Old West Firefighting

By Davalynn Spencer

When I was a child, my mother drove down Main Street one afternoon past a burning building, and I asked her if Daddy was helping fight the fire.

She was aghast and insisted that no such thing would ever happen, for Daddy was a farmer.

That evening, my father walked in the front door, covered in soot and smelling of smoke and wet ash.

He’d been fighting the fire.

I have no clue to why’s or how’s, nor any recollection of hearing what started the fire, but I will never forget how Daddy looked and smelled.

As an adult, my now-unanswerable questions focus on how my father ended up in town, miles away from our farm, trying to extinguish a fire that gutted a corner building on Main Street. And I wonder if it had something to do with stories he’d heard from his carpenter father who fought in the great San Francisco Fire of 1906.

My grandfather and everyone he knew fought in that earthquake-induced fire. Everyone who could walk or run or carry a bucket. Historians say the San Francisco fires burned four days and four nights. Many were set by people whose property was not insured against earthquakes but was insured against fire. Nearly 3,000 people died in the disaster that destroyed 80 percent of the sparkling city.

Fire is a force long welcomed by man for its light, warmth, and protection. Yet it also destroys and kills. Controlling it has been an age-old challenge. Extinguishing it has grown into a science.

Several fires occur in my novel, An unexpected Redemption, set along Colorado’s Front Range in 1881. My fictional town of Olin Springs was patterned after many Old West towns that fought flames with bucket brigades manned by able-bodied volunteers.

Men working a bucket brigade along the Niukluk River to put out a fire,
Council, Alaska, circa 1907 - Wikimedia Commons.

Neighbors either joined the hand-to-hand process of passing water-filled buckets one at a time down a line of volunteers, or they donated buckets to be used. Sometimes they did both. In larger cities, people typically painted their name and address on the bucket so they could be picked up after the fire.

However, any kind of hand-to-hand combat is tedious and slow. The futility of bucket-brigade intervention gave rise to hose teams such as the Relief Hook & Ladder Fire Company No. I, established January 27, 1879 in the actual town of Cañon City, Colorado, manned by twenty-three volunteers. The early hose teams pulled giant reels upon which spooled a hundred feet or more of water hose that would be connected to handpumpers also operated by volunteers who pulled handles on either side of the tank.

The "Franklin" end-stroke torrent pumper, manufactured by William C. Hunneman Company. Hunneman was an apprentice of Paul Revere who revolutionized fire-fighting by developing hand pumped fire equipment. The output was similar to a modern water cannon. Ferndale Enterprise photograph from the collection of the Ferndale Museum. Circa 1890 - Wikimedia Commons.

Eastern and Midwestern cities had fire departments and hose teams long before the West, and these often developed into fraternal organizations. In addition to hose teams and handpumpers, firefighters also had “bed keys” with which to disassemble beds so they could be quickly removed from burning structures. Before gas lines and similar accelerants, residents had time to remove valuables from their property. Beds were often the most valuable piece of furniture they owned.

Horses joined the teams in the early 1800s, pulling manually operated pumps and early fire “engines.” Of course, in the West, this advancement came even later for smaller communities. Just before the turn of the century, Cañon City put a two-horse team into service, Chief and Taylor, who pulled the heavy wagon laden with hose and ladders.

In 1910 Chief and Taylor were retired and replaced by Tom and Dexter who, five years later, stepped aside for a 1915 Buick touring car modified with hose and ladder attachments, according to Larry Thomas Ward, author of Cañon City Colorado.

Canon City Fire Department, 1912. Left to Right: George Padgett, Assistant Captain;
Charles McKissick, Sr., Captain; George Cassidy, Chief; and Fred Priest, Plugman.
Horses, Tom and Dexter. Photo courtesy of the Royal Gorge Regional Museum and History Center
as pictured in Canon City Colorado by Larry Thomas Ward.

Steam-powered pumps eventually replaced hand pumps and horses, and technology evolved and improved along with building structure and height.

Roughly twenty-six miles from Cañon City as the proverbial crow flies, the gold-mining town of Cripple Creek, Colorado, suffered two back-to-back fires in April 1896 that nearly destroyed the town.

An overturned gasoline stove was blamed for starting the fire of April 25, driven by high winds to take the lives of two people and eight blocks of the business district. On April 29, the second fire reportedly broke out in the Portland Hotel kitchen on Second Street and jumped to consume neighboring buildings. Other structures were blown up by firefighters using readily available dynamite in a fruitless effort to stop the fire. Altogether, 6,000 people were left homeless.

