Classic Murfin Verse for Veterans Day—Pictures, Poppies, Stars and Generations

  

This is a resurrection of an old chestnut that I first read as a Chalice Lighting to open services at the old Congregational Unitarian Congregation in Woodstock, Illinois about 2000.  I read it subsequently when the congregation moved and was renamed the Tree of Life UU Congregation in McHenry.  It was included in my 2004 Skinner House collection, We Build Temples in the Heart.

It was based on the memories of a boy from Cheyenne in the 1950s.  Reviewing it now, I am struck that the World War II ended 80 years ago and is fading fast from memory.  Almost all who served them are gone now, just as I remember the passing of the last World War I vet at the age of 110 in 2011.  The cohort of their children, the so-called Baby Boomers are fast aging as well.  I am 76 and my friends with parents who served in what Studs Terkel called the Last Good War are about the same.

It occurs to me now that my grandchildren don’t understand much of what I wrote about.  They live in a different world.  World War II and post-war America are decades older for them than the Great War was for me.  Neither they neither know nor care about our Vietnam War choices obliquely referenced in the last lines.

  

                                  One of those ubiquitous photo on the wall--First Lieutenant W. M. Murfin, U.S, Army Medical Corps on Leyte in the Philippines, 1943. 

Pictures, Poppies, Stars and Generations

We knew war.

 

Somewhere in every home a handsome young man

            peered from a tinted photograph,

            overseas cap at a jaunty angle 

                        or the fifty-mission crush

                        or the crisp, square beanie of a gob.  

            usually someone’s Dad in some other life,

            but sometimes the ghost of someone frozen in time,

            caught in that picture like a fly in amber

            while bloody shreds were left draped on barbed wire

            ten feet from the high water on an anonymous beach,

            or splattered on the glass of the ball turret

            of a Mitchell bomber spiraling for an appointment

            with a German potato field,

            or bobbing in a sea of burning oil, naked and parboiled.

 

We knew pity. 

 

 

                                     A  Buddy Poppy peddled on every street corner. 

 

The veterans in neat blue uniforms,

            sleeves pinned to shoulders, ears shot away,

            noses burned off, faces twitching,

            fistfuls of red paper poppies in one hand,

            shaking white cans for nickels with the other.

            on every street corner, May and November

            and no decent man or woman passed

            without emptying pockets of change,

            twisting flowers into buttonholes, on to purse straps,

            without ever looking the peddler in the eye.

 

We knew death.

 

 

                         A Gold Star Flag represented a family member lost in the War. 

 

Inside scrapbooks with brittle pages and fading ink,

            kept far up in the front hall closet behind hatboxes,

            surrounded by last winter’s scarves and mittens,

            between the leatherette boards bound by black shoelaces,

            amid the rations coupons, V-mails,

            postcards from exotic ports, Brownie snapshot,

            campaign maps, and yellowed clippings,

                        a small fringed flag,

                        white edged in red and blue,

                        a gold star in the center.

 

                                    We raided our Dads' footlockers and haunted surplus stores for our play wars. 

 

In the neighborhood we looted footlockers and duffel bags,

            saved our allowances for forays to the Army/Navy Store,

            outfitted ourselves in helmet liners, webbed belts,

            canteens and mess kits, cast–off khaki and drab,

                        and amid the prairie burrs and grasses,

                        between the wild rose hedge and lilac caves,

                        on top of the car port in the window wells,

                        every summer day we tried to sort glory from horror.

 

We knew war and pity and death—

            we thought.

 

And then—suddenly—it was our turn for real.

 

—Patrick Murfin

Cheyenne Frontier Days—The Daddy of ‘em All Comes Roaring Back to Life This Week

 

Back in my old hometown of Cheyenne, Wyoming the annual rodeo cum bacchanal known as Cheyenne Frontier Days started Friday, July 18 and runs through July 27. This is the 129th edition of what has usually been held annually. It is expected to attract the 200 thousand to the Daddy of ‘em All virtually swamping the Wyoming capitol city’s 64,000 residents. 

