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| This "journaling
adventure" is in response to those who have asked for more
information and background on my life and philosophies as well as
on my western and cowboy poetry. For the most part, it randomly
covers my personal views and biases but it may also include a
contributed piece from time to time. If you have a short item
you'd like to have considered, please send it along by
clicking here. Journal entries are listed with the latest
postings first.
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 About This Journal- This
site contains viewpoints, biases, and philosophies which were
shaped by the Great Depression and years of hardship and drought
in the Sandhills of Nebraska. Historic perspective is contained
my four books of poetry: Voices of the Wind,
Reflections, Where Horses Reign, and Sun, Sand
& Soapweed. The later two contain western and cowboy
poems in traditional ballad format. Four-Letter Words -
It's a real myth that cowboys didn't use four letter
words. If they didn't know them, they'd invent them! Four
letter words were especially valuable in getting the attention of
a team of horses. And, somehow, the knowledge of those words and
their ease of use were therapeutic, like in easing the pain after
clobbering your thumb with a miss-aimed hammer blow. One of my
poems, "Four-Letter Words," discusses some aspects of
the use of such words.It's mostly in recent years that four-letter words became inappropriate...as cowboy poetry and music became popular and families began to attend, the cowboys had to clean up their act out of respect for the women and children who were present in the audience. Nowadays, except maybe way back in some out-of-the-way corner of the west, cowboy events are family-oriented and it would take quite a prudish person to take offense at any of the language used. Where Horses Reign -
 Thirty-five of my poems are now
available on a CD, Where Horses Reign, which was released
last month. The play list is available on the internet at
CowboyPoetry.com. The poems are some favorites selected
from both my first book, Where Horses Reign, and my new
book, Sun, Sand & Soapweed.The CD is available for $8.50 (USD) postpaid to anywhere in the U.S. or Canada from Western Poetry Publications, 1541 Jadwin Avenue, Richland, WA 99354. Payment may be made by mail (check or money order payable to Clark Crouch) or on the internet by credit card through PayPal.com (payable to clark@crouchnet.com). Sun, Sand & Soapweed
-  My fourth book of poetry,
Sun, Sand & Soapweed, is now in print. It contains 63
western and cowboy poems and is available at local bookstores
(they can secure copies through Ingram Book Company, a wholesale
book distributor). It is also available for $12.95 (USD) ($11.95
plus $1.00 postage) postpaid to anywhere in the U.S. or Canada
from Western Poetry Publications, 1541 Jadwin Avenue, Richland,
WA 99354. Payment may be made by mail (check or money order
payable to Clark Crouch) or on the internet by credit card
through PayPal.com (payable to clark@crouchnet.com).. The book ID
is ISBN: 0-9624438-3-2 published by The Resource Network under
the imprint "Western Poetry Publications."The book is dedicated to Ed and Angie Dailey of Kennewick, Washington for "their selfless mentoring and promotion of new artists and rising stars in western and cowboy music and poetry with emphasis on the traditions and values of our western heritage." They've brought along and supported quite a number of performers over the years. Ed's web site is Legends of Country.  Cottonwood Store- In 1939, my parents bought
Scott's Store in Blaine County Nebraska. Cottonwood
wasn't a real town, just a small community of homes near a
rural school (Cottonwood School) built in the early 1930's by
the Works Projects Administration. The store is pictured in the
calendar below. It was a tiny building with living quarters in
the basement.That ain't a satellite dish on top of the store; it's actually a windmill back of the building. The mill pumped water through a cooling tank where cream purchased from local ranchers was kept until it could be shipped to a creamery in the eastern part of the state. It ain't hard to tell that the calendar was handmade. Businesses in larger towns had calendars made up commercially to hand out to their customers but we couldn't afford that. So, we made up a few calendars using cardboard from the back of school tablets, a picture of the store, and some little printed calendars we bought in town. Our customers enjoyed them but it was a long time ago and I reckon this one is probably the only one in existance. The calendar was put together in November 1941 just a few days before the Japanese attacked Pearl. Harbor on December 7, 1941.  >>> Return to Top <<< Personal Journaling- One of my prized possessions is
the transcript of a diary an ancestor kept as she and her family
moved westward in a covered wagon. Life wasn't easy and small
things were highly valued. On one occasion her husband had to
ride into a nearby town for wagon repair parts and, when he
returned, he brought back some things for the family. Her prize?