During reconstruction, wooden structures were banned by the town council, and Cripple Creek was soon up and running again.

From neighbor- and family manned bucket brigades to highly trained specialists of today, those who have braved the flames on the behalf of others remain some of our most revered heroes.

~

An Unexpected Redemption

Wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters, Davalynn Spencer can’t stop #lovingthecowboy. She writes award-winning Western romance with rugged heroes, teaches writing workshops, and plays the keyboard on her church worship team – when she’s not wrangling Blue the Cowdog and mouse detectors Annie and Oakley. Connect with her at www.davalynnspencer.com.

Cupo-what?

A cupola (kyo͞o-pə-lə) is the little dome or square-shaped addition that we see today atop a house, barn, or gazebo. It can also be a larger windowed area accessed from inside an Italianate-style home popular in the Victorian era.

None of this sounds very Western in the 1800s American-West sense of the word. But that’s exactly what my character Elizabeth Beaumont (An Unexpected Redemption) saw on her way home from the train station in 1881—the cupola rising romantically from the top of Maggie Snowfield’s boarding house.

When Elizabeth and her friend Sophie Price were growing up, they imagined what it would be like to secretly meet their sweethearts in a cupola, high above the town with a panoramic view and unparalleled privacy. At least they thought there would be a view. Young girls imagine all sorts of things, you know.

The term cupola comes from an Italian word derived from Latin for little tub. Italianate-style homes sprang up all over the United States during the mid- to late nineteenth century, other than in the South due to the Civil War and economic devastation of southern states.

American architects redesigned creations of British architects, who creatively recreated ideas from Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio of the 16th century. Clearly, imitation was the purist form of flattery.

Cupola ceiling in the Synagogue of Gyor, Hungary.
Emmanuel Dyan, Wikimedia.

The cupola is an integral part of that design and can be traced even farther back to 8th-century Islamic architecture on minarets, often with balconies. It later appeared in ancient Roman architecture. The dome-shaped styles were also found in India.

Cupolas were used to provide natural light and ventilation to space just below the roof, particularly in more humid regions. Those on barns often supported a weather vane from their highest point. The square-shaped style was sometimes referred to as “lantern.”

Old barn at Brookwood Farm, Canton, Massachusetts.
Jameslwoodward, Wikimedia Commons

But the larger, windowed cupola is what I envisioned atop Maggie Snowfield’s opulent home. Often, such a space is accessed via a stairway inside the house, as it was in Maggie’s. A very romantic hideaway, indeed, for a certain couple in my book.

The image below of John Muir’s home in Martinez, California, is close to what I envisioned as the Snowfield Boarding House in An Unexpected Redemption. Without the palm trees, of course. 

John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, California.
Victorian residence of scientist, philosopher and conservationist Muir
from 1890 till his death 1914. National Park Service photo.Wikimedia.

Historians tell us that Italianate architecture was favored for new Victorian construction because technology of the time made reproduction of cast-iron and metal decorations quite affordable. Not only homes employed the style, but also rooming houses, train stations, town halls, and libraries.

However, homes, barns, public buildings, and gazebos were not the only place cupolas made an appearance. Cabooses had them as well.

History lovers will know that trains once pulled a caboose with an “angel seat” from where workers had a clear view of the track and the rest of the train.

A former Milwaukee Road cupola caboose on display at the
National Railroad Museum in Green Bay. Photo by Sean Lamb, Wikimedia.

When my family and I first moved to Colorado, an open pasture bordering our property held a deserted train caboose left beneath a giant cottonwood tree. My son often went there to play and explore with a neighbor boy. We always supposed it had served as a line shack or cow camp, though it was not the typical shelter for cowboys.

To this day I regret not going out with my camera and photographing the old “dinosaur.” When the property owners got rid of the caboose, I felt as if a little bit of untold history went with it. Especially its angel-seat cupola.

~

An Unexpected Redemption

From the shelter of the cupola, Elizabeth could see the whole of Olin Springs. The railroad twisted away into the foothills, a silvery ribbon in the moon’s thin light, and to the north, the Big Dipper stood on its handle, spilling countless stars across the sky.

Tears spilled across her cheeks.

She hated Garrett Wilson. She hated him for stealing her heart when she wasn’t looking, for making her want to love again. For making her wonder what life could be like with a man like him.

But she hated him most for being right.

Davalynn Spencer can’t stop #lovingthecowboy. As the wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters, she writes romance for those who enjoy a Western tale with a rugged hero, both historical and contemporary. She holds the Will Rogers Gold Medallion for Inspirational Western Fiction, teaches writing workshops, and plays the keyboard on her church worship team. When she’s not writing, teaching, or playing, she’s wrangling Blue the Cowdog and mouse detectors Annie and Oakley. Learn more about Davalynn and her books at www.davalynnspencer.com.

