While scouring Montana history books in search of characters and colliding events for my new series I came across a name I’d read about a time or two before–Nelson Story. He’s always struck me as a very interesting figure of Montana history, staging the first cattle drive from Texas to Montana, eluding murderous jayhackers and defying the orders of a commanding military officer at Fort Kearny. Nelson Story was an adventurous young man and the pioneer of the Montana cattle industry.
In 1866 Montana was all a hubub of miners, military and railroad outfits. Bisen were being hunted to the brink and Native American Indians forced from thier lands, leaving thousands of acres of open grasslands awaiting to be plundered. A young miner who’d just unearthed his forturne not only saw the available grazing lands, but being a miner he knew mining camps had a dire shortage of beef.
Taking his newly acquired forturne to Texas, Story purchased a thousand long horn cattle, hired twenty seven drovers and set out on the longest and most dangerous cattle drive in history.
Crossing thousands of miles of plains and mountains was the easy part–reaching Montana was only the start of new troubles. Story chose a trail dubbed “Bloody Bozeman” (Yup, the Bozeman Trail), a trail that cut straight through designated Indian Territory, yet was riddled with Military forts—-a hot spot of military and Sioux battles. When Story stopped at Fort Laramie they urged him to sell his cattle to the military at a cheap rate and save himself the danger of continuing on. Story refused and purchased extra firearms. As feared, they were set upon by Sioux and his herd was stampeded and a portion stolen by the warriors. The drovers went after their cattle, fighting the Sioux and recovering most of their herd.
When they reached Fort Phil Kearny the commanding officer refused to allow them to continue on, certain they’d attract more hostile attention. Story was detained and ordered to make camp three miles out from the fort. The next morning when troops went out to check on the herd they only found rutted ground and cowpies–Story and his men drove their herd through the night and eventually made it to Gallatin Valley with over six hundred mooing beasts, thus starting the booming cattle trade of Montana.
After Story’s success hundreds of cattle outfits began to poor into the region. Story wasn’t satisfied with cattle, he seems to have been a jack of all trades, successful in numerous other business ventures including banks, flour mills and steamboats.
I found out while doing a web search for pictures that Nelson Story was also an inspiration behind Lonesome Dove. No wonder he sparked my interest
Published at October 8th, 2009 in category Announcements
Miss Lyn Cote has boarded the train and will arrive at the Junction on Saturday. The dear lady is such a joy and the Fillies are looking forward to the visit.
Miss Lyn has written the third book of her Texas Star of Destiny series and it will hit the bookstores early next year. She’s going to tell us about that. Sure sounds like a dandy.
So please hitch up your wagons and help us welcome Miss Lyn back.
It’s difficult to say exactly what creates an incredible onscreen kiss, but it has to be a combination of the chemistry between the actors, the tension that has led up to this point in the story—just like in a book—and the dialogue that accompanies the event. Everyone has his or her favorite movie kisses. Most popular in recent polls were the waterfall scene in The Last of the Mohicans, Twilight (honestly, I didn’t make it that far through the movie), Romeo and Juliet, Gone With the Wind, Katie and Hubbell (Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford) in The Way We Were, that famous upside down kiss in Spiderman, and Moira Kelly and D.B. Sweeney in The Cutting Edge.
Here are a few of mine:
The Notebook – Ryan and Rachel in the rain
Allie: “Why didn’t you write me? Why? It wasn’t over for me, I waited for you for seven years. But now it’s too late.”
Noah: “I wrote you 365 letters. I wrote you everyday for a year.”
Allie: “You wrote me?”
Noah: “Yes. It wasn’t over, it still isn’t over.”
Allie McGraw and Ryan O’Neal in Love Story
“Look, Cavalleri, I know your game, and I’m tired of playing it. You are the supreme Radcliffe smart-a[lec]. The best. You can put down anything in pants. But verbal volleyball is not my idea of a relationship. And if that’s what you think it’s all about, why don’t you just go back to your music, and good luck. See, I think you’re scared. You put up a big glass wall to keep from getting hurt. But it also keeps you from getting touched. It’s a risk, isn’t it, Jenny? At least I had the guts to admit what I felt. Someday, you’re gonna have to come up with the courage to admit you care.”
