Ah know this is a busy time for everyone but we all need to take a break and relax a spell.

How better to do that than with Miss Kathy Steffen.

Miss Kathy is on our doorstep as I speak. She’s here to visit with us tomorrow at the meetin’ place. You know where it is right here in Wildflower Junction.

You can learn about ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night. Ah just hope she isn’t bringing them with her because I don’t want to wrestle with one when ah’m on my way to the privy. No sirree! Spirits and I haven’t gotten on speakin’ terms yet.

Miss Kathy is also going to talk about her new book. You won’t want to miss that. Or the chance to win a two-book set that she’ll give away to one lucky person.

We need your help in making her visit one to remember. Shake the wrinkles out of your bustle and head over here!

One week to Christmas!  So, is everyone ready?

Today marks the end of semester finals for my boys and school bus duties for me–wooohooo!!!  I love it when my boys are out of school for Christmas break. We have some serious hustling and bustling to do over the next week–sad to say, but we still need a tree!  We had hoped to be moving back home into our remodeled house this weekend, but a big snaffu with kitchen cabinets has dashed those hopes, so it’s time to deck the halls we’ve got while painting the ones where we’re not   We plan to find time to head up the mountain while my boys are out of school for a day in the snow, and of course, build snowmen.  We don’t live in the snow but we can see it–the mountains are beautiful!!  Anyone have any winter activities planned?  Or plans on staying inside where it’s cozy and warm?  Am I the only one still Christmas shopping? 

For those still in need of a stocking stuffer–I’ll be giving away a copy  of THE GUNSLINGER’S UNTAMED BRIDE and a beaded dragonfly clip to one lucky poster today!

Hope you enjoy these snowman funnies…the first one is so fitting for my guys…

The Gunslinger’s Untamed Bride (Harlequin Historical Series)

There were so many great suggestions for my ghost town in Colorado that I had a hard time choosing one.  I finally settled on Devil’s Creek, suggested by Pat Cochran.  Pat, send me your address and I’ll send you the books.

Thanks all.

Hello Darlings,

It’s almost time to unveil our Christmas doings and bring a special treat from all the Fillies to you.

The place looks right nice with jillions of decorations and gewgaws, everything we could find. I don’t think we could do any better if I say so myself. Jolly old St. Nick won’t have a lick of trouble finding us.

But, that’s not all we’ve been doing. You should’a seen Pam, Cheryl, Stacey, Pat, Elizabeth, Karen, Mary, Kate, Linda and Charlene juning around like little chickens looking for a kernel of corn. Hee-hee. We’ve been baking up a storm and laying out the table. The pies and whatnot are cooling and we’ve got the table ready, just waiting for you to park your behinds in the chairs.

Now for the big news….

Starting Monday, December 22nd, we’re going to entertain you for ten days.

Our own talented Pat Potter has written a story serial that by all accounts is a humdinger. One segment will be posted each morning, except on weekends. Then, in the afternoons we’re going to give you a sneak peek inside each Filly’s life (one per day.) Some of us might show you a special corner of our home…or a corner inside our hearts. You’ll get to see some of the things that make us tick.

Shoot, you’ll even get a peek at my humble abode!

Also, don’t forget our guest authors on Saturdays. We’ll have Jane Myers Perrine on Dec. 27 and Linda Ford is set up for Jan. 3. Help us roll out the red carpet for these talented ladies.

We do think you’ll enjoy all the festivities, so come and take the load off. Prop up your feet and spend the holidays with us. Just follow the trail to Wildflower Junction.

You can’t miss it.

How many of you ordered at least a few of your Christmas gifts online? It’s really the easiest way to shop, isn’t it? No crowds, no icy parking lots. You have the world of items at your fingertips and they can be delivered overnight if you’re willing to pay. Our forefathers couldn’t have dreamed of the ease with which we shop today. Meat, milk, fresh fruits and vegetables are a few blocks away. Clothing is ready to wear and in every size imaginable. We are a spoiled generation, and I don’t know about you, but I’m loving it.

