Wild West Land Blog

Paper Cowboy

Chris Hails — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:45:28 +0000

I’ll never look at a piece of humble A4 photocopier paper in quite the same way again after seeing the range of works by amazing Danish artist Peter Callesen.

Just look at the detail and creativity that must go into his paper scultures:

Cowboy
53 x 40,5 x 7 cm.
Acid Free A4 115 gsm paper, glue, acrylic paint and oak frame

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Trigger Happy in Auckland, NZ

Chris Hails — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 20:38:36 +0000

Some days you just hit pay dirt - that was the feeling I had when I came across this fantastic store tucked away in Hakanoa St in trendy Grey Lynn, central Auckland.

The owner Tom is a wild west aficionado with genuine American connections and a passion for all things cowboy themed.

He self-built the store/home in the traditional adobe style of New Mexico - how much more passion for the American south west can you get that that?

Out the front of Trigger Happy is parked Tom’s yank barge and an assortment of selected clothes displayed in a small covered wagon reminiscent of so many settlers’ transport of choice. There’s even room to tie up your horse.

Inside there are racks of old western shirts and jackets, a selection of classic guitars (Tom and his wife play country music in their act Tennessee Sister), native American blankets and cowboy boots galore. More stock arrives regularly from contacts in the US.

If you’re in the area I highly recommend a visit!

Home of the Navajo braves

Chris Hails — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:58:54 +0000

‘The Long Walk’ is etched into the memory of the Navajo Nation as a time of death and defeat when many died during the forced migration from their ancestral home of the Canyon De Chelly area of northern Arizona, 300 miles south to Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

Stanley Stewart, writing a travel piece in The Times about this most magnificent part of the American south west, gives a great summary of this period in American history - the 1860s - now looked back on with a sense of shame.

To the Indians of the American Southwest - the Navajo, the Apache, the Hopi and numerous others - the great ellipse of red-rock country between the Rio Grande and the Colorado River is the sacred land of their own beginnings. It was here that the first of their ancestors climbed through the sipapu, the hole in the earth, to emerge in this world.

At the heart of the region is an area known today as the Four Corners, for the four states that meet here - Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. It is one of the emptiest and most dramatic parts of the continent. To the west, it abuts the Grand Canyon.

To the north, it fades towards the surreal rock formations of Monument Valley, which have played a starring role in countless films, from John Ford’s Stagecoach to Back to the Future III. And occupying the largest part of it is the Navajo Nation, a swathe of country almost the size of Scotland.

Read the comments written by readers and you understand the mixed feelings today about the ‘genocide’ of the native American tribes during the period of westward expansion. The strongly held views are wildly divergent.

Cowboy Country sits at the heart of this region and I’d highly recommend a first hand visit to many of the sites mentioned. For now though take in this set of Flickr photos by Sublime Dharma of the Canyon De Chelly and Hopi Reservation:

Giving cowboys a bad name?

Chris Hails — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 02:56:27 +0000

If there’s one thing that always upsets me, it’s when the generic term cowboy is used to describe somebody who’s an obvious out and out villian.

You can suffer bad work from a ‘cowboy builder’ and be told to watch out for cowboy mechanics but convicted murderers being described as ‘an old cowboy’?

That was the way lawyer Thomas Phalen described Viva Leroy Nash - “the oldest death row inmate in the United States, who spent most of his life behind bars” - who has just died of natural causes at the age of 94.

Phalen tells the NZ Herald:

“He was born in 1915 and he was sent to prison in 1930,” Phalen said.

“Think about it - he had 15 years of life in southern Utah, at a time when Utah and Arizona was the wild, wild West - and he went to prison in 1930, and he remained in prison for the next 80 years, more or less.

Not the kind of guy I would have wanted to bump into down a dark alley!

Buy your own piece of the Wild West. We’re open for business!

‘Grand Theft Horseback’ - Rockstar Games showcase Red Dead Redemption

Chris Hails — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:07:01 +0000

Apologies all for the 2 month hiatus from the blog - I moved house again for the second time this year and have been slowly sorting out all the associated chaos that brings with it.

I’ve also been working hard to source a supplier for the Cowboy Country Owners Packs in NZ who can offer good quality veg tan leather to produce further portfolio packs for new owners. Despite the country’s reputation for lots of livestock it’s proven harder than expected!

So, as of tomorrow, I’ll be calling a pause to orders for 2009 and revamping the product offering ready for Feb 2010 (January is pretty much written off down here I’m told, much like August in France).

Many thanks to those of you who’ve ordered the pack this year - be sure to tell your friends or colleagues about the unique gift but please advise that ordering won’t be back up and running until the new year.

—

Enough product promotion! The real topic of this post is news of a major new wild west themed computer game launching in 2010 - Red Dead Redemption from Rockstar Games, the company behind the often scandalous Grand Theft Auto series.

The London Times explains how programmers have to date always found horses and gunsmoke hard ‘to do’, well it seems from the trailer video below they have cracked that problem.

The game, featuring ‘John Marston’ - who looks a lot like a spaghetti western era Clint Eastwood - is due out on 27 April 2010 on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. I can’t say I’m a big console gamer but the video promo looks superb and may entice me into shelling out the dollars required. But which platform to buy? Recommendations welcome.