They stop walking and Jenny says: “I care”
Angie Dickenson and John Wayne in Rio Bravo
Gorgeous young Angie says, “I’m glad we tried it a second time. It’s better when two people do it”
Body Heat – Man oh man did Kathleen Turner and William Hurt ever have chemistry in this flick. Whew! He breaks the bay window with a porch chair and finds the sultry femme fatale waiting for him on the stairs. Wowzer, what a kiss.
“You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man.”
Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn in The Terminator
“I came across time for you, Sarah. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
What could be more romantic, eh?
William and Anna (Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts) after the press conference in Notting Hill.
Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray after dancing to I’ve Had the Time of My Life in Dirty Dancing
Princess Bride – Robin Wright and Carey Elwes
The narrator says to his grandson: “Since the invention of the kiss there have been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.”
Robin Wright actually has two great movie kisses. Besides her Princess Buttercup masterpiece, she ran through the pool at the Washington Monument to kiss Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump.
Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger in Jerry McGuire
“I’m looking for my wife…If this is where it has to happen, then this is where it has to happen. I’m not letting you get rid of me. How about that?…Our company had a very good night. A very, very big night, but it wasn’t complete. It wasn’t nearly close to being in the same vicinity as complete, because I couldn’t share it with you. I couldn’t hear your voice, or laugh about it with you. I missed my wife. We live in a cynical world, a cynical world, and we work in a business of tough competitors. I love you. You complete me.” (Earlier they’d seen a deaf guy sign these words to his girl in an elevator.)
Dorothy tearfully interrupts: “Aw, shut up. Just shut up. You had me at hello. You had me at hello.”
I don’t even know how long this collection of film kisses is, because I couldn’t get through them all, but here’s the most extensive listing of movie kisses I’ve ever seen:
Did I mention your favorite or did you see it in the video?
Can you name five of the movies in this video montage?
“I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords,” said Mark Twain upon his first sight of the “big water” on a summer day in 1863. Although he lived in Virginia City, Nevada and wrote for the Territorial Enterprise, he’d decided to try harvesting timber from the lake’s luxuriant wooded shores for the Comstock Lode mines.
“It was a vast oval,” he later wrote in Innocents Abroad,“…80 or 100 miles in traveling around it.”
Actually, the drive around the Tahoe shorelineis 71 miles, 42 belonging to California, 29 to Nevada. and so spectacular it should be on everybody’s Bucket List. The breathtaking clarity of the lake water exceeds depth of 75 feet! Although this is down from 100 feet in the late 1960’s, it has held stable since 2001. In fact, Mark Twain blamed the clear water for his failures at fishing, saying if he could see fish 80 feet down, they surely could see him as well and refuse to be caught.
The lake holds enough water , 39 trillion gallons, to cover entire California fourteen inches deep. The amount of water evaporating every 24 hours could supply Los Angeles with its daily demand for water!
And some people get to live here! Today Lake Tahoe is a mix of residents and tourists, but the first humans here were the Washoe. For centuries, the tribe migrated here from Nevada’s Carson Valley every summer to seek cooler temperatures and abundant fish and game, and hold religious ceremonies at the lake sacred to them. They named the lake, Da-ow-a-ga, meaning “edge of the lake.” The basketry of the Washoe women is especially famed today.
In 1844, John C. Fremont and Kit Carson recorded the first non-native “sightings.” Mispronouncing the Washoe name, they called the lake “Tahoe.” It was officially named Tahoe in 1945 after names such as Lake Bonpland and Bigler (after California’s third governor) failed to stick. Although Kit Carson went on in 1848 to carve the nearby Carson Pass known then as the Mormon-Emigrant Trail, the Tahoe area was virtually ignored until the discovery of silver in Virginia City in 1859.