A spool of white thread! And, for the children, a penny's
worth of candy! Small treasures valuable enough to be highlighted
in her diary!Journaling can be fun and can, at the same time, provide a valued family record, documenting discoveries about the family. A recent poem, "Family Journal," was about this aspect of journaling. Some folks who want to journal just don't know where to start. My other web site has some resources on Holistic Journaling called "Seven Pages of Life". A listing in the Writers Digest states: The author "...offers a free interactive journal format and other resources related to living and documenting the whole life experience. The concept is based on seven signficant life goals and related affirmations designed to assist those who want to reach beyond today's topical journals." For those who have FileMaker software for their computers, another resource which I developed is available which permits the creation of an unlimited number of topical journals in one database. A trial copy of the "All-In-One Journal" can be downloaded free by clicking here. The Past is Prologue- William Shakespeare said that
and it does seem that those who don't know and appreciate
history are destined to make the same mistakes or similar ones.
It's sorta like the statement attributed to Yogi Bera,
"It's déjà vu all over again!"
Daylight Using Time - It seems mighty strange that
some folks think you can save daylight... they make it sorta
sound like like going to the bank to stash away an hour a day in
the winter and to withdraw an hour a day in the summer. I read
somewhere that Daylight Savings Time might be compared to a
cowboy cutting his bedroll in two and sewing the uncut ends
together twice a year...it don't change much of anything!When I was raised, during the lull between World War I and World War II, Daylight Savings Time wasn't mandated. We just got up when the sun came up and went to bed when we felt like it. Your watch was handy to be sure you got to dinner on time at noon or to the house in time for supper at night but, other than that, we didn't pay much attention to time. It just ain't true that country folks benefit from changing the clocks twice a year. Seems to me that, instead of fussing with the clocks, it's more sensible just to get up earlier or later depending on the season. And, if the boss wants you to start work an hour earlier or later, you just do it...no need to change the clock! Why don't employers just start their work hours at 8:00AM in the winter and at 7:00AM in the summer instead of playing clock games? It seems to me that folks in Arizona, Hawaii, and Indiana (three states that don't change their clocks) get along just fine without all the fuss. There's still just twenty-four hours in a day regardless of where the clock is set! So, I'm on Daylight Using Time using my twenty-four hours a day regardless of what the clock says. County Officials - This photo shows the officials of
Blaine County Nebraska in 1908. My grandfather, William Henry
Crouch (third from the left, seated) was the County Assessor. A
fellow-rancher, Tom Burke (second from the left, seated), County
Commissioner, was my Dad's employer in 1894 when Dad was a
twelve-year-old ranch hand.In the mid-1930s, it was my pleasure to get to know Tom and his wife, Annie...a true pioneer couple whose names were familiar to everyone in the Sandhills area of Nebraska. Legends of Tom's life were the inspiration for a number of my poems including: "Tom and the Devil" and "Tom's Long Johns". 
Please click here for the identity of other individuals and a related story as published in the Custer County Chief on Thursday, October 11, 1951. Arlington Vandeventer - This gentleman provided a
great service to youth in the Sandhills of Nebraska. He had a
small herd of Shetland Ponies and he'd loan one at no charge
to any youngster who had no horse of his or her own. In 1938-39,
he gave me the use of a three-foot tall Shetland stallion which I
rode five miles to school at West Union. Mr. Vandeventer'd
drop by our ranch occasionally to chat and to see that I was
taking good care of his pony. He was a good man who cared about
both kids and ponies. Rural Schools - I attended four different rural
schools; two were the traditional one-room schools and the other
two, which had both elementary and high school classes, had two
rooms. None had indoor facilities, just a couple outhouses out
back and an open shed to shelter horses that some of the students
rode. All of the schools had emergency supplies, non-perishables
laid up for use in case of a bad snow storm. Only once did we
have to stay over...that was a blizzard that lasted three days.
