Cheryl Pierson

A BEAUTIFUL REMEMBRANCE 100 YEARS LATER–by Cheryl Pierson

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Have you ever noticed how obituaries of yesteryear seem to always “say more” than many of the current ones do? (I don’t know—maybe it’s just me—I’m an obituary reader! Even those of people I don’t know.) I think one reason for this is, of course, now, everything is shortened and abbreviated to the point that sometimes the heartfelt meaning is lost. We have to make it “fit on the page” and not “run too long” in the fast pace of our modern world.

In 1921, William Allen White was the owner of the Emporia Gazette. So when his teenage daughter, Mary, died suddenly, he penned one of the best obituaries that probably ever has been written. Reading this final summation of her young life, I felt like I knew Mary without, of course, having ever met her. Her obituary became famous throughout the United States at the time it was published, 100 years ago this month.

In my upcoming novel, LANDON, a young woman about the same age as Mary dies. She happens to be a central player in the story, even though she dies before the story ever begins. Though there was no obituary written for Little Dove in my story–she was half Indian, the wife of a gambler–I wanted to show how loved she was by the other characters in the story who are left behind. In a twist of fate, she is the reason that Landon and Alissa fall in love–she’s Landon’s younger sister, and also the mother of Alissa’s young half-brother, Zach. Landon had planned to take the boy from Alissa however he could, but he never planned on falling in love with her. Alissa had no idea that Landon and Little Dove were connected in any way until much later, after she was as in love with him as he with her.

AMAZON PRE-ORDER LINK FOR LANDON: https://tinyurl.com/ap9f493n

This obituary written for Mary White is so precious and lovely, I found myself wishing that Little Dove had had some kind of remembrance like this as well, but I think for her, it would be enough to know how much her brother and her friend loved her, and kept her memory alive for her young son.

Mary’s obituary is long, compared to those of today. I hope you’ll read it all the way through and share this father’s love and truly,  the entire community’s love, for this young woman. She must have been such a  shining star, even at her young age.

 

Mary White obituary

by William Allen White

Emporia Gazette, May 17, 1921

 

The Associated Press reports carrying the news of Mary White’s death declared that it came as the result of a fall from a horse. How she would have hooted at that! She never fell from a horse in her life. Horses have fallen on her and with her—”I’m always trying to hold ’em in my lap,” she used to say. But she was proud of few things, and one of them was that she could ride anything that had four legs and hair. Her death resulted not from a fall but from a blow on the head which fractured her skull, and the blow came from the limb of an overhanging tree on the parking.

 

The last hour of her life was typical of its happiness. She came home from a day’s work at school, topped off by a hard grind with the copy on the High School Annual, and felt that a ride would refresh her. She climbed into her khakis, chattering to her mother about the work she was doing, and hurried to get her horse and be out on the dirt roads for the country air and the radiant green fields of spring. As she rode through the town on an easy gallop, she kept waving at passers-by. She knew everyone in town. For a decade the little figure in the long pigtail and the red hair ribbon has been familiar on the streets of Emporia, and she got in the way of speaking to those who nodded at her. She passed the Kerrs, walking the horse in front of the Normal Library, and waved at them; passed another friend a few hundred feet farther on, and waved at her.

 

The horse was walking, and as she turned into North Merchant Street she took off her cowboy hat, and the horse swung into a lope. She passed the Tripletts and waved her cowboy hat at them, still moving gayly north on Merchant Street. A Gazette carrier passed—a High School boy friend—and she waved at him, but with her bridle hand; the horse veered quickly, plunged into the parking where the low-hanging limb faced her and, while she still looked back waving, the blow came. But she did not fall from the horse; she slipped off, dazed a bit, staggered, and fell in a faint. She never quite recovered consciousness.

 

But she did not fall from the horse, neither was she riding fast. A year or so ago she used to go like the wind. But that habit was broken, and she used the horse to get into the open, to get fresh, hard exercise, and to work off a certain surplus energy that welled up in her and needed a physical outlet. The need has been in her heart for years. It was back of the impulse that kept the dauntless little brown-clad figure on the streets and country roads of the community and built into a strong, muscular body what had been a frail and sickly frame during the first years of her life. But the riding gave her more than a body. It released a gay and hardy soul. She was the happiest thing in the world. And she was happy because she was enlarging her horizon. She came to know all sorts and conditions of men; Charley O’Brien, the traffic cop, was one of her best friends. W. L. Holtz, the Latin teacher, was another. Tom O’Connor, farmer-politician, and the Rev. J. H. Rice, preacher and police judge, and Frank Beach, music master, were her special friends; and all the girls, black and white, above the track and below the track, in Pepville and Stringtown, were among her acquaintances. And she brought home riotous stories of her adventures. She loved to rollick; persiflage was her natural expression at home. Her humor was a continual bubble of joy. She seemed to think in hyperbole and metaphor. She was mischievous without malice, as full of faults as an old shoe. No angel was Mary White, but an easy girl to live with for she never nursed a grouch five minutes in her life.

 

With all her eagerness for the out-of-doors, she loved books. On her table when she left her room were a book by Conrad, one by Galsworthy, “Creative Chemistry” by E. E. Slosson, and a Kipling book. She read Mark Twain, Dickens, and Kipling before she was ten—all of their writings. Wells and Arnold Bennett particularly amused and diverted her. She was entered as a student in Wellesley for 1922; was assistant editor of the High School Annual this year, and in line for election to the editorship next year. She was a member of the executive committee of the High School Y.W.C.A.

 

Within the last two years she had begun to be moved by an ambition to draw. She began as most children do by scribbling in her school books, funny pictures. She bought cartoon magazines and took a course—rather casually, naturally, for she was, after all, a child with no strong purposes—and this year she tasted the first fruits of success by having her pictures accepted by the High School Annual. But the thrill of delight she got when Mr. Ecord, of the Normal Annual, asked her to do the cartooning for that book this spring, was too beautiful for words. She fell to her work with all her enthusiastic heart. Her drawings were accepted, and her pride–always repressed by a lively sense of the ridiculous figure she was cutting–was a really gorgeous thing to see. No successful artist every drank a deeper draft of satisfaction than she took from the little fame her work was getting among her schoolfellows. In her glory, she almost forgot her horse—but never her car.