Thus began the heartbreaking deforestation of this lush land from 1860-1880’s, as timber was relentlessly cut to build the mines of the Comstock and the boomtowns, trestles and snowsheds of the Central Pacific Railroad. A logging empire established on the east shore clear-cut the entire shoreline, and the natural resources are still recovering. I’m happy that Twain only spent a few half-hearted weeks working a timber claim.
In 1860, the lake had its first permanent resident. General William Phipps claimed 160 acres in today’s Sugar Pine Point and built a humble cabin. During his twelve years at the lake, he built a second cabin, a pier and a boathouse while successfully protecting his homestead from loggers. His homestead is preserved today, and does it ever have a room with a view.
On this same plot at Sugar Pine in 1903, banker Isias Hellman built a vacation cabin, ahem—a spectacular three-story mansion with Phipps’s same view. Sadly, sugar pines are scarce in the basin today, still recovering from the deforestation of more than a century ago. Florence Ehrman inherited her father’s estate in 1920, her heirs selling it to the State of California in 1965, which offers daily tours.
Not far away at Emerald Bay sits Fannette Island, the lake’s only island, overlooked by Vikingsholm Castle. A castle?Vikings? Indeed. In 1928, the bay so reminded Mrs. Lora J. Knight of Norwegian fjords that she instructed a Scandinavian architect to build her a vacation home without chopping down or injuring any of her land’s natural trees. The resulting structure was built with the same methods and details of a Norse fortress circa 800 A.D. and includes sod roofs, like those in Scandinavia which fed livestock in the wintertime. For her guests, Mrs. Knight built a special “tea house” on Fannette Island. Look to the top of the island in the photo to see it.
Now, I’ve seen such historic, iconic waters as Lake Champlain, Walden Pond, the Mississippi, the big Muddy, the Columbia, and others, but nothing, nowhere, does it for me the way Lake Tahoe does. Since it’s one of my favorite places ever, and Twain is one of my favorite authors, I can’t help but quote him again because he said it best. “I have such a high admiration for it (Tahoe) and such a world of pleasant recollections of it, that it is very nearly impossible for me to speak of lakes and not mention it.”
How lucky were Ben Cartwright and the boys to live around here. Sadly, the ranch at the Incline area was closed to tourists in 2004 after a 37-year ride.
How about you? Have you ever visited Lake Tahoe? What other bodies of water are special to you? Do you fish? Have a mountain home? Go river rafting?
(P.s. All the travel brochures warn that it can snow any time at Lake Tahoe. Believe it. Here’s me in late May. )
Do you have the theme song to Rawhide running through your head yet?
Who can forget Clint Eastwood and the show that launched his career?
But, that’s not my topic. Just wanted to get you fired up. Cattle drives are on my mind, that period in American history when cowboys drove large herds from Texas to points north. Though most people know that trail drives lasted from 1867 to 1881, few are aware that cattle were driven to markets in Kansas and Missouri as early as the 1840′s over the Shawnee Trail.
The Shawnee Trail began in San Antonio, Texas. It ran northward through Austin, Waco, and Dallas and crossed the Red River near Preston, Texas at a place called Rock Bluff. The trail divided north of the Red River with part of it veering sharply eastward through Arkansas while the other branch ran due north. The final destination led to rail heads in Baxter Springs and Westport in Kansas and Kansas City, Sedalia, and St. Louis in Missouri. The route passed by a Shawnee village in north Texas and went near the Shawnee Hills in Indian Territory. Many settlers traveled this road in their migration west. At times it was referred to as the Texas Road. But in the 1850′s farmers in Missouri became angry when the herds of Longhorns infected their cattle with a tick-borne disease called Texas fever. The farmers began turning back the drovers and left them with few choices. They could either take them elsewhere or back home to Texas. In 1859 and 1860 violence erupted when drovers encountered stiff resistance and tried to push through the blockades anyway. Then, the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 stopped traffic on the Shawnee Trail north of Indian Territory.