The event was the subject of one of my poems, "Stormed
In".The first one-room school I attended was in 1936-37 at Hawley Flats about twenty miles north of Dunning, Nebraska. It was a cement block building located about two miles from our one-room sod home and I walked or rode a horse to attend. In the 1880's, my grandfather, William Henry Crouch, had served as secretary of a land owner's association which met in that same school building. Then there was a step up to a two-room school in Brewster, Nebraska (the Blaine County seat). It was 1937-38 and we lived on a ranch about ten miles east of there. I rode in a school bus that year! Well, not really. A lady who lived about fifteen miles east picked up about five kids each day and drove them to Brewster in her old sedan. I understood she worked in a store during the day, then drove us home in the late afternoon. Although Brewster was the Blaine County Seat, the population was, perhaps, not more than 100 people. I was to return to this school to attend the tenth grade in 1943 because of a job opportunity to be the school janitor and work as a telephone operator. In 1938-39, it was back to a one-room school at West Union, about fifteen miles north of Dunning, Nebraska. It was five miles from the Cox & Smith Ranch which my folks managed for a widow lady, Hattie M. Smith, who was quite an accomplished artist in china painting, watercolor, and oil. The school had a fenced pasture where our horses could graze during the day. I rode to school on my shetland pony in good weather...he was too small to make it through some winter drifts so we traveled on the crest of the hills where the snow had blown away. Occasionally, when the snow was particularly deep, I even had to ride my dad's horse, Blue. From September 1939 through May of 1942, I attended school in a second two-room school...a stucco building built by the Works Project Administration (WPA) at Cottonwood located, more or less, halfway between Dunning and Purdum, Nebraska near the Blaine and Brown County border. The two rooms were divided by folding doors which could be opened for Saturday night dances and other public events. It also had a full basement where school lunches were prepared from food provided by the government. The school was about a mile from Scott's Store, a country store owned and operated by my parents. We lived in an unfinished basement beneath the store and I walked to school down a cottonwood-lined lane. Pondering - From time-to-time, the folks at CowboyPoetry.com publish
an "ArtSpur"...a work of art to "spur"
western and cowboy poets to create a new poem. One such was a
bronze, Ponderin' Lines 'n Lyrics, which was cast
by Tom Morgan of San Antonio, Texas as a tribute to cowboy poets.
I responded to that challenge and wrote "Lyrical
Ponderings". Subsequently, after seeing some of the
artist's other work, I wrote a another poem, a tribute to his
artistic talents, "Ponderin on the Artist". The poems
are in the book, Sun, Sand & Soapweed, and the
artist's bronzes can be seen by clicking
here. Working My Way - Some folks have wondered about the
truth of my tale about working my way through high school.
It's true. Although my parents were good providers, the rural
schools usually had only elementary classes and I had to go into
town to go to high school. The folks simply couldn't afford
to pay board, room, and other expenses for me to stay in town so
it was up to me to pay my own way.As a result, I was pretty much on my own financially from the time I was twelve when I started saving for high school. I worked as a ranch hand during the summers and at various jobs in town during the school year. I attended four different high schools, selecting whichever town offered the best job opportunity at the time.