 

For she used the car as a jitney bus. It was her social life. She never had a “party” in all her nearly seventeen years—wouldn’t have one; but she never drove a block in her life that she didn’t begin to fill the car with pick-ups! Everybody rode with Mary White—white and black, old and young, rich and poor, men and women. She like nothing better than to fill the car with long- legged High School boys and an occasional girl, and parade the town. She never had a “date,” nor went to a dance, except once with her brother Bill, and the “boy proposition” didn’t interest her—yet. But young people—great spring-breaking, varnish-cracking, fender-bending, door-sagging carloads of “kids”—gave her great pleasure. Her zests were keen. But the most fun she ever had in her life was acting as chairman of the committee that got up the big turkey dinner for the poor folks at the county home; scores of pies, gallons of slaw, jam, cakes, preserves, oranges, and a wilderness of turkey were loaded into the car and taken to the county home. And, being of a practical turn of mind, she risked her own Christmas dinner to see that the poor folks actually got it all. Not that she was a cynic; she just disliked to tempt folks. While there, she found a blind colored uncle, very old, who could do nothing but make rag rugs, and she rustled up from her school friends rags enough to keep him busy for a season. The last engagement she tried to make was to take the guests at the county home out for a car ride. And the last endeavor of her life was to try to get a rest room for colored girls in the High School. She found one girl reading in the toilet, because there was no better place for a colored girl to loaf, and it inflamed her sense of injustice and she became a nagging harpy to those who she thought could remedy the evil. The poor she always had with her and was glad of it. She hungered and thirsted for righteousness; and was the most impious creature in the world. She joined the church without consulting her parents, not particularly for her soul’s good. She never had a thrill of piety in her life, and would have hooted at a “testimony.” But even as a little child, she felt the church was an agency for helping people to more of life’s abundance, and she wanted to help. She never wanted help for herself. Clothes meant little to her. It was a fight to get a new rig on her; but eventually a harder fight to get it off. She never wore a jewel and had no ring but her High School class ring and never asked for anything but a wrist watch. She refused to have her hair up, though she was nearly seventeen. “Mother,” she protested,” you don’t know how much I get by with, in my braided pigtails, that I could not with my hair up.” Above every other passion of her life was her passion not to grow up, to be a child. The tomboy in her, which was big, seemed loath to be put away forever in skirts. She was a Peter Pan who refused to grow up.

 

Her funeral yesterday at the Congregational Church was as she would have wished it; no singing, no flowers except the big bunch of red roses from her brother Bill’s Harvard classmen—heavens, how proud that would have made her!—and the red roses from the Gazette forces, in vases, at her head and feet. A short prayer: Paul’s beautiful essay on “Love” from the Thirteenth Chapter of First Corinthians; some remarks about her democratic spirit by her friend, John H. J. Rice, pastor and police judge, which she would have deprecated if she could; a prayer sent down for her by her friend Carl Nau; and, opening the service, the slow, poignant movement from Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, which she loved; and closing the service a cutting from the joyously melancholy first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Pathetic Symphony, which she liked to hear, in certain moods, on the phonograph, then the Lord’s Prayer by her friends in High School.

That was all.

 

For her pallbearers only her friends were chosen: her Latin teacher, W. L. Holtz; her High School principal, Rice Brown; her doctor, Frank Foncannon; her friend, W. W. Finney; her pal at the Gazette office, Walter Hughes; and her brother Bill. It would have made her smile to know that her friend, Charley O’Brien, the traffic cop had been transferred from Sixth and Commercial to the corner near the church to direct her friends who came to bid her good-by.

 

A rift in the clouds in a gray day threw a shaft of sunlight upon her coffin as her nervous, energetic little body sank to its last sleep. But the soul of her, the glowing, gorgeous, fervent soul of her, surely was flaming in eager joy upon some other dawn.”

 

Mary’s father, journalist and newspaperman William Allen White, Feb. 10, 1868-Jan. 31, 1944

Don’t you feel like you know Mary through her father’s words? Have you ever read an obituary that touched you deeply? One that made you laugh? This one, especially that last lovely paragraph, brings tears every time I read it.

Cowgirls in the Kitchen – Cheryl Pierson – April 28

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Hi everyone! Time for another edition of Vintage Recipes here at “Cowgirls in the Kitchen”!  Oh, golly, I had a lot of trouble deciding what recipe to feature today–so guess what? I had to include more than one! I think you will enjoy all of these and they are for very different types of “eating pleasure”, but none of them are hard to make (you know my rule about having to be something easy if I make it!)

This first one is one my best friend’s mom used to make sometimes when we were all over at her house and hungry. I had never had these before, and I begged my mom to make them, but with my dad’s work schedule, we rarely had leftover mashed potatoes, which is a key ingredient for these coveted MEXICAN HATS!  And these are so simple–I still make them sometimes just because I love them. (I will say, if I’m remembering right, ours looks more like a Mexican Hat than this picture, but this will give you an idea).

MEXICAN HATS:

You will need only three basic ingredients:

Bologna

Sliced American Cheese

Leftover Mashed Potatoes (though I have been known to make fresh or buy some ready-made)

On a griddle, place 4 pieces of bologna. Place a dollop of leftover mashed potatoes in the center, in a circle (like the rise of a sombrero) and cook on low heat. As the bologna begins to cook, the edges will turn up, curving around the mashed potatoes (again, like a sombrero). Place a piece of cheese on the top and let it begin to melt over the potatoes. Remove them from the heat, and season as you like. I’ve even been known to eat these with a little picante sauce.