Once the war was over, Jesse Chisholm blazed the Chisholm Trail and herds were taken up from Texas to the Kansas cow towns of Dodge City, Caldwell, Wichita, Newton, Ellsworth, and Abilene. More than half the cattle driven north followed the Chisholm Trail. It was by far the best known and probably the longest at 1,000 miles.
The Goodnight-Loving Trail was developed by Texans Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving. Larry McMurtry brought their lives to the big screen in Lonesome Dove. The Goodnight-Loving Trail started in central Texas, headed due west across the Pecos River into New Mexico and Colorado before reaching a destination in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The Texas/Western Trail started in San Antonio and headed due north through Texas and Indian Territory in Oklahoma to Dodge City, Kansas. Eventually it continued north to Ogallala, Nebraska. There it split into the Texas Trail with one branch continuing to Dakota Territory and other extending west to Cheyenne before turning north again past Fort Laramie through the Powder River Basin and on to Montana Territory.
A lesser-known route was the Chisum Trail that was established by John Chisum. It began in central Texas and traveled west into New Mexico ending at Fort Sumner.
A herd could easily travel 15 miles a day. Any farther than that and the Longhorn would lose their weight. A normal trip lasted three to four months.
The average size of a herd was around 3,000. And with the going price per head at $40 that was quite a hefty profit. Even after paying the fifteen to thirty cowboys it took to drive the Longhorns to the rail head a cattleman came out way ahead. By the way, an ordinary cowboy only earned about $40 to $50 a month on the cattle drive. Sometimes they received a bonus though at the end of the trail if the drover felt they’d earned it.
Here are some surprising statistics:
In 1867, 35,000 head of cattle went up the trails.
By 1869, that figure increased to 350,000.
The peak year was 1871 when cowpunchers moved 600,000 head. Wow!
The last major year was 1881 when 250,000 longhorns were moved out of Texas so that was quite a decrease and was attributed to significant expansion of the railroad.
Cattle had a road brand burned into their hip for the trip so cowboys could tell which herd was whose, since many herds followed the same trails at the same time. At the end of the drive, cattle owners rebranded cattle with a permanent brand if they weren’t to be slaughtered.
Can you imagine spending 6 months of a year away from home and on the road? That’s what the drovers and cowpunchers spent on an average cattle drive-three months there and approximately three back home. Their families probably missed them terribly. And just think about all the things a man got left out of. I’m a homebody down to my bones and wouldn’t want to go through this experience. It’d be too tough. What about you? Are you adventuresome?
Published at October 5th, 2009 in category Gold mining
One of my all-time favorite films is “Giant,” a sprawling epic of Texas with Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and the ill-fated James Dean who was killed in an accident immediately after the filming.It was the highest grossing film until “Superman” assumed that the honor, and it was nominated for eight Oscars, including best supporting actor for James Dean. One theme of the movie was the conflict between oil men and the ranchers.
I was reminded of those raucous oil years not long ago when I heard one of those old family stories that occasionally pop up. My dad’s family homesteaded in southern Arizona in 1911, and I have great family stories, including one in which my then toddler father played with a rattler. But then that’s another story.
There were three brothers and three sisters. The three sisters were all older than the brothers. My oldest uncle, an intrepid fellow who later became a war correspondent, worked on the early wells to earn money for college. One of my aunts ran a boarding house for roustabouts.
So I thought I would check out a little history of oil in the west. It was a little ironic that men searched so long and hard for minerals when black gold lay beneath their feet across the great plains.
One of the first finds was in Texas. Indians had known of places where brown fluids seeped from the earth, oils which healed battle wounds and skin diseases. Around such seeps were invisible substances in the air that would burn forever – better than pine torches to light the night during times of tribal ceremonies. The first pioneers learned to use the brown fluids for softening leather, lubricating wagon axles and making ointments. But most ranchers hated the stuff. It ruin their water for drinking.
