Gee. I thought Kittredge grew up in San Francisco, with mandatory time at Oscar's ranch. I guess 'Frisco is about as West as you can get. A book like this does need the silver spoon fed kid's point of view. Carpetbagger trust puppies have been a significant part of Western living. (I am still miffed at Kittredge calling the hotel in Corvallis, Oregon, the "Benson." ) He has a hole in his memory sky. The best hotel in Portland is the Benson. Named after the timber baron who built it, and put the bronze drinking fountains all over old town (Benson Bubblers), giving bums an alternative to whiskey.

The grand hotel in Corvallis was the Benton. You know, Benton county. Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, father of manifest destiny and vindicated by the discovery of gold in California. My grandfather built the forms for the original cornice. I stood outside one spring morning to get KC Jones and Bill Russell's autographs as a kid. Mothers need stuff to throw away when you go off to college. And as a drunken idiot at my first class reunion, I drank too much in the Beau Brummel lounge. Now there is no lounge. The Benton Hotel is an old folks home. Unlike the Benson, I think it is for people of less than moderate means.

Gee, Bearturd, don't know much about Kittredge, do you? So ya think you're a real Oregonian huh? You're a funny little fella. Kittredge's roots in Oregon run just a wee bit deeper and more authentic than a pretender like you.

Oh, Larry, I don't think so. Just because I tweak Kittredge about his disinclination to hang out at the Adel store for a lifetime shouldn't bother an overactive sphincter like you. But I have Lake county roots in the family tree.

My dad, 93, was born on a homestead at Fort Rock, at the foot of the Connely Hills. Mother was born in Great Falls. Immigrant's kid. Dad's family was in Yamhill county in the 1860s. My Dad's father lost his father when he was a tad. His father and his father in law were with their wives to settle a disagreement at the Washington county courthouse din Hillsboro, Oregon. 1883. The arbitration did not go well. One drew a gun and it misfired, and the other drew and his didn't. On his way down, shot in the heart, my great grandfather re-cocked and put one is his father in law's heart. Both died in minutes.

My Grandfather, fatherless after the shoot out, was a plucky guy, and down the road got a law degree from American University in D.C., and worked for the GLO. He was a General Land Office Land Commissioner for the Ft. Rock and Fremont districts of Lake county (Kittredge country), thus there would be a chance he signed off on some of Oscar's land on the original homesteads. He was also an attorney, as well as a notary public. They left Lake county after the flu in 1918. Dad was three. As an aside to Lake county, and the Warner Valley, my wife is putting O'Keeffe's Working Feet on hers as I write. That, and Working Hands are the best!

It was my maternal grandfather who worked on the Benton Hotel. Seventeen years old, no prospects in Denmark, he was faced with going to sea on the JOSEPH CONRAD, a huge steel sailing ship, or paying his way to America to work with his half brother in Chicago. 1907. He went to Chicago, worked the Northern Pacific RR on the bridge crews, and after marriage, labored at the smelter in Great Falls. He was hurt in a smelter explosion in 1918, and in 1920, recovered, he moved his wife and my newborn mother to Corvallis where he worked ever after as a union carpenter.

Oregon's gone, Bear. In case you missed it, it's been Californicated loong ago. And that's too bad. It was a great place about fifty years ago. I'm headin' down to Corvallis tomorrow for a wedding. I still have lots of relatives there. If you want a taste of old Oregon, move your ass to Montana before it's too late, for it's goin' fast here too. But if you know the state well, you can still find pockets of old Montana here and there. Pretty damn sad what's happened to the west. I still wouldn't/couldn't live anywhere else. In fact, I've never been east of the eastern border of Montana. Been in every western state though. Glad that you admitted that Kitteredge was from Oregon. That's pretty wild country over there where he's from. I love it.

Larry:
Actually, I own a quarter section of alkali flat on the northern end of the Warner Valley. Can see Poker Jim and mirages. Surrounded by BLM. I am half the private land in three townships. I bought it because I had sold something. Had some cash in my pocket. And it was real cheap. And, if deer ever come back, I can get two landowner tags in big mule deer country. It is just into Harney county. So I still own land in Warner Valley. I wonder if Kittredge does? None in Lake county, though.

