T O Cowboy

Lloyd Antypowich has always given his all in everything he has chosen to do. He wore many different hats on the way to achieving his dream of becoming a rancher. This is a compelling story of his journey and the many paths he traveled to make it a reality. His life began in a time of struggle and hardship, when his immigrant family lived in the frontier of the northern Saskatchewan wilderness, with none of the amenities of the modern world. It stretched across the decades to a time when he saw man go to the moon and back. Today he lives in a time when new technology has created a world that his ancestors could never have imagined. His early childhood years were lived in a time when man used horse and buggy for transportation; when the hospital was more than a hundred miles away, so he was born at home with his grandmother acting as midwife; when the native Indians who lived in teepees just over the hill befriended his family and taught them how to make moccasins. He lived life in times when the bathroom was outside, and when it was forty below, the toilet seat was just as cold; the Eaton's catalogue was something you read while you were contemplating before you had to tear the page, because there was no toilet paper. This is a simple account of his determination to fulfill a lifelong dream of owning a ranch in the mountains and make cowboy boots his daily wear. When he met obstacles, he worked to find a way around them or over the top of them. He wouldn't consider the concept of failure and he didnt understand the words "no," "you can't," or "it's impossible." It is a tale of courage, humor, ingenuity, and determination.

Here in one volume is a complete guide to cowboy-speak. Like many of today's foreign language guides, this handy book is organized not alphabetically but situationally, lest readers find themselves in Texas at a loss for words.

Sparks fly when a sexy cowboy collides with a determined city girl out in a West filled with quirky characters and sizzling romance. Acclaimed for delivering "a fresh take on the traditional contemporary Western," Joanne Kennedy's books might just be your next great discovery! From stable to boardroom... Sarah Landon's Ivy League scholarship transforms her from a wide-eyed country girl into a poised professional. Until she's assigned to do damage control with the boss's rebellious brother Lane, who's the burr in everybody's saddle. He's determined to save his community from oil drilling, and she's not going back to the ranch she left forever. Spurs will shine in this saucy romp about ranchers and roots, redemption and second chances. Praise for Tall, Dark and Cowboy: "Charming."—RT Book Reviews "A sassy and sexy wild ride that is more fun than a wild hootenanny!"—The Romance Reviews, 5 Stars "Practically sizzles off the page."—Eva's Sanctuary "Another steamy, suspenseful offering from the popular Kennedy."—Booklist

"I've known about Ike Blasingame all my life, knew many of his fellow punchers, white and Indian. Ike was certainly a salty representative of the Texas bronc twister when he came North with that most romantic of cow outfits, the British-owned Matador. . . . [He] takes the reader across the treacherous Missouri River as the spring-softened ice goes out under the horses' feet, into the still wild cow towns, through the round-ups, the prairie fires. . . . There is the authentic smell and feel of the Northern cow country of fifty years ago in the story Ike Blasingame tells."-Mari Sandoz"Here is one of the most gripping Western tales since Andy Adams' The Log of a Cowboy was published in 1903. The telling is considerably like Adams'-warm, human, flavorful. The author, a one-time Matador ranch cowboy, . . . lived his story, and he tells it straight in the language of the cow country without contrivance."-New York Times"Many of the cowboys who have written about their experiences never really looked at any wider segment of the cattle business than was visible between their horses' ears, but Ike Blasingame did. He paints a big picture without omitting details."-New York Herald-Tribune

The Flint Hills are America's last tallgrass prairie, a green enclave set in the midst of the farmland of eastern Kansas. Known as the home of the Big Beef Steer, these rugged hills have produced exemplary cowboys—both the ranch and rodeo varieties—whose hard work has given them plenty of material for equally good stories. Jim Hoy grew up in the Flint Hills on a ranch at Cassoday that's been in his family for five generations and boasts roots "as deep as those of bluestem grass in black-soil bottomland." He now draws on this area's rich cowboy lore—as well as on his own experience working cattle, breaking horses, and rodeoing—to write a folk history of the Flint Hills spanning a century and a half. Hoy blends history, folklore, and memoir to conjure for readers the tallgrass prairies of his boyhood in a book that richly recalls the ranching life and the people who lived it. Here are cowboys and outlaws, rodeo stars and runaway horses, ordinary folks and the stuff of legends. Hoy introduces readers to the likes of Lou Hart, a top hand with the Crocker Brothers from 1906 to1910, whose poetic paean to ranch life circulated orally for fifty years before seeing print. And he tracks down the legend of Bud Gillette, considered by his neighbors the world's fastest man until he fell in with an unscrupulous promoter. He even unravels the mystery of a lone grave supposed to be that of the first cowboy in the Flint Hills. Hoy also explains why a good horse makes up for having to work with exasperating cattle—and why not all horses are created (or trained) equal. And he traces Flint Hills cattle culture from the days of the trail drive through the railroad years to today's trucking era, with most railroad stockyards torn down and only one section house left standing. Writes Hoy, "I feed on the stories of the Hills and the characters who tell them as the cattle feed on the grasses." His love of the land shines throughout a book so real that readers will swear they hear the click of horseshoes on flint rock with every turn of the page.

"Tracing the story of Red Lodge from the 1880s to the present, Christensen tells how a mining town managed to endure the vagaries of the West's unpredictable extractive-industries economy. She connects Red Lodge to a myriad of larger events and historical forces to show how national and regional influences have contributed to the development of local identities, exploring how and why westerners first rejected and then embraced "western" images, and how ethnicity, wilderness, and historic preservation became part of the identity that defined one town."--BOOK JACKET.

During your lifetime you will be meeting a lot of people in your extended journey and travels. The quickest and easiest way to make a favorable impression is to possess a quick, tactful and ready wit or possess a good sense of clean humor. A few examples may help. When discussing children, you can say, I gave my son a Spiderman costume as a gift and he said that he was Spiderman. I told him that he wasnt Spiderman, but I did not know how to get him off of the wall. Or, state trooper recruit to personnel manager: What kind of pay can I expect? Reply, I dont like to brag, but on this job you can write your own ticket. Or, a young lady dating a mortician said, Sometimes I dont think he knows that Im alive. Or, Doctor, when will I know something after my operation? Doctor Smoothy, That depends on what you knew before your operation. Or, two bees drank too much dandelion wine; they were not drunk but both of them had a buzz. Or, a different chicken joke based on that age old question, why did the chicken cross the road? Answer: She wanted to beat up a chicken who called her a dumb cluck. For now, enough is enough. If you want more humor of a similar questionable nature buy Jokes 102.

Reclaims, reframes, and reexamines one of acclaimed maverick filmmaker Robert Altman's most accomplished and admired movies, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, as a commentary on Western history, the Western film, the times from which it emerged, and as a tribute to a neglected masterpiece of American cinema.