In 1886, a rancher near San Antonio drilled for water and hit oil instead. He was not a happy man, not until he discovered he could use it for fuel around the ranch.
But nothing more happened until 1894 when a well being bored for water at Corsicana suddenly spouted oil in a steady stream. It caught fire and started the first oil boom in the west. Corsicana was soon producing petroleum commercially – 1,450 barrels the first year. Four years later production rose to more than half a million barrels.
The find encouraged other petroleum drilling, leading to the Spindletop, a oil gusher near Beaumont that was big enough to surprise even a Texan. The driller expected maybe fifty barrels. With his old fashioned rig, he drove down a thousand feet. According to “The Settlers West” by Martin Schmitt and Dee Brown, the drill pipe shot up out of the casing and knocked off the crown block. “In a very short time,” the driller said, “oil was going up through the top of the derrick and rocks were shot hundreds of feet into the air. Within a few minutes, the oil was holding a steady flow at more than twice the height of the derrick.” Spindletop spilled oil all over the Texas landscape, a hundred thousand barrels a day.
In a few weeks Beaumont was running a high fever. Wooden oil derricks shot up like weeds. The population jumped from ten to thirty thousand. Land values soared from $40 to $1,000,000 an acre.
From then oil fever consumed the country, just as gold fever had a few decades earlier. Oil was found in an impoverished Oklahoma near a sleepy village which the natives called Tulsey Town. Gamblers and speculators and the new fraternity of oil men in big hats and laced boots swarmed into the little town on the Arkansas River. Little Tulsey Town became Tulsa.
The finds in Texas and Oklahoma spurred more searches north and west across the great plains, and strike followed strike. There was so much oil that there weren’t enough storage tanks and thousands of barrels flowed back into the earth or wells caught fire and burned for days.
And wherever oil was found, tents, shacks, saloons and gambling houses, and boarding houses sprung up just as they had in the old cattle trail towns of an earlier generation.
California had some small fields before the Texas finds but boomtowns and oil fever was constrained, perhaps as an aftermath of gold fever until a gusher blew in neaar Lake View and poured out 90,000 barrels a day. The spray covered an area 15 miles around and the well became the richest of all time.
Do any of you have any stories of those black gold glory days. And have you seen “Giant?” If not, do yourself a favor and rent it. The music is great, too.
Published at October 4th, 2009 in category Drawing
“Perhaps more than any other genre, westerns require adherence to some fairly strict guidelines. Writing in this genre requires knowledge of its expectations,” says R. L. Coffield in her article, “Sexuality and Cursing in the Western.”
This applies especially to classic westerns.
Most classic western fans presume a certain code. No explicit scenes. Swearing minimal or nonexistent. But there can be lots of romance amidst the shootin’ and dyin’. Character development is a must. (Or setting development, such as in a classic Zane Grey.) Good triumphs over evil. That’s why classic westerns attract lots of female readers.
In my newest western Creede of Old Montana (to be released October 2009), protagonist Avery John Creede rides into Ft. Benton, Montana, looking for old army pals. Instead, he stumbles into a running gun fight with a notorious outlaw and two women determined to distract him, each for their own reasons. Creede seems at first to either be very naïve with the ladies, or one smooth cowboy. Whichever, the results prove to be the same.
There’s lots of the usual head banging in the book, and it’s not all done by the males.
“With the quickness and velocity of a mother killing a snake with a hoe, Sunny slammed the barrel of the revolver into the back of the outlaw’s head. He crumpled to the sand.”
In one chapter I put Avery John Creede on the trail with this same Sunny (a.k.a. Mary Jane Cutler), and male/female sparks happen…some humorous, some “Aha!” But I do keep a close eye on them. Trust me.
A note about this scene, that also has to do with genre expectations: On the trail ride, even though Sunny’s a tough gal in lots of ways, she rides sidesaddle. That’s not just because she’s wearing a dress. It was thought to be scandalous beyond civilized reason for females to straddle a horse in the 1800s. And much later into the 1900s. She has no intention of breaking that sanction. And I, as the author, try very hard to stick with historical cultural facts. That’s one reason the movie, Shane, rankles me. In an otherwise excellent western, why in the world did the wardrobe people clothe Jean Arthur in pants? U.S. women, even ranch gals, didn’t start wearing slacks of any sort until WWII with the advent of Rosie the Riveter and the influence of the working gal.
