Your Alter Ego?

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Joined
Jan 20, 2008
Messages
2,271
Location
Orange County, CA
I was raised on a cattle ranch and if the Old West was much like that, what it was REALLY like was a lot of work and dirt and cow crap and never quite knowing if you were going to have two nickels of your own to bang together at the end of the sale.

Did I mention losing half of your kids to disease, half your wives to childbirth, and half your limbs to crazy livestock? And often losing your life to a septic splinter from the corral rails or a bad tooth?

I have studied the Old West seriously and while I'm glad men and women were willing and able to sacrifice to win the land for us, I'm also very glad we didn't have to make those sacrifices ourselves.

Don't mean to be a downer, but I guess I'll leave my time machine up on blocks in the garage.... The West was won by grueling hard labor, not gunfights.
 

JWhitmore44

Blackhawk
Joined
Oct 23, 2008
Messages
987
Location
NW Kansas
Mike Armstrong said:
I was raised on a cattle ranch and if the Old West was much like that, what it was REALLY like was a lot of work and dirt and cow crap and never quite knowing if you were going to have two nickels of your own to bang together at the end of the sale.

Did I mention losing half of your kids to disease, half your wives to childbirth, and half your limbs to crazy livestock? And often losing your life to a septic splinter from the corral rails or a bad tooth?

I have studied the Old West seriously and while I'm glad men and women were willing and able to sacrifice to win the land for us, I'm also very glad we didn't have to make those sacrifices ourselves.

Don't mean to be a downer, but I guess I'll leave my time machine up on blocks in the garage.... The West was won by grueling hard labor, not gunfights.

In deed, I often romanticize that I was born in the wrong time and that I would have been well suited drifting form town to town on the back of a horse. Then I look at my family history and realize that I would probably have been a poor dirt farmer on the Nebraska plains or a ranch hand in eastern Colorado as my fore fathers were. Neither too glorious or glamorous to look back on. Although there was some "action" during the early 1900's with the Dewey-Berry fued :lol:
 
Joined
Jan 20, 2008
Messages
2,271
Location
Orange County, CA
Sadly, most of our forefathers had Zulu guns or cheap Belgian double shotguns bought from the Monkey Wards "wishbook" if they had a gun at all. Or a Belgian "Flobert" .22 or .32 single shot. If they had a handgun it was very likely a cheap "British Bulldog" (NOT English make!) or a "Saturday Night Special" .32 from the same source.

Gunwise, most of us are much better off than people on the frontier. And many cowboys on the big spreads were forbidden to carry personal arms. If the boss thought there was a need, he'd issue you a rifle. Usually to protect HIS property.

My dad had a saying: "Winchester may have won the West but Monkey Wards made it safe for poultry!" He didn't watch Westerns.....
 

gunsbam69

Hunter
Joined
May 2, 2012
Messages
3,133
Location
Kansas
Mike Armstrong said:
Sadly, most of our forefathers had Zulu guns or cheap Belgian double shotguns bought from the Monkey Wards "wishbook" if they had a gun at all. Or a Belgian "Flobert" .22 or .32 single shot. If they had a handgun it was very likely a cheap "British Bulldog" (NOT English make!) or a "Saturday Night Special" .32 from the same source.

Gunwise, most of us are much better off than people on the frontier. And many cowboys on the big spreads were forbidden to carry personal arms. If the boss thought there was a need, he'd issue you a rifle. Usually to protect HIS property.

My dad had a saying: "Winchester may have won the West but Monkey Wards made it safe for poultry!" He didn't watch Westerns.....

Yip :D
 

gunsbam69

Hunter
Joined
May 2, 2012
Messages
3,133
Location
Kansas
Mike Armstrong said:
I was raised on a cattle ranch and if the Old West was much like that, what it was REALLY like was a lot of work and dirt and cow crap and never quite knowing if you were going to have two nickels of your own to bang together at the end of the sale.

Did I mention losing half of your kids to disease, half your wives to childbirth, and half your limbs to crazy livestock? And often losing your life to a septic splinter from the corral rails or a bad tooth?

I have studied the Old West seriously and while I'm glad men and women were willing and able to sacrifice to win the land for us, I'm also very glad we didn't have to make those sacrifices ourselves.

Don't mean to be a downer, but I guess I'll leave my time machine up on blocks in the garage.... The West was won by grueling hard labor, not gunfights.

I grew up on the plains of north central Kansas and north east Oklahoma. I love to hear some common sense about it all, especially when it's coming out of good ole California :mrgreen:

P.S. I do love good westerns though :D
 

The Blackhawk Kid

Blackhawk
Joined
Mar 24, 2013
Messages
710
Location
here 'n there
I grew up on a cattle ranch, and I recall the stories my Granny told about growing up in post civil war Texas. You had to work hard for what you had, only to lose everything to prarie fires, drought, marauding Commanche's. Granny read to us from her mothers diary which dated back to Oct 1872. One entry was chilling: "we seen sum commanch today. they did not see us, we was lucky". The diary was written by pencil in large printing. Kinda like we used in 2nd grade. Granny also told of the Polio epidemic in the 1930's and 40's. People were scared to death they would die from Polio. When we played penney-anti poker with Granny, Grandpa told us how Granny won the herd back, in a card game in Abilene Texas circa 1909. I'm glad there were tough people like those who forged this country. I know I'm thankful. BHK
 

Boxhead

Blackhawk
Joined
Mar 28, 2004
Messages
969
Location
Either Texas or Idaho
Not sure if it's alter ego but as one in fairly senior management in the #2 company (Oil and Gas) in the world helping run multi-billion (tens of) dollar projects abroad I am always able to turn off for this, my family. Most I have worked with don't get it... I and my family do. Alter ego??? Naw, we're all right.















 

Hugh

Buckeye
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,139
Location
West Jordan, Utah
In 1909 my maternal grandmother Lyda married John at Sigourney, Iowa. They traveled by wagon to a little place near Valentine, Montana. Lived in a dugout for two years until grand-dad and a friend built her a great big 14 foot square one room cabin. That is where my mother was born in 1912. After another year they packed up the wagon and moved to Bremerton, Washington, where some years later my parents met and married. I was born in the comfort of a Bremerton hospital late 1941, and taken home to a comfortable home in Bremerton. Just after the war in 1945 we moved to a small 20 acre farm, with house, barn, and other outbuildings. One of my aunts debriefed grandma on tape before she died in the early 1980's.

My father was born near the little town (no longer exists) of Avard, Oklahoma (Territory) in 1904. His family came west to western Washington in 1905 by similar means.

The west was a harsh mistress in those days, and survivors survived.

Nope, no alter ego for me. I am who I am with all of my life experiences growing up and later.
 

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