May all that you read be uplifting.

Women Behind the Keys

My mother was an excellent typist and worked “keeping books” for my father’s several small businesses. It wasn’t long before I mimicked her, sitting at the typewriter-stand-on-wheels, pecking away at the keys.

During my junior year in high school, I took a night class for typing at the local college and, thereby, set the course of my life.

I’ve been typing – or keyboarding – ever since.

The keys that make my living.

I dare say that typing skills have served me in every job I’ve had, from secretary to schoolteacher, journalist to novelist. It’s difficult to imagine making it through life without the ability to type.

However, this specialized skill changed the course of more lives than mine, particularly that of women in the public workforce during the 1880s. As typists, women could do more than they had as telegraphers, clerks, and copyists in the previous decades.

Both men and women worked as typists, but they were not referred to as such. Research indicates that there were discrepancies in the spelling of typewriter or type-writer. Sources differ in their opinions as to which denoted the machine and which denoted the operator.

Newspaper articles of the day touted the type-writer as a great invention. By 1885, it was credited with expediting business and coming close to replacing the pen. The Remington Standard Type-Writer was heralded as the premier machine.

Remington had previously been associated with firearms (and sewing machines), and the company had several under its belt, including pistols, rifles, and shotguns.

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody himself reportedly carried a Remington New Model Army .44 from 1863 to 1906.

We haven’t heard that he carried a typewriter.

Remington was founded in 1816 by Eliphalet Remington in Ilion, New York, and later became E. Remington and Sons in 1839. It was not the first company to produce a writing machine, but by 1873 became known for manufacturing the first successful commercial typewriter.

Another writing-machine company, Sholes and Glidden, sold their patent to financial backers Densmore and Yost who negotiated with E. Remington and Sons for production. Remington introduced Sholes’s QWERTY board in their model, and the Remington No. 2 of 1878 became a wildly successful typewriter with both upper- and lower-case letters accessed by a shift key.

Today it’s hard to imagine anything else.

Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer, invented by Christopher Latham Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel W. Soule in 1868, and manufactured by Remington & Sons, Ilion, New York, USA, between 1874 and 1878. This was the first typewriter to be manufactured commercially (about 5000 were made), the first to use the Universal or QWERTY keyboard which Sholes invented, and the first to be called a 'typewriter'; Sholes coined the term. The colorful flowery decorations may have been intended to appeal to women, who were entering the typist profession. Wikimedia Commons.

The QWERTY keyboard design was so named for the lineup of letters on the top letter row of keys, with other letters placed elsewhere based on frequency of use. With a few changes in other letter/character positions, it remains in use today with Latin-script alphabets. Wisconsin newspaper editor and printer Christopher Latham Scholes came up with the layout after earlier designs resulted in the jamming of keys.

Scholes's QWERTY, 1878. Wiki-Commons

The Remington typewriter was used in law offices, counting rooms, and mercantiles in European and American cities, employing young women with wages ranging from $12 to $15 per week. 

Even my old Oliver from 1914 has the QWERTY layout.

The abandoned heroine of my novel, An Unexpected Redemption, is one such young woman who finds employment as a type-writer in a Denver law firm and later in her hometown of Olin Springs, Colorado. Her not-so-portable Remington No. 2 model typewriter influences the course of her life, as does her other Remington, which you can read about here.

Funny, how a few little letters—and the ability to manipulate them—can change a person's life for the better.

~

Davalynn Spencer

Wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters, Davalynn Spencer can’t stop #lovingthecowboy. She writes Western romance with rugged heroes, teaches writing workshops, and plays a different keyboard on her church worship team – when she’s not wrangling Blue the Cowdog and mouse detectors Annie and Oakley. Connect with her at www.davalynnspencer.com.

High Country Parks and a Giveaway!

 

When I first started reading historical “cowboy” books, I noticed that parks were frequently mentioned. In the Western ranching context, it was easy to see that these parks were not grassy city blocks set aside for recreation, but valuable cow country—high mountain rangeland conducive to raising cattle, particularly in Colorado.

Pushing cow-calf pairs across a small high-country park in
south-central Colorado, looking over the ears of the author's horse from Badger Creek Ranch.

