June and April and I travled up to north Texas, to Bowie (pronounced BOOwie), near the Red River, to a well-known horse auction barn. April needed horses for her camp string — she was looking for old, gentle horses for kids— and I also was prepared to buy something if it looked sound, and then Nancy, our friend who was thrown off her dressage horse and broke her thigh, needed an older gentle horse to get started riding again so April said she would buy something for her — she couldn’t come. She still walks with a cane. June came along for the fun of it. The auction and all its activities were really interesting to watch. The whole thing was fascinating.

 

 

 

 

 

April driving. This was her diesel truck and a three-horse slant trailer.

The auction barn is owned by David O’Dwyer, a great horseman. We came the day before and looked around and walked the catwalk above. When the auction started they began driving in the horses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They were saddled up and the barn riders rode them in the auction ring, which was a really tiny space. Other barn riders cut loose horses out and ran them up to be saddled.

 

 

 

 

 

This barn rider really knew how to use that flag. This in some way fits into the new book because Simon was raised in a livery stable and was a barn rider and all-around worker and learned his fiddle on the side until it took over his life.

A lot of interesting people wandering around looking at the horses, prospective buyers. Also lots of kids. Here’s a proud dad and his daughter.

Strange people as well as cowboy people…

 

 

 

 

 

 

And kids all over the place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

April and June and I walked the catwalk to get a good view; while up there April looked down and saw a seller inject his horse with something, probably Ace or one of the other horse tranquilizers, so he could sell it as a calm and gentle horse. This is despicable. Take the horse home and the sweet gentle thing breaks in half and you’re on the ground. This made me really reluctant to bid on a horse at all, no matter how good it looked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

But O’Dwyer is a good man and trustworthy; saw a horse I liked and April said, “Let me talk to David about it.” David said, “Don’t trust that guy.” If I ever bought a horse there it would be with David’s advice and approval.

 

So if you want to sell a horse or horses, you pay a small fee to the auction barn and also a fee for a stall for a night or maybe two nights. Then a barn rider takes it into the ring and shows it off while the auctioneer roars out his patter. They say, ‘no alley deals’, meaning no private deals in the alleyways because after all the barn has to take its cut or it wouldn’t make any money and it would close. Also, the barn owner (David O’Dwyer, from Ireland) has a selection of stock that he has bought, worked with and will sell in the auction ring. There was a big trailer load of ranch horses that came down from North Dakota. Everybody watches closely as the horses are ridden in one by one. A sign overhead says the Lot #, and also ‘Sound’ or ‘As is’, meaning, guaranteed in good health or Take Your Chances.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The girl barn riders seemed to have developed a fashion for elegant hand gestures when reining.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They were great to watch. Terrific riders. The one on the right is sitting behind the saddle to show how broke he is.

Up beside the auctioneer O’Dwyer keeps an eye on his laptop as several people were bidding online and watching online. Our friend Evelyn was watching online and was e-mailing us and could hear us chatting! The auctioneer would cry out the price, the assistant gestures for bids, and the auctioneer would often say, “And Online bids…” so much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One goodlooking horse went for about $7800, there were others that were absolutely beautiful but there was no telling how they would be to ride so I sat on my hands. April endured seven hours of that loud auctioneer’s voice blasting out, but I couldn’t take it and sort of came and went. April bought a huge tall old Thoroughbred for Nancy, and that is going to work out great. The old boy needs a good home and an easy life. She also bought two other older horses, and again, there at the camp they will be very well taken care of and enjoy an easy old age. We stayed with June Chism’s husband’s people who have a beautiful home just outside of Nocona. We had the place to ourselves as they were gone on a trip to Italy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And so the next day they turned out all the unsold horses and they were glad to get back to open spaces. We loaded up the bought horses and came home, about five hours, eating junk food all the way and enjoying one of the greenest springtimes I have seen in Texas. Wildflowers everywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bluebonnets near Nocona, town cemetery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was south of here in the brush country, just east of Uvalde, last week, when I drove in to do my shopping.

I made this map to locate as many of the businesses and buildings as possible (1865-70) from old photos and memoirs. Mary Maverick’s memoirs were helpful.  It was fun, also demanding. Puzzling. The two plazas today are almost unrecognizable compared t this map and photos from that time.  

 

Noted all the bars and saloons with a red dot. There were certainly a lot of them.   Will try for a clearer picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is looking south on Soledad, about 1873. I think the cross-street is Market. The Plaza Hotel where Simon and Damon got a job making music would be behind the viewer. I think. It’s so wide-open, and now it is hard to see the sky for all the great multi-story buildings. This looks like many towns in Mexico, even today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And other types who say go to hell.

June, April, Me.

We never had lighted screens to watch all day, never in human history. It’s astonishing and dubious and pleasing. Firelight was the closest thing.

