The title for this blog is a bit of hyperbole, but I think it’s true.  El Paso by Marty Robbins has been my favorite song for years.  It came up at P&P a few weeks ago, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. For those who haven’t heard it, I’m included a YouTube video from the 1970s. I recommend ignoring the white jumpsuits. It’s hard to believe we ever thought they were a good idea.   

Here’s El Paso.

And now for some trivia . . .

The song was written by Marty Robbins in almost less time than it takes to sing the 4-1/2 minute long version.  He said in an interview that it came to him almost like a movie and he just wrote it down.

The song is unusual in that there’s no chorus and no repeated lyrics.

El Paso was released in September 1959 and went to No. 1.  In 1961, it won the Grammy for Best Country and Western Recording.

The Grateful Dead did a cover of  El Paso.

El Paso appeared on Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs.  Today on Amazon, there are 107 review that break down like this: 5 Stars — 100.  4 Stars — 6.  3 Stars — 1. The solo 3-Star reviewer didn’t like the  change in the order of the songs on the digitally remastered CD.

The City of El Paso named a park after Marty Robbins.

The song on the flipside of the old 45 was Running Gun.

The Glaser Brothers supplied the harmony, and Grady Martin played the Tex Mex style guitar that gives the song so much character.

Marty Robbins’ real name was Shane Dawson. He was born September 26, 1925.  He passed away December 8, 1982 from a heart ailment. He had a twin sister.

And now here are the lyrics that first made me love western romance . . . 

El Paso by Marty Robbins

Out in the West Texas town of El Paso
I fell in love with a Mexican girl.
Night-time would find me in Rosa’s cantina;
Music would play and Felina would whirl.Blacker than night were the eyes of Felina,
Wicked and evil while casting a spell.
My love was deep for this Mexican maiden;
I was in love but in vain, I could tell.

One night a wild young cowboy came in,
Wild as the West Texas wind.
Dashing and daring,
A drink he was sharing
With wicked Felina,
The girl that I loved.

So in anger I

Challenged his right for the love of this maiden.
Down went his hand for the gun that he wore.
My challenge was answered in less than a heart-beat;
The handsome young stranger lay dead on the floor.

Just for a moment I stood there in silence,
Shocked by the FOUL EVIL deed I had done.
Many thoughts raced through my mind as I stood there;
I had but one chance and that was to run.

Out through the back door of Rosa’s I ran,
Out where the horses were tied.
I caught a good one.
It looked like it could run.
Up on its back
And away I did ride,

Just as fast as I

Could from the West Texas town of El Paso
Out to the bad-lands of New Mexico.

Back in El Paso my life would be worthless.
Everything’s gone in life; nothing is left.
It’s been so long since I’ve seen the young maiden
My love is stronger than my fear of death.

I saddled up and away I did go,
Riding alone in the dark.
Maybe tomorrow
A bullet may find me.
Tonight nothing’s worse than this
Pain in my heart.

And at last here I

Am on the hill overlooking El Paso;
I can see Rosa’s cantina below.
My love is strong and it pushes me onward.
Down off the hill to Felina I go.

Off to my right I see five mounted cowboys;
Off to my left ride a dozen or more.
Shouting and shooting I can’t let them catch me.
I have to make it to Rosa’s back door.

Something is dreadfully wrong for I feel
A deep burning pain in my side.
Though I am trying
To stay in the saddle,
I’m getting weary,
Unable to ride.

But my love for

Felina is strong and I rise where I’ve fallen,
Though I am weary I can’t stop to rest.
I see the white puff of smoke from the rifle.
I feel the bullet go deep in my chest.

From out of nowhere Felina has found me,
Kissing my cheek as she kneels by my side.
Cradled by two loving arms that I’ll die for,
One little kiss and Felina, good-bye.  

Carolina’s Courage is about a young girl who leaves her New Hampshire home to travel west with her family.  They’re part of a wagon train, and Carolina’s most beloved possession is her china doll. Somewhere in the story she reluctantly trades it with a little Indian girl, and it’s that trade that leads to peace and safe passage for the entire wagon train.

Carolina’s Courage was the first “western” I ever read.  I’m so glad my mom took me to the library that summer. At summer’s end I’d read 25 books, each noted in my little-girl block printing and acknowledged with a stick-on gold star. That first summer reading program led to many others, and I will be forever grateful to the librarians who made it such fun. I discovered Laura Ingalls Wilder at the library.  Same with Jack London . . . Later I moved on to Willa Cather’s My Antonia and O Pioneers.