Red Dead Redemption video trailer

Like it? Love it? The game’s got everything a wild west buff could want: red butte landscapes reminiscent of Monument Valley; railroad trains with cowcatchers charging across creaking wooden bridges; dusty one horse towns; even Mexican bandits and pueblo architecture straight out of The Magnificent Severn.

Going to pre-order my copy come January. In the meantime, a Merry Xmas to all!

The Armijo-Ortega House, a Holbrook HABS treasure

Chris Hails — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 08:44:11 +0000

Back in the days of the Great Depression, the US National Parks Service was persuaded by Charles E. Peterson, a young Park Service landscape architect, to create a new programme to generate work for jobless architects, draughtsmen and photographers.

And so the the Historic American Buildings Survey was born, its’ mission: “documenting a representative sampling of America’s architectural heritage“.

Now I love American history and love the access the web gives to search these historic databases. My first search turned up several treasures (I use the word loosely) in the city of Holbrook, Arizona, the city some 10 miles southwest of Cowboy Country.

Holbrook has a rich western history and an interesting mix of characters who were active during the second half of the nineteenth century when cattlemen and sheep ranchers roamed the vast lands around the soon-to-be Navajo County seat.

The HABS database has an entry for the Armijo House located at 301 Montano Street, Holbrook. Although it wasn’t built until 1915, the simple adobe style construction and freestanding water tower make it the most interesting building in the CF Perkins subdivision south of the Little Colorado River:

The house was originally built by the Armijo family “a pioneer group of Hispanic northern Arizona farmers and ranchers”. To learn more about the history and view another dozen black and white photos check out the report written by historian Robert G Graham on the HABS database.

I only wish I’d had the opportunity to know about this house and the other features of the city before my visit in January this year. If you are passing through and are able to send a photo or report of the location (16 years after the report was drafted) then I’d love to find out if the house is still standing.

Sweet Home Alabama? The Top Gear boys upset the locals

Chris Hails — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 05:52:11 +0000

“Were you really chased out of town by those American rednecks, or was it made up for the telly?”

That’s apparently the question asked a lot lately of Top Gear host Richard Hammond. It’s all in connection with one recent episode of the hit UK motoring show:

In the programme in question, we wanted to know if it was possible to buy a car and drive across a chunk of the USA for less money than the cost of traditional “fly-drive” schemes offered by holiday companies.

Rather foolishly the boys decided to paint slogans on the sides of their vehicles, rude/crude slogans that upset the Alabama locals enough to reach for their guns as The Times reports in an excerpt from Hammond’s forthcoming book, Or Is That Just Me?.

Back in 1993 I drove round California and Nevada in a beige 1977 Chevy Impala ‘cop car’ with ‘FBI’ marked on the doors with black electricians tape. We got some odd looks for that but no death threats!

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IBM: The Internet is now like the Wild West

Chris Hails — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 06:54:05 +0000

“The Internet has finally taken on the characteristics of the Wild West where no one is to be trusted”

So said Sukhdev Singh, senior security consultant from IBM Internet security systems. It’s a dangerous world out there so make sure you’ve got your sixguns strapped on (read anti-virus/phishing/malware software).

Annie Oakley, sharpshooter rediscovered

Chris Hails — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 01:10:02 +0000

It’s almost a year since I wrote about Annie Oakley, “the first American female superstar” and how she’s been portrayed in the media over the last 100 years.

The post remains the most popular on this blog with many people still interested in finding out just how one of the stars of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show looked all those years ago.

So with a bit of digging over at the Library of Congress archives, I’ve tracked down two new Annie Oakley pictures - the first was taken in 1899 by Richard K. Fox and is titled:

ANNIE OAKLEY - Famous Rifle Shot and Holder of the Police Gazette Championship Medal

The black and white photo does bear some resemblance to the Wild West Show promotional poster. The hat, dress, stockings and footwear certainly match, as does the chest full of medals.

But I can’t help but think the artist who drew the poster used a little ‘Photoshop magic’ - normally associated with modern magazine cover celebrities - long before the age of computer trickery.

The face is a little thinner and the nose a little more prominent, perhaps suggesting feminine beauty was a key ingredient of circus show marketing even back in the 1890s.

It’s circus acts that also form the centrepiece of the next picture, an illustration created by artist Peter Newell in 1894 to illustrate a story published in the March 31st issue of Harper’s Weekly:

The amateur circus at Nutley

Newell’s drawing illustrates an article reporting on an amateur circus performed by the residents of Nutley, New Jersey to raise funds for the establishment of a branch of the Red Cross Association. Their star performer was Nutley’s celebrated resident, Annie Oakley.

A gentleman wearing a hat and spectacles stands before a hoop held by two clowns. The scene depicted in the center of the hoop is of Annie Oakley, standing on horseback, giving a demonstration of her shooting ability. Outside the hoop are other scenes of circus acts such as acrobats, fencing, an animal on horseback, and a dancing bear.

Here’s a close-up view of the central part of the illustration showing Oakley shooting at an unseen target whilst standing on a moving horse.

It’s a truly impressive feat and one I can’t think would be allowed under modern entertainment laws given the potential risks to the audience and performer!

Missed the machine gun social

Chris Hails — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:46:57 +0000

Wish I’d spotted this South Carolina political ‘rally’ earlier, it certainly raised the profile of Dean Allen and his ambitions for office. An AK-47 is an alternative sweepstakes prize to the kind of tombola raffles I buy into:

Obama USA: A Land of Two Nations?