Even as early as the 1800s one savvy businessman was thinking up a way to take merchandise to people across the country. The Montgomery Ward catalog is known as one of the most influential American books ever published. The Grolier Club stated: “The mail order catalogue has been perhaps the greatest single influence in increasing the standard of American living. It brought the benefit of wholesale prices to city and hamlet, to the crossroads and prairie.”

Aaron Montgomery Ward was born in Chatham, New Jersey in 1844. His family traveled west to Niles, Michigan in 1853 where his father took up the cobbler’s trade. Aaron left school at fourteen to work in brickyards and a barrel factory where he learned his most valuable lesson: “I learned I was not physically or mentally suited for brick or barrel making.” Gotta love this guy. He’s the Bill Gates of yesteryear.

After clerking at a shoe store and then a country store where he earned six dollars a month plus board, he was ready to go to the big city. Apparently he wasn’t physically or mentally suited for retail work either.

In the 1850s Chicago was home to thirty thousand people and known, none too affectionately, as “The Mudhole of the Prairies.” The streets were barely above the level of Lake Michigan and covered with bottomless goo. But by the late 1860s Chicago was teeming with post-Civil War energy. Fifteen railroad lines moved 150 trains a day out of the busy terminals. Like thousands of other young men, Ward arrived in Chicago in 1866 and began work in various dry goods firms, including one operated by Marshall Field. He became a salesman, his income rising to the princely sum of twelve whole dollars a week.

As he made his tedious rounds through the mud in his horse and buggy he took notice of the country stores. While they were friendly places with potbelly stoves and made fine meeting places for local farmers, they were far from friendly when the farmers had to actually buy something. Selection was small and prices were high. The storekeeper was at the mercy of the big city wholesalers. Sort of like American consumers and the oil companies.

Ward considered how he could help the disadvantaged farmer and decided on a mail order store. He would set up in the big city where he could easily reach suppliers and buy in quantity to get the best prices. A catalog listing his prices would be sent to farmers who would then receive their order by mail, cash on delivery. It was not a new idea but the few direct mail firms at the time sold only one or two items. Ward was going to bring the whole store to the farmer.

Ward worked and saved. He talked about his idea with friends and associates. The nay sayers claimed he would go broke trying to sell goods sight-unseen to back country folk, but he was not dissuaded. By 1871 he finally saved enough money to buy a small amount of goods at wholesale prices.  As luck (or bad luck) would have it, on October 8, 1871 the Great Chicago Fire engulfed the city for thirty hours. Every building in a four square mile area was destroyed, and along with them…Ward’s inventory.

He was not discouraged. By August 1872 he had scraped up money and convinced a few people to join him, raising sixteen hundred dollars in working capital. He printed up a one-page price list and hand addressed the first circulars to the Grangers, a co-operative farm supply organization. One of his earliest pricelists contained 163 items under the banner “Supplied By The Cheapest Cash House In America.” Most of the items cost one dollar, even the clothing, a 6-view stereoscope, and a backgammon set.

For most of 1873, Ward’s mailbox was bare. By then his partners wanted out, and Ward, who still had his sales job, managed to buy them out of their small investments. The panic of 1873 was quickly sinking established traditional retailers, let alone his radical enterprise. His business was ridiculed by the Chicago Tribune as a disreputable firm “hidden from public gaze with no merchandise displayed and reachable only through the post office.” Under threat of a lawsuit, the Tribune printed a retraction. The retraction was added to the next flyer and sales increased.

About this time, ready-made clothing began appearing. It was always believed that no two people had the same measurements, and tailors were needed to make quality clothes. But the crunch for uniforms in the Civil War had demonstrated that certain combinations of measurements could be standardized. Ward told his faraway customers: “Give your age and describe your general build and we will nine times out of ten give you a fit.”

Ward, a short, stout man, wrote all the early copy. He always included a message in his catalogs, often educating the reader about buying and selling. “It is best to make your order around five dollars. Shipping charges on small orders will eat up your savings. Consider joining a buying club with your neighbors.”