Both of my grandmothers also encouraged my love of books.  I was about ten years old when Nana Bylin bought me my first Black Stallion book.  I read it fast, and then I read it again.  Every week for the next few months, she had a new book waiting for me.  When we finished the Black Stallion series, we launched into Nancy Drew. That was good for a year of reading! 

My other grandmother played a different role in my love for books. She was a writer at heart.  She never ventured into fiction, but she wrote wonderful letters. She lived about 400 miles away when I was in middle school, and we wrote weekly.  I wish now she’d written her memories in a journal. I don’t have the details, but she and her family traveled to New Braunfels, Texas in a covered wagon. 

The other individuals who encouraged me to read were elementary school teachers.  My fifth grade teacher put Caddie Woodlawn  into my hands and I loved it.  Every week when we went to the school library, I found something new and intriguing. For a while, I was hooked on biographies. I discovered Sacajawea  on the biography shelf and read it many times.

Has this blog jogged your memory?  What books do you remember reading as a child?  Do you remember the very first chapter book you ever read?  Books have always been magical to me. They still are!

Bordertown, a Wild Western featuring two lawmen straddling the U.S/Canadian border in 1880, ran on Family channel for 78 eisodes, from January 7, 1989 through May 17, 1991. Although its three-year run was deemed a rousing success—indeed, the Canadian production was the highest-rated original series for Family Channel–huge costs unfortunately halted production. 

More’s the pity. The town often poured with rain and ran with mud, but I loved it.  The community of Bordertown had been known as “Pemmican” until a survey of the 49^th parallel in 1880 split things up. Residents were dumbfounded that the new border ran not just down the main drag but also right through the middle of the local law enforcement office!

Corporal Clive Bennett (John H. Brennan) of the Royal Mounted Police and former Texas Ranger, U.S. Marshal Jack Craddock (Richard Comar) are both upstanding lawmen who try to maintain the peace despite being very different sorts.

Rough and tumble Jack is a former gunfighter/Texas Ranger, and Confederate fighter. Mountie Clive, proper and idealistic, was formerly stationed in the more civilized big city, Toronto, Ontario. 

Their shared situation and love of the law has the potential for success except…both guys fancy themselves In Love with Marie Dumont (Sophie Barjac), the town doctor who also runs the mercantile. Her late husband, Jacque, was also a physician, and she has adopted a local orphaned girl. 

Despite their mutual love interest, The Marshal and the Mountie deal pretty well together with rowdy outlaws and bounty hunters and duels. However, they also tend to such sensitive matters as the local Cree tribe producing documents claiming the town as theirs, and a whole Indian village mysteriously perishing. 

As with some American made Westerns, notable historical figures sometimes promenade through Bordertown, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Bat Masterson. And kind of portending Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, a strong female lead shows her medical chops and political sensitivity: the saloon keeper Zack Denny’s wife Diane is a former slave.

One of the most poignant episodes involves Clive going after the outlaws who have wounded rival Jack and killed two other lawmen. However, Clive’s pistol misfires, blinding him. To escape the bad guys, he must accept help from a young woman, a prostitute the Mountie ran out of Bordertown some years back. 

The series was shot near beautiful Maple Ridge, British Columbia.
The series is available in a a boxed set of DVD’s at Amazon. To watch episodes free on line, or to see the opening credits/hear theme song, click here:

http://www.ovguide.com/tv/bordertown.htm

 Anybody else remember Bordertown?

After I graduated from the giant orange and yellow daisy prints of my college dorm room, I turned my bachelorette apartment turned into a haven of gentle yellow gingham. A few years later, the everyday dishes I selected for our first home bore that theme. One serving bowl relic, left,  still survives, and I selected red gingham for our first Christmas. (A few relics survive here, too.) The kids’ nursery wore yellow gingham…so I guess it wasn’t a surprise that said gingham should reappear in my life in my later years. This time, it’s black.  

Yet it seems such a prairie material. So I thought I’d peek into its history a bit. Gingham was first produced in the 1600’s in England as a striped pattern and imported to the colonies. By the mid 1800′s, when it was being heavily produced in the mills of Manchester, it became woven into a checked or plaid pattern which often featured blue and white.

 The warp (lengthwise strands attached to the loom) and filling (horizontal strands that cross the warp) in gingham are usually balanced, and if the fabric is comprised of checks of two colors, the same sequence is used in both the warp and the filling. Gingham is reversible; the front looks the same as the back. The yarns used are usually white with one contracting color. 