Koshopah, Nebraska - It was a small
"town", population three...my Mom and Dad and me from
1942 until 1945. Of course, I wasn't there much as I worked
as a ranch hand during the summers and was away attending high
school during the winters.There was a post office, which gave some legitimacy to Koshopah's existance. Dad was the postmaster and Mom was his assistant. In addition, they operated a general store which offered groceries, feed for livestock, and gasoline. Beside the store was a small two-bedroom house with, of course, the traditional outhouse way out back. Modern amenities were few: a gas cook stove, a kerosine refrigerator, and electric lights (from an array of batteries charged by a gas operated generator).  Koshopah is a variation of
Koskopah, a name given to nearby Goose Creek by the Pawnee
Indians. When the post office was established in 1920, a
typographical error resulted in the current spelling. I was once
told that the name meant "one who watches".The folks had owned Scott's Store about four miles south of there which they demolished when they purchased the store at Koshopah from Elmer and Flo Cannon. The Cannon's trademark was a pair of World War I cannons painted on the facade. When we drove past there a few years ago we saw the deserted store building with the cannons still visible. The house had been moved away and the feed sheds were gone. Five Generations - Five generations of my relatives
have been carrying the mail continuously on rural Nebraska mail
routes out of Anselmo, Nebraska since before the turn of the 20th
Century. That's well over a hundred years!It started with my Grandfather, William Henry Crouch, who braved the backroads in a horse-drawn buggy to deliver the mail come hell, high water, and prairie blizzards. He was followed in due time by his son (my uncle), William Oliver Crouch. The line of carriers continued through a direct line of decendants: Ora William Crouch, Barbara Crouch Mason, and now Kelly Mason Hueftle. It's a bit different now days. Four-wheel drive vehicles and improved roadways make the task easier and cell phones sorta help keep folks in touch if the going gets rough. And those Crouch carriers are still getting the mail through! Best Practices - I was very pleased to have one of
my more serious western poems, "The Guardian," selected
a while back as a reference document in a Page, Arizona classroom
program which has been recognized for "best classroom
practices". The program, developed by Sandra Lomeland of the
Page Unified School District, stresses the use of primary source
documents to teach fifth grade students about historical events,
in this case on Westward Expansion and the Transcontinental
Railroad. The poem is true to it's time, the late 1880's,
and was the result of seeing a lonely weathered cross atop a hill
in the Nebraska Sandhills back in the 1930's. From the hill
one could see the ruins of an old sod house in the valley below
and, beyond that, the North Loup River. Our Sod Home - My parents and I lived in a sod house
in the Sandhills of Nebraska for a time in the mid-1930's.
The house, probably dating from around 1875, had one room which
was about twenty feet square. It had an earthen floor and a sod
roof. The home had sturdy walls two foot thick so it was cool in
the summer and warm in the winter. I wrote a poem, "Going
Home," to record the time I last visited it quite a number
of years ago.Cheesecloth was strung under the roof as a ceiling to catch dirt and insects that filtered down occasionally. Half of the soddy served as an area for living, dining, and cooking and the other half was divided into two bedrooms by sheets strung from wires. The kitchen area had a two by four foot wooden pad on the floor so we wouldn't kick up dust while preparing food. Winter heat was provided by an ornate pot-bellied stove fueled by cow chips (dried cow dung which we gathered in the fall and stored under shelter near the house). Lights were from kerosine and liquid gas lamps. Cooking was done on a tabletop, three-burner liquid gas stove which had a portable oven to set atop one of the burners. Simple amenities were outside: a well with a windmill and a handpump which provided water for us and the stock, a tiny "spring house" through which freshly pumped water ran and kept our perishables cool in he summer, an outhouse way out back, and a six-volt windcharger to charge a battery for a small radio and a one-bulb emergency light in the kitchen. It was home! Cowboy Philosphies - The life of a cowboy can be a
lonely one. Working in isolation allows a powerful lot of time to
think about life and it's meaning. One of my poems,
"Perplexing Questions," is about that.Such thinking might lead a cowboy to conclude that the philosophy of life falls into three categories: Pro-Darwin, Anti-Darwin, and Who's Darwin. The Pro-Darwinians sorta let dust collect under the bed for fear they might destroy emerging life. The Anti-Darwinians claim there ain't no dust under the bed, just some stuff left over from the birth of Adam. And, the Who's Darwinians sweep up the dust and spread it on the garden where it'll be of some use. Life's sorta like that. Maybe two-thirds of the folks spend time and energy and money for things that don't serve humanity all that well. Others might put those resources to work to make sure that folks in need have a decent place to sleep, food to eat, clothing to cover their bodies, and medical care. I reckon that's consistent with the spirit of the west and the nature of cowboys...living independently but always willing to reach out with a helping hand. Doggie Rap - I've never had a particular
admiration for rap music but one day recently, when I didn't
have my TV remote control handy, a rapper came on the TV screen.
Being somewhat sedentary, I wasn't inclined to go get the
remote so I just sat and watched and listened to what was there.
And, you know, although some of the words weren't pleasing to
me, I got caught up in the rhythm of that performance. While it
didn't change my feelings about rap in general, it did cause
my level of appreciation to go up quite a bit and I began to
wonder what Doggie Rap (like in "get along little...")
might be like. As a result, I wrote a poem, "The
Greenhorn's Tale," which can be recited in that
distinctive rap rhythm. I can only conclude that rap can be sort
of catchy if you let yourself tune in on it. My First Poem - Recently while we were sorting some
boxes of old papers, we ran across my first cowboy poem which I
had written in 1941 as a seventh grade English project in a rural
school (Cottonwood School in Nebraska). Not surprisingly, it was
simply titled, "Cowboy," and a scanned image of it is
posted on this site. The school entered it in the Blaine County
Nebraska Fair and it was awarded an "excellent" ribbon.
