable commercial artillery "tractor" (i.e., truck) was available  The developed truck was what the artillerymen wanted, but it was very expensive to produce.  Fortunately for the Army, by the 1930s commercial manufacturers were ready to pick up what the Army had started.  

 
 6x6 2 1/2 ton Trucks on the Alaska Highway during World War Two.

The 6x6 truck was  the workhorse of World War Two, and it arguably was the single most significant item produced by the United States during the war.  People like to imagine that tanks, or guns, or aircraft won the war, and of course a good case can be made for any of them, but as the old saying goes, professionals study logistics, amateurs tactics.  The 6x6 truck gave the US such a  logistical advantage over its opponents that it would be difficult to exaggerate.  That advantage extended to all the Allies, as the 6x6 was supplied by the Army to all of them.  Indeed, for years after the war the Soviet Unions 6x6 truck bore a striking resemblance to the Studebaker variant of the 6x6 supplied to them by the US during the war.

The Army didn't limit itself to 6x6 trucks of course, it also put out specifications for 4x4 trucks.  While Chevrolet, and International are part of the WWII 4x4 truck story, it was principally Dodge that filled that need with trucks and a car that are the parents of almost all larger 4x4s today.

The father of every 4x4 pickup on the road today. . . a Dodge 1/2 ton Army 4x4 truck.

Dodge started in the late 1930s by making a 1/2 ton 4x4 truck for the Army. That truck soon gave way to a 3/4 ton truck.  It also made "command cars" for the Army, which predicted the large SUV of later eras.

The original SUV, a Dodge 4x4 command car.  Note the tire chains on all four wheels.

Dodge 3/4 ton Weapons Carriers, a 3/4 ton pickup truck.

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Nice preserved 3/4 ton command car.

Most vehicle fans, in terms of World War Two U.S. Army vehicles, will immediately recall the 1/4 ton Jeep, which of course was also a very significant 4x4 car of the war.  It's really misunderstood in some ways thought, as it was an extremely light weight vehicle, and arguably not as important as the vehicles mentioned above.  None the less, it can't be ignored.

Franklin Roosevelt in a Jeep at Casablanca

A striking feature of the 6x6 and 4x4 trucks of World War Two is that they all used existing engines.  Therefore, to some extent, putting them into post war manufacture was fairly easy.  This did not occur as the 6x6s, as there was only limited civilian application for them, but Dodge and Willys both understood that there was a market for what they were making post war.  Willys, one of two manufacturers of Jeeps, basically kept its World War Two production line up and running and introduced the wartime Jeep as the CJ2A, which varied only slightly from the military Jeep (including the addition of a tailgate).  Dodge, for its part, restored the enclosed cab to the 4x4 3/4 ton truck it was making for the Army, which had been omitted in favor of a soft top in the military edition, simplified the box, and introduced the truck as the Power Wagon, a name it was already using during the war.

Both vehicles were phenomenally successful, although the Jeep never really lived fully up to its promise.  Marketed as a vehicle that could be used for anything, including being used as a farm tractor, it really could not be.  Nonetheless, it was a popular vehicle with sportsmen, and it continues to be to this day.  The vehicle probably more closely resembles a vehicle of the World War Two than any other vehicle made today.

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1958 Willys M38A1 Army Jeep, in civilian use and repainted.  This version was introduced to the public as the CJ5.

4x4 trucks took off a little more slowly than Jeeps.  The Dodge Power Wagon, introduced in a 3/4 ton and 1 ton variant, were heavy duty vehicles that were a little more truck than most civilians wanted.  The original Jeep wasn't a very good "daily driver", but the heavy Dodges were definatelty not.  None the less, the original Dodge Power Wagon, resembling the Army product very strongly, was made all the way up into the 1970s.  In the 1950s a second, equally beefy, version came out with a V8 engine, which bore the name "Power Wagon" as well, but which were marketed as Power Giants, reflecting the fact that they were actually larger than the Power Wagon.  While finding only a limited market with sportsmen, the truck was a huge success with commercial and agricultural users.  I recall seeing Power Wagons still in use as late as the 1990s on some ranches.  In the meantime, Dodge began making lighter 4x4 trucks in the 50s, reflecting a less industrial market.

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Dodge Power Giant.

