The King of Cowgirls: Lucyle Richards and her lost loves.

One of the most outstanding purchases I made at the recent Burley Auction in New Braunfels was a collection of photographs and newspaper clippings… evidently belonging to the legendary Lucyle Richards-Roberts.

This collection had been offered on a couple of Internet auctions and apparently never found a home, and when I saw the remnants of her own personal scrapbook, spread out like miscellany, I also saw important historic artifacts being offered to an audience unable to appreciate the items in front of them. I felt impulsively that I had to bring the last vestiges of her life home and find a suitable venue for them. Somebody needs to write a screenplay about this iconoclast who was not only ahead of her time, but she was unique in human history. Understand, I knew nothing about her… but soon realized what a catch I had made… and began to be mesmerized by this amazing human being. Not unlike the seventeen husbands she netted during her stunning life.

Lucyle had to learn to laugh off her abundance of marriages and divorces... and the Media seemed to laugh along with her.

That’s right. Seventeen. And amazingly, that is not the most incredible thing about her. She was a female air acrobat and war hero in WWII, a member of the Women Air Force Service Pilots, flying bombers over the Atlantic to England. She was a woman rodeo performer, competing in bronc riding, bull dogging, and trick riding. She was touted as “the prettiest and best dressed cowgirl in America” and performed in the 101 Wild West Show, hundreds of rodeos around the country, and unbelievably, married seventeen times. Now guys, THAT’S a redneck girl!

In the pile of stuff was a clipping from the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, with an article about the love her life, the man who taught her to fly, T. J. Richards, her (first?) husband who was killed in a plane crash near Dallas while training an Army Air Corpsman, during WWII. A rodeo performer himself, Richards was a real deal cowboy, and succumbed to Lucyle’s pitch for a trade, where she would teach him to trick ride, if he would teach her to fly. Richards soon bailed out from the deal, when he saw how daring she was, saying she would never make a good pilot. She later proved otherwise, and showed him a thing or two, but he never became a trick rider because his life was cut short while serving our Country.

Tall and rawhide tough, T. J. Richards was probably a real keeper as well, and perhaps the only man that could have ever made Lucyle happy or domesticated her, but we will never know.

Lucyle certainly looked hard trying to replace him, or perhaps his memory, but never found another one like him. In fact her luck was terrible and she actually had to shoot and kill one of them, in self defense. Charges were not even filed, and Lucyle Richards Roberts lived the life of a Western Star and eventually became an icon of the American West.

Of course, I would love to have had the chance to ask Lucyle some questions... like "How did you keep your hat from falling off?"


Lucyle had to have set or broken numerous records for female rodeo performers, if not number of marriages. She was training riders and horses into her old age, claiming she would probably not quit until some horse killed her. When asked if she had the chance, would she do all over again, she replied, “I’d probably just do more of it!” She was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in 1987 and passed away, full of vinegar at a ripe old age of 86 in 1995. Even today, Lucyle Richards has few imitators or equals.

So in this time of national tragedy, I thought it was a good time to introduce you to a couple of true American Heroes.

B-roke.... It's time to come out of my cave...

Thanks for pulling up this article, but it has been relocated to a blog devoted exclusively to my art and essays on art. Please click on the link below to find "B-roke.... It's time to come out of my cave":


http://russellcushmanart.blogspot.com/p/baroque-b-roke-other-eassys.html  


 

 

 

 

The art of ancient men was often preoccupied with the supernatural, and was thought to have innate powers... and an artist or craftsman was held in high esteem, a special member of the community with creative genius, even spiritual prowess.

You can call this "Russell's rant on Art History: A crash Course on Man and Art, based on one man's opinion."

 

My fifteen minutes of fame… shared with… LEON!

