I Turn My Face from the East

I Turn My Face
from the East

Hula hoops come to Cheyenne, Wyoming, in the Old West, c. 1957. Note TV in BG.

A
manly
lavender
hue,
or,
Real
Men
can
enjoy
quiche
should
they
so
desire.

--"The Code
of the West"

hy is this page not about Santa Fe, New Mexico? Good question, Pilgrim. This page is about the Santa Fe Trail in my mind.

From the time I was born, the TV sat in the living room, and after 6 months in Grand Island (and I have some vague memories from that time), I sat in Cheyenne, Wyoming for five years, and Laramie, Wyoming until I reached puberty at which time, evidently, I was unworthy and through no fault of my own was exiled from my beloved Wyoming until 1987.

And in Cheyenne, Wyoming, I watched Clint Walker in "Cheyenne," and in Laramie, I watched "Laramie," and "The Lawman" (which had "The Bird Cage Saloon" in downtown Laramie, and downtown Laramie had "The Bird Cage Saloon" and I never knew if they were the same establishment). And "My Friend Flicka" -- which takes place BETWEEN Laramie and Cheyenne -- and "The Virginian" which takes place 30 miles north of Laramie in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, and my Dad, who worked for the Forest Service, on the Medicine Bow National Forest, brought me home Smokey Bear pencils and book covers and decals, and when "Lassie" got rid of little Timmy, she was, while I grew up, with a Ranger who worked for the Forest Service and drove a pickup truck just like Dad's.

Was I confused?

Of course I was. But I wasn't alone. The first "western" was written on commission from John Jacob Astor by Washington Irving. The first American novel is its sequel, also by Irving by way of Astor (he was buying P.R. you see).

usda.jpg (58279 bytes)

And I have grown up in a region of the country that is on a level with a U.S. Protectorate or Territory - Uncle Sam still insists on owning 80-90% of every state in the West, and we are stymied in our ability to be other than resource pockets for plunder, else National Parks for Easterners.

I remember the kid in first grade, always in his little rodeo belt buckles, his red checkered shirts, his crew cut and his Butch Wax, with his Dad's display of neat crap they'd found on their ranch outside of town: Cavalry belt buckles, arrowheads, old Springfield rifle rounds, and the centerpiece, an officer's pistol. Were we in the Old West? Yes and no and yes and no again.

Welcome to the West, the largest Dude Ranch ever invented. And welcome to the child-proofing of the West, as the East Coast Mommies swath us in paved paths with handrails. And, now, they charge us $3 to walk in the woods. Soon, all will be padded with Styrofoam and we will be deported so we don't continue to spoil the view.

I turn my face from the East, from whence our well-meaning but clueless oppressors come.

And how many times have I seen some imbecile from Philadelphia move West and start telling everybody how to save the natural wonder they've moved here for and can we all just stop living so that Mr. East Coast can have his precious view and his topiary miniature poodle?

I have driven the Santa Fe Trail more times than I can count. I began at the Independence, Missouri Courthouse in July of 1993, and took the Oregon Trail out here in search of a better life. Independence, Missouri marks the extreme eastern edge of the portion of the continent I'm familiar with.

No one would ever publish a novel in which the protagonist takes a boat from New York City to Chicago, thence, by train to Atlanta as a "natural" route.

But 1955's "The Man From Laramie" has Jimmy Stewart taking the "Trail" from Laramie (Wyoming, we assume) to unnamed Santa Fe, where they collect salt from the salt lake just outside of town. From Laramie to Santa Fe to Salt Lake City? A howler to us, but to the great Eastern mass that sucks our resources, and stifles our industry, it's just a "good western."

I can't watch a John Ford western in Monument Valley without suppressing a giggle that all those Navajo are dressed up like some gay Hollywood art director's idea of Sioux.

If need be, I could name at least ten tribes I've had significant personal friendships in -- and therefore have had to listen to griping about another fifty tribes THEY have issues with.

The true victims of your refusal to let Westerners be real people -- to have cars, and not to be cardboard characters, as "Eastern" friends of my parents used to always ask when they got to Laramie: "Don't you ride horses? Aren't you afraid of Indian attacks?" - the true victims are the Indians. You can't accept that they have CD players, and that they want their kids to get a good education and a good profession, like a lot of other Westerners. You prefer the myth to the reality. And some few dress in Indian drag and sell you blankets from Taiwan.

I can't watch some movie obviously shot in Palmdale, California that's supposed to be Kansas, and Dodge City has a big mountain behind it. Nor can I watch people riding in wagon trains, when hardly anyone ever rode in one, and then only because they COULDN'T walk. The movies forget that walking was always more important in the West than horses, no matter when you want talk about.

Yippie-ki-yo-ki-yay, mofo.

My wife and I have a little game, called, "How long before Hart can tell you EXACTLY where in the West that movie was shot." I know most of the rocks. The Phoenix/Tucson flicks, the Santa Fe flicks, the endless San Fernando Valley/Twentieth Ranch/Palmdale flicks of the early days, and the Oregon films of the 'fifties come readily to mind.

You see, the West has been half myth/half real from the very beginning, as have I. My life has been based on Western assumptions of honor and initiative and Boy Scout rules, but in my middle age man (at 44), I cannot separate fact from fiction. But I am not alone.

Neither can you.

But I will not accept Eastern cultural hegemony anymore, nor will I look to New York City ("New York CIDDY!?! As they say in the Pace commercials -- though San Antonio is still pretty far East for my tastes) for publication, for culture, for literature or guidance. National news is just New York news -- that old New Yorker poster was utterly right. The world DOES end at the western limits of town.

But I will turn my face from the East and publish my own books, and write of western issues for western magazines, and pray that someday you will let us control our own lands, and not force us to live like serfs in some Disneyesque fantasy of "The Wild West." I am not of "the North" or the "Old South." I am of the West and I'm not sure I like you anymore.

Y'all come out here in your Winnebago Death Machines and sit on your big fat Buttes and you know it all, and aren't we just "quaint"? Yeah, like all the other savages in Borneo. Only your congressman decides what to do with 90% of our state, terrified of self-righteous urban ecology sh(r)ills and Natural Resources Defense Counselors. We don't hate you. Really. Promise we don't. We actually believe that you are citizens of the same nation we belong to, and love. But you aren't. You're Easterners, and we're just the facilitators for your Zane Grey fantasies.

So welcome to my Santa Fe of the Mind, where Laramie is just east of here, and Tombstone is only a suburb of Abilene; where Denver is just south of San Francisco, and everywhere in the West can be got to on the next Union Pacific train through town.

I turn my face to the West.

let 'er buck