While the Power Wagon was really too stout for use by most non business or non agricultural users, the utility of 4x4 truck wasn't lost on outdoors men and all the American automobile manufacturers soon started offering a lighter truck, often with running gear actually made by Chrysler or Marmot Harrington for that market.  In 1959 Ford finally introduced its own, all Ford, 4x4 truck, a good decade plus after Dodge.  Chevrolet followed suit in 1960, although it had been selling Chevrolet and GMC trucks with NAPCO parts since 1956. 

As this might reflect, while there was a market, the manufacturers were unsure of it at first, and frankly all the early 4x4 trucks were very heavy duty.  For that reason, in Wyoming, a lot of 2x4 trucks were around well into the 1970s, and they were the rule for town truck owners up through the 1960s.  4x4s were bought by sportsmen, but they tended to shy away from them as they were very heavy duty, rough riding, and there was a common well founded belief that they more expensive to maintain.  Even some ranchers and farmers were reluctant to really heavily use 4x4s, tending to keep a Power Wagon just for when a 4x4 was really needed.

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1956 Chevrolet 2x4 pickup truck.

This means that the change 4x4s brought was slow in coming, but it did come.  The first big impact they had in Wyoming was on ranching.  The Dodge Power Wagon, in both its civilian and military surplus variant, ended the career of many cowboys just at the same time when many of them were returning from World War Two and looking for other employment in any event.  Equipped with the Power Wagon, there was no longer any need to keep a cowboy in the high country all winter long, as the rancher could drive there if he needed to.  And the Power Wagon replaced the hay wagon on many outfits.  

The 4x4 also meant, that for the first time, many really dedicated sportsmen could get into the back country much later in the year. The post snow fall elk camp became a possibility for hte first time, with the hunters equipping themselves with pickup trucks or Travelalls (early full sized SUVs) and heading to the high country.  Quite a few Jeeps also were employed by them in that capacity, and the Jeep as a backcountry summer time vehicle came on rapidly.

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Modern Dodge diesel 1 ton truck with stock trailer in heavy snow.

The WWII Dodge 4x4s were the predecessors of every 4x4 truck and SUV out there today, unless they're smaller, in which case the Jeep is.  That's opened up the country for us year around, an evolution which occurred extremely rapidly.  In 1944 ranchers and outdoorsmen still couldn't reach the high country, or go out in heavy snow far from their home bases.  By 1949 they could.  Not everyone switched right away, particularly in town, but by the 1970s a high percentage of pickup trucks in  Wyoming were 4x4s. By the 1980s, they majority of them were.  Now, a 2x4 truck is a freakish oddity.

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Dodge D150 1/2 ton truck, a direct descendant of the WWII Dodge military 4x4.  Indeed, with this body style, the Army would employ the same truck in a 1.5 ton version as the D880.

4x4s are now everywhere in the American West, and indeed, they're everywhere in general.  But that hasn't been the end of backcountry vehicle evolution.  Motorcycles made an early appearance on rural roads and then the "dirt bike" became a big, but temporary, hit in the 1970s. Following them was the 3 wheeler, a popular if dangerous light motorized trike.  Both the dirt bike and the trike came and went, but a newer vehicle, the ATV, appears to be a permanent addition to the scene, and not one that's an unqualified good thing.  Light, somewhat dangerous, but capable of going many places that even a Jeep could not, the hills are crawling with them.  Contrary to the expectations of some, they have not replaced the horse by any means in ranching, and like the dirt bike they've appeared and then started to disappear in that application, but many outdoorsmen now seem almost permanently glued to them.

 
The ATV for those too cheap to buy an ATV.

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Thursday, November 8, 2012

Retired game warden reflects on 30-year career - Laramie Boomerang Online

Interesting article on a Game Warden who is retiring from Laramie.

Retired game warden reflects on 30-year career - Laramie Boomerang Online

The scary thing, to me, is that his 1983 starting date doesn't have the "back in the day" sort of feel to me, that it obviously does to the author.  Shoot, 1983 doesn't seem all that long ago to me.  Granted, I wasn't out of college yet, but I was in it.

Radio Signal Companies, 1913

A very interesting post on early Army Radio Signal Companies on SMH.