The term park is a “Colorado-centric idiom meaning upland valley,” says Shannon Davis in an article on the Estes Park, Colorado, web site. The mountain town of Estes Park is one of several with park in its name due to its meadow-like surroundings. Established in 1859, the town was named by Rocky Mountain News co-founder and editor, William N. Byers, for one of its first non-native residents, Joel Estes from Kentucky. It is not to be confused with the nearby Rocky Mountain National Park – a different kind of park, four of which are also found in the state.

The Colorado connection fed my curiosity. Besides Estes Park, we have Winter Park and Woodland Park. There is even a Park County. In my neck of the woods, we’ve got a small unincorporated community known as Parkdale, as well as High Park Road, Lincoln Park, and Garden Park. Veteran cowboy author and area rancher Paul Huntley also mentions Webster Park and Gribble Park in his hand-drawn maps and colorful first-person publications from the 1970s.

A smaller park near Colorado's Royal Gorge Bridge and Canon City,
similar to those mentioned by cowboy author, Paul Huntley.
Photo by author.

The word “park” has its origins in Medieval Latin, as a well as Old High German, and the Old English word for paddock. But the term landed in North America in the 1840s when trappers and explorers labeled three high-mountain valleys or parks west of the Front Range and one, San Luis Park or Valley, west of the Sangre de Cristo Range.

Near Walden in Colorado's North Park backed by the Park Range mountains.
Image from Wikimedia Commons. 

There are countless small high-country parks in Colorado, but the three primary inter-mountain valleys are North Park (8,800 ft.) that lies at the headwaters of the North Platte River and stretches into Wyoming; Middle Park (8,000 ft.) that cradles the narrow basin of the Colorado River; and South Park (9,000 – 10,000 ft), the largest of the three flat basins and found at the headwaters of the South Platte River.

Colorado's South Park looking northeast to the Front Range.
Image from Wikimedia Commons.

In simple cowboy-speak, “park” is where you want to graze your cattle. Today, the Colorado parks are known for producing a coveted, short-season crop of Timothy hay. Kentucky thoroughbred horse farms pay dearly for good mountain grass hay from the Rocky Mountain parks.

GIVEAWAY!

Enter for a chance to win an e-book copy of An Unexpected Redemption by signing up for my quarterly author update here: http://eepurl.com/xa81D and sharing today’s post on one of your social media accounts. Comment below to let me know where you shared and if you’re already one of my subscribers. The winner’s name will be drawn the evening of May 18, 2019 at 8 p.m.

~

Memories spread through her like the gas light, complete with the sweet tinge of sage and pine. Of riding the high parks with Cade and their pa and ending the day with whatever Deacon could fit in a skillet.…Betsy felt free. As free as the mares in late spring when Cade and their pa turned the band out on the high parks. ~An Unexpected Redemption






Davalynn Spencer can’t stop #lovingthecowboy. As the wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters, she writes romance for those who enjoy a Western tale with a rugged hero, both historical and contemporary. She holds the Will Rogers Gold Medallion for Inspirational Western Fiction, teaches writing workshops, and plays the keyboard on her church worship team. When she’s not writing, teaching, or playing, she’s wrangling Blue the Cowdog and mouse detectors Annie and Oakley. Learn more about Davalynn and her books at www.davalynnspencer.com.

If the Need Arose

 

When I was a preteen, my father bought me a lever-action .22 rifle and taught me how to use it. I didn’t have much occasion to do so, but he believed I needed to know. Dad seemed to have a little of the Old West in his veins and wanted his women-folk to be capable of doing what was required if the need arose.

Now I write historical fiction about women just like that. Hmm.

I haven’t yet written about crack-shot Phoebe Ann Moses, but I do have two cats named Annie and Oakley. And I have an old Leanin’ Tree birthday card with an untitled Fred Fellows painting of an aproned woman standing on the wide prairie. She’s holding a bouquet of flowers in one hand and her horse’s reins in the other. A Henry rifle hangs off the saddle horn.

“Prairie Garden” by Fred Fellows
http://www.fellowsstudios.com/gallery-fred/prairie-garden.html

I’ve kept that birthday card for more than twenty years because of what the picture says about pioneer women of the plains and Old West: There wasn’t much they couldn’t handle if the need arose.

My childhood .22 vanished years ago, but I have Dad’s trusty shotgun which is great for scaring off coyotes. A distant double-barrel cousin of the old standby made a cameo appearance in one of my novellas about a young widow and her two small children.

But it’s a double-barrel of a different sort that has piqued my interest lately. One that is not quite so bulky and fits discreetly in the folds of a lady’s skirt—a compact Remington double derringer smaller than a woman’s hand.