With all of the previous rant being said, and completely out of my system, these are exciting times… “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” and this week I have enjoyed the haunting and unique honor… or random celebrity, of receiving two books, in which the authors wrote a little about me and my art… with illustrations! One is an autobiography by one of my major art patrons, who celebrates a major sculpture commission I did for her (and the City of Bryan) as a milestone in her life, and a step in her recovery from the lifelong abuse from “the man that I was married to,” as she calls him. In Muggs - Finding Myself, Muggs Gardner, in true Baroquean one-upmanship, shares private thoughts and actions that will keep Bryan social circles swooning and shaking it off for years. Her story is so brutal yet glib, it would surely be a great screenplay. I am grateful that my sculpture in Bryan’s Heritage Park brought her closure and fulfillment, but sickened at what she had to go through, including the humiliation of her deceased “man that she was married to,” to get there. But nothing less would entertain the readers of today… Off with his head!

The other book, Navasota - Images of America, just recently published, in fact to be released officially at the Horlock History Center soon, is a project of the Texas Center for Regional Studies, headed by Dr. Robin Montgomery and tailed by his equally talented daughter, Joy. In this book full of historic photos (many of which I provided), sandwiched between a tribute to the eminent artist Kathleen Blackshear and the prolific Brooklyn pitcher Virgil Garvin, are back to back, full page tributes to me… and Leon Collins. If I doubted that I was history… literally, here the Montgomerys have erased any doubt. It is interesting… humbling… humorous that Leon and I will share the same page … at least in this volume… for posterity.

I’m sure there are those that will find some kind of justice in this. I am working on it.

Like two sides of a coin, the yen and the yang, the two opposite poles of art, neighbors on mainstreet where, like we used to say about Little League, “anything can happen and probably will.” The one good thing about this B-roke age of hyper-communication, besides all the geniuses at every street corner, and the hilarious You Tube videos, is the guarantee that every day will bring a surprise, if not a revelation.

Frank Hamer comes to life before my eyes...

Yes, sometimes even I am amazed at what happens in my studio... with just my hands and the right information. And even more amazed at how that information gets to me...

If you check this blog very often, you are going to be wondering what the heck I've been doing... because I'm not writing in the blog much...

I am working quite a bit these days on my commission for the City of Navasota, that is the life-sized statue of Navasota Marshal Frank Hamer (1908 - 1911), to be cast in bronze. I have visited the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame in Waco, where they shared what they had in their files, including rare, never published photos of Ranger Hamer. But there were lots of questions still. Last Saturday a young policeman from Hempstead came in and after talking a bit, he offered that he was an Old West re-enactor and had items that might help me in the creation of Hamer's clothing... Amazingly, he had the authentic dead ringer for Frank Hamer's hat and gun belt, and a pair of trousers and suspenders that have helped me a great deal as well.

A few weeks ago a nice lady from Giddings came by, she is a big Hamer fan, and after talking, brought me rare photos I would never have found of Hamer's actual holster, pistol and badge, all items featured in an old auction catalog. With Divine intervention, everything is falling together. I always say that things never fall together, they fall apart... it takes no less than God to make order out of chaos.

I'm so glad that I had not already made the sculpture, as I would have had to have redone a lot of the details. And as you can see, I have tried to get it right, right down to the suspender straps and the caliber of bullets on the gunbelt. I even acquired a holster designed similar to his, and a 1895 Winchester .30-06 lever action rifle like the one he sometimes posed with, to get it right. And you are looking at the final maquette. It is right! Now I can finish "big Frank" with confidence.

The first step in the process is to weld up an armature, this took several days, to make a steel skelton that is light yet strong enough to carry the weight of the clay.

Next I will "mass him in" with styrofoam. This keeps the sculpture light and actually stronger, and also saves a lot of clay. Then after he has reached about 90% of his eventual volume, I finally start with the clay. That's next!

I will post blogs about Frank's progress all through the process, so you guys can see how it is done. You are not going to believe how difficult, how expensive, and how complicated the processs is!

More at:

http://russellcushmanart.blogspot.com/

And then there were chain killings...

Tools of the lawman's trade...