Shows the degree to which things have advanced in various ways.  The amount of equipment and effort to achieve what today would be an easy result is impressive.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Monday, October 29, 2012

The Private Social Club: Today In Wyoming's History: October 26

The  Today In Wyoming's History: October 26: featured this item, amongst others:
1880  The Cheyenne Club incorporated.



The Cheyenne Club was a legendary early Cheyenne institution, with many significant Wyoming figures visiting the club, depicted here in as the second building from the right in the row of significant Cheyenne buildings.  It was ornately furnished and courtly conduct was expected within it.  By some accounts, plans for the Johnson County War were developed there, although that is not necessarily undisputed.
Here's an example of something that shows up in some movies, and which is pretty much dead as a doornail in modern history.  The big men's social club.

I don't know when the Cheyenne Club passed on, but I'm sure it was eons ago.  Most modern ranchers wouldn't think of joining such a thing, the costs alone would be prohibitive.  It says something about the cattle industry of the era.  I suppose the most modern comparable thing would be institutions like Casper's Petroleum Club, which was founded by oilmen, but that's not really comparable really.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Newsweek, the Casper Star Tribune, and Journalism. A rambling

This must be a tough time to be a print journalist.  It would be a lot like being a wheelwright in 1920, or perhaps like a commercial saddle maker in the same era.  Your services would still be needed, but you could probably see the handwriting on the wall, as the profession declined from a valuable, highly skilled, necessary profession into one with diminishing prospects.  Pretty grim outlook, in some ways, and one in which you would have to sort of hope against hope that things would straighten out for you, even if it were unlikely that they would, or you'd have to move on in the profession to a diminished niche market or just some other career.  A grim example, I suppose, of this is provided by the fate of the big R. T. Frazier saddle shop in Colorado, which at one time was a major commercial manufacturer of saddles.  Frazier himself saw the end coming on and noted it publicly.  Apparently he was unwilling to adapt to the new era, however, and ultimately he took his own life.

I was reminded of this recently by two events.  One was the end of the print edition of Newsweek magazine, and the other was the semi pathetic excuse, in my view. for the Casper Star Tribune printing one of the periodic letters of Al Hamburg.  Both sort of signal to me the increased slide of the print media into an ever increasing spiral of diminished importance, unfortunately.

Everyone is probably familiar with the Newsweek story by now.  The weekly news magazine went into print in 1933, seemingly a bad year to go into business, but the one that it started in nonetheless.  It was started by a former editorial writer for Time magazine, which itself had been in business only a decade, and which was its main competitor by design.  The magazine has been published consistently as a weekly up until just now, and now its stopped, a victim of the Internet.  In November 2010 it merged with the cyber Daily Beast, and its last print issue will come out on December 31, 2012.

Newsweek is trying to put a happy face on this, but my prediction is that it is doomed.  I don't expect the cyber version to last long.  It also isn't the first glossy magazine to suffer at the hands of the Internet.  The New Republic, a magazine (with a more expensive subscription rate) that is older than Time or Newsweek, dating back to 1914, went from being a monthly journal to coming out every two months, I think, for pretty much the same reason, although I frankly think that it has suffered in part due to the ownership of Martin Peretz, which is reflected in its editorial policies. It was a better magazine in general before Peretz, but the Internet hurt it further.  It's still around, but you have to wonder how long it can make it either.  Time is hanging on, and seems set to, but still it isn't what it once was.  Such giants as Life and Look disappeared long ago, at least in their original forms.

Not all magazines have evaporated, of course, but this is a trend that cannot be ignored and its even more pronounced in the newspaper industry, where lots of newspapers have folded or at least greatly contracted.  The big giant newspapers, like the New York Times, have all been suffering in recent years and have all experimented with having an electronic presence.  And, while supposedly the very small newspaper (i.e., local) has been doing fine, a person has to wonder.

As for the Tribune, the Casper Star Tribune is Wyoming's largest newspaper, and the only one which gets statewide circulation.  It was, at one time, a real Wyoming powerhouse because of that.  It printed two daily editions, one just for Casper and another, very similar, edition which was available everywhere else.  Now, it prints just one edition, and that one seems to get smaller and smaller.  The paper is not locally owned, and has not been forever, although it even fairly recently bought the locally owned Casper Journal, and continues to print that weekly.  I can see why it does, frankly, as the Journal's weekly columnists frankly make the Tribune's look comparatively sad.  The out of state owner has had financial troubles in recent years, a not unsurprising fact given the general state of the newspaper industry.