Nederlands: Een 4de Generatie over-under Remington Derringer in .41 

randvuur Southpaw Dutch Wikipedia/commons

Concealed carry is nothing new, and Henry Deringer of Philadelphia offered his first single-shot, muzzle-loading, miniature power-packed pistol in 1852. Often called a pocket pistol, the popularity of the original Philadelphia Deringer eventually gave way to the double barrel .41 Rimfire Remington Model 95.

From The Look of the Old West by William Foster-Harris,
illustrated by Evelyn Curro, Skyhorse Publishing, 2007.

Remington wasn’t the only company to pilfer Henry’s label, and competitors added an “r” to the well-known name to keep ol' Henry at bay. However the Remington model quickly became synonymous with “derringer.”

Cold-eyed, nimble-fingered gamblers weren’t the only people in the Old West carrying a holdout or concealed weapon, and derringers showed up in the cuffs and vest pockets of men on both sides of the law.

They also showed up in the reticules, boots, and garters of ladies bearing equally contrasting reputations.

With its signature hook handle, the derringer had a fairly accurate range of between fifteen and twenty feet. Up close, it could do serious damage.

One could be had for about eight dollars, ten if the owner wanted to fancy things up with a pearl or ivory stock or engraving.

Western film buffs easily identify the snappy little weapon that was scattered across screens and pages of Western lore, becoming one of the most widely recognized American handguns.

James West, the fictional Secret Service agent in Hollywood’s The Wild Wild West sported a Remington double derringer as a sleeve gun (or dismantled inside the hollow heels of his boots), and Miss Kitty Russell from television’s Gun Smoke had no qualms about drawing a well-concealed derringer if necessary.

The Remington derringer also fit nicely into the hands of my character Elizabeth (Betsy) Parker in An Unexpected Redemption. In fact, she had two Remingtons: one with bullets and one with keys. But that’s a story for another time.

As a woman on her own, Betsy had good reason to be proactive regarding her safety, but she didn’t hesitate to use it in defense of others:

She dashed down the narrow stairway, counting the steps so she didn’t tumble off at the bottom, and ran into her room, where she threw open her trunk. After tossing clothing onto the floor, she opened the secret compartment, loaded her Remington derringer, and slipped it into her skirt pocket.

It was no Winchester rifle, nor would it hold a candle to Garrett’s Colt, but in a tight spot, the double-barreled derringer could be the difference between dead or alive.

However, the derringer, left casually in a desk drawer, almost marked that very difference in Betsy:

The mantle clock’s ticking drowned out his future brother-in-law’s voice as Garrett planned a discreet exit. But a thud from upstairs and breaking glass sent him running from the room.

Lamp-oil fumes met him on the landing.

He kicked in Betsy’s door. With a hungry rush, flames followed the path of spilled oil and leaped up the window curtains. Garrett jerked them off the wall, yanked the quilt from the bed, and smothered the fire. Water from the basin and pitcher soaked the smoking mound, and he stomped it into submission. Only then did he sense he was not alone.

Betsy stood in the corner near the door, eyes wide, hands gripping a man’s arm clamped across her throat.

Garrett slapped his right hip—and found nothing. His gun and holster were in his room.

A double-barrel derringer pressed into Betsy’s right temple, held steady by the hand of Anthony Rochester. He laughed. “Unprepared, are you, cowboy?”

Garrett’s hands balled into fists and he took a step forward.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Elizabeth’s Remington is closer to her pretty curls than you are to me.”

Thank goodness, many a woman has been capable of doing what was required when the need arose.

Wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters, Davalynn Spencer writes Western romance. She is a Publisher's Weekly bestselling author and winner of the Will Rogers Medallion for Inspirational Western Fiction. Connect with her at https://www.davalynnspencer.com/.

Desperate to redeem her reputation and independence, runaway Betsy Parker returns home to face her toughest critics—the people she grew up with, a rugged lawman who threatens to steal her heart, and the one person unwilling to forgive her.

Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing

Come, Thou Feet of Restless Youth

Back and forth. Seen and not seen, peeking and hiding.

On Sunday morning, my shiny black patent-leather shoes popped from beneath the wooden pew where I sat with my parents in our very proper church, and then they disappeared. My feet didn’t yet touch the floor, but boy, could they swing those shiny shoes. Back and forth. Peeking, hiding.

Unless we were singing.

Then I’d stand next to Mother in those stiff “good” shoes, propping my own hymnal on the back of the pew ahead of us, pretending to read the words.

In fact, church may be the place I first learned to connect letters and sounds and phrases, for music has a way of winding the words around your heart strings and tuning them in with your brain.