I remember the dispersal sale of the old MC ranch. When the junk bond guy was forced to sell. 125 ranch geldings, the cavvy, and all the cow dogs. Sad. But a bunch of the Irishmen ranching around the edges ponied up a pile of cash and outbid the Nature Conservancy, (maybe an O'Leary was the lawyer) and bought the irrigated land that Oscar ditched and leveled. They still have their co-op, or however they did it. A bunch of small ranches (40?) banded together to buy the guts of the MC land, the best of it. And a good move, too. For not to long after, the Feds ran them out of the Hart Mountain NWR, and the fashionable thing to do for the last ten years has been to go roll old fence wire as a USFWS volunteer. No cows clipping the grass moved some bighorns around to new feed areas, and the antelope population goes up and down with the rabbit population and the ancillary coyote population. Just another nail in the economic coffin of a state with 65% of its land in public management. More like non-use. To the east of the Hart Mtn NWR, all the land is now owned by the Roaring Springs ranch. They traded into Catlow Valley for their aspen patches and mountain meadows in the Steens Mountain preserve deal. Ten to one. Ten acres of Catlow for one on the mountain. I have 30 acres now land locked into the Roaring Springs. Not enough to justify buying a helicopter. Or renting one. So, from the Warner Valley to east of the Steens, all is either in no entry NWR or private lands, no trespassing. A pretty big chunk of no use as a result of zealots and their High Desert preservation activities. No complaints from the public since all the deer died in an early spring grass flush that scoured the winter slimmed deer, and they green squirted to death by the thousands. 1993. Cougars have prevented any recovery. Friends on the Steens last month were there three days and didn't see a deer. Not one. No cows has not helped deer recover. Coyotes show up at the Fields store with an Oregon Trail card the first of every month. Probably to buy dog food for bait. The Whitehorse marijuana grow was the profitable business on public land in the last five years. And they didn't buy a permit, or pay rent to the BLM or the Whitehorse Ranch. Just ate bighorns, calves, and one of the 19 remaining deer in the Trout Creek mountains. One would have hoped one of those Roman nosed, feather footed "wild mustangs" in the Trouts would have ended up between tortillas. No such luck.

My hunting partner is over there repairing a rock house as I write. The itinerant ranch carpenter. Some hubba hubba horse whisperer is there right now, so my hunting partner has two colts getting used to a rider and a Decker. I hope it all works well. I am too old to walk all the way in. I need a ride to camp. Murphy the mule can walk for me. I can hunt from camp ok. Tweaked my achilles two weeks ago and I am still limping. Even if I do have Medicare, jumping off a flatbed trailer is dumb at my age. Old fat white guys never could jump up, and now I have proven they can't jump down either.

All very interesting, Bear. Mehthinks that maybe YOU should write a book! Or is that why you dislike like Kitteredge so much, becuase he did and gets recognized for it and you haven't? When you're not ranting, you can tell a pretty good story. There are some good books about Eastern Oregon. I'm currently reading Wilderness Ranch by Dayton O. Hyde. Have you read it? Maybe you know the family. It's a great book. I also read recently Bowerman and the Men of Oregon. Great book. Bowerman grew up over there in the east too. Fascinating stuff. Gotta run. Heading to Oregon now with a stop in Lincoln for some jerky! Later.

My family came to what would one day be the American West in Precambrian times. Back then we were protozoa.

Wow, Jenny we should talk as my family arrived at the same time and in much the same way. Wow, small world. We'll have to get together and talk fission and fossil records and, well, all those old family memories. By the way, I'm not sure, but does this give us an extra vote?
Michael

Ah, the joy of writers writing about writer's writing. The congo line of self perpetuation. But what should we expect with the demise of the daily newspaper? That the press release forwarders would go away? So many column inches. So few comments.

But I do read your insider writer news, and I do read new books. I would hope that any anthology of growing up in the West would include Dr. Ken Holmes "Covered Wagon Women", an 11 volume compilation of pioneer women's journals and diaries. That is first person history, and a testament to the strengths and dedication of women who walked to Oregon and beyond behind ox and horse across the breadth of the West to begin a new life far, far away from their place of birth. Writers are now using it as a reference and source to write their own books. But the dedicated writers are those women who found the time, had the education and will, to write about their lives on this emigrant journey of hardship and dying, all the while being responsible for cooking, child care, wagon care, and holding a family together under the most trying of times. The 11 volumes are a gold mine of experiences, facts, and musings. You can never know the pioneer woman until you read his books.

Bearbait,

Thanks for reading the books page and leaving your comments and reading suggestions. I appreciate it. I just couldn't resist having a little fun with you!

