Agood friend of mine, John Duncklee, is an award winning western writer who was educated in geography, and taught English in colleges in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. John ranched in the dry 50s in Arizona, and bought and sold feeder cattle on the Mexican border. A navy veteran from World War II, he’s grown cotton, made range studies in the San Francisco mountains north of Flagstaff and built furniture from desert wood. He owned and ran many race horses on the Tucson track, and worked mules in his pre-college years in Wyoming.
John and his wife Penny, who is a renowned artist, live in a spacious Mexican style adobe house in Las Cruces, N.M. Their house is in the barrio, a quiet section in the medium size town, perhaps the size of Fayetteville with a milder winter. The following is a letter from John. I thought his comments might fit many of the baby boomers who are beginning or thinking about retirement.
Dear Dusty,
You have had winter this year in Arkansas! I, too, have had sad thoughts about how society has become so entranced with high tech, and the kids no longer play at real stuff like the things you mentioned. I wonder at times what will society be like once these kids grow up and take charge. I remember when the CEOs of just about any business were all white haired with a certain wisdom between their ears. Now you look at the CEOs on TV in front of Congress or elsewhere, and they are all too young to have much experience in anything. Perhaps that is why greed is so entrenched, because the young are always overly ambitious. I am damn sure glad I am 80 and never had to operate under Corporate America. You managed fine, but I’ll bet you’re glad to be gone from it. There’s nothing like being able to sit down and tell stories.
The other day a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to partner on a race horse, a three-year-old maiden that he had researched the bloodline, and looked like he had lots potential.
He said, “We might be able to make a few bucks on him at Sunland.” (At nearby El Paso.)
I replied, “Dick, you are using the wrong pronoun.” Then I told him that I was sitting just fine, and had no desire to pay some trainer a hundred bucks a day on some hopeful racehorse.
Another thing that happens when you are content – there are all kinds of real estate buys from foreclosures over in Arizona right now, but I wouldn’t even waste the time to go over there and look at the best buy of the century – because I don’t feel like messing with anything except to tell stories. I still have time to be the kid I have always been, but leave out the horse trades!
A great cowboy, 80 years old, and my friend who writes western books, poems and pontificates on my e-mail. There are lots of us who look with some upset about where America will go in the future. But this country has survived bad presidents, recessions, depressions and wars. Still, most of us would like to see things much brighter on the horizon.
Western novelist Dusty Richards and his wife Pat live on Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas. For more information about his books you can email Dusty by visiting www.ozarksfn.com and clicking on ‘Contact Us’ or call 1-866-532-1960.