Another version is to put these in the oven–I’ve never done them that way, but here’s how they say to do it, if you want to try that instead of the griddle–(and this calls for instant mashed potatoes, which of course, were not available back when I was eating them as a kid):

Heat oven to 325-350 degrees. place bologna on a cookie sheet and bake until bologna is desired color. Meanwhile cook the instant mashed potatoes according to directions on package. Take the bologna out of oven and put the 1/2 cup of mashed potatoes on it. then put the fat free kraft single on top and bake until cheese melts.

They are wonderful no matter how you eat them, and boy, do they bring back some great childhood memories.

FOR DESSERT: RUM CAKE AND GLAZE

My mom loved to make Rum Cake. This was back in the 60’s and 70’s when bundt cakes became all the rage. She got a HEAVY bundt cake pan (no teflon lining in it, that hadn’t become the norm yet) and that’s what she made these in.

 

Here’s the original cake recipe written in my mom’s handwriting. It’s really faded, and I’ve had to recopy it, but I keep this copy as a keepsake, remembering all the times she made this wonderful recipe and how much we all loved it and looked forward to it.

I’ve written the instructions below so you can read it better.

RUM CAKE AND GLAZE

1 box of golden deluxe butter recipe cake mix (you may have to substitute this for yellow cake mix–not sure they make this one anymore)

1 package Jello instant vanilla pudding

1/2 cup oil

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup rum, OR 1 teaspoon of rum flavoring

4 eggs

Grease and flour pan– you can sprinkle butter pats, brown sugar and nuts in before filling pan with batter. Bake at 325 degrees for 50-60 minutes. Let cool about 15 minutes before inverting on cake plate and putting the glaze on.

GLAZE:

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup of rum

1/4 cup heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Add all ingreditents to saucepan over medium heat. Stir well until butter has melted and mixture is smooth. Bring mixture to a boil, stirring, and boil for TWO  minutes. You can pour the glaze over the top, or you can put the cake back into the pan and poke holes in it and pour some of the glaze over that to let it soak it up, then pour the rest of the glaze over the top. Mom always just poured it over the top and it was always wonderful.

And last, but not least, a tried and true recipe for plain, good ol’ fashioned pancakes that is simple to make and you can make it from ingredients you usually have on hand.

PANCAKES:

1 cup flour

1 cup milk

1 tbsp. baking powder

1 tbsp. sugar

1 tbsp oil

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

Measure and sift dry ingredients. Add slightly beaten egg, milk, and oil together and mix well. Add dry ingredients and mix. Don’t OVER mix. Spoon mixture onto griddle for whatever size/thickness of pancakes you want to make. Garnish with fruit, if you like, or you can also add chocolate chips, pecans, etc. while they are cooking. These are really good!

HISTORY OF MARTY ROBBINS’ “EL PASO TRILOGY”–and a GIVEAWAY–by CHERYL PIERSON

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Hi, everyone–I did a series on “learning history through songs” a while back, and I just knew I had to include this “series” of songs by one of my favorite songwriters/balladeers, the incomparable Marty Robbins. This isn’t specific history, but these songs give us an idea of how life was for this particular gunfighter, then for his love, Feleena, and then how a modern-day man feels such a connection to it all. I love that there is “history” as we think of it, and then the modern-day connection to it all to “complete the circle.”

How many songs do you know that had sequels to them? Remember “back in the day” when recording artists would sometimes “answer” a song with one of their own? Well, if you love Marty Robbins like I do, you’ll know that his song El Paso had not only one sequel, but two, and he was working on a third sequel when he died in 1982! I think that’s a “record” for musical sequels, don’t you? I love ballads, or story-songs, and to find out that there were sequels to my all-time favorite one was pure pleasure!

El Paso was written and originally recorded by Marty Robbins, and was released in September 1959 (I was two years old at the time, but Marty was my man from the minute I heard this song!) Though it was originally released on the album Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, within a month it was released as a single and immediately became a hit on both the country and pop music charts, reaching NUMBER 1 IN BOTH at the start of 1960! But that wasn’t the end of it at all—it also won the Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording in 1961, and with good reason. It still remains Robbins’ best-known song, all these years later.

 

Wikipedia states: It is widely considered a genre classic for its gripping narrative which ends in the death of its protagonist, its shift from past to present tense, haunting harmonies by vocalists Bobby Sykes and Jim Glaser (of the Glaser Brothers) and the eloquent and varied Spanish guitar accompaniment by Grady Martin that lends the recording a distinctive Tex-Mex feel. The name of the character Feleena was based upon a schoolmate of Robbins in the fifth grade; Fidelina Martinez.

The storyline is this: The song is a first-person narrative told by a cowboy in El Paso, Texas, in the days of the Wild West. The singer recalls how he frequented “Rosa’s Cantina”, where he became smitten with a young Mexican dancer named Feleena. When the singer notices another cowboy sharing a drink with “wicked Feleena”, out of jealousy he challenges the newcomer to a gunfight. The singer kills the newcomer, then flees El Paso for fear of being hanged for murder or killed in revenge by his victim’s friends. In the act of escaping, the singer commits the additional and potentially hanging offense of horse theft (“I caught a good one, it looked like it could run”), further sealing his fate in El Paso. Departing the town, the singer hides out in the “badlands of New Mexico.”

The song then fast-forwards to an undisclosed time later – the lyrics at this point change from past to present tense – when the singer describes the yearning for Feleena that drives him to return, without regard for his own life, to El Paso. He states that his “love is stronger than [his] fear of death.” Upon arriving, the singer races for the cantina, but is chased and fatally wounded by a posse. At the end of the song, the singer recounts how Feleena has come to his side and he dies in her arms after “one little kiss”.

Robbins wrote two songs that are explicit sequels to “El Paso”, one in 1966, one in 1976. Robbins intended to do one more sequel, “The Mystery of Old El Paso”, but he died in late 1982 before he could finish the final song.

Feleena (From El Paso) (FIRST SEQUEL TO EL PASO)

In 1966, Robbins recorded “Feleena (From El Paso)”, telling the life story of Feleena, the “Mexican girl” from “El Paso”, in a third-person narrative. This track was over eight minutes long, but what a story it tells! This may be one you have not every heard before–I didn’t know it existed until I was an adult.