The Tribune, it seems to me, has been a sadder and sadder newspaper in recent years.  Its gotten smaller for one thing.  It still does a pretty good job of covering the statewide news, but it just isn't what it used to be (although in fairness the televised news outlets in the state aren't what they used to be either).  The editorial page, however, seems to me to really be suffering.

For quite some time the main editorial features of the paper have been the daily editorial sandwiched between two national columns.  I guess I like some of the national columns, such as George F. Will and Froma Harrop, but some are pretty run of the mill.  I'm sure, given as they are national, that this view isn't shared by every reader.  But its the local columnists that just don't hold much, and the editorial doesn't either in my view, quite often.  The editorials are often on a subject that just isn't worth doing much more than scanning.  Probably all of the columnists have their own followings, but most just don't seem that interesting on the editorial page. . . the Journal's are better.  One in particular, Mary Billitier, is just a parade of the maudlin with over 50% of the observations of the relocated Californian being on her sad life.  While I'm sorry that her life is sad, reading the column is like watching a train wreck so I just read the first paragraph and generally move on, something that I now find I'm doing with most Tribune columnists.

Add to this the once mighty letter to the editor section of the Tribune has declined enormously.  The Tribune used to have an enormous number of letters almost daily, with the Sunday paper being particularly letter heavy.  Probably reflecting a decline in readership, the letters have become fewer in number and, even more unfortunately, the really repetitions serial letter writers now can no longer be ignored.  The Tribune has several writers who write in constantly, very often on what are essentially the same topics.  At this point, for all but the most recent of readers, they have to be writing for themselves, as a person can pretty much know what they're writing about just by reading their names.

Which brings me to my final point.  This past week the paper ran, boxed inside of a column on the letter, a letter by Al Hamburg attacking the character of the late Joseph Meyer, the late Treasurer of the State of Wyoming.  Joe Meyer recently died due to cancer.

I don't know anything about Meyer personally.  I'd frankly forgotten he was an attorney and had been the States' AG.  I probably learned more about him in a recent interview in a University of Wyoming journal than I'd ever known before, which isn't to say that I now know a great deal.  Hamburg, long time Wyoming residents will recall, is a perennial candidate for various offices including even the presidency.  Rather obviously he has no significant support for the offices he runs for (over 20 times) and a felony conviction for forgery connected with one such race, partially reverse, apparently disqualifies him from holding office in any event.  Hamburg, while far from the most frequent correspondent to the Tribune, is nonetheless a person that any Tribune letter reader would recognize.

Hamburg's letter regarding Meyer was frankly just flat out mean.  The letter criticized the late Meyer for not having served in the military during the Vietnam War (Hamburg served in the Korean and Vietnam Wars) and went on to reference Meyer's death from cancer and his cigarette smoking in a rather hostile light.  I've never been one who held to the maxim that a person should not speak ill of the dead, but this letter served no purpose at all and was simply mean.

The Tribune didn't need to run the letter.  But run it, it did, and it actually ended up emphasizing it by the editor writing a column on why he was running it.  While the editor's column noted how inappropriate the letter was, it chalked up writing it to a philosophical public forum policy.

Well, baloney.  Newspapers have not always pretended to be Roman forums and at one time were quite pointed about their editorial biases.  There is no reason for the Tribune to have printed a letter like Hamburg's, and there's also no reason for the paper to have allowed its letter page to descend into the sad state that it has, with so many repeat letter writers writing to themselves on the same topics again and again.  The fact that the paper has reached this state says a lot about the decline of the print medium.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Impressive Large Scale Drawing. American Cavalry Officeres, 1921

ArtPrize2010_Top10_Chris_LaPorte_0.jpg (JPEG Image, 1920 × 1200 pixels) - Scaled (66%)

Proposed Wyoming Constitutional Amendment B. The Right To Hunt, Trap and Fish.

Included amongst this year's ballot proposals for amending the Wyoming Constitution (there are three such proposals) is a proposal to amend the constitution to provide for the protection of the right to hunt, fish and trap.