As consumers came to trust Ward’s unseen store, business grew rapidly. He bound his first catalog in 1874 and in 1875 the book grew to seventy-two pages. Ward began to worry he might become too big and took an ad in Farmers Voice just to reassure his customers he had not lost touch with their needs.

In 1893 Ward sold controlling interest to George R. Thorne who had come on as a partner late in 1873. Ward remained president, but after a while he stopped attending board meetings. The last twenty years of his life were spent preserving the Chicago waterfront as a park for the people. He spent over two hundred thousand dollars of his own money to defend the public’s right to open space.

His long-time efforts to prevent the erection of buildings along Lake Michigan won him the title of “The Watch Dog of the Lake Front.” At one time there were forty-six building projects planned in the park and he fought them all successfully, losing many influential friends along the way. Finally, just before his death in 1913 he won his final legal battle to forever keep the waterfront an open area. He was sixty nine years old.

 
The Tribune, no friend of Montgomery Ward, wrote: “We know now that Mr. Ward was right, was farsighted, was public spirited. That he was unjustly criticized as a selfish obstructionist or as a fanatic. Before he died, it is pleasant to think Mr. Ward knew that the community had swung round to his side and was grateful for the service he had performed in spite of misunderstanding and injustice.”

It was the men and women with unwavering belief in their ideas and innovations that broke ground for the rest of the country. Sears Roebuck and Bloomingdales followed with catalogue merchandise, and to this day we all receive catalogs in the mail for seeds and lingerie, hunting gear, and all manner of merchandise.

When you think about it, ebay is a gigantic online catalog with auction sales. Amazon is an amazing online catalog of every book, CD, DVD etc. available! What would Mr. Ward have thought? Craigslist is an online local catalog of the good things people are selling. Have I ever mentioned how much I love Craigslist? Take a photo, post a listing and the next day you have someone pay you to haul your junk away. What a deal!

I even ordered prints of photos online and am waiting for an email to tell me they’re ready to pick up. My other packages have all arrived, and I did very little real world shopping this year. How about you? Did you place any catalog orders?

 ORDER WARDS CATALOGS FROM AMAZON:

My exciting news is that HER MONTANA MAN is featured in the Doubleday and Rhapsody Book Clubs this month in hardcover! Yee haw!

I hope you darlings have wound up your Christmas shopping and will join us to welcome Miss Kathy Steffen.

The dear lady has set her sights on Wildflower Junction and will arrive shortly for a stay in our fair town. She’ll be giving us the low-down on ghosts and hauntings. Ah do hope she won’t find any wandering spirits around here to frighten you off. Ah hear they won’t hurt a body, but don’t know it for a fact.

Miss Kathy will be promoting her latest book, Jasper Mountain. She’s going to give away a two-book set to one lucky person who leaves a comment. That’d sure make a fine Christmas gift for someone.

So lay down your wrapping paper and bows and head over to the meeting place. We’ll be waiting for you!

Does anyone feel like the true meaning of Christmas is a little bit lost?

Okay.  Alot lost?

Christmas has become more of a retailer’s phenomenon than a religious holiday destined to remind us of why we’re here on this earth.  While we make ourselves crazy shopping, we forget why Jesus was born, what He would grow up to do.  We don’t think of salvation, compassion, or good will toward men.

If we’re not careful, the true meaning will be forever lost in the commercialism.  That’s why we have to start with the youngest of our humanity.  The future generations. 

Our children.

Years ago, my sister-in-law gave each of us a red bag filled with trinkets.   They came with a story, too, which never fails to choke me up.

I’d like to share that story with you today. 

Just a week before Christmas, I had a visitor. This is how it happened. I had just finished the household chores for the night and was preparing to go to bed when I heard a noise in the front of the house. I opened the door of the front room, and to my surprise, Santa Claus himself stepped out from behind the Christmas tree. He placed his fingers over his mouth so I would not cry out.