That’s what it’s all about for the reader…knowing what to expect when they pick up another title by an author they’ve come to know and enjoy. I try to stay with the expectations…if I don’t, I hear about it…whether I’ve crossed a line in this reader’s mind in language choice, a suggestive taboo, or getting the details right.
Leave a comment to get your name in the drawing for a copy of Stephen’s book Creede of Old Montana.
I’m a firm believer that many of the old ways are the best, and with that theory I include cooking. Finding an old cookbook is a treasure, especially those that are collections created by church ladies—the best cooks ever. Many of my grandmother’s and my husband’s grandmother’s recipes are still family favorites.
Anyone who knows me knows that I frequent flea markets and can’t resist a garage or rummage sale. At a garage sale a year or so ago, I unearthed a fat packet of yellowed recipe cards held together by rubber bands. Eureka! I asked the young woman how much they were. She took them and said, “I didn’t know these were here.” Then turned aside. “Mom, do you know what these are?”
“They must have been Grandma’s,” replied the older woman.
My heart sank. They hadn’t meant to toss them out with the junk.
But persistent one that I am, I asked, “How much?”
“Fifty cents,” says the daughter.
“Oh, a quarter,” says her mother.
“Halleluiah,” I say under my breath and snatch them back.
In that bundle I discovered newspaper clippings and recipes from old packages and hand-written recipes in the spidery penmanship of yesteryear. I’ve had a wonderful time testing them out.
My family loves rhubarb, and it has taken my husband and I several years to establish a good patch of our own. Now I’ve made rhubarb in a good many ways over the years, from plain sauces to crunches and crisps and jellies.But today I’m sharing with you the recipe that made that purchase a gold mine. It’s Rhubarb Cobbler by a lady named Gladys, and while the process seems a little odd, it’s the best cobbler I’ve ever tried.
Back in the day, these ladies weren’t concerned about sugar consumption, but I have experimented with less amounts of sugar and even with substituting part of it for a sugar replacement, and it still comes out great every time.
Rhubarb is a vegetable with a unique taste that makes it a favorite in many pies and desserts. It originated in Asia over 2,000 years ago. It was initially cultivated for its medicinal qualities, and it was not until the 18th century that rhubarb was grown for culinary purposes in Britain and America. In more recent history we heard it referred to as pie plant. Rhubarb is often commonly mistaken to be a fruit but rhubarb is actually a close relative of garden sorrel, and is therefore a member of the vegetable family. Rhubarb is rich in vitamin C and dietary fiber.
Rhubarb is a perennial plant, which forms large fleshy rhizomes and large leaves with long, thick (and tasty) petioles (stalks). Rhubarb stalks are commonly found in supermarkets. Gourmet cooks prize fresh rhubarb. Some folks say the finest quality rhubarb is grown in Michigan, Ontario, Canada, and other northern states in the United States. Fresh rhubarb is available from early winter through early summer. Winter rhubarb is commercially produced in forcing houses in Michigan and Ontario.
RHUBARB COBBLER
From the kitchen of Gladys
4 cups (or more) of cleaned and chopped rhubarb
Place in 9×13 pan (lightly sprayed or not)
Sprinkle with ¼ cup (or less) sugar
Cream together all at once:
¾ cup (or less) sugar
1 cup flour
3 Tbsp melted oleo (margarine)
½ cup milk
1 tsp baking powder
salt
Pour batter over rhubarb.
Mix 1 cup (or less) sugar with 1 Tbsp cornstarch.
Sprinkle over batter.
Pour 1 cup boiling water over all.
Grind cinnamon over the top.
Bake 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees.
