The Old West is famous for its boomtowns, those transient collections of stores, saloons and boarding houses that followed mines and railroads across the frontier, thriving on the workers’ pay and packing up to follow the source of cash when a mine played out or the advancing railhead moved on. Such was the case with the Frontier Index, a newspaper published by two enterprising former Confederate soldiers who found work after the Civil War with their former enemies. Read the rest of this entry »
James Michener’s “Texas” is a massive, monumental historical novel about the state that is larger than some countries, large enough that it retained the option when joining the Union to separate into as many as five states. Michener extensively researched his books (30 months on “Texas”) and based his fictitious characters and locales on historical people and places. Read the rest of this entry »
Our cultures have blended for centuries. Our country martially and officially subdued Mexico in the 1840s, but, as is usually the case following conquest, the conquered and conqueror mingled, and continue to mingle, and our languages, music, food and customs have combined in a spicy blend. Read the rest of this entry »
Last year I bought this serape at Don Pancho’s restaurant in Alliance, Ohio. I had wanted a serape since watching Clint Eastwood movies in my youth, always having been a fan of historical American clothing. Some vendors consider a serape a blanket and consider the garment with a slit for the head a poncho. Merriam-Webster lists serape or sarape as being Mexican-Spanish, the word dating to 1834, and defines it as “a colorful woolen shawl worn over the shoulders especially by Mexican men.” M-W says that “poncho” is American-Spanish from the Mapuche people in South America and means the same as a serape, “a blanket with a slit in the middle so that it can be slipped over the head and worn as a sleeveless garment.” So “sarape” is Mexican, and “poncho” is South American. My Merriam-Webster Spanish-English dictionary defines a “jorongo” as a full-length poncho. Read the rest of this entry »
This is my Alliance Review article about the filming of “Centennial” at Roscoe Village:
… a disgruntled wagoner approached Hell Street in silence. His horses lacked the twenty-four brass bells which a proper team of Conestogas should have, and loungers at the inn came into the street to mark this strange arrival. …
At the edge of the crowd … stood a young Mennonite in black suit and flat-brimmed hat. He was twenty-four years old, stockily built, with a reddish beard that started at his ears and met in a neat line just at the edge of his chin. Since his face was already square, the fringe of beard made it look as if it had been framed.
The Mennonite’s name was Levi Zendt, a leading character in James Michener’s “Centennial,” an epic novel abut the American West set in Colorado. 
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James Michener’s monumental “Centennial” takes place mostly in Colorado, but Chapter 6, “The Wagon and the Elephant,” starts in the east. Portions of that chapter were filmed in Ohio for the miniseries adaptation of the novel, which was released in October 1978. Michener follows a favorite format in Centennial — he describes his chosen location, in this case a fictitious town along the South Platte in Colorado, from the formation of the land to the present day, populating the story with animals, Indians, Frenchmen, Germans, Americans, Slavs and Orientals, portraying the Indians with compassion and realism and depicting relations between whites and Indians as much more than just confrontations at the opposite ends of rifles and bows and arrows. Read the rest of this entry »