“What are you doing?” I started to ask, but the words lodged in my throat as I saw he had tears in his eyes. His usual jolly manner was gone…gone was the eager, boisterous soul we all know.

He then answered with a simple statement of “teach the children”. I was puzzled. What did he mean? He anticipated my question and with one quick movement brought forth a miniature toy bag from behind the tree. As I stood there bewildered, Santa said again, “Teach the children. Teach them the meaning of Christmas…the meanings that Christmas nowadays has forgotten.”

I started to say, “How can I…” when Santa reached into the toy bag and pulled out a shining star.

“Teach the children the star was the heavenly sign of promise long ages ago. God promised a Savior for the world and the star was a sign of the fulfillment of that promise. The countless shining stars at night, one for each man, now show the burning hope of all mankind.” Santa gently laid the star upon the fireplace mantle and drew forth from the bag a red Christmas tree ornament.

“Teach the children red is the first color of Christmas. It was first used by the faithful people to remind them of the blood which was shed for all the people by the Savior. Christ gave His life and shed His blood that every man might have God’s gift of Eternal Life. Red is deep, intense, vivid…it is the greatest color of all. It is the symbol of the gift of God.”

“Teach the children,” he said as he dislodged a small Christmas tree from the depths of the toy bag. He placed it before the mantle and gently hung the red ornament on it. The deep green of the fir tree was a perfect background for the ornament. Here was the second color of Christmas.

“The pure green color of the stately fir tree remains green all year round,” he said. “This depicts the everlasting hope of mankind. Green is the youthful, hopeful, abundant color of nature. All needles point Heavenward, symbols of man’s returning thoughts toward Heaven. The great green tree has been man’s best friend. It has sheltered him, warmed him, made beauty for him.”

Suddenly I heard a soft tinkling sound.

“Teach the children that as the lost sheep are found by the sound of the bell, it should ring for a man to return to the fold. It means guidance and return. It further signifies that all are precious in the eyes of the Lord.” As the soft sound of the bell faded into the night, Santa drew forth a candle. He placed it on the mantle and the soft glow from its tiny flame cast a glow about the darkened room. Odd shapes in shadows slowly danced and weaved upon the walls.

“Teach the children,” whispered Santa, “that the candle shows man’s thanks for the star of long ago. Its small light is the mirror of starlight. At first candles were placed on the trees. They were like many glowing stars shining against the dark green. The colored lights now take over in remembrance.”

Santa turned the small Christmas tree lights on and picked up a gift from underneath the tree. He pointed to the large bow and said, “A bow is placed on a present to remind us of the brotherhood of man. We should remember that the bow is tied as men should be tied, all of us together, with the bonds of goodwill toward each other. Goodwill forever is the message of the bow.”

Santa slung his bag over his shoulder and began to reach for the candy cane placed high upon the tree. He unfastened it and reached out toward me with it.

“Teach the children that the candy cane represents the shepherd’s crook. The crook on the staff helps bring back the strayed sheep to the flock. The candy cane represents the helping hand we should show at Christmas time. The candy candy cane is the symbol that we are our brothers’ keepers.

As Santa looked about the room, a feeling of satisfaction shone in his face. He read wonderment in my eyes, and I am sure he sensed my admiration on this night.

He reached into his bag and brought forth a holly wreath. He placed it on the door and said, “Please teach the children the wreath symbolizes the eternal nature of love; it never ceases, stops, or ends. It is one continuous round of affection. The wreath does double duty. It is made of many things and in many colors. It should remind us of all the things of Christmas.

Please teach the children.”

Do you try to keep the true meaning of Christmas alive at your house?  How?  What customs do you do–or used to do–that would help you and your children remember what the Season is truly about?

By the way–Santa’s story and his red bag of trinkets makes a wonderful treasured family heirloom.  Feel free to make this story your gift to someone you love!

The Fillies will be taking a well-deserved break for a couple of weeks.  I’ll be back the first Wednesday in January.  Until then . . .

May you have the most joyful of Christmases filled with the light from God’s love!

   Click to buy from Amazon!