I learned the melodies and verses to many old hymns in our traditional church, and they’ve stayed with me over the years that have swept me into the musical freedom of contemporary worship. As a pianist/keyboardist on my church’s worship team, I love and play it all, both the old and the new.

But one song in particular lodged deep inside my childhood experience with its lilting notes that seemed to dance like a butterfly on a clear summer day:

“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”

It was the melody that embedded in my young heart, tugging the lyrics along with it. Only later did those words take on meaning. Perhaps one has to experience the floods and fires of life and trudge through the mud and ash before one really understands the cleansing power and need of the Fount.

According to several hymnals, the tune is a Traditional American Melody from John Wyeth’s Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second, 1813. However, Hymnary.org credits the melody for “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” as the tune “Nettleton,” penned by “Anonymous.” Footnotes mention Asahel Nettleton (1783-1844) as the possible originator of the tune.

Asahel Nettleton, by Samuel Lovett Waldo (1783-1861) & William Jewett (1789-1874) 

[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Though little-known today, Yale-graduate Nettleton was the Billy Graham of the 1820s, according to author and Pastor William P. Farley. This quiet and unassuming evangelist from Connecticut saw the advent of the telegraph and railroads, and the exploration of Lewis and Clark, all linchpins of our nation’s development. He also lived during the ebb and flow of the second Great Awakening of the 1790s through the 1830s (historians debate the actual dates). He died in 1844 at the age of 61. 

Robert Robinson, by Anonymous [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Stanzas 1 – 2 of the song are credited to English clergyman Robert Robinson in 1758 and stanza 3 to Martin Madan in 1760. Several variations of the stanzas exist, as well as a fourth and fifth verse, and the song rests today in the public domain.

It also rests in the corners of my memory, and thus wended its way onto the pages of my recent release, An Unexpected Redemption.

Redemption is the theme of “Come, Thou Fount,” and so it naturally flowed from my mind, through my fingers, and into the heart of Elizabeth (Betsy Parker) Beaumont. In the story, she credits her mother with teaching her the song, and perhaps I am that mother since I gave birth to the fictional Betsy and her impulsive nature.

Certain phrases thread through her struggle, such as,

“Streams of mercy, never ceasing,” 

“Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it, Mount of Thy redeeming love.” 

“Hither by Thy help I’m come; And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, 

Safely to arrive at home.” 

“Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.”

Regardless of a few obsolete words from centuries past, these confessions can touch the core of a seeker, one who may have wondered on restless childish feet, coming at last to the merciful Fount.

One can certainly hope.

My most favorite rendition of this song is by the very modern David Crowder band that presents it with rich Old World flavor. It can be found here. Bypass the quick ad and listen with your eyes closed.

Let your heart be lifted.

And then let me know if there is an old hymn that has made its way across the years and into the corners of your memory.

~

Wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters, Davalynn Spencer writes cowboy romance. She is an ECPA and Publisher's Weekly bestselling author and winner of the Will Rogers Gold Medallion for Inspirational Western Fiction. And she’s fairly certain her previous career as a rodeo journalist and crime-beat reporter prepared her for life in Colorado, wrangling Blue the Cowdog and mouse detectors Annie and Oakley. Connect with her at http://davalynnspencer.com/ 

Shattered by her father’s fatal choice, naïve Betsy Parker elopes with a faithless beau who abandons her for the Dakota gold fields. After taking a job as a type-writer for a prestigious Denver law firm, she rebuffs the advances of a senior partner who fires her and sullies her character. In a desperate bid to redeem her reputation and independence, she returns home to face her toughest critics—the people she grew up with, a rugged lawman who threatens to steal her heart, and the one person unwilling to forgive her.

Watch Out for Bear Sign! – and a Giveaway

When I was big enough to peek over the edge of my grandmother’s kitchen table and draw a bead on her silver-plated, big-eared sugar bowl, I was old enough to spend the entire drive out to her house with my parents hoping she’d made apple fritters for desert.

By the time I was old enough to make them myself, she was gone.

But I still remember that deep-fried bread sprinkled with powdered sugar and chock full of tasty apple chunks. Maybe that’s why I’m such a fan of Bear Sign, the closest thing I’ve had to Grandma’s fritters.

Not Bear Sign.

Bear Sign is code for cowboy donuts, and any trail Cookie worth his keep knew how to make them.

Nope, still not Bear Sign.

Any cowboy that knew up from down also knew to stay on Cookie’s good side if he wanted his share of those deep-fried, cinnamony hunks of sweet bread.

