"We'll be here, " Wilbarger said. "You won't have to hunt us up"Lonesome Dove, page 105.*
"Wait a minute, " Call said. "What's your horse brand, or do you have one?"
"I have one, " Wilbarger said". "I brand HIC on the left hip."
"Are your horses shod?" Call asked
"All shod," Willbager said. "Bring 'em if you see 'em".
"What HIC stand for?" Augustus said.
"Well, it's Latin," Wilbarger said. "Easier than what you wrote on that sign."
"Oh," August said. "Where'd you study Latin?"
"Yale college," Wilbarger said. Then he and Chick trotted off.
"I figure he's a liar,"Augustus said. "A man that went to Yale college wouldn't need to trail cattle for a living."
"How do you know?" Call said. "Maybe the family went broke. Or maybe he just wanted an outdoor life."
Every now and then somebody I know will claim that I look like Theodore Roosevelt.
Theodore Roosevelt, 1904/05. Colorado.
I don't see it myself and I'm certainly making no effort to. I think people say that as I have a heavy mustache, as Roosevelt did, and I wear very round glasses, as Roosevelt also did. Having said that, Roosevelt normally wore the now long gone pince nez type of glasses which were more or less the contact lenses of their day.** He wore more conventional glasses when doing something outdoors. I have adopted contact lenses, which I hate, recently because I have to work with a computer daily and that allows me to wear reading glasses and therefore not be constantly changing glasses during the day. When I wear glasses, which I almost always do outside of the office, I wear B&L rimless temple frames, which Roosevelt did not and which I don't think even existed in his day. I wear those as they have small lenses and I hate large lenses. I also just like the style of them.
All of which basically goes to say that if you have a heavy mustache and you work in town, people are going to claim you look like Theodore Roosevelt or Pancho Villa, depending upon your mindset and maybe the color of your hair.
Emiliano Zapata. Now that's a mustache.
Now, I like Roosevelt, so I don't want to be taken to be holding otherwise. I just don't want to be regarded as a Roosevelt impersonator. That's not, however, why I'm bringing this topic up here.
I've been posting some fairly grim posts here recently. One of them might be, although I hadn't considered it to be, my post on my occupational history the other day. About the same time that I posted that I made a similar remark to two friends of mine, who happen to be married to each other. The husband in that family is a lawyer, but also a psychologist of a specific type, and had an immediate reaction to it, which the wife also did in less scientific terms.
The basic gist of it was that "you're an intellectual and would have been miserable in any other occupation other than the law". He's said something similar in the past and, as he's a European, he expanded that out a bit to include "the clergy and the law".
That's a really common view in a broad sense and one of the interesting things about it is that the view actually operates in society to keep you doing certain things. Another interesting thing about it is the belief, and perhaps it's true, that a person who has that sort of makeup, an intellectual frame of mind and a strong attraction to the outdoors, is in someway at war with themselves.
Maybe, however, it's the modern world that's at war with people of that mindset.
The Roosevelt analogy people make is interesting in that Roosevelt was afflicted with asthma as a child. So was I. Indeed, the only really good written description of what its like to have asthma is given in David McCullough's biography of Roosevelt's youth, Mornings on Horseback, which is an excellent read. McCullough there, and Edmund Morris in his masterpiece first volume on Roosevelt, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, go on to describe how TR's father told him as a child that he "had the mind" but "didn't have the body", and he'd have to "make the body". Roosevelt certain did that. Anyhow, as part of that, he not only conquered his asthma, but he developed an immense existenail fondness for the outdoor life.
My parents never said anything like that to me, but what they did do was simply raise me normally and make sure that I did have physical activity, which was mostly swimming. I developed an immense existential love of the outdoors simply by being around my father and by being raised in rural conditions. My attraction to the outdoor life, however vastly exceeded that of my father's, which is saying something. I've never gotten over it in any fashion and its as intense now as it was when I was a teenager.
Morris notes in his book, although I'm not sure of where the quote can be found, that when Roosevelt was a young man an observer noted to him that as a man with a strong mind and a deep attraction to the outdoor life, he'd always be in an internal struggle. If that's true, Roosevelt certainly managed it well. But is that true?
Well, it may be. But maybe people just don't like the idea very much.