Where I live in Wichita County in North Texas the land is rolling hills, arid, and for the most part, barren. I can’t imagine what the early settlers must’ve thought when they first laid eyes on it. It doesn’t even remotely look like a fertile place in which to make a home. There’s just not much to recommend it so I have no idea what the attraction was.

Other than a few trees that grew along the streams and rivers, wood was a scarce commodity. So when pioneers came west and settled here, they had nothing except dirt from which to make a home. They grabbed a shovel and set to work. The early settlers carved dugouts into the sides of hills around here. Also, the dugouts were actually warmer in winter and cooler in summer than other types of houses.

But they were nothing to write home about. They were dark inside with only a door to allow light and the floors in most all of them was nothing but dirt. Can you imagine trying to keep things clean?

Or keep the creepy crawly things out.

Or for the pioneer woman to see to do the sewing, cooking or reading.

It must’ve been miserable even though they were lucky to have the shelter.

According to the Wichita Falls Museum of North Texas History here, one of the early families to make friends with the Wichita Indians and set up housekeeping on the tall grass prairie was the W. T. Bunton family. He carved a dugout from a hill that is near our present day downtown area and lived in it with his wife and two boys. Several more children were born to them there. I’m sure cramped wasn’t the word for the tight quarters.

Another family to settle here was Monroe Dodson with his wife and children. He too carved a dugout from a bluff.

Here’s an excerpt from a young adult nonfiction book titled “In the Land of the Wichitas” by Dorothy Crowder that describes the Dodson dugout:

“Other than a few cowboys from the Samuel Burk Burnett 6666 Ranch, there were no other white neighbors of the Dodson family. Let us go near the dugout which serves as the family home. It is carved from the red earth of the river’s bluff. It is 14 x 14 and houses the entire family and the hunting dog. Mr. Dodson has carved a fireplace into the south side of the dugout. The chimney does not draw well, and the tiny room is filled with smoke…. The children are tumbled in piles of fur, which form their beds….”

Oh, lovely! The pioneers paid a handsome price for adventure, cheap land, and wide open spaces.

The book doesn’t mention what kind of fuel the Dodson’s used in their fireplace but I’m sure it was mostly dried buffalo chips or something like that. Thousands of buffalo roamed this area until the buffalo hunters killed them all off.

The museum has an exhibit currently on display called “A Texas Christmas on the Frontier.” The exhibit features a replica of the Dodson dugout and I loved getting a feel of what life must’ve been like living in one. One of the striking things about the display is how cramped the dugout actually was and how dark and dreary it was inside.

At Christmas the pioneers brought in a tumbleweed if they wanted to celebrate the holiday since a tree wasn’t to be had, not even mesquite until the cattle drives got in full swing. This one in the dugout exhibit is decorated with a single string of popcorn.

Sort of reminds me of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

Do you think you would’ve been desperate enough to drag in a tumbleweed and try to make it look festive? To what lengths do you go to celebrate the holidays? Do you go all out or keep things simple and to a minimum?

<–Click to preorder

THE GOLD RUSH CAMPS 

My work in progress takes place in the remnants of a once thriving gold mining camp. I’ve been doing mountains of research, trying to find a likely location in the right time frame. I’ve rummaged through any number of books on mining towns in the west.  And I have all kinds of tidbits to share.

It seems backward that the gold rush began in California and moved eastward rather than the reverse. But California was where the first gold was found, and it seemed the world was bound to follow.

The many thousands who headed for California at the first cry of gold in 1848 swelled the population from 14,000 to a census of 112,856 in 1852. “The whole country,” wrote one San Francisco newspaper editor, “resounds with the sordid cry of ‘gold, GOLD! GOLD! while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and everything neglected but the manufacture of shovels and pick axes.”

The gold rush spread from Sutter’s Mill both north and south, from southwestern Oregon toward Mount Shasta and along the eastern side of California’s central valleys. Towns sprung up at every find, and rewards were sometimes extraordinary. One lump of gold unearthed at Sonora weighed twenty-eight pounds. A small group from Monterey took two hundred and seventy three pounds from the Feather River in seven weeks.