After Reconstruction, the Texas Rangers reorganized in the late 1870's and made a historic sweep that put most outlaws behind bars or six feet under, but soon it became evident that the cat was out of the bag. Western scoundrels fled Texas like Baptists caught at a pasture beer bash, and took their bad attitudes to Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico and Arizona, where there was more elbow room (and no law) and life became very cheap. The obnoxious, gunslinging Texas "cowboy" became a stereotype. Most of the scum Wyatt Earp hunted down and killed were Texas "cowboys." Wild Bill Longley, John Wesley Hardin, Phil Coe, the Thompson brothers, Temple Houston, Johnny Ringo, John Selman and many more of their kind took the new science of "six-shooterology" to all parts of the West.

And the advent of the handgun facilitated a bizarre and random equation, the chain killing.

Henry McCarty AKA William Bonney AKA "Billy the Kid" was one link in an extraordinary chain killing...

When the West was young, men had no pattern to follow, about when or how to use the new and deadly tool. The "Six Shooter" or "Peacemaker" became a law unto itself. A strange code formed out of convenience and the lack of effective local Law Enforcement. "Self defense" was the oft claimed excuse for snuffing out another life, regardless of the evidence. Murder became common as did bearing false witness. And a man who routinely killed another with a gun, who "lived by the sword," as Jesus said, would most likely "die by the sword."

Once a scout for General Custer on the Great Plains, Wild Bill Hickok was almost at the top of a veritable pyramid of death. His claims were so outrageous it is impossible to know the numbers of links in his chain...

Wild Bill Hickok started his "law" enforcement career shooting three unarmed men who were trying to collect rent from his employer. He went on to serve as the famed and fearless marshal of Abilene, Kansas killing at least four men in the line of duty. One was the hothead Gambler Phil Coe, another his own deputy running to his aid. Hickok had claimed years before to Custer that he had killed over one hundred men in his earliest days, including rebs during the Civil War. Actual recorded killings by him were perhaps a dozen. When faced with a true killer like John Wesley Hardin, he chose to talk his way out of a situation gone bad when he tried to disarm the young gunslinger, and gun-crazed young Hardin all but begged for a gunfight. He got a complimentary shot of whiskey instead. Hardin and others noticed that Hickok rarely actually faced anybody, but shot his enemies by surprise or from positions of strategic advantage. So it was not such a shock then as it is now, when Jack McCall shot him from behind, (falsely claiming he was avenging the death of his brother). McCall was not shot, but was tried and hanged for his crime.

After John Selman (2) assassinated John Wesley Hardin (1), who had killed over 40 men, he was shot to death in an unrelated incident by fellow lawman George Scarborough (3). Death count: 45 (Could be higher, I do not known how many Selman or Scarborough might have killed)

Pat Garrett was just a bartender when he met Billy the Kid, but was soon sucked into perhaps the West's most famous chain of killings... but at least he enjoyed a gap before he got his...

Leading a "posse" of deputized outlaws, William Morton (1) murdered rancher John Tunstall, who had become a threat to the local cattle baron's monopolies in Lincoln County. Billy the Kid (2) who worked for and worshipped Tunstall, killed a bunch of folks, including Morton, the number never actually proven, but "one for each year of his life" has always been repeated. After killing at least nine or ten men, he was more or less ambushed by Sheriff Pat Garrett (3), who was later gunned down by his own neighbor (4). Total dead: 14

The mother chain of them all, boasting the most players is of course the Earp's war in Arizona... where two of the three gunslinging Earps survived and did not fall victim to the curse of the chain. "Texas cowboys" had been terrorizing Tombstone when finally "Curly Bill" Brocius(2) killed Marshal White (1) in cold blood. The Earp Brothers (3,4,5) took out some of these cattle rustling punks (AKA "the Cowboys"), Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers (6,7,8), with the help of Doc Holliday(9), who killed at least one of the McLaurys. Their deaths were somewhat avenged when somebody (probably Pete Spence (10)(not a link), Frank Stilwell(11) and "a Mexican woodcutter" called Indian Charlie(12) assassinated Morgan Earp. Wyatt Earp (3b) went on a one-man crusade, and without a peace officer's commission, proceeded to exterminate Frank Stilwell, "Indian Charlie," (the Mexican woodcutter implicated in Morgan's death), and if Wyatt's wife can be believed, "Curly Bill" Brocius and Johnny Ringo (13) as well. Known deathcount of one chain: 9, with four surviors (Three of the four from the Earp faction).