When made from cheap cotton, gingham was often used in the past like muslin, to make “trial” copies of new dress designs.  Today’s gingham is woven from cotton-polyester blend to reduce shrinking, and premiere ginghams can be made from wool, silk or linen. 

The origin of the term “gingham” can be contentious. Some claim it came from the Italian “ging-gang” while others cite the Malaysian word “genggang.” Still others argue its origin as Indonesian. Whatever, the word came to the English language via the Dutch. Everybody agrees that in all the above languages, the root word does mean  ”striped.”

Gingham is everywhere–even our masater bedroom, above.  Its pattern appears on oilcloth tablecloths, curtains, casual dress for women and kids, kitchen ware including my glamorous rubber gloves. The lightweight texture is perfect for summer, but in darker hues and wool, good in the cold. Yesterday our waitress at breakfast wore a white retro-style uniform and cap trimmed in black mini-gingham. I felt right at home. 

However, there are several varieties besides the traditional checkered pattern. Chambray fabric uses white yarn in the weft-direction and a dyed yarn in the warp direction, but the fabric appears to be one color. “Shagbark” is a type of gingham where the warp yarn is allowed to go “slack” occasionally to give the cloth an interesting texture. “Madras” is a familiar plaid gingham that originated in India, a non-colorfast cloth that tends to bleed. 

Gingham production lifted the economies of England and the southern U.S., and was the most popular fabric sold by many textile companies, even through the 20^th century. Counterchange smocking of gingham checks and stripes can make highly unusual, sophisticated patterns in the classic pattern, and the impact of gingham is intense in the “craft” world. 

Not to mention my family home LOL. 

So what about you? Any gingham fans out there? How about anybody who does weaving or knows how to use a loom?

P.s. It was exciting on Christmas Day to learn I am  nominated for Favorite Author at the CAPA Awards presented by The Romance Studio.                                                                                                                                                                                                            

I’m a total sucker when it comes to redeemed outlaws, and Ethan was classic. He gets in plenty of trouble, but mostly because his past keeps catching up with him. He has no idea how to raise his orphaned niece and nephews, but he does his best. And the romance!  The sparks that fly between Ethan and Amelia nearly caught the TV on fire.  Without a doubt, Ethan Allen Cord is my favorite TV western hero.

No. 2 on the list would be Johnny Madrid from Lancer.  The show was set in the San Joaquin Valley in the 1870s. It’s definitely an oldie, but it sure caught my little-girl imagination. The premise of the show involved two brothers returning to their father’s ranch. Scott Lancer was blond, a Harvard graduate and a Boston gentleman. Johnny Madrid was a rebel, drifter and gunslinger.  The actor who played Johnny Madrid was James Stacy. His life changed dramatically in 1973 when he was struck by a drunk driver while on his motorcycle. Tragically he lost his left arm and leg and his girlfriend was killed. He continued to act and was twice nominated for Emmy awards.

My No. 3 TV cowboy is from High Chaparral. Manolito was played by Henry Darrow. He was the brother-in-law of John Cannon, the owner of a ranch called the High Chaparral. The series was set in Arizona Territory in the 1870s. What I remember most is that Manolito had a bit of rebel in him. I’m detecting a pattern here . . . my favorite TV cowboys are all bad boys, rebels, gunfighters, etc..

There’s a tie for the No. 4 slot on my list.  Does anyone remember The Quest with Kurt Russell and Tim Matheson as brothers looking for their sister? The series only ran for 15 episodes, but I didn’t miss a single one.  Kurt and Tim played Morgan and Quentin Beaudine.  Morgan had lived with the Cheyenne for eight years and was also called Two Persons. Quentin was a physician from San Francisco. Together they were searching for their sister. The series ended in part because interest in westerns faded in the 1970s, but it also had the bad luck to run opposite Charlie’s Angels.

I’m giving the No. 5 slot to . . . Decisions! Decisions!  My first thought was Little Joe Cartwright from Bonanza.  It just doesn’t seem right to leave him off the list, but my real choice is Tom Hart from Broken Trail.  He’s not as retro as the first four picks, which is one of the things that appeals to me.  Broken Trail proved that westerns are still relevant. Honor, independence, courage and loyalty never go out of style.

I can think of a lot of shows I didn’t mention. Dr. Quinn is at the top of the list.  Then there’s The Virginian and Gunsmoke and The Rifleman.  I also loved pioneer-themed shows like The Monroes.

What shows would you add to the list?  Which characters were your favorites?  Westerns may be more retro than trendy, but I will always love them.