For lack of a functioning government, the Forty Niners turned to themselves for governance. As soon as any considerable number of them reached a new strike, they gathered at a central point amidst their tents and shanties, elected officers and selected a committee to draw up law governing their ‘district.”

From the beginning, one feature was common: every one was to have equal opportunity to dig and not be thrust aside by hogs. The exception was the the discoverer who sometimes was awarded two claims.   No one individual could hold more than a single plot, though contiguous claim holders might operate their ground in common. Boundaries were carefully defined in a book kept by the camp recorder. An owner held title only so long as he actively worked the ground. Wherever he failed to meet requirements concerning the amount of labor to be expended during a given period, the claim reverted to the public domain and could be reappropriated.

Because the first camps were often very rich, the area allotted was small, sometimes as little as ten feet square per claim. In later days, after the best ground had been picked over, claim sizes increased but remained smaller than in other mineral sections of the West,

Jails did not exist, and justice tended to be summary. Trials were held promptly and a jury arranged. Punishment consisted of flogging, banishment, the cutting off of ears or immediate hanging.

But by 1852, most of the easy-to- handle placer gold had been skimmed away, and new sources had to be found. The individual miner was replaced by companies that damned rivers and used high pressure nozzles to wash mountains of gravel into batteries of sluice boxes and by sheer volume wrung a profit from the light dusting of gold the material contained. By 1858 the annual yield of gold dropped from eighty one million to forty six million, and the individual miner had little hope of earning a living. Thousands of restless miners milled about waiting impatiently for the “next California.”

The mining camps, often situated in heavily wooded mountain areas, were abandoned or destroyed by wildfires. Their inhabitants moved on in search of the next big strike. Miners were, if nothing else, optimistic.

Traces of gold was found in Colorado in 1848 but there was not enough to divert the migration to California. It wasn’t until 1858 that a modest strike was found up the Platt River. So many previous finds had been dismissed as rumors or hoaxes, that new claims were disbelieved.   But in 1958, the New York Times declared this gold rush real, and thousands headed for the rugged Colorado mountains. Dozens of camps and towns popped up only to meet the same fate as those in California. Most had a life expectancy of no more than pthree years.

In Colorado, the same governmental structure existed. Miners organized the area into a mining district and laid down some rough rules. These rules usually decided that no one except the man who first discovered a particular gold field could hold by right of discovery more than one creek (placer) one gulch (patch) and one mountain (lode) claim. The dimension of a placer claim was larger than those in California, usually one hundred feet square.

Many of these towns had colorful names: Fairplay, Fiddletown, Drytown, Hell’s hollow, Jackass Hill, Pokerville, Poverty Gulch, Tin Cup and Buckskin Joe. Fairplay was a typical tent city and in the manner of boom camps everywhere it had a handful of rough-hewn log cabins, a hotel, three newspapers and twelve whorehouses.

Finding gold in either California foothills or the Colorado mountains depended a great deal on luck. Getting the gold out of the ground depended on hard back- breaking work. Panning was the simplest way to separate placer gold from dirt and rocks, but it was slow, back-breaking work in icy streams.

Not fun. Most of the miners who eagerly raveled to the gold fields expecting to pick up nuggets turned away disillusioned when they realized the amount of hard labor required for a day’s wages. Thus, most mining camps became ghost towns.

For time reasons, my little ghost town has to be located in Colorado rather than California.   I know where it is, but I’m haven’t yet found a great name for it.  Suggestions are welcome, and the best one will earn two of my westerns.

Thanks to all who came and blogged with Joanne Sundell this weekend. What a blast!

The names were thrown in the cowboy hat and shuffled up, so without further ado, the winners of “The Parlor House Daughter” are……….

Deidre

Fedora

Big congratulations, ladies! Yippee! Please contact me at lindabroday@live.com with your mailing address. I’ll pass the info on to Joanne and she’ll be happy to get the autographed books to you.

Until next time……..