The previous summer, I had worked on my first job as a paid ranch
hand and had met Badger Clark, then Poet Laureate of South
Dakota. Those two things influenced me to write that first
poem. Poetic Traditions - In general, there is no
universal or accepted definition of poetry. Today, poetry has
departed from classical and traditional form and is, quite
simply, whatever the poet says it is. Thus, there are a great
many poetic forms without meter or rhyme. Some are so
non-traditional that they are actually just graphic presentations
with the lines organized to make a pattern which is pleasing to
the poet.However, despite the modern variations in poetic form, the traditional ballad is the most accepted for western and cowboy poetry and I would encourage western poets to respect that tradition. A ballad consists of four lines in a verse with the second and fourth lines rhyming; however, it is acceptable for the first and third lines to also rhyme. Without getting into the technicalities of poetic form, the number of syllables have a consistent pattern (rhythm). For example, a common pattern is for the first and third lines of a verse to have eight syllables (iambic tetrameter) while the second and fourth lines have six (iambic trimeter). An example with the lines two and four rhyming might be:
Sovereign Nations - During my eight years on the
Richland City Council (1993 through 2001), I was pleased to be
somewhat instrumental in establishing a landmark agreement...the
first government-to-government agreement between a non-federal
entity (The City of
Richland) and Native American Tribes (The Confederated Tribes of the
Umatilla Indian Reservation). Quite simply, the agreement
recognized the sovereignty of the Tribes, respected their rights
under the Treaty of 1855, anticipated areas of potential
disagreement, and provided a structure for working together on
projects and programs of mutual interest. Other municipal and
state governments have since entered into similar agreements.
Although history cannot be rewritten, we can create a better
tomorrow by working together to resolve the issues of today, many
of which are the tragic remnants of yesterday. Bent's Crackers - In 1801 Josiah Bent, a maternal
relative of my wife, started a "cookie" factory in
Massachusetts, selling mostly to Transatlantic ship merchants.
One day, he over-baked his biscuits and heard a
"crackling" sound coming from the brick oven. Thus, he
coined a new American phrase "cracker". During the
Civil War, the Bents supplied hardtack to the Union Army and also
to frontier trading posts, such as Bent's Fort (which was
also founded and operated by my some of my wife's relatives).
In 1891, Josiah's grandson, George H. Bent, built a
new facility to produce the crackers and now, more than
200 years later, Bent crackers (and hardtack which is used in
Civil War renactments) are still produced in that facility even
though the operation is no longer under the ownership of the Bent
family. The crackers were featured in one of my poems,
"Bent's Water Crackers". More information about the
factory and it's products is available by clicking here. From the Sioux - One of my most prized possessions is
the bolo tie shown in the column on
the right. It was made for me and presented to me by a
granddaughter of Chief Sitting Bull some twenty-five years ago
(around 1980). The bead work is traditional and is sewn on a
buckskin backing. The leather necklace is hand woven and only
it's metal tips are of non-traditional origin. It is not only
a reminder of the generosity of the lady who crafted it but also
of a Lakota Sioux Chief that I met at the Custer County Fair in
Broken Bow, Nebraska when I was three years old in the fall of
1931. He talked to me for quite some time and, as I left his tipi
at the Indian Encampment, he gave me an Indian-head nickle which
I still have. Paternal Roots - This is as far back as we've
been able to trace my paternal side. My great grandfather, Elisha
Crouch, was born in New Castle, Delaware in 1824 and is said to
have been an orphan. He was married twice and my line is through
his second wife, Mary Phillips (pictured below). Elisha was
mustered in and out of the Pennsylvania Volunteers twice during
the Civil War and had total service of about three months. He
later migrated to the ranch country of Nebraska, via Illinois. He
died in 1891 in Halsey, Nebraska and is buried in Brewster,
Nebraska. 