That such an amendment would even be regarded as necessary would have been a shock a couple of decades ago, and perhaps it really isn't needed now.  Participation in hunting is increasing in the United States, reversing a trend of some years, and in Wyoming hunting participation is dramatically up, grossly countering a trend of some years.  Nobody knows the reasons for this, but it appears that hunting is now increasing remarkably in popularity and participation.  And even on television, where we have not seen a great deal of hunting for quite some time, the reverse is now becoming true.  A couple of adventure type channels have been running hunting related series, with the most recent being Yukon Men.  And these shows have become pretty unapologetic about depicting what amounts to subsistence type hunting, which is the type that most American hunters actually do.

Nonetheless, in this day and age when many people live in urban settings that are so distant from nature that they have not connection with it, and often don't understand it, it serves to have an amendment that reminds us of the most basic nature of things, which we are never very far removed from in spite of what me might think.  Hunters and fishermen truly engage in an activity that's so deeply connected with nature and who and what we are as humans that this shouldn't be necessary, but this "modern" age has allowed many to become deluded, debased and indeed depressed, by their lack of connection with nature in this most fundamental of senses.  Therefore, this amendment serves a vital purpose now, even if some feel it is presently unneeded.  And, of course, by the time a right is under attack to such an extent that it needs protection, it's difficult to provide it, which is another reason to support this amendment.

Some have also suggested that this interferes with wildlife management in a way that's not helpful, but that concern seems misplaced.  Nothing in this amendment requires the Game and Fish Department to do any one thing, even if it can be argued that it does provide a mandate as to how the natural resource would be looked at in part.  I'm confident that the interference, to the extent it exists, will be easy to overcome and perhaps it only really exists if its somehow perceived to.

Therefore, like Amendment C below, I feel this is a good proposal and should become law.

Wyoming Constitutional Amendment Proposed Amendment B:
Opportunity to hunt, fish and trap
.Article 1. Section 38. Opportunity to hunt, fish and trap.  The opportunity to fish, hunt and trap wildlife is a heritage that shall forever be preserved to the individual citizens of the state, subject to regulation as prescribed by law, and does not create a right to trespass on private property, diminish other private rights or alter the duty of the state to manage wildlife.

June 24, 1915 « Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker

June 24, 1915 « Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker

June 14, 1915 « Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker

June 14, 1915 « Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker

May 24, 1915 « Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker

May 24, 1915 « Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker

May 11, 1915 « Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker

May 11, 1915 « Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

WYOMING STATE BAR SUPPORTS CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT C


From the Wyoming State Bar:

WYOMING STATE BAR SUPPORTS CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT C
The Wyoming State Bar would like to encourage Wyoming citizens to vote in favor of Constitutional Amendment C. 
The purpose of Constitutional Amendment C is to enhance the efficiency of the district court by removing two obstacles to the court’s use of court commissioners.  The state constitution currently allows court commissioners appointed by the district judge to conduct “chambers business”, and it grants the court commissioner authority to act in the absence of the district judge from the county.
However, much has changed in the operation of district courts since the 1890 when our constitution was adopted.  The statutes impose more duties and deadlines that can be difficult to fulfill promptly when the district court is conducting trials or other business. The amendment would give the court commissioner authority to act in matters beyond “chambers business,” such as emergency hearings in mental health and juvenile cases, where the district judge is within the county, but is otherwise occupied, such as in  a jury trial.  This would allow the district court to more promptly act on matters of great importance to members of the public.
“This is a simple, necessary and practical change that will increase public access to the court system,” said John Cotton, President of the Wyoming State Bar. “It will improve the legal system and enhance the administration of justice.  I strongly encourage support of the amendment.”

I concur with the opinion of the State Bar.  This would be a worthwhile amendment to the Wyoming State Constitution.    The actual text of the Amendment reads as follows:

Article 5, Section 14. District courts generally; commissioners.
The legislature shall provide by law for the appointment by the several district courts of one or more district court commissioners (who shall be persons learned in the law) in each organized county in which a district court is holden, such commissioners shall have authority to perform such business as may be prescribed by law, to take depositions and perform such other duties, and receive such compensation as shall be prescribed by law. 