Born in a desert shack in New Mexico during a thunderstorm, Feleena runs away from home at 17, living off her charms for a year in Santa Fe, New Mexico, before moving to the brighter lights of El Paso to become a paid dancer. After another year, the narrator of “El Paso” arrives, the first man she did not have contempt for. He spends six weeks romancing her and then, in a retelling of the key moment in the original song, beset by “insane jealousy”, he shoots another man with whom she was flirting.

Her lover’s return to El Paso comes only a day after his flight (the original song suggests a longer time frame before his return) and as she goes to run to him, the cowboy motions to her to stay out of the line of fire and is shot; immediately after his dying kiss, Feleena shoots herself with his gun. Their ghosts are heard to this day in the wind blowing around El Paso: “It’s only the young cowboy showing Feleena the town”. Here’s a 1973 performance of the original EL PASO on Midnight Special!

 

El Paso City (SECOND SEQUEL TO EL PASO)

In 1976 Robbins released another reworking, “El Paso City”, in which the present-day singer is a passenger on a flight over El Paso, which reminds him of a song he had heard “long ago”, proceeding to summarize the original “El Paso” story. “I don’t recall who sang the song,” he sings, but he feels a supernatural connection to the story: “Could it be that I could be the cowboy in this mystery…,” he asks, suggesting a past life. This song reached No. 1 on the country charts. The arrangement includes riffs and themes from the previous two El Paso songs. Robbins wrote it while flying over El Paso in, he reported, the same amount of time it takes to sing–four minutes and 14 seconds. It was only the second time that ever happened to him; the first time was when he composed the original “El Paso” as fast as he could write it down.

Though there have been many cover versions of the original “El Paso” song, Marty Robbins put out more than one version of it, himself. There have actually been three versions of Robbins’ original recording of “El Paso”: the original full-length version, the edited version, and the abbreviated version, which is an alternate take in stereo that can be found on the Gunfighter Ballads album. The original version, released on a 45 single record, is in mono and is around 4 minutes and 38 seconds in duration, far longer than most contemporary singles at the time, especially in the country genre. Robbins’ longtime record company, Columbia Records, was unsure whether radio stations would play such a long song, so it released two versions of the song on a promo 45—the full-length version on one side, and an edited version on the other which was nearer to the three-minute mark. This version omitted a verse describing the cowboy’s remorse over the “foul evil deed [he] had done” before his flight from El Paso. The record-buying public, as well as most disc jockeys, overwhelmingly preferred the full-length version.

I can’t tell you how many times I played my 45 record of El Paso on my little portable record player as a little girl. As a country and western song, this has to qualify as my all-time favorite, and my husband even managed to record and adapt the ringtone for me on my iPhone, so when my phone rings it plays the opening words to EL PASO. This has been a huge embarrassment for my kids when they were teens and had to be with me in public, but also was a source of amazement for them when other people actually smiled and said, “Hey! Marty Robbins!

Now THAT recognition is the mark of endurance—a song that is still beloved by so many after over sixty years!

A picture of “retro” Rosa’s Cantina that hangs in my breakfast nook.

 

In the new sweet western historical series GUN FOR HIRE, all the heroes have something in common–they live by the gun, some of them walking a very thin line on the right side of the law. My hero, Landon Wildcat, is half Seminole/Choctaw Indian, and half white. He’s done a lot of things, including being a sniper and scout for the army. He has a good education, having been sent to a mission school. Yet…there is more than a hint of dangerous savagery in him, as the heroine finds out near the beginning of the story. I had to find the right mix of civilization and ruthlessness to make his character believable and make the heroine, Lissie, still fall in love with him. Though his story is not the same as the singer in these El Paso songs, he does share the longing for a brighter future, though he’s not sure at the beginning what that might mean, since Lissie is off limits to him for many reasons.

My LANDON is available for pre-order at Amazon, and will be released on July 15, 2025. BUT, there are 10 books in this wonderful series and they are coming out every two weeks, with Linda Broday, Margaret Tanner, and Charlene Raddon’s stories already being available, and Heather Blanton’s coming at the end of April!

 Aren’t these covers gorgeous? 

 

I’m offering a free copy of LANDON to one lucky commenter today (USA only)–so don’t forget to leave a comment and your contact info!

What’s your favorite classic country & western song? Is there a sequel to it?

Here’s the link for the series page. The link for LANDON is just below.

AMAZON GUN FOR HIRE SERIES PAGE

PREORDER LANDON HERE! 

I love series like this one. The heroes and heroines are all different because they come from varying backgrounds and places, but the heroes have something in common that holds the thread of the series together. 

CHERYL’S AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE

NEW WHR SERIES “GUN FOR HIRE” KICKS OFF WITH A BANG! by Cheryl Pierson

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There’s a new series in town! GUN FOR HIRE is a multi-author series that focuses on ten men who must rely heavily on their guns throughout their lives. They don’t expect to ever settle down and have a normal life, much less ever fall in love! But, and there is a big but…they didn’t ever expect to meet “the” woman who can make all of that fall into place for them, either!

GUN FOR HIRE includes books by some present and past fillies, and many other talented authors, including Charlene Raddon, who put the series together. It was her brainchild and she made all the gorgeous covers! I was so thrilled to be asked to participate because I had a story in mind I’d been wanting to write and it fit right into the broad premise that Charlene had come up with.

Linda Broday kicked off the series with her book, CREEK, yesterday. Oh, my stars, y’all. Let me just say, I think I’m in love with every one of these men – and that’s before I’ve even read their stories! I’ve ordered CREEK and am just waiting for the perfect time to be able to sit down and immerse myself in his tale.

Next comes DUSTIN by Margaret Tanner. Her story will be available on March 30, but you can pre-order NOW! Charlene Raddon’s story, KIRK, follows on April 15. (So pay your taxes and then treat yourself to a great story!) LANCE by Heather Blanton follows two weeks later, and then DEVON by Carra Copelin.