It is both the longest continuously held cowboy competition in the world and by far the largest outdoor contest of its kind.  Although there has been a National Finals Rodeo since 1956 to crown individual champions in each main professional rodeo event, that indoor competition, currently held in Las Vegas, lacks the pageantry and history that makes Frontier Days unique.  

 

Bronco busting at Cheyenne Frontier Days circa 1900 in those days hands on the ground kept a rope on the horse to keep him from jumping the low rail fences or just crashing through them if he threw the rider.  The men on the ground were hurt more often than the riders.

The first Cheyenne Frontier Day was a one day contest for local cowboys working the big ranches in the area on September 27, 1897.  The event included a raucous informal cowboy parade through downtown with the boys whooping it up and riding wildly like they did when they brought their herds to the rail head after round-up every year. 

Cheyenne was then a bustling and modern small city, not only the Wyoming state capitol, but home to major Union Pacific Railroad facilities.  Its streets had been the first in the nation to be illuminated by electric arc lamps back in 1883.   Fueled by the wealth of cattle barons on Millionaire’s Row, the city considered itself up-to-date and cosmopolitan.  Even in 1896, however, just six years after statehood and four years since the bloody events of the Johnson County War, residents were already becoming nostalgic for their wild west heritage.  

 

The distinguished gentlemen of the first Frontier Committee donned their formal top hats and best suits in their finest carriages.  Local cattle barons, bankers, railroad executives, and politicians.  Having their fine wheels drawn by oxen and a jackass was a nice touch.

The first event was so successful that Frontier Day became annual.  The competition was soon promoted nationally by the Union Pacific to boost tourist traffic on its trains, and the local business community loved the sound of cash registers ringing in local hotels, restaurants, bars, and brothels.  

 

In the early years cowgirls competed separately in most of the same events as the men.  Despite the popularity of their competitions, by the 1930s they were confined to "powder puff" events like barrel racing. 

By the turn of the 20th Century elements of the wild west shows popularized by Buffalo Bill Cody and others, including mock hold-ups of the Cheyenne to Deadwood stagecoach, Indian battles, and in particularly bad taste given recent the state’s recent history, a re-enacted lynching for rustlers were incorporated into pageantry surrounding the rodeo.  Other events like street dances, amateur theatrics, menageries, and carnivals were added to the ever growing event over the years as more days of competition were added to the rodeo. Cowgirl competitions were an early favorite. The cowgirls rode the same stock and took the same risks as the men but were judged separately. 

 

From his special box erected on the arena floor former President Theodore Roosevelt shook hands with a cowgirl at the 1910 Frontier Days.  Note Black Buffalo Soldier Army troops from Fort Russell, bottom left.  

In 1910 former President Theodore Roosevelt was delighted to be on hand to congratulate the winning riders.  In 1903 he visited as sitting president and a special one day rodeo was staged in his honor and he participated in a ride over Sherman Hill from Cheyenne to Laramie with Senator Francis E. Warren and big-wigs of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.   

By the 1930’s stars of Hollywood’s popular westerns, including the state’s own favorite son Col. Tim McCoy, were regularly making personal appearances and sometimes incorporating the rodeo itself into their films.  Concerts by popular Hillbilly and Cowboy singers—and later the masters of Western Swing—were added to the mix. 

Since 1931 reigning over the events has been Miss Frontier and her Lady in Waiting.  The first was Jean Nimmo Dubois, a descendent of Esther Hobart Morris who was America’s first female Justice of the Peace in South Pass in 1869 and a heroine of the Wyoming suffrage movement. For the first three years the winner was selected on the basis of who could sell the most tickets to a dance.  Starting in 1934 the Frontier Committee has privately picked Miss Frontier and her Lady in Waiting, traditionally drawing on the daughters and granddaughters of local cattle barons, Cheyenne business leaders, and political figures.  One requirement was that she had to be an expert horsewoman.  

 

 Miss Frontier of 1936, Mary Helen Warren, granddaughter of Wyoming's first Governor and former Senator Francis E. Warren designed the fringed white buckskin culottes still worn by the rodeo queens. 

Miss Frontier of 1936 was Mary Helen Warren Wolborn, granddaughter of the state’s founding patriarch Francis E. Warren.  She designed the distinctive white buckskin culottes worn to this day.  Her inspiration was a costume worn by celebrated fan dancer Sally Rand who had titillated audiences the year before.