Of course there are no chopped apples or any other fruit inside bonafide Bear Sign. It’s a pretty basic recipe, simple enough for the trail Cookie to have everything he needed on hand.

In my recent release, An Unexpected Redemption, Elizabeth/Betsy Beaumont/Parker (there’s a whole name-thing going on there) stops by Bozeman’s Café and discovers that Bozeman is a former trail cook and makes a mean batch of Bear Sign.

Elizabeth is a fan because she grew up eating Bear Sign made by Deacon, the older ranch hand, and she doesn’t mind puffing powdered sugar off her lip after biting into a delicious helping. (Hungry yet?)

One recipe is pretty much like the next, but I’ve included what I use when I’m frying up a batch. Mind you, this is half a batch so I don’t end up with too much must-eat goodness. If you want to feed the whole bunk house, just double the ingredients.

Warning: Proceed with caution. These are delicious!

                                              

Cow-camp or trail cooks may have been the most important person on the cattle drive or roundup, and they weren’t always called Cookie. A few of their more colorful handles were Sourdough, Greasy Belly, Biscuit Roller, Old Lady, Pot Russler, and more.

My grandma, well, I just called her Grandma. She was awfully important to our family, too, and fritters weren’t the only thing she did well.

She also gave a mighty fine bear hug.

In An Unexpected Redemption, Elizabeth is a fan of Bear Sign - aptly depicted in this picture
of my cowboy doughnuts.  They may look rough, but I fried all the odd shapes as well as the
round pieces to give them that bear-sign look. And I must warn you, they are delicious.

Excerpt from An Unexpected Redemption:

Snowy powder lifted beneath Elizabeth’s nose as she bit into a sugar-dusted bear sign. Nibbling and chuckling, she made her way back to the boarding house, savoring Hoss Bozeman’s thunderstruck look. He’d thought he was pulling a fast one, but the joke was on him when she flicked not an eyelash at the name he gave his pastries.

She’d grown up eating Deacon’s bear sign on roundups. The best doughnuts she’d ever had.

GIVEAWAY!

I’m giving a reader-choice e-copy of AnUnexpected Redemption, Book 2 

or An Improper Proposal, Book 1 of my “Front Range Brides” series. Enter for a chance to win by sharing today’s post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or whatever social media you prefer. Leave a comment below telling me where you shared this post and I’ll toss your name in the skillet. I mean hat.

You can enter a second time by signing up for my quarterly newsletter here. Leave a comment below telling me you signed up, and I’ll enter your name again in the random drawing.

Wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters, Davalynn Spencer writes cowboy romance. She is an ECPA and Publisher's Weekly bestselling author and winner of the Will Rogers Gold Medallion for Inspirational Western Fiction. And she’s fairly certain her previous career as a rodeo journalist and crime-beat reporter prepared her for life in Colorado, wrangling Blue the Cowdog and mouse detectors Annie and Oakley. Connect with her at http://davalynnspencer.com/

From Quill to Dip to Fountain - with a give-away

Daddy was good with his pocket knife. He could cut leather into strips, and flick splinters from my fingers, and make whistles from pussy willow branches that really worked. But when he told me he could make a pen from a feather, I had my daughterly doubts.

Sitting at his outside-office desk one afternoon, he produced a long, white plume that I suspected came from a member of the barnyard committee. It tapered to a perfect point and looked exactly like a feather missing its goose.

Daddy opened his pocket knife, sliced the end of the quill off at an angle, then cut a deeper curved notch. Finally, he carefully split the very tip.

“Now you have a pen,” he said.

I thought I had a ruined feather.

Feather pen image by Bru-nO via Pixabay, CCO Creative Commons

With a smile, he dipped the quill into a stout little bottle of blue-black ink. “Don’t press too hard,” he said and offered it to me. 

Feather in hand, I touched its tip to the clean sheet of typewriter paper awaiting my test … and the quill pen wrote! Like a pencil or a real pen or a piece of chalk. But finer. And I felt more elegant and important than a ten-year-old tomboy had a right to feel.

However, Daddy wasn’t the first person to make a pen.

Quill pens have been around nearly as long as the birds that sourced them, but they had to be dipped repeatedly in an ink pot. Such “dip pens” were improved upon with steel nibs held not only by feather shafts, but by wood, bone, or metal. Dip pens are still used today by artists, calligraphers, and cartoonists requiring specific inks and creative flexibility through varying pressure.

But the tedious task of dipping inspired writers over the centuries to design and create self-filling pens with built-in reservoirs. Such fine writing instruments became known as fountain pens.