Jo-Ann Roberts’s hunky hero is named ASH, and SHAD is Caroline Clemmons’s heartthrob. Tracy Garrett’s story is CLINT, and my LANDON is next in the lineup, rounded out by Winnie Griggs’s  story, LUKE.

My LANDON won’t be out until July 15, but boy, there’s lots of great reading in the months ahead, and of course, Winnie’s story just after mine, at the end of July.

Some of these stories will be available not only on KINDLE, but also in print, including my tale about LANDON. Aren’t these covers gorgeous? 

Here’s the blurb to whet your reading appetite! You can pre-order LANDON now, as well as many of the others, and the availability to pre-order the remainder of the others will follow soon.

Landon: Gun For Hire Sweet Western Romance Series #9

Alissa Devine finds herself in an unthinkable situation when her father is murdered, and she’s left to raise her young brother, Zach. With $22 to her name and her no-account gambler father’s burial to pay for, Lissie has no choice but to carry on with her father’s plan to take part in the Oklahoma land run. But single women aren’t allowed on the wagon train.

Landon Wildcat’s mission for months has been to find the man who abducted his younger sister. His search ends when crooked gambler Happy Devine gets what he deserves at the end of Land’s gun. But that act of vengeance leaves Lissie and Zach alone with no man to accompany them on the wagon train.

Wagon Master Bill Castle hires Land as his scout; a devil’s bargain—for both of them. Land offers Lissie his protection, suspecting the unscrupulous Mr. Castle has indecent intentions toward her.

When one of the settlers is murdered, Land takes the outlaws on in a desperate battle to protect the only witness, and nearly pays the ultimate price. Land’s life hangs in the balance, but the wagon train moves on, callously deserting him and the teen boy he saved, along with Lissie and Zach.

Through the hardship, Lissie and Land both realize how much they love one another, and what they have come so close to losing. Though danger lurks around every curve in the road, Lissie believes with all her heart there is a place for their small band of settlers in this untamed Territory. Now that love has finally come, will Fate allow a miracle for their happiness with this new beginning?

Our GUN FOR HIRE series page is still populating, but the first four are up if you want to go take a look at them, too, and pre-order. Here’s the link for the series page. Here’s the link for the series page, and keep checking back to see more as they are added there. The link for LANDON is just below–he hasn’t made it to the series page yet, but he’s coming, along with the rest of the gang!

AMAZON GUN FOR HIRE SERIES PAGE

PREORDER LANDON HERE! 

I love series like this one. The heroes and heroines are all different because they come from varying backgrounds and places, but the heroes have something in common that holds the thread of the series together. 

CHERYL’S AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE

 

“GO-TO” RECIPES–PEPPER STEAK IN A CROCK POT–EASY AND GREAT! by Cheryl Pierson

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Hey, everyone! I am SO excited! No, it’s not a book or a character this time around that’s got me all “hyped”—but, of all things, a RECIPE. Now, hear me out, and I think you’ll be just as happy to get this on your kitchen table as I was.

Y’all know, my “recipe” for a great RECIPE is that it has to be two things: EASY AND GOOD. This takes the cake for both of those things, and also, I was able to make about 3 meals from it. Now if hubby had not been sick, he’d have helped me and it wouldn’t have lasted even that long! I DID have to purchase three items I don’t use that much when I cook (bouillon cubes, cornstarch, and soy sauce), but that’s okay, because I’ll be making it again.

I simplified this even more by buying beef fajita strips already cut (they were perfect!) and I did add about 4 small sweet colored peppers that I already had in the fridge—you know the ones, yellow, green, red, orange, and much smaller than the bell peppers—they added some pretty color! Our Sam’s store carries a brand of spices that makes a blend of salt, pepper, and garlic—that’s what I used on the beef strips.

Don’t be concerned if the beef bouillon cube doesn’t completely dissolve. I stirred in the cornstarch when it was about half dissolved and heated the entire mixture (water, bouillon, cornstarch) up again in the microwave for about 30 seconds, and broke it up at that point.

 

I can’t say enough how easy this was and how GOOD. I served it over some rice, and ate a small salad with it the first night—and the 2nd time I ate it I made corn on the cob to go with it. There are lots of other things you can serve with it—I was sure wishing I’d bought some rolls! LOL

 

Look at this scrumptious feast! All cooked up in one big ol’ crock pot and ready to eat with very little tending once it’s all assembled. This is definitely going to be one of my “go-to” recipes, summer or winter, now that I’ve made it!

Here’s the recipe, and I sure hope you enjoy it. I was thinking, you could probably serve it over noodles, too, if rice is not up your alley. I cooked it for 4 hours on high in my crockpot and the meat was so tender, and everything blended great.

 

PEPPER STEAK IN A CROCK POT

INGREDIENTS

2 pounds beef sirloin, cut into 2 inch strips

¾ teaspoon garlic powder, or to taste

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 cube beef bouillon

¼ cup hot water

1 tablespoon cornstarch

½ cup chopped onion

2 large green bell peppers, roughly chopped

1 (14.5 ounce) can stewed tomatoes, with liquid

3 tablespoons soy sauce

1 teaspoon white sugar

1 teaspoon salt

 

DIRECTIONS

Sprinkle beef sirloin strips with garlic powder. Heat vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium heat and sear beef strips, about 5 minutes per side. Transfer to a slow cooker.

Mix bouillon cube with hot water in a separate container until dissolved, then mix in cornstarch until dissolved. Pour into the slow cooker with beef strips. Stir in onion, green peppers, stewed tomatoes, soy sauce, sugar, and salt.

Cover, and cook on High for 3 to 4 hours, or on Low for 6 to 8 hours.

ENJOY!

Do you have a “go-to” recipe that’s easy and wonderful? I’m always on the lookout!  Would love for you to share if you have something your family loves that’s not too complicated to make (cooking is not my forte!) LOL 

CHERYL’S WINNERS!