Indeed, it's true now, it wasn't always true. For one thing, people's careers tended to be much more fluid at one time and for that reason people didn't really think it weird to be a lawyer and a farmer simultaneously. John Adams was. And there's any numbers of similar examples.
I don't find that to be anywhere near the case now, although there are examples. Indeed, usually a person who tries to do two things such as that is regarded as occupying the more outdoorsy one as a hobby or a retirement position. And because its regarded as a hobby, or retirement, avocation, it's not taken seriously.
Even rarer are examples of people who have pretty high intellects and opt for something that doesn't seem, in society's view, to reflect that. Society tolerates, although only barely, a person being in agriculture if they were born into it. So a person born a farmer can stay in the family business. But somebody breaking into it from the outside is pretty rare. Rarer yet are people who simply enter an outdoor career as a "hand", so to speak, and economics is part of that. Hands don't get paid as well and therefore people tend not to enter those fields, except perhaps temporarily, if they can do something else. It's the great economic motivator. Put another way, being an actual cowboy, as opposed to being a rancher, puts you in a state of lifelong poverty that most people will probably seek to avoid.
This has particularly been the case since World War Two. Prior to the Second World War entire classes of Americans opted for occupations that didn't require university in part because not as many did, but in part also because it was foreclosed to them.***
Indeed, one of the great myths of the practice of law is that it's always been a profession of the elite. That's far from true. For much of the post World War Two era it was the blue collar world's introduction into the white collar world. Indeed, a lot of blue collar parents pushed their children into it under the belief that: 1) it didn't actually involve work, and 2) every lawyer was rich. Neither of those things was in any fashion true. At any rate, if you know lawyers whose parents came of age during the Second World War or earlier you probably know somebody whose experience is just that. A lawyer I practiced with for years had a father who was a career railroader. Another one had a father who was a bar owner. There are a lot of such examples.
Mistaken impression or not, what's come to be the case is a subtle, or sometimes outright, push towards certain types of careers. Adding to that push is the fact that our modern world has eliminated outdoor jobs at a blistering rate so that people are really left with a selection of indoor ones, not all of which everyone can occupy. You have to be good at math, for example, to be an engineer.
That also has meant that the push exists in a continual and understated way that few really grasp. It's part of our culture. In the film Stand By Me, for example, we learn that one of the early teen kids whose really smart, but from a blue collar family, overcomes what is portrayed as a negative fate by becoming, of course, a lawyer. That's all the more there is to it. He's smart, so he becomes a lawyer. Voila, success.
And maybe it is, but a person has to at least wonder how we got to this point. And maybe that should give us pause.
In other words, in 1982 or 83 (can't remember which, probably 83) my CC history teacher suggested that I consider a career in the law based upon my written papers, was he acting responsibly? No doubt he believed so, and I believe now he was as well. But he didn't really know me. And its remarkable that only two figures I knew at the time every commented on it. One was a geology professor I knew really well, also at CC, whom I caught back up with as I was getting to go to law school. He mentioned another student who had done the same (I didn't know him) and regarded the decision with disdain. The other was the mother of one of my friends whom I'd known forever, and who I, as an adult, regarded as a friend. "I don't see you as a lawyer" was her comment, although I later became her lawyer.
________________________________________________________________________________
*Hic translates as "this".
**Which are oddly making a comeback as portable reading glasses.
***An aspect of that change is that its now the case that single wage earner households have become rare and the sort of situation that existed mid 20th Century, in which a person might work in some of them and still enjoy a middle class income on one job has ended.
That's a really common view in a broad sense and one of the interesting things about it is that the view actually operates in society to keep you doing certain things. Another interesting thing about it is the belief, and perhaps it's true, that a person who has that sort of makeup, an intellectual frame of mind and a strong attraction to the outdoors, is in someway at war with themselves.
Maybe, however, it's the modern world that's at war with people of that mindset.
The Roosevelt analogy people make is interesting in that Roosevelt was afflicted with asthma as a child. So was I. Indeed, the only really good written description of what its like to have asthma is given in David McCullough's biography of Roosevelt's youth, Mornings on Horseback, which is an excellent read. McCullough there, and Edmund Morris in his masterpiece first volume on Roosevelt, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, go on to describe how TR's father told him as a child that he "had the mind" but "didn't have the body", and he'd have to "make the body". Roosevelt certain did that. Anyhow, as part of that, he not only conquered his asthma, but he developed an immense existenail fondness for the outdoor life.
