putterings 505 < 506 > 507 index
That’s the trouble with trail life. It isolates you.
Goodnight was considered a big man in the cattle world by now, and his generous attitude toward the Loving family made him many friends in Weatherford, so that during the three days he spent there, closing out the partnership, Loving’s friends tried to entertain him. They gave dinners in his honor but he was ill at ease. He liked the people and he appreciated their spirit; but they had nothing in common with him. He realized fully that his long life in the open, alone, had unfitted him for contact with people. He had formed the habit of living with his thoughts.
He stood their kindness for three days and then slipped away to visit his mother. She scolded him for his precipitate departure although she knew that it was characteristic of him.
“You ought not to have run off like that, Charlie,” she said. “They wanted to be nice to you.”
“I know it,” he agreed. “But I didn’t have a thing to say to those people. They didn’t know the things I know. That’s the trouble with trail life. It isolates you.”
Mrs. Sheek smiled indulgently at her Charlie, the eagle she had hatched among her fledglings. She welcomed him and let him spend his time at home as he liked, puttering around the place, patching fences and gates, building chicken pens, working from dawn to dark, or else sitting and thinking his long unshared thoughts.
ex Laura V. Hamner, The No-Gun Man of Texas; A Century of Achievement, 1835-1929, Illustrated by Ben Carlton Mead and Terry Stowe (self-published? 1935) : 98-99
U California copy/scan (one of two at hathitrust) : link
The book is a fictionalized biography of Charles Goodnight (1836-1929), scout, Texas cattleman and rancher
wikipedia : link
Goodnight is fictionalized in many elsewheres, too, including Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove tetralogy, where he appears as himself and as incorporated in the character of Woodrow F. Call.
Laura Vernon Hamner (1871-1968), school teacher, postmaster, writer, researcher, interviewer, radio presenter of Texas pioneer stories
- Humanities Texas, “Texas Originals” profile: link
- profile by Deolece M. Parmelee, Texas Historical Association : link
- Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Laura V. Hamner Papers : link
aside — traveled to Japan in 1953
&nsbp;
The lyricism of Laura V. Hamner’s book resonates, I think, with Larry McMurtry own writing.
23 December 2024