 

 

 

 

Lighted screens and firelight are hypnotic, they lower your judgement potential by 30% (I just made that up). Go now and buy my books. Go now. Buy two copies of all of them. Give them to your friends. This is an approved thing to do, it will enhance your social prestige. Go now. Obey. That is all.

 

 

Read the same book on Kindle and as a physical in-your-hand book.

There is a different feeling about them. Move from a lighted screen onto a paper page and there’s a kind of let-down. The paper page is duller, less significant, less exciting. We are tuned to light. The lighted screen gives importance to things above and beyond their intrinsic merit. Lighted screens make you suspend judgement. It all started with fire. Staring into a fire. About a million years ago.

 

 

 

 

As most writers and editors know, you will miss typos and inconsistencies in your text if you try to edit on the computer screen, because you’ve suspended judgement. The light makes you less attentive, you coast. The great two-edged sword.

 

 

Just discovered a film that bombed but it looks very good. They said you could only get it on Amazon — $2.99

The Death of Stalin; A Comedy of Terrors.

The trailer and clips are intriguing and the fact that somebody has been able to at least attempt a comedy of dark humor about Russians under the evil Stalin. Amazing. I don’t think you would get belly laughs but Oh God laughs.

 

My oriole is back on his/her flyway north and so are the robins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been trying to play this low D whistle for three years and finally managed ‘The Water Is Wide’. It seems the size of a drainpipe. Too much of a stretch for my short fingers. If there is any air leakage at all, if all the holes are not completely covered then you get skraaawk skreeeek. Finally realized it was the ring fingers on both hands that weren’t completely covering the holes and so worked at that. Also I run out of air. It takes a lot of breath to move a large column of air down the bore. But, at any rate, the sound is wonderful. It sounds like an oboe.

Have been working on ‘Margaret’s Waltz’ on the G, which is also a large whistle but not as big as the low D. I finally found somebody on YouTube who played Margaret’s Waltz  in G, his name is Lester, and Lester plays it nice and slow on the melodeon, which I listened to repeatedly and picked it out on my little three-octave keyboard along with him, from thence to the G whistle. Lester had about twenty hits on his YouTube video until I came along and upped his numbers enormously.

So Lester and I have been merrily tootling and squeezing away. Tom our fiddler and Diane and Chuck play it in G, so the G whistle it is. I don’t know why they decided on G but I am a latecomer to this piece and will do it in any key they choose.

Myself and June and Sherry and Evelyn and Nancy (all horse people) watched The Rider which CD was sent to me by the producer on this upcoming film of News of the World.

 

Am really enjoying The Sheltering Desert. Observations on animal/insect life in the Namibian desert are riveting. Hermann and Henno survived two and a half years in a scorching environment, lived through it, escaping both the British authorities who wanted to intern them as German nationals and also the Nazi regime who would have conscripted them into the Wermacht.

While waiting for game Henno would observe and record the activities of ants or preying mantises, record their tiny wars and struggles to live, Descriptions of rain clouds that finally brought moisture are splendid.  This is a wonderful document.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just started it. Two German scientists in Namibia during WW2 — they decide to stay out of the war and out of the world by taking off into the Namibian desert. By all accounts a great story. They hid out for 2 1/2 years. Henno Martin wrote this after the war. A movie was made of it in 1991, never heard of the movie either.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

San Antonio n the 1870’s. Just finished a final draft of the novel about Simon the Fiddler and sent it off to agent and editor. Am looking for a title. This is a view from the west side of Military Plaza with the Horde Hotel and the Military Plaza saloon just to the left of it.  San Antonio became a transportation center and a truly wild place in the years after the Civil War with freight trains (wagons) coming in from the coast, and the coast (Galveston, Copano, Indianola) was where all the shipments came to by steamship or wind-driven ships. Transportation military, and entertainment for all these people.

It was crowded and lively and the old Spanish air of the town was quickly being overwhelmed. I have had a interesting time researching the older fiddle tunes, and find that the names of the old tunes often have nothing to do with what it sounds like. Most people who know country music know “Black Mountain Rag” (in which Doc Watson played 77 notes in 11 seconds one time, on film) and it seems it came from an older tune named “The Lost Child”, and it was just as wild and fast under the latter name as the former. “A Man Of Constant Sorrow” was earlier known as “Down In The Tennessee Valley” and “Red River Valley” came from a melody known as “In The Bright Mohawk Valley”, from Manitoba. Tunes wander and take on other names and other variations, musicians take them and vary them, their variations become popular in the world of musicians — folk musicians — all these changes as untraceable as the water in an aquifer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doc Watson, blind from age one, born in the hills of North Carolina in 1923, his playing was faultless, magical.