Monday, October 8, 2012

Recorded Music

On the October 3 This Day in Wyoming's History blog the following item is noted:

October 3

1842   Sam Houston ordered Alexander Somervell to organize the militia and invade Mexico.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1863  President Lincoln declared that the last Thursday of November would be recognized as Thanksgiving Day.

1866  The Regular Army arrives at Ft. Casper with  troops from Company E, 2nd U.S. Cavalry arriving as reinforcements.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1895  Uinta County's Sheriff John Ward arrested Bannock Indian Race Horse for "the unlawful and wanton killing of seven elk in said county on the first day of July, 1895." Race Horse was exonerated when the United States Circuit Court held that the "provisions of the state statute were inconsistent with the treaty" of July 3, 1868.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1901  The Victor Talking Machine Company incorporated.

1941  The Wyoming Labor Journal advertised for skilled defense workers to work on Pacific Islands. . . probably not the best opportunity in retrospect.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.
The Victor Talking Machine Company made, of course Victrola's, an example of which appears here below.



Its an odd thing to think of in this day and age, but before the Victrola, people didn't have recorded music, for the most party, in their houses.  It just didn't really exist.  That isn't to say that households were devoid of music, far from it.  Music, however, was provided by the people themselves, with knowledge of musical instruments being very widespread.

The first "record player" to appear on the scene, of any kind, was invented in the late 1850s, but average people didn't have them, or probably even know of them.  It was Edison's cylindrical record player of the late 1890s that really launched record players, with a device that both played tubular records, and which could also record them.  But  the really big launch of the record players came  with the gramophone, which entered the market in 1901.  The gramophone and the Victrola were the same thing.

None of this is news to hardly anyone, but what is interesting about this which is misses is that they were actually fairly expensive items.  And they weren't always simply the box and turntable scene so often in the movies. They were nicely cased items of furniture deserving a central place in a person's home. 
Victrola on dedicated stand. The stand holds records.

Starting in 1901, the Victrola became a coveted household item.  A way to bring music of all kinds into the average home.  Worked by a hand crank, and sounding tinny today, at the time people raved about the sound.

 The front doors on the Victrola box are to open up the sound box.  The doors to the stand are a record cabinet.

That's an oddity of human nature that's also rarely mentioned about record players of any kind, although it was the subject of an excellent essay in The New Republic some 30 years ago.  Nobody would view the Victrola as much more than a novelty, or historic oddity, today. But in their day, running from 1901 to 1933, when the 33 1/3 record was introduced, they were the hi-fi, high tech, musical wonder of the age.  To their owners, the 78 rpm records they played sounded just like being there.

Up until 1931, that was.  In that year RCA, which owned Victor, introduced the 33 1/3 rpm record.  These new records were designed for electric record players, not the hand cranked dinosaurs that preceded them.  Not that they would replace them instantly, but certainly by 1950 the old Victrola was a dinosaur.  78s continued to be made in the 1940s, but by the time 45s were introduced in 1949, they were remnants of a bygone era, although record players were still made that played them.

Those record players were often set in "Stereos", big heavy furniture cased units that included a turntable and an AM/FM radio. As noted, stereophonic speakers came to be the rule after the war too.  Stereos of this type, often in very nice furniture cases, predominated into the 1960s, along with much cheaper turntable units.  At some point by the 1970s, however, really high end audio equipment had evolved into component parts, that looked electronic and were.  Each piece was separately bought by serious music lovers, with the much more cheaper small portable unit also being an option.  I had the latter, not being able to afford the former, in that era.

The Linn Sondek reflected the absolute pinnacle of the turntable.  Sound so good that, after listening to one, a person could hardly stand to listen to the cassette tape deck in their car.  The sound was absolutely unbelievable, and still is.  A Linn Sondek produced sound so good, with good speakers, that it's deflating to listen to it, as whatever else you have fairs poorly in comparison.

As referred to above, however, not only had record players evolved from hand cranked machines of the 1900s, involving no electronics at all, into electrically driven and broadcast items, rival forms of recording and playing music back had come into existence as well. I suppose mention should first be made of the player piano, a piano that was mechanically able to reproduce music without the aid of a on the spot musician.  Most people have probably seen an old player piano, or a pianola, at some point, and they're sort of a musical oddity today, but they've been around in one form or another darned near forever. Sales of them, however, really got rolling in 1876 after they benefited from being shown at the World's Fair.  Sales peaked for them in the 1920s but by the 1930s, not surprisingly given advances in radio and record players, and the Great Depression, they started dieing in the 1930s.  They certainly lacked the portability that Victrola's had, and even though I've emphasized the cabinetry associated with them above, it was very common, early on, for people to pack their Victrola to a party, along with some records.  You can't do that with a player piano.