As with many other inventions, history offers a varied view of who invented the first fountain pen, but it seems that once the notion was born, each successive generation improved upon the work of the prior. Sort of a multi-generational, cross-cultural group effort.

The earliest record of a fountain-type pen mentions an Egyptian craftsman who reportedly made one in 953. But fountain pens as we know them today didn’t exist until the late 19th century, though their ancestors appeared much earlier.

In 1636, Daniel Schwenter (1585–1636) described a pen constructed of several quills pushed together. Nicolas Bion (1652–1733) wrote of a fountain pen in his published work of 1709, but he did not claim to have invented it.

A creative Romanian by the name of Petrache Poenaru (1799–1875) is credited with a reservoir-holding invention utilizing a large feather shaft. Poenaru was awarded French Patent No 3208 on May 23, 1827, but he did not claim invention of the fountain pen either.

Frederick Bartholomew Fölsch on May 9, 1809, received British Patent No 3235 for “Several Improvements on Certain Machines, Instruments, and Pens, Calculated to Promote Facility in Writing.” A decade later, John Scheffer, on July 8, 1819, received British Patent No 4389 for his “Machine or Instrument for Writing.”

In 1884 America, Lewis Waterman patented the first practical model hoping to improve upon earlier leaky versions. Before Waterman’s modifications, fountain pens frequently spilled and blotted papers and were less than dependable.

Advertisement card for R. Esterbrook & Co., promoting the 048 "falcon pen". 1876. Wikimedia.org

In the meantime, dip pen and nib manufacturing in America began as early as 1858 with the Esterbrook Steel Pen Manufacturing Company, established in Campden, New Jersey. Richard Esterbrook touted his enterprise as “America’s Original Pen Company.” He later moved to New York, and in 1866, issued a Lincoln Pen model in honor of slain U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln. The original advertisement for the Esterbrook Lincoln Pen is catalogued in the Library of Congress.

Esterbrook’s first fountain pen came out in 1920, and the company continued to craft pens and nibs used by several U.S. presidents and well-known Americans such as Disney artist Carl Barks and celebrated cartoonist, Charles M. Schulz. Schulz’s pen of choice was the Esterbook Radio Pen No. 914. When the company discontinued the edition, Schulz reportedly bought up the remaining inventory of No. 914 nibs.

The Esterbrook brand waned over the years, but was acquired by Harpern Brand Holdings, LLC in 2014. Several specific series and limited editions were released, including the Charles M. Schultz Limited Edition Fountain Pen as well as a ballpoint pen. They are merely commemorative, looking nothing like the old Radio dip pen No. 914, but both bear a striking imprint of Schultz’s signature.

The following year, on the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, the Esterbrook brand released a commemorative “one of a kind” Abraham Lincoln Limited Edition Fountain Pen. Honoring the life of one of America’s most beloved presidents, the pen comes with 18kt gold-plated sterling grip, 14kt gold-plated sterling filigree on the cap, and an 18kt gold-plated nib.

Paper wrapper for a box of R. Esterbrook & Cos. Lincoln Pen, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, 1866, Library of Congress via Wikimedia.org

Again, not like the dip pen of 1866, but hearkening back to the original with replicated signature and artwork.

In my latest historical release, An Unexpected Redemption, Elizabeth Beaumont, aka Betsy Parker, leaves her Denver employment as an attorney’s type-writer and returns home to Olin Springs, Colorado, under not-so-shiny circumstances. Her friend and mentor from the Denver law firm, Erma Clarke, gives her a going-away gift at the train station—in spite of the hasty going.

“You may be an exceptional type-writer, but every writer needs an exceptional pen,” Miss Clarke told Elizabeth.

The gift was an Esterbrook Lincoln Pen.

As I inspect photographs of Esterbrook’s finely crafted steel nibs from the past, I find they are remarkably similar in form to the goose-feather pen that my father made. And somehow I’m swept up in the current of countless writers across the centuries who were intent on making their words as permanent as possible.

Fine company to keep, I’d say.

~

I'm giving away an ebook version of my recent release, An Unexpected Redemption. Comment below to be entered in the two-day (May 17-18, 2018) random drawing for a chance to win.

Wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters, Davalynn Spencer writes heart-tugging, #lovingthecowboy romance set along the Front Range of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. She is an ECPA and Publisher's Weekly bestselling author and winner of the Will Rogers Gold Medallion for Inspirational Western Fiction. An award-winning rodeo journalist and former crime-beat reporter, Davalynn lives in Colorado where she caters to Blue the Cowdog and mouse detectors Annie and Oakley. Connect with her at http://davalynnspencer.com/