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Thanks so much to each and every single one of you who came by today and commented on my post about SAECULUM –it’s just such a fascinating topic, and I loved hearing what you all had to say about it.

I picked two winners–and they are…..

JOANNIE SICO  and JACKIE WISHERD!

If you ladies will email me at: fabkat_edit@yahoo.com with your contact information, I will be glad to send you your copy of NOELLE’S CHRISTMAS WISH. If you have already read that one, PLEASE LET ME KNOW when you e-mail me! We’ll figure something out!

 

HOW LONG WILL WE BE REMEMBERED?– AND A GIVEAWAY!–by CHERYL PIERSON

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I learned a new word thanks to a dear friend of mine, Sharon Cunningham. She posted on Facebook about the word, “saeculum”—which was one that I’d never heard of. I didn’t even know there was an actual word for this “event” or “circumstance.”

Saeculum means the period of time from when an event occurred until all people who had an actual memory of the event have died. The example she used was World War I. The saeculum for that war is over.

It can also be applied to people. (Something else I never thought about.) A person’s saeculum doesn’t end until all people who have a clear memory of knowing that person are gone. So even though a person has died, their saeculum will live for another two or three generations!

Isn’t this amazing? And comforting, somehow. Yes, eventually our saeculum will be over, but what amazes me, and comforts me at the same time, is knowing there is a word—an actual TERM—for the idea of this memory of an event or person.

When you think about it, knowing that someone has created a word to define this period of time is important, because it defines it and gives it meaning—not just some nebulous “I remember Mama” type idea that is passed down. It means, I DO REMEMBER MAMA. I remember how Mama used to sing, I remember how Mama used to cook, how her palm felt on my forehead in the night when she came to check on me. I remember “that” look when she was upset with me, and I remember how she cried when she learned her dad, my grandfather, had died.

 

Valentine’s Day 1965, Mom, my sister Karen, me, and my oldest sister, Annette
Nov. 1960–my sisters, Karen and Annette cutting up in the living room
Sept. 1966–my mom and dad together
 Dec. 1965–my mom wearing the hula skirt my sister Annette brought me from Hawaii for Christmas
April 1960–my grandmother (mom’s mother), a not-quite-3-year-old me, and my sister Annette
January 1960–Mom’s 38th birthday

I remember Mama the way I knew her. And when we talk to other members of the family who knew and remembered her, we learn many other facets about her personality and things about her as a person we would never have known otherwise. It’s this way with every person we know!

But let’s take it one step further: I remember family. My own, of course—two sisters, Mama and Daddy. But what about extended family? Sometimes we tend to just “move on” in our lives and not dwell on memories of long ago because somehow, they don’t seem important to us. But now that there is a word that defines us in relationship to those memories, doesn’t it seem a little more important that we remember those long-ago times? Soon, there will be no one to remember, and the saeculum for our entire family will be gone.

A group of my cousins at a family reunion

Oddly enough, I remember what I thought as a child at family get-togethers—the excitement of seeing my cousins, of taking a trip to visit everyone, of staying up late and having a bit more freedom since I had grandparents at both ends of the small town where both sides of my family had many members living—and I felt special because of that. I was the only one of my cousins who had THAT! So we always had somewhere to walk to when they were with me—to one pair of grandparents’ house or the other.

As an adult, I think back on those simpler times and wonder what else was going on in the “adult world”—sisters, brothers, in-laws all gathering with their children and meal preparation for so many people—my mother was the oldest of eleven children!

My mother, El Wanda Stallings Moss, and my aunt (my dad’s sister) JoAnne Moss Jackson

Two unforgettable women!

Everyone tried to come home to Bryan County during Christmas and/or Thanksgiving. Such an exciting time, but for the adults…tiring and maybe stressful? If so, I don’t remember ever seeing that side of anyone.

 

My mom and dad as newlyweds in 1944–El Wanda Stallings Moss and Frederic Marion Moss–around 22 years old

So, maybe that’s why I think writing is so important. My mom always said she wanted to write down her life story, but “life” kept getting in the way and it never happened. When she ended up with Alzheimer’s, the time for writing down anything was over. Though the written word doesn’t add to a person’s saeculum, it does at least two things for those left behind: It helps preserve the stories and memories the deceased person has talked about before they passed, and it gives future generations a glimpse into their ancestors’ lives, thoughts, beliefs, and dreams.

This is my great-grandmother, “Mammy” (Emma Christi Anna Ligon Stallings)–my mother’s dad’s mother. I never knew her, but I felt like I did from the stories Mom told me about her. She was born not long after the Civil War ended, and regaled my mother with stories of her growing up years. I wish I had listened better when Mom tried to tell me about her!

We die, and eventually are forgotten by the world. Events happen that were, at the time,  life-changing, world- altering, such as wars, rampant disease, and tragedies of other kinds. These, though horrific at the time, will eventually be relegated to the tomes of the historical past…and forgotten…by many. There is nothing to stop it. All saeculums will be over for individual people and for events. And they will all become history.

What we can leave behind for others is our pictures, the written word of who we are and what we believe, and if we have a particular talent or craft, pieces of that—carvings, quilts, beautiful artwork or writings, creations of so many kinds.

A painting my mom did many years ago of an old barn in a snowstorm. Sorry it’s so small! Couldn’t make it bigger without making it blurry.

Our saeculum is fragile, and fleeting. So for 2025, my one and only resolution is to try to keep some kind of journal for my children, or for anyone who might be interested in the future. I want to write about my childhood, just the regular every-day things we did, the heat of the Oklahoma summer nights, the fireflies that lit up those nights until we knew we had to go home or get in trouble! The way the house creaked, and how the attic fan sounded like a freight train as it brought in that blessed cooler air during those same hot summer nights. So many memories of “nothing special”—just the business of living.  I want to write about the way life was then—because it will never be that way again, for better or worse.

