Nothing Plain About Her

So, I was all involved in a poem I was writing, a book I was illustrating, my car needing a new wheel put on, thanks to whoever's in charge of maintaining the streets of Kansas City and cut a large hole in one of them, neglecting to mark it, much less spike a steel plate over it. Watch where you're going & drive AROUND such manmade chasms: That's my advice.

Forgot that yesterday was Jesse James' deathday [courtesy "that dirty little coward"). Didn't occur to me that it was the anniversary of the beginning of the Pony Express. Anyway, I figure that if I hadn't made something of a morning ritual of checking to see what interesting someone had been born on this day in history, I'd never have come across THIS dame. Do, if you've happened to come across this post, peek into the life of Jane Digby, b. 3 April, 1807. Golly.

Distant Hoofbeats

"Not by a long shot was it the last adventure in beating the western wilderness: seven and a half years of railroad tracks racing to meet at the Golden Spike were just ahead. But its the ponies and the daring young men who ride in our imagination.

When the wind is in the West, listen for distant hoofbeats.

It's the Pony Express."

Cheryl Harness

They're Off! The Story of the Pony Express

I loved working on this book. It's been years ago now. One day I was driving up to St. Joseph, MO, about an hour north of here, to visit the Pony Express Museum [click link above], to research. Next thing you know, I was taking a pile of artwork to the P.O., kissing the pkg. for luck, lest it be lost in transit and I'd feel compelled to throw myself under a buss. Must have been like that [except for the bus] for the army of characters who planned & executed the audacious business of establishing speedy, regular postal delivery between the eastern States & faraway California. BANG: They were off! 3rd of April, 1860. Big fat election year! Young men riding through the wilds, all kinds of weather, day & night. No headlights on their horses.

Then, as of the 26th of October, 1861, it was over. It wasn't like the fastest horse could outrun electronic messaging via telegraph wires. Now it's been 150 years, almost 55 thousand sunsets, as of today, can you believe it?

So, this is a big day, anniversary-wise. Two big fat ones occur today, having to do with two of my favorite books: The Amazing Impossible Erie Canal http://www.amazon.com/Amazing-Impossible-Canal-Aladdin-Picture/dp/0689825846/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288136307&sr=1-1

and They're Off! The Story of the Pony Express http://www.amazon.com/Theyre-Off-Story-Pony-Express/dp/0689851219/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1288136486&sr=1-1

Together, to my mind, these two were a pair, TAIEC representing the first phase of the USA's unstoppable taking over the continent, 1820s & 30s, when the Ohio Country was the Wild West. The USA was a young exuberant nation along the Atlantic seaboard, busting to penetrate the wilds beyond the Appalachian Range. Americans set their sites on the wealth of land, a bounty of raw materials waiting on the other side (to be marketed to the rest o' the world) - on the Native Americans' whose ancestral home were there - not so much. Another obstacle to be vanquished, I'm afraid. Our history is not a tame lion.

It took 8 years of back-busting work from July 4, 1817 to the fall of 1825 to complete the waterway between Lake Erie & the Hudson River, flowing > NYC>the Great World). Just think of it: 363 miles, 4 feet deep, 40 feet wide. AND - oh baybee - I'd get to paint a glossy ribbon of manmade waterway in some of the most beauteous landscape in North America. I know because my old dad (God rest him) & I drove the distance and got on one another's nerves terribly as we're related. As for 1820s fashions - shut up! - high waisted gowns, glorious bonnets for de ladies & for de gents, high collars & cravats, waistcoats, top hats [too bad for you, beavers. kiss your pelts goodbye.] Anyway, the whole shebang opened for business on this day in history: October 26, 1825. One of my favorite paintings ever is TAIEC's opening spread, showing a glorious flotilla setting 'sail' east out of Buffalo.

Now, if TAIEC represented Phase One, what better way to represent Phase Two (the pressing westward, from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean) than those wiry riders & their 4-leggers, carrying the U.S. Mail? Here's how Mark Twain [I did a book about him as well, and the "Queens of the Mississippi" Steamships, fyi. Another tale for another day.] wrote about the Pony Express in his terrific "Roughing It" [by golly, I need to read that again.] :

"The pony-rider was usually a little bit of a man, brimful of spirit and endurance. No matter what time of the day or night his watch came on, and no matter whether it was winter or summer, raining, snowing, hailing, or sleeting, or whether his "beat" was a level straight road or a crazy trail over mountain cragsand precipices, or whether it led through peaceful regions or regions that swarmed with hostile Indians, he must bealways ready to leap into the saddle and be off like the wind! There was no idling-time for a pony-rider on duty. He rode fifty miles without stopping, by daylight, moonlight, starlight, or through the blackness of darkness--just as it happened. He rode a splendid horse that was born for a racer and fed and lodged like a gentleman; kept him at his utmost speed for ten miles, and then, as he came crashing up to the station where stood two men holding fast a fresh, impatient steed, the transfer of rider and mail-bag was made in the twinkling of an eye, and away flew the eager pair and were out of sight before the spectator could get hardly the ghost of a look."

Thank heavens, you don't have to be a genius like Mr. Twain to write about this chapter in our history, this connecting up of the U.S. [about to be @ war] & the golden west. I took my best whack at it and adored doing the paintings, though I so wish I could redo the jacket art. Ah well. You probably know that the PonyEx only lasted a year & a half, until the telegraphic wires were strung & hoisted pole to pole, messages sent by electricity, somewhat faster than any old pony. It ended on this day, October 26, 1861.

They're Off!

So, you all probably know that cheerful, far-traveling Washington Irving (future author of Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, future dancer with lovely Dolley Madison, future U.S. Ambassador > Spain, + subject of a swell book I wrote and illustrated, published by the Nat'l Geographic: The Literary Adventures of Washington Irving: American Storyteller. Join the tiny throng of those who bought a copy of it! You won't be sorry!)

And if you don't know, let me remind you that it was on this day in 1882 that the real-life-legendary outlaw Jesse James, 34, was killed on this day in 1882, snuck up upon from behind by glory- & bounty-seeking coward, Robt. Ford. This happened up in St. Joseph, Missouri, exactly 22 years after the first horse and rider galloped past a cheering crowd, down the path and onto the ferry that would carry them over the Missouri River to Kansas. Nearly 2,000 miles away, another pony, another rider, was doing the same, heading NE out of San Francisco. The Pony Express was off and running!

Here's my poem. You can sing it if you're a mind to (I surely hope you will!) to the tune of the old cowboy song: I Ride an Old Paint.

The Ballad of the Pony Express

Come eighteen and sixty

The country had a test:

How'll we get our letters

To folks from east to west?

Three Missouri fellers

Say try this on for size:

We'll get us some ponies

And some tough little guys.

From the edge of Missouri,

From the town of St. Joe

They galloped the prairies

Just as fast as they could go,

And over the mountains

Down to San Francisco Bay

Ten days of hard riding the lightning relay.

Think on those horsemen

With their bold, careless smiles...

One thousand, nine hundred

And sixty-six miles!

'Twixt Missouri and the ocean,

Far off in the West,

Went the horses and the riders

of the Pony Express.

Chorus: Ride on, ye young travelers!

Ye bravest and the best,

Go follow your fortunes

Out there in the West!

p.s. If your travels should take you to the Land of the Show-Me, do visit the swell Pony Express Museum in St. Joseph, MO. www.ponyexpress.org Big doings up there today!