My parents never said anything like that to me, but what they did do was simply raise me normally and make sure that I did have physical activity, which was mostly swimming. I developed an immense existential love of the outdoors simply by being around my father and by being raised in rural conditions. My attraction to the outdoor life, however vastly exceeded that of my father's, which is saying something. I've never gotten over it in any fashion and its as intense now as it was when I was a teenager.
Morris notes in his book, although I'm not sure of where the quote can be found, that when Roosevelt was a young man an observer noted to him that as a man with a strong mind and a deep attraction to the outdoor life, he'd always be in an internal struggle. If that's true, Roosevelt certainly managed it well. But is that true?
Well, it may be. But maybe people just don't like the idea very much.
Indeed, it's true now, it wasn't always true. For one thing, people's careers tended to be much more fluid at one time and for that reason people didn't really think it weird to be a lawyer and a farmer simultaneously. John Adams was. And there's any numbers of similar examples.
I don't find that to be anywhere near the case now, although there are examples. Indeed, usually a person who tries to do two things such as that is regarded as occupying the more outdoorsy one as a hobby or a retirement position. And because its regarded as a hobby, or retirement, avocation, it's not taken seriously.
Cowboy, 1887. At this time being a cowboy was a glamourous occupation.
Even rarer are examples of people who have pretty high intellects and opt for something that doesn't seem, in society's view, to reflect that. Society tolerates, although only barely, a person being in agriculture if they were born into it. So a person born a farmer can stay in the family business. But somebody breaking into it from the outside is pretty rare. Rarer yet are people who simply enter an outdoor career as a "hand", so to speak, and economics is part of that. Hands don't get paid as well and therefore people tend not to enter those fields, except perhaps temporarily, if they can do something else. It's the great economic motivator. Put another way, being an actual cowboy, as opposed to being a rancher, puts you in a state of lifelong poverty that most people will probably seek to avoid.
This has particularly been the case since World War Two. Prior to the Second World War entire classes of Americans opted for occupations that didn't require university in part because not as many did, but in part also because it was foreclosed to them.***
Indeed, one of the great myths of the practice of law is that it's always been a profession of the elite. That's far from true. For much of the post World War Two era it was the blue collar world's introduction into the white collar world. Indeed, a lot of blue collar parents pushed their children into it under the belief that: 1) it didn't actually involve work, and 2) every lawyer was rich. Neither of those things was in any fashion true. At any rate, if you know lawyers whose parents came of age during the Second World War or earlier you probably know somebody whose experience is just that. A lawyer I practiced with for years had a father who was a career railroader. Another one had a father who was a bar owner. There are a lot of such examples.
Mistaken impression or not, what's come to be the case is a subtle, or sometimes outright, push towards certain types of careers. Adding to that push is the fact that our modern world has eliminated outdoor jobs at a blistering rate so that people are really left with a selection of indoor ones, not all of which everyone can occupy. You have to be good at math, for example, to be an engineer.
That also has meant that the push exists in a continual and understated way that few really grasp. It's part of our culture. In the film Stand By Me, for example, we learn that one of the early teen kids whose really smart, but from a blue collar family, overcomes what is portrayed as a negative fate by becoming, of course, a lawyer. That's all the more there is to it. He's smart, so he becomes a lawyer. Voila, success.
And maybe it is, but a person has to at least wonder how we got to this point. And maybe that should give us pause.
In other words, in 1982 or 83 (can't remember which, probably 83) my CC history teacher suggested that I consider a career in the law based upon my written papers, was he acting responsibly? No doubt he believed so, and I believe now he was as well. But he didn't really know me. And its remarkable that only two figures I knew at the time every commented on it. One was a geology professor I knew really well, also at CC, whom I caught back up with as I was getting to go to law school. He mentioned another student who had done the same (I didn't know him) and regarded the decision with disdain. The other was the mother of one of my friends whom I'd known forever, and who I, as an adult, regarded as a friend. "I don't see you as a lawyer" was her comment, although I later became her lawyer.
________________________________________________________________________________
*Hic translates as "this".
**Which are oddly making a comeback as portable reading glasses.
***An aspect of that change is that its now the case that single wage earner households have become rare and the sort of situation that existed mid 20th Century, in which a person might work in some of them and still enjoy a middle class income on one job has ended.
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