My best friend, Jane Carroll, and me, on a fall day in the sandbox. I was about 8, and Jane was a year older. We moved in just down the street from one another during the same week of 1963! Jane is gone now, but I still love her and miss her.

Will anyone give a hoot? Maybe not. But I will know I’ve done what I could do if anyone DOES care. I’m not sure Laura Ingalls Wilder thought anyone would care about her stories—but look at what a glimpse into the past they have provided for so many generations! I’m no Laura Ingalls Wilder. My journals won’t begin to make the impression on the world that hers did. But you never know who might read them and think, “I wish I had known her!” (Even after my saeculum is over!)

Me, at age three.

Do you have anything you would like to leave to future generations to remember you by? This fascinates me!

Today, I’m giving away a PRINT OR DIGITAL COPY of NOELLE’S CHRISTMAS WISH–book 5 of the Petticoats & Pistols Christmas Stocking Sweethearts series to one lucky commenter! Thanks to each and every one of you for being a part of PETTICOATS & PISTOLS!

 

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE NOELLE’S CHRISTMAS WISH

Click here to view the entire series on Amazon

 

Order your copy of LOVE UNDER FIRE today!

 

A MARSHAL FOR CALLIE–KINDLE LINK: https://tinyurl.com/yn85vnkk

A MARSHAL FOR CALLIE–PAPERBACK LINK: https://tinyurl.com/mryt2fwf

 

Thanks for stopping by today! Be sure to leave your contact info along with your comment in case you win!

CHERYL’S AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE:  https://tinyurl.com/2k7xeddt

SILVER MAGIC–A CHRISTMAS STORY BY CHERYL PIERSON–AND A GIVEAWAY!

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Several years ago, I had just sold my first short story to Adams Media’s Rocking Chair Reader series. I was on Cloud 9! A few months later, I sold this story, SILVER MAGIC, to them. It would appear in their first Christmas collection, Classic Christmas: True Stories of Holiday Cheer and Goodwill. I want to share it with you here. This story is true, and is one of the most poignant tales I could ever tell about my grandfather–he died when I was eleven. I never saw this side of him, and I don’t think very many people did–that’s what makes this Christmas story so special.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SILVER MAGIC by Cheryl Pierson

Did you know that there is a proper way to hang tinsel on the Christmas tree?

Growing up in the small town of Seminole, Oklahoma, I was made aware of this from my earliest memories of Christmas. Being the youngest in our family, there was never a shortage of people always wanting to show me the right way to do—well, practically everything! When it came to hanging the metallic strands on the Christmas tree, my mother made it a holiday art form.

“The cardboard holder should be barely bent,” she said, “forming a kind of hook for the tinsel.”   No more than three strands of the silver magic should be pulled from this hook at one time. And, we were cautioned, the strands should be draped over the boughs of the tree gently, so as to avoid damage to the fragile greenery.

Once the icicles had been carefully added to the already-lit-and-decorated tree, we would complete our “pine princess” with a can of spray snow. Never would we have considered hanging the icicles in blobs, as my mother called them, or tossing them haphazardly to land where they would on the upper, unreachable branches. Hanging them on the higher branches was my father’s job, since he was the tallest person I knew—as tall as Superman, for sure. He, too, could do anything—even put the serenely blinking golden star with the blonde angel on the very highest limb—without a ladder!

 

Once Christmas was over, I learned that there was also a right way to save the icicles before setting the tree out to the roadside for the garbage man. The cardboard holders were never thrown out. We kept them each year, tucked away with the rest of the re-useable Christmas decorations. Their shiny treasure lay untangled and protected within the corrugated Bekins Moving and Storage boxes that my mother had renamed “CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS” in bold letters with a black magic marker.

 

(JACK SORENSON–ARTIST)

At the end of the Christmas season, I would help my sisters undress the tree and get it ready for its lonely curbside vigil. We would remove the glass balls, the plastic bells, and the homemade keepsake decorations we’d made in school. These were all gently placed in small boxes. The icicles came next, a chore we all detested.

We removed the silver tinsel and meticulously hung it back around the little cardboard hook. Those icicles were much heavier then, being made of real metal and not synthetic plastic. They were easier to handle and, if you were careful, didn’t snarl or tangle. It was a long, slow process—one that my young, impatient hands and mind dreaded.

For many years, I couldn’t understand why everyone—even my friends’ parents—insisted on saving the tinsel from year to year. Then one night, in late December, while Mom and I gazed at the Christmas tree, I learned why.

As she began to tell the story of her first Christmas tree, her eyes looked back through time. She was a child in southeastern Oklahoma, during the dustbowl days of the Depression. She and her siblings had gotten the idea that they needed a Christmas tree. The trekked into the nearby woods, cut down an evergreen, and dragged it home. While my grandfather made a wooden stand for it, the rest of the family popped and strung corn for garland. The smaller children made decorations from paper and glue.

“What about a star?” one of the younger boys had asked.

My grandfather thought for a moment, then said, “I’ve got an old battery out there in the shed. I’ll cut one from that.”

The kids were tickled just to have the tree, but a star, too! It was almost too good to be true.

Grandfather went outside. He disappeared around the side of the old tool shed and didn’t return for a long time. Grandmother glanced out the window a few times, wondering what was taking so long, but the children were occupied with stringing the popcorn and making paper chains. They were so excited that they hardly noticed when he came back inside.

Grandmother turned to him as he shut the door against the wintry blast of air. “What took you so long?” she asked. “I was beginning to get worried.”

Grandfather smiled apologetically, and held up the star he’d fashioned.   “It took me awhile. I wanted it to be just right.” He slowly held up his other hand, and Grandmother clapped her hands over her mouth in wonder. Thin strands of silver magic cascaded in a shimmering waterfall from his loosely clenched fist. “It’s a kind of a gift, you know. For the kids.”

“I found some foil in the battery,” he explained. “It just didn’t seem right, not to have icicles.”

