Thursday, September 21, 2023: Cowboys, a green house and Rudolph
Info:
“City of Oklahoma City”, as Oklahoma City is officially known, is the capital of the state of Oklahoma. There are 680,000 people living in the city and 1.4 million in the metropolitan area. In addition to one of the largest cattle markets in the world, Okla has oil fields – even the Capitol is located on an active oil field!
My opinion:
I finally got to meet John Wayne in person! He stands around in bronze in the Cowboy Museum.
Okla is a nice town. Not exciting, but nice.
Diary:
On such a long journey, you automatically come across a wide variety of topics. What I was still missing were cowboys, among other things. I was often traveling through landscapes where I thought to myself: “If Lucky Luke turns the corner now, I wouldn’t be surprised.” But Lucky Luke didn’t show up.
But in Okla City, as Oklahoma City is abbreviated on all signposts, there is a western and cowboy museum where this culture is explored. But not only that, because a very large section is dedicated to the indigenous tribes and their traditions. You can learn a lot about the way of life and history of the indigenous people who lived in the south. Until they were expelled.
I would like to take just one example from a tribe that I had never heard of before.
The Caddo were the first to come into contact with Hernando de Soto on his North American expedition in 1542. About 200,000 Caddo inhabited an area of 50,000 square miles (130,000 km2) in what is now Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. They had been farming for at least 700 years. The main components of their diet were cereals, beans and pumpkins, but they also ate various animals, fish, berries and nuts. They maintained an extensive trading network that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes and from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic coast.
After the Caddo were driven out of their homeland by the whites, their numbers dwindled to 600. They were placed on a reservation in Oklahoma in 1859, which was dissolved in 1901. There are currently around 5,000 Caddo.
Other southern tribes include the Hopi, Pawnee, Chickasaw, Hooghan and Kiowa.
When the Spaniards arrived, they brought cattle with them. The Spaniards left, the cattle stayed and multiplied in the areas bordering the Gulf of Mexico. As they didn’t belong to anyone, no one took care of them.
Until the Industrial Revolution in Europe and America developed an enormous demand for leather, because the machines were kept running by leather straps.
Demand could not be met. They remembered that somewhere in the south, millions of stray cattle were grazing happily. All you had to do was catch them and take them to where the train was already going. At the beginning it was still relatively far to the east, but the further the construction progressed, the shorter the cattle drives became.
What is now known as the cult cowboy used to work under the names Vaquero, Boockaroo or Drover. In contrast to the rancher, who owned the cattle, they were hired workers who had to possess a high level of knowledge, skills and abilities in order to carry out their tasks. They captured the cattle and drove them north in herds of around 3,000 animals, which usually took three months. Such a trail was a strip about 50 miles wide, because when one herd had passed through, the next could not take exactly the same route. The animals needed fresh grass. 3,000 cattle eat a lot!
Many places in Kansas became the end points of these cattle drives, where the animals were then loaded onto trains and transported to Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago or elsewhere. Incidentally, the railroad was also the main means of transportation for people. Most immigrants came by train and not by the legendary covered wagons.
The cattle were driven in cattle cars, wagons that were specially prepared for them. Fifteen to twenty cows fit inside. The train traveled for eight hours at a speed of 10 to 20 mi/h (16 to 32 km/h), then the animals were unloaded so that they could eat and drink. After a while they were loaded again and the journey continued.
One more thing: the Drovers carried no weapons. The cowboy who rides and shoots at the same time is an invention of the film industry. They needed three horses a day anyway, which meant saddling three times, so it was important to put as little weight on the animals as possible. What’s more, a revolver would have interfered with riding, and with a bit of bad luck you could have shot yourself in the leg. Which is not to say that many a dispute in the villages was not settled with the Colt.
At each cattle drive, a cook traveled with a covered wagon, the chuck wagon, which was pulled by a mule. In the beginning it was mainly dried food, but over time more and more healthier and better things were added. The ranchers soon realized that they would get more skilled cowboys if they provided better food. But what could be found on every fire was the coffee pot.
In addition to the already very demanding and strenuous work, there was also the rodeo, where the cowboys were able to put their skills to the test. In the 1920s, cowgirls also established themselves, whose athletic skills were in no way inferior to those of the men. In the 1930s, women were no longer allowed at rodeos and were only allowed to attend as showgirls in glittery outfits. This has since changed again.
It was over twenty years ago in Estes Park (where the house from the movie Shining is located – yes, that’s real!) at a rodeo where the then Miss Rodeo America was present – “of course” only as an optical decoration. The cowboys tried their hand at riding untamed horses and wild bulls.
In between, the smiling Miss rode up and down again and again. And just as I was agreeing with myself that this was pretty disgusting, a horse went through and sped off. Within a second, the smiling Miss became a fantastic rider, and even before the men realized what was actually happening, she had not only caught up with the horse, but also calmed it down so that it could be led back easily. She handed the animal over to the cowboys, who finally came riding up, put on her smile again and did her job, for which she was obviously very well paid. Hats off to this woman! Incidentally, I met her in a hat store afterwards and had a brief chat with her. Since then I’ve owned a cowboy hat, but it’s in a certain basement in Leonding, where Annie Way’s instruction manual is also lying around.
Back to the present. I want to talk about Oklahoma City. As I said, a nice city where great importance is attached to the historic buildings in the city center. For example, the courthouse, on which quotes from famous men are engraved. Samuel Adams wrote a sentence that is probably more relevant than ever in America: “He who has most zeal and ability to promote public felicity, let him be the servant of the public.” The quote is still up-to-date, because there are no signs that a “servant of the public” in the US could be female in the foreseeable future.
The Myriad Botanical Gardens are located right in the city center, with a spectacular and enormous green house where you can experience everything from the tropics to the subtropics. But what it doesn’t have, unlike the Linz Botanical Garden, is a café with delicious pastries …
By the way, I met Rudolph. Yes, the reindeer with the red nose. In September. That’s probably still on vacation.
I was very impressed by the memorial to the bombing on April 19, 1995, in which 168 people lost their lives and the Alfred P. Murrah building collapsed. It was the most serious act of terrorism in the USA before September 11, 2001 and still is the most serious domestic act. Where the building once stood, there are now 168 empty chairs made of glass and bronze. The memorial was built on the premise that such an act of violence, intended to spread chaos, fear and mistrust, had the opposite effect, namely love and solidarity.
“We come here to remember those who were killed, those who survived and those changed forever. May all who leave here know the impact of violence. May this memorial offer comfort, strength, peace, hope and serenity.”