Serve plain or with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
I have used as much as 6 cups of rhubarb with the same excellent results.
I have run out of flour and used pancake mix with excellent results.
I’ve added 2 Tbsp of chocolate to the flour mixture and had yummy chocolate cobbler.
I’ve added ginger and cinnamon to the batter for a change.
You can’t mess this up no matter what you do!
My next experiment will be introducing strawberries to the fruit.
Cherries or peaches are also a good combination with rhubarb.
L-R My husband, Max, Larry, Tim, Del, Marybelle, tiny Sean in front, Tom, the dad and Keith
My mother-in-law turned ninety this year and she had perfected this cake before any of you were even a gleam in your daddy’s eye.
That’s a picture of my husband’s family.
A lot of my book Calico Canyon was inspired by tales told me by my mother-in-law.
My husband is the tiny blonde one on the far left.
Wow he was cute.
Grandma Connealy’s Sour Cream Chocolate Cake
2 C. sour cream (I use a boughten container of sour cream)
1 t. vanilla
4 eggs
Beat well and add:
2 ½ C. sifted flour
2 C. sugar
½ C. cocoa
2 t. soda
pinch salt
Beat well. Bake in 9 X 13 pan at 3500 about 45 minutes.
I never use real sour cream because I can’t bear to eat the cake after I’ve used the disgusting stuff in the recipe so I use boughten or I ‘sour’ the cream by adding a teaspoon of lemon juice to 2 C. of fresh cream and let it sit until it curdles. It takes just a few minutes. BUT I don’t think my cake is as good as Grandma’s when she uses that real sour cream. I still can’t stand to do it. RATS!
Do not bother with layers it’s so delicious all that labor isn’t worth it!
Chocolate Fudge Frosting
Delicious but tricky. Easy to overcook.
1 C. sugar
1 heaping T. cocoa
1/3 C. milk
Boil nearly to soft ball stage. That means a candy thermometer which I don’t own. That might be why I always over cook it. Then it turns to a solid, unspreadable chunk of frosting. Add:
1 t. vanilla
1 T. butter
Cool partially. Add:
Powdered sugar to the right consistency.
I always add too much! The only reason I’m including this recipe is because it’s the one my husband’s mother always uses on her Sour Cream Chocolate Cake and, done correctly, it’s about the best in the world. Good luck.
If you’re SCARED, here’s a delicious no fail recipe. Not as good, but still wildly good.
Chocolate Chip Frosting
The best simple chocolate frosting on the planet! This covers top and sides of 9 x 13 cake. ½ recipe for just top of 9 x 13 cake.
eluding murderous jayhackers and defying the orders of a commanding military officer at Fort Kearny. Nelson Story was an adventurous young man and the pioneer of the Montana cattle industry.
Hello Darlings,
The Notebook
Allie McGraw and Ryan O’Neal in Love Story
Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn in The Terminator 
William and Anna (Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts) after the press conference in Notting Hill.
Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger in Jerry McGuire
Thus began the heartbreaking deforestation of this lush land from 1860-1880’s, as timber was relentlessly cut to build the mines of the Comstock and the boomtowns, trestles and snowsheds of the Central Pacific Railroad. A logging empire established on the east shore clear-cut the entire shoreline, and the natural resources are still recovering. I’m happy that Twain only spent a few half-hearted weeks working a timber claim.
like those in Scandinavia which fed livestock in the wintertime. For her guests, Mrs. Knight built a special “tea house” on Fannette Island. 
Do you have the theme song to Rawhide running through your head yet?
“Perhaps more than any other genre, westerns require adherence to some fairly strict guidelines. Writing in this genre requires knowledge of its expectations,” says R. L. Coffield in her article, “
I’m a firm believer that many of the old ways are the best, and with that theory I include cooking. Finding an old cookbook is a treasure, especially those that are collections created by church ladies—the best cooks ever. Many of my grandmother’s and my husband’s grandmother’s recipes are still family favorites. 
My next experiment will be introducing strawberries to the fruit.