There are more of these death chains, I call them chain killings, because they remind me of the old chain-letters you used to get, where you got unwanted correspondence from sombody wanting you to pass the damn thing on to others, with all kinds of veiled threats if you failed to do so. All you had to do was to forget it, but it haunted you either way.

When thoughts could kill: a timely review of angry youth + guns

[Blogger's Note: I'm cut to the quick at how timely these entries have been, where I have discussed some of the most famous multiple or serial killers of the Old West, from our region of Texas. The main ingredient for all of them (and Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and many more) was their youth, in an atmosphere of bullying, in a harsh, unsympathetic, even unjust culture. Then the temptation of the gun "as equalizer" in society seemed to trump moral upbringing, religious teaching, human empathy or plain common sense. An associate recently pointed out how studies show that young adults have not really developed mature powers of reason until way into their mid to late twenties... so that is some of the explanation of what happened in Aurora...]

"Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes,
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills: —
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking-glass." ...James Allen

Many of these Confederate "Dance" revolvers were manufactured near here in Anderson, Texas, during the War Between the States and afterwards were carried by the likes of outlaw "Wild Bill" Longley.

My father used to love to quote James Allen's famous essay, published in 1902. No doubt he heard his favorite quotation from it many times from his mother: "As a man thinketh, so is he." Never was that more true, than when handguns were invented. Suddenly men could carry mortal weapons on their hips, and on a whim, no matter the size or prowess of the offender, end the life of another. A bullet was simply a thought shot out of the muzzle of a pistol.

Young men in Texas after the "Civil War" had to struggle to control their tempers as the Federal Government swooped in and turned their world upside down. Their fathers humiliated, their fortunes lost, their pockets empty, their pride decimated, it is no wonder some of them turned to their own private wars.

The ushers of "Reconstruction": Accompanied by his wife, General George Custer camped in Hempstead, Texas, which was considered a good place to quell rebellion and establish order.

Soon young rebel punks led by veteran insurgents like Cullen Baker were spoiling for revenge and harrassing Union troops mercilessly.

Since many of these law enforcement officers were black or from the North, they became popular targets of angry thoughts sent from guns. One of the first men (boys!) to make a name for himself as he foiled and frustrated Reconstruction authorities was William P. "Wild Bill" Longley, of the Old Evergreen community near Giddings. He started his notorious killing spree by shooting numerous negroes who offended him or got in his way, with a .44 caliber Dance Bros. "cap and ball" revolver. Someone actually has that pistol, serial number 4, suggesting that it was made in the earlier East Columbia Dance Bros. factory before they moved to Anderson. Legend has it that he went to Houston as a youth to get himself a firearm, and after various escapades, including the mugging of a black Federal soldier, he came home with the Dance.

Wild Bill Longley bragged that he had killed more people than his rival, John Wesley Hardin. After wandering all over Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, killing men of all colors that gave him trouble, Longley was finally apprehended and hung for killing a white man in Lee County. Tradition places his toll in human lives at 32.

This illustration from the National Police Gazette also illustrates the moral dilemma in the Victorian period, where almost any coverage of Western badmen turned into glorification.

John Wesley Hardin was a preacher's kid from east Texas, learning his hatred of negroes and Yankees from the "unreconstructed" around Polk, Trinity and Navarro Counties.