In our modern world of disposable commodities, can any of us imagine being so poor that we would recycle an old battery for the metal and foil, in order to hand-cut a shiny star and tinsel for our children’s Christmas tree?

A metal star and cut-foil tinsel—bits of Christmas joy, silver magic wrapped in a father’s love for his family.

This anthology is only available used now, but it’s well worth purchasing from Amazon and reading so many heartwarming Christmas stories from yesteryear! Hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful Christmas and a fantastic 2025!

 

Do you have a favorite Christmas memory, or a story that has been handed down through your family about something that happened during the holidays? My parents told a lot of stories about their childhoods, but this story was the one that really stood out for me. I’d love to hear about a favorite family story or one of your dearest Christmas memories! I’m giving away one of my Kindle books to two lucky commenters–YOUR CHOICE! 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

 Christmas horses

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE NOELLE’S CHRISTMAS WISH

Click here to view the entire CHRISTMAS STOCKING SWEETHEARTS series on Amazon

CLICK HERE TO SEE ALL BOOKS BY CHERYL PIERSON

 

Christmas Stocking Sweethearts! Cheryl Pierson

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Hi everyone! I’m so glad to be a part of the Christmas Stocking Sweethearts authors, and I can’t wait to tell you a little bit about my story, NOELLE’S CHRISTMAS WISH. It’s a bit longer than most of the others in this series, but I have to tell you, once I got caught up in Noelle’s life and all that was happening to her, I just had to write it the length it needed to be! I’ve often thought how hard it would be to just pick up from somewhere you’d lived most of your life and leave it–I only had to do that one time, the summer before my senior year in high school when my dad got transferred from Oklahoma to West Virginia.

Noelle is a little older than I was when this happened to her, but I love how, though she was dreading the changes she’d go through, things turned out better than she could have ever expected–with a few hiccups along the way, of course!

Here’s the blurb for you to get a better idea of what is going on in Noelle’s life, and her possibility for a very happy ending!

Her wish is to find lasting love…

He’s looking for a new future…

Can a Christmas journey bring a miracle to both?

When her life is turned upside down by her aunt’s death, beautiful Noelle Cutler must leave Texas for Indian Territory, to live in her family-owned cattle ranch dynasty with a relative she barely knows. Noelle’s Christmas wish as she boards the stagecoach is something she’s yearned for the past several years. Now, with an uncertain world unfolding for her, would it be so much to wish for her very own true love this Christmas?

Texas Ranger Kellan Montgomery has a few wishes of his own. Traveling home to Indian Territory, he dreads what awaits him. An unplanned dinner with Noelle the night before they become fellow passengers aboard the northbound train leaves him imagining a different kind of future—one that’s completely opposite from the solitary life of a lawman.

But their newfound romance may come to a deadly end as two ruthless outlaws board the train—men Kellan put in prison. As Kellan and Noelle masquerade as a newlywed couple, their plan goes awry as the train is taken over by a gang of renegades. Danger explodes in a life-or-death situation, and their perilous deception becomes the catalyst for the flames of love to ignite in their desperate bid for survival.

But love is the only thing on Noelle’s Christmas wish list—and she is determined to make this dream come true for the future she envisions. Now that love has finally come, it’s up to her to make her own longing a reality. Can the magic of Christmas bring a miracle to two lonely people in these most unlikely circumstances?

 

CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE NOELLE’S CHRISTMAS WISH

Click here to view the entire series on Amazon

Yes, we know. It’s that time of year when we sometimes feel less kind than we should. 

Re-write the sentence in red to something less naughty and more nice.  For example:

NAUGHTY:  “Grandma’s eggnog is too thick and chunky.”

NICE: “Isn’t it wonderful Grandma is still with us to make her eggnog?”

THERE’S NOTHING BUT CHRISTMAS MOVIES ON TV! 

You might win this ornament from me–plus a backlist book of your choice!

I chose this ornament as my prize giveaway because it looks just like the piano I learned

to play on when I was growing up.

 

All entries will be eligible for our oh-so-beautiful Grand Prize, too!

Winners announced Sunday, December 15!

(USA Winners only, please.)

In the event the piano ornament becomes unavailable, we will happily make a substitute.

AN EASY, WONDERFUL HOLIDAY RECIPE! (Only three ingredients!)

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It’s getting to be that time of the year! You know, where we love to eat desserts that we would not normally eat? But we want something simple and wonderful? I wanted to share this now before things got “holiday hectic” because I think this might be something everyone can use.

I think I’ve found something so perfect here–I haven’t made it yet, and I’m hoping the video will play like it should, but just in case it doesn’t, I’m going to write out the simple instructions, because this looks like the yummiest thing to happen in a long time. And it’s just so easy! (I will be making these before Halloween, I’m sure!)

You make this in a crock pot (my favorite kind of dessert or cooking of any kind!)

 

You’ll need:
1 jar of Planter’s (or any other brand) dry roasted peanuts (about 16 oz.)
1 package of Nestle’s semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 package of white chocolate chips
I jar of peanut butter (this looks to be about a 16 oz. jar)–melt this in the microwave to make it pourable
Chocolate sprinkles (optional)

Also, if you would rather use all milk chocolate or dark chocolate chips, you can, or all white chocolate chips, she says that’s fine too. I personally will probably make it just as she shows the first time, because I’m a scaredy cat when it comes to cooking new things. LOL

In your crock pot, pour in the peanuts first, then the two bags of chocolate chips, then the melted peanut butter on top of it all. Set your crock pot on high, and check after one hour. If needed, continue to let it melt–she says it will take two hours, but then on the video, most of it was melted in one hour. It depends on the crockpot.

Meanwhile, line a baking sheet with parchment paper–and I’d say you might need TWO baking sheets for this!

Once it’s all melted, stir it up well, and take an ice cream scoop, scooping it out and transferring it, one scoop at a time, onto the baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

If you want sprinkles, put those on at this point, and put the baking sheet in the freezer for about an hour–then check and be sure they are frozen hard after one hour. Take them out and EAT THEM. Here’s the video!