Great to hear the back story of the MC. It did give rise to one of my favorite Ian Tyson songs. . . .

Oregon and Montana have a lot in common.

Anthology.. Bull crap
To think that de border land..Cowboy who never wore a colored shirt, the son of a Governor of New Mexico Miles would be on that der list is very parshall way... Where my rope... it politics de old fasion way..de choosen
Dem der Texan writers, dey is'a de need'n an attitude a-justment into some of de vejitos still liv'n in der state.
To think, dey Texas ghosts folklore of de past still call'n de land east of de Rio Grande River a part of Texas. Dem use to be figt'n words between dem two states.. Put that n yaw western book..
hummmm
and goodbye... Straight Shooter.. Joe Bowman (RIP)
Yeppers growing up in der West just aint what it use to be.. it aint what it use to be....gust like my old nag...
I'm tell'n yaw it just ain't!!
Giddup..... Slow Light'n
De Colonel out of here!!

Beerbait: I trotted your AO and if not mistaken; Buckaroo Pass makes for a good enough driveway, and Beaty's Butte an advantageous look out towards those isolated Catlow holdings. A fine avenue for leppying Roaring Springs calves off to western Oregon sale barns. I was with Bill Black's MC crew with Wolfsen's signature on my paycheck before "Junk Bond" Gillet foundered. I then answered a call from Roaring Springs looking for experienced buckaroo's to help the wealthy Molalla lumber guy from losing his new outfit to rustlers and wannabe waddies from town. Pssst,,, t'was an inside job, they all are.

Nature Conservancy rads wanted to grow grass for the sage rats and hens, good thing they lost out or the MC Ranch would have been just another semi-productive chunk of grazing land that would no longer help feed our nation. "Ted Turners Ladder Ranch"

But yes, Big Green tried to wiggle around reality and truth by claiming that the "new" MC Ranch would be a model for growing happy, content, cattle. How do you reason with people like that?
You can't work with the radical eco-fag. Rational thought on the ranch is tempered by rope burns, lumps, bumps and stingers. It's not something a pink palmed tye-dye can study up on in alternative energy courses at the community college or NatGeo mags, Hayduke blogs.

I've got to wonder if this nasty Kralj crusader gathers all his Oregon Outback knowledge from Eugene eco-scuttlebutt, tourism sites and the field journals of others? I never did glass such a foul little human while working on our High Desert?!

ShortyMecate: the Roaring Springs owner, the mill guy and long ago Oregon football player, hired a Mormon ranch manager long ago. I think he is competent and wise beyond his years. And maybe the Roaring Springs owns part of Beatty's Butte now. I do believe they go clear to the Hart Mountain refuge from the home place, and they got most of the surrounding BLM at the Skull Creek ranch. The remains of the Oregon End Ranch are for sale. I think the McClean kids kept the Domingo Pass piece with the good water. I haven't asked about the Alvord side of late. I don't know if they are losing cattle or not. Most of what I have heard about is missing from the Jordan Valley end of the world, and their graze to the south. And the word in the JV Bar was that it was an inside job. One just wonders where they are sold. I would bet that the Feds know, and are now just building a case. The sting will come later.

The ranch my Grand dad had was condemned in 1940 for an Army Air Corps bombing range that was never built. Just more ground for the GLO. And now the BLM. It had an artesian well which I have a picture of the water being conveyed across the field by a raised pine board flume. No aluminum or plastic pipe in those days. Now they have tapped so much water that you no longer can get a permit to drill a well.

A friend from here in Oregon has gone to Wyoming to deer hunt for thirty years. He said this year there were sheep every where. I guess sheep are making a comeback as livestock in eastern Wyoming. And he said damned few deer. Things run in cycles, and this is just another of an infinite number here or yet to come.

I was thinking about Harney county today. It is hard to find a place lacking in ambient night light from which to look at the night sky. Maybe there should be a zoned area in southern Harney and Malheur counties where you need a permit to have a night light shining. Have a lumen cap for the area with some grandfathered, and if you don't renew the permit, you lose the light. The issue would to create a place in the Big Empty in which science could see the night sky without the ambient light of civilization. Somehow, that could become an economic opportunity. How, I have no idea, except the law of supply and demand would favor those with the supply, if in fact there was a demand.

I hope all have a safe and sane New Year hoorah....and a good 2011.