Audiotape had come into existence in the 1930s, along with electric record players.  Reel to reel audiotape was a German invention of the 1930s. The technology spread into the US in the 1940s after the U.S. Army had acquired the technology after Germany's defeat in the war.  As this would indicate, reel to reel audiotape wasn't the domain of the common man at first, but by the 1960s some serious audio fans were buying reel to reel tapes players for some special type of recordings.  For example, one dedicated music fan I know has a reel to reel recording of Woodstock.

Audiotape had the ability to be altered such that it could be used in a small format and adapted for automobiles.  I don't really understand the technology, so I won't bother to get into it, but cassette tapes first came out in 1963.  Cassette tapes had low audio quality at first, however, and so 8 track tapes were the tape player for automobiles in the US.  Apparently they were largely unknown in Europe. Fairly big and clunky by contemporary standards, the 8 track also had a highly annoying feature of having a very audible "click" as they changed tracks, but apparently nobody minded that much.  It always irritated me, but my exposure to 8 track tapes was fairly limited.  I recall them being a feature of teenagers automobiles before I was old enough to drive, but already in my early teens. They were around in the 60s and 70s but rapidly died as audio quality of cassette tapes passed them by in the 1970s.  

Cassette taps were much smaller and very readily adaptable to cars.  Every young person's car had a radio that included a tape player or a separate tape deck.  I had both in one car or another, and actually still have two in vehicles that I bought back when they were still in use.

All this, tapes and records, were dealt a near death blow by the Compact Disk, which started to make its appearance in the 1980s.  Very expensive and a specialty item at first.  I think the first one I ever heard was the Nakamichi Dragon, an expensive unit that was set up to be compared to a Linn Sondek.  It sounded great, much better than any record player I'd ever heard, until compared to the Linn Sondek, to which it, and everything then and now, fared poorly in comparison.

CDs, however, had advantages that records just couldn't compete with.  Most people can't afford a Linn Sondek (myself included) and so the CD player, as prices dropped, was a better audio option. Also, car units could take CDs.  CDs had much better sound quality than tapes and better than could be produced by most record players.  Soon, record players of all types, and certainly all tape players, seemed like antiquated items from a distant past.

Well, as this story would go, this didn't stay fixed in place.  CDs are now in danger of dieing themselves, replaced by a purely electronic medium.  The Ipod came in, and songs could be individually purchased the way that they had been in the 78 rpm days, or the 45 rpm days. . . one at a time.  33 1/3 "long play" albums and CDs had trapped the buyer into usually buying some junk to get what they wanted, although there are certainly many LP exceptions.  Now, most music buyers go to Itunes first and the record store second.  

Ipods have partially yielded to Iphones, which are a revolution of their own.  With the Iphone 5, a person can have a device that can hold thousands of tunes, more than they could listen to in a weeks time, played straight trough with no repeats, and which also operates as a phone, a camera, a diary. . . and everything, really, that a computer can do.

Oddly enough, for pure music fans, this has brought back in something that logic would almost hold should be dead. . . the record player.  CDs made vinal record collections obsolete except amongst a rare few (indeed, the Linn Sondek has never gone out of production).  The electronic medium revived them.  It's now quite easy to convert records into digital music, and the quality is amazingly good.  For relatively low cost the old record libraries can be converted into digital ones, much the way that they were converted into tape at one time for use in car stereos, but with much, much better quality.

 The modern turntable.  An Ion turntable that's jacked into a computer.  Into the foreground is a CD  by The Pogues.  To the left, "ear buds" for an Ipod.  The turntable itself plays through the computer's speakers and the computer can digitally record the records, or if jacked into the back, it can play, and the computer can record, cassette tapes.  Record speed options are 33 1/3 and 45.  The wooden/felt block is a record cleaner, once a common site but now an artifact.

