World Film and Television Progress (1938)

Continuing 'The Lone Prairie3 / had a gal and her name was Daisy, And when she sang the cat went crazy With diliriwns — 57. Vituses— And all kinds — Of cataleptics. I'm going out in the woods next year And shoot for beer — and not for deer— I am — / ain't — /'/;; a great Sharshootress. At shooting birds I am a beaut. There is no bird I cannot shoot In the eye, in the ear, in the teeth. In the fin(g)ers. Oh, I went up in a balloon so big, The people on the earth they looked like a pig, Like a