He had already killed four men by the age of 15. Hardin later reminisced that he hung around Brenham a lot in his early days, which seemed to be a Southern criminal hot spot and thus an early staging area for rebel malcontents. [Navasota had burned to the ground after a Confederate munitions warehouse explosion and was just a post-war disaster scene] Federal troops camped on the eastern edge of Brenham, and established their own safe zone known as "Camptown." It was an irresistible target. For three years the occupying army skirmished with the townsmen of Brenham, (who were no doubt reenforced by Texas' most able gunmen!) even burning down the incessantly agitating town newspaper and a whole city block with it. Many of the future legendary gunslingers and gamblers of the West converged in Brenham during those days, (1866-1869) as Hardin recalled seeing and gambling with Phil Coe, Ben and Billy Thompson, and King Fisher, all of whom led bloody trails and died violent deaths. And not far from Brenham, Hardin and Longley once met at a Lee County gathering, and all bets were that they would have immediately locked into a mortal bloodbath. Six foot-two Longley was about 19 and Hardin around 17. They gambled some inside of a corn crib, and the ever clever Hardin took Longley to the cleaners. After going to the local horse races together, they surprised everyone including themselves, and parted with no gunplay. If only they had killed each other, over 70 lives could have been saved.

Also the son of devout Christians, Longley confessed to killing a young fellow who stared at him too long (probably scared to death!) while he was trying to sleep, but Hardin supposedly topped that by killing a man in a next-door hotel room for snoring. ( He later defended himself indignantly, that all accounts about his evils had been exaggerated and that he had only dispatched one such snorer). Only after the "State Police" were disbanded and the Texas Rangers were reorganized did the crime wave in Texas begin to diminish. After a legendary outlaw round up, both of them were found hiding out of state and brought to justice. Fearless and cunning, both had since turned to posing as law abiding citizens, even assisting the local peace officers in Louisiana and Alabama in making arrests! Both had even killed suspects in the line of duty. Arrogant and verbose, Longley wrote widely circulated editorials from his cell, recalling that he had been unsuccessfully strung up by vigilantes once before, and fuming at the injustice that he got the death penalty while Hardin only got 25 years in prison.

Just 28 years old, Wild Bill gave a touching speech, thanked an old Lee County sweetheart for a flower she pinned on his lapel, and then was hung in Giddings before a massive crowd of 4000 well-wishers. In the end, he admitted his wrongs, admitted that his kind of law would never do in a civilized society, and agreed that he was getting what he deserved. But he had failed to make his case, as he was buried just as he had lived, just outside the boundaries of respectable society, and outside the boundary of the town cemetery. Even paupers and those of ethnic origins were treated with more respect. His family did not attend his hanging or his funeral. Someone once put a large chunk of petrified wood over his grave, which has disappeared.

Hardin took advantage of his incredible popularity and studied law books and, in between prison escape attempts, became a lawyer. He was released early from Huntsville Prison as a reformed man, by adoring Southerners who considered him a folk hero. He had gotten away with around three dozen murders, killing perhaps a half-dozen of the despised Reconstruction era Texas State Police, various town deputies, bounty hunters in Florida, and even faced down Abilene Marshal Wild Bill Hickok. Hardin kicked the dust off of his feet and moved out west to El Paso, where he resumed a life of gambling, debauching and bullying, until a frightened deputy whom he had threatened put an angry .45 caliber "thought" into the back of his head. No charges were filed.

The only safe place to contain Wild Bill Longley's thoughts was the grave.

On the way to the auction...

Saturday morning I was on the road at sunrise... headed to a fantastic auction of Texas Ranger items in New Braunfels. I was pretty excited about it, but not too excited to notice God's handiwork in the rear-view mirror.

Yes, I've been PAINTING!

The blog has been neglected, and I apologize for that... but I've had a serious run on art lately and had to make a bunch... including this delightful scene from McKittrick Canyon in far west Texas. It was a commission handled through Harris Gallery in Houston, and set a new high for a Cushman easel painting. 2012 will go down as the best year ever for sales of Cushman art. My dad always told me that during the Great Depression, the artists he knew were doing fine... they were working when nobody else was. That always sounded suspicious to me... but he was right. The folks who buy art are institutions, governments, corporations, and the wealthy, most of whom maintian their purchasing habits during economic downturns.

More at:
  http://russellcushmanart.blogspot.com/