 

For a boy in Cheyenne in the 1950's rodeo champions like Casey Tibbs were bigger stars than baseball heroes like Mickey Mantel, Stan Musial, or Willie Mays.  

The 1950’s were the Golden Age of Rodeo.  The most storied figures of the sport were active—Casey Tibbs, Big Jim Shoulders, the Bell Brothers, and the legendary rodeo clown and bulldogger Wilbur Plaugher—and shined in Cheyenne.  Monte Blue, known for playing the sheriff in countless B westerns, was the arena announcer famous for his signature call at the beginning of each rodeo, “Let’s go, let’s show, let’s rodeo!”  

 

Chief Charley Red Cloud and Princess Blue Water (second from left) of the Ogalala Sioux brought their band to Frontier Days for many years shown here with Miss Frontier and her Lady in Waiting in 1956 while my father was on the Frontier Committee.

Chief Charley Red Cloud and Princes Blue Water, who had appeared with Buffalo Bill, brought their band of Oglala Sioux each year to perform traditional dancing and live in a teepee village on the grounds of Frontier Park.  Top movie and TV stars from Roy Rogers to Hugh O’Brian made personal appearances and country music stars like Ernest Tubbs, Red Foley, and the Sons of the Pioneers performed nightly at the Frontier Pavilion.

During that era the famous saloons and bars downtown were a nightly explosions of cowboy contestants, tourists, and pretty young local girls—many of them really, really young—carousing and drinking with intermittent brawls all of which spilled into the streets until the wee-small hours.  I am told that in the interest of family entertainment local authorities have heavily clamped down on that and the evenings are pale and tame now.  Some old timers say it is downright boring.

 

                                     My father W. M. Murfin in his first year as Secretary of the Frontier Committee in 1954.

 From 1954 through 1956 my father, W. M. Murfin as Secretary of the Frontier Committee, played a leading role in coordinating the rodeo and all the other activities.  My brother Tim and I reveled in riding in the parades and meeting the cowboys and celebrities that often came through our house.  

 

Decked out for Frontier Days circa 1959--Timothy Murfin, neighbor Sharon Niddlekoff, Patrick Murfin, and cousin Linda Strom. 

Today the whole Frontier Days extravaganza stretches over ten days and includes 9 rodeos sanctioned by the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA).  Day Money is awarded to the winners in each event for each rodeo.  At the end of the schedule Cheyenne Frontier Days champions are named in each event and an All Around Cowboy, who must compete in two or more events, are determined by the total amount of Day Money earned. There are also nights of separate PRCA Xtream Championship Bull Riding  competitions.

More than 2,500 local volunteers work on events that include the rodeo, 4 Grand Parades, pancake breakfasts, concerts, chuck wagon cook-off, the carnival, exhibits, Indian Village, and military open houses.  A traditional performance by the United States Air Force Thunderbirds is back with their aerial acrobatics.

After experimenting with adding big Rock and Pop acts in recent years this year it’s all country  in headlining Frontier Nights in the main arena—Brooks and Dunn, Luke Bryant, Cody Johnson, and Megan Moroney among others.   Side venues will feature other acts, making Frontier Days a major music festival. 

 

                                Huge crowds are drawn to the Frontier Nights stage set up in the rodeo arena and featuring big country music and pop stars. 

I know many readers of this blog are animal lovers and abhor rodeo and the people who love it.  No question about it, rodeo can be brutal to both animals and human competitors—bull riding is hands down the most dangerous competitive sport in the world.  It remains so even though significant reforms have been made in how rodeo stock is handled.   Particularly dangerous events for animals like the Chuck Wagon Races—think horse drawn NASCAR with often horrific pile-ups—and Steer busting—roping a steer around the horns then pulling past the animal catching its feet and throwing it to the ground, a maneuver that often resulted in broken necks or legs—have been eliminated but the Wild Horse Race which is more dangerous to competitors than the unbroken stock is still on.  Nothing short of abolition by law of all rodeo competition will satisfy most animal rights folks.  I understand that.  But I also love a good rodeo.  I guess you will have to lump me with the heartless brutes.