Of course, some would regard converting music from the digital format into an electronic one is an abomination, and as also noted the Linn Sondek LP12 is still made, and after 40 years of continual manufacturer is still regarded as the best turntable that money can buy.  But the age of digital, highly portable, music is obviously fully here, and is not going away.

This blog, of course, attempts to explore items of historical interest, historical periods  (particularly the 1890 to 1920 period) and trends.  So it may be worth it to briefly examine what the impact of this technological revolution has been.  To start with, the portability of music is now at an all time high.  Never before has a person been able to take hundreds, indeed thousands, of recorded pieces of music and pack it with you.  That's pretty neat.

What's somewhat missed, however, is that the same revolution has essentially created the professionalization of music, the blending of it, and the categorization of it. Sounds odd, but true.  Prior to records, music was extremely local and homemade, as a rule.  This doesn't mean that there weren't professional musicians. There were.  There have been, indeed, since at least the Middle Ages.  But it was also the case that most families had members who could play musical instruments, if in fact they didn't all know how to.  This is much less common today. And it was also common for people to learn certain common songs and sing them at home. This is very uncommon today.  Good examples of this are presented in the the films Breaker Morant and Michael Collins, in which, in the former the central figure is shown singing at a Victorian home gathering, around a piano, and in the latter the protagonist is showing doing the somewhat related thing of reciting a poem in a gathering of friends.  People might still do both today, but to have somebody stand near a piano and sing would be somewhat unusual.  I've never seen that done.

The very way we even think of music is a result of records.  Prior to records there were popular songs that circulated nationally, or regionally, but that's basically what they were regarded as.  There were also, of course, the great works of classical music and opera, which were separately categorized.  And there were regional works that tended to remain regional.  After records started to sell, however, record companies started to categorize music by type, so as to be able to better sell the records. The original categories of popular music were four in number, country, western, rhythm, and blues.  Country music was mostly the music of Appalachia and the white south.  Western music was the music associated with the American west at the time.  Rhythm and blues were two categories of "race", i.e, black, musical forms from the American south that already had an audience with some whites.  As the latter categories were "race" records, overall these four categories were lumped into two bigger ones, Country & Western and Rhythm & Blues.  Therefore, simply by virtue of record marking, one entire music genera, Country & Western, was manufactured and lives on.  The "Western" part of the C&W music scene is all but dead today, and the "Country" part basically died in the 1950s when the last of the real "old timey" type artists disappeared.  Today two other categories, Blue Grass and Folk actually are much closer to the original Country than Country & Western generally is.  Rhythm, a category of black music is also gone, and I don't know if it has a modern descendant.  Rhythm & Blues remains as its own category, and Blues, an extremely resilient form of music, lives on as a separate category and gave birth to Rock & Roll, which originally differed from it only slightly if at all.  

Even that story, that of Rock & Roll, however, could not have occurred without the record player as the music that came from the blues would likely not have without it.  Blues gave birth to Jazz, Big Band and Rock & Roll.  Exposure to blues by regional players created jazz, and exposure to jazz created Big Band, but records made jazz and Big Band what they were.  This is all the more the case for Rock & Roll which essentially was created when the electric small band blues of the late 1940s and early 1950s was re-flagged as Rock & Roll in order to sell records to a while audience.

So, I guess to sum it up, in the late 19th Century we had a lot of music in the country, and most if was local.  Cowboys with guitars, farmers with fiddles, Yiddish laborers with violins, soldiers with harmonicas, black sharecroppers singing the blues, and so on.  The record player started coming in big about 1900.  It didn't change all that, but it certainly impacted it.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

My thesis, Part III « Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker

My thesis, Part III « Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker

The third installment on Leann's thesis on the military experiences of her great-grandfather in the teens.

My thesis, part II « Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker (Punitive Ex[pedition, Part II)

Part II of Leann's discussion on "My thesis, part II « Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker"

My thesis « Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker (Punitive Expedition Entry)

Leann, the author of the Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker blog  has posted a series of entries on her Master's Thesis, which deals with a family member who was a soldier during the Punitive Expedition and World War One..  Given the focus of this blog, I"m glad to see her do that, and I've mentioned her prior blog entries before.  Anyhow, she's serialized the entries, the first of which is here:

My thesis « Ramblings of a teacher, Redskins fan, and scrapbooker

Interesting stuff.