Guns at School - Zero tolerance is practiced in the
schools of today, forbidding even innocent objects which might,
under some extreme circumstance, be used as a weapon. It sure was
different in 1939 when I was eleven and in the fifth grade.
"Zero tolerance" wasn't even in our vocabulary. I
had a single-shot 22 rifle and a 410 gauge shotgun and I'd
frequently take one or the other of them with me on the five-mile
ride to the one-room school. During the day, it'd stand
behind the coat rack in the schoolroom. Then, on my return ride
home, I'd often bag a rabbit, a pheasant, or a prairie
chicken to have for supper. It wasn't any big deal. Of
course, there were only seven kids enrolled in the school...four
boys and three girls...and guns and hunting were just part of our
daily lives. Sure is different today! Western Toad (Bufo boreas) - Lewis & Clark
on their western expedition, made note of a great many animals
and plants, the existence of which had never before been
documented. One such was the
Western Toad which was noted by the expedition on May
30, 1806, at Camp Chopunnish, Idaho County, Idaho. So what's
that to do with me? Well it was just 196 years later, to the day,
on May 30, 2002 that one of those critters showed up in our
backyard in Richland, Washington sorta commemorating the
expedition's bi-centennial a few years early. Two days later
our toad had disappeared into history and our neighborhood crows
had a pleased look about themselves. Maternal Roots - Roots can't get much deeper than
this...right down into the sod itself. Here is a link to a
family photo which was taken by Solomon Butcher, a
famed pioneer photographer. The fellow in the picture is my
maternal granddad, William Henry Baird, with his widowed sister
(my great aunt), Georgia Baird McGaughey, and her children in
front of the sod home on granddad's homestead near Anselmo,
Nebraska. Just for the record, the picture was taken in the
summer of 1889 and the kids pictured (left to right) are John
Orville McGaughey (b. 4/1/1889), Woodford Henry McGaughey, Jr.
(b.1/19/1881), Lena May McGaughey (b. 1/5/1879), George William
McGaughey (b. 6/27/1883), and Ned Franklin McGaughey (b.
2/7/1887). The picture itself is on display in the Library of
Congress. Badger Clark - I first met Badger Clark in 1941 and
became better acquainted with him in 1943. He's shown in the
snapshot below which was taken of him at that time. Notice, the
cowboy poet isn't wearing chaps or Levis or cowboy
boots...he's wearing jodhpurs and English riding boots!
Didn't hurt his writing but his image got sorta tarnished. A
poem about this poet is "Cowboy Poet," Badger Clark was
and remains an icon in the field of western and cowboy poetry.
Although his poetry still "reads" well, nothing can
compare with his own reading of such classics as "The Glory
Trail" (aka "High-Chin Bob"). Cowboy Hat - Here's me (on the right, below,
c.1931) showing off my first cowboy hat at approaching three
years old. With me is my cousin, Wallace, who is wearing Angora
hair chaps. We had several pair of those chaps around as well as
a set of fancy leather wrist cuffs but, over time, they just got
away from us. A poem about this and other valuable stuff that
slipped away is "One Man's Junk". Big Brother - Here he is, Alferd Crouch, showing off
his cowboy hat, Angora hair chaps, and our granddad's six-gun
at around ten years old before I was born in 1928. Obviously,
that saddle wasn't adjusted for him what with the stirrups
hanging loose and all. He was challenged through his life by the
spelling of his name, Alferd. I reckon that either Mom didn't
know how to spell or she just preferred the link to
Ferdinand rather than to Fredrick. 
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Weblog Index About This Journal Arlington Vandeventer Badger Clark Bent's Crackers Best Practices Big Brother Cottonwood Store County Officials Cowboy Hat Cowboy Philosophies Daylight Using Time Doggie Rap Five Generations Four-Letter Words From the Sioux Guns at School Koshopah, Nebraska Maternal Roots My First Poem Our Sod Home Past is Prologue Paternal Roots Personal Journaling Poetic Traditions Pondering Rural Schools Sovereign Nations Sun, Sand & Soapweed Western Toad Where Horses Reign Working My Way  Sioux Beadwork Right click the picture and "View Image" to see detail or click here for added info. |
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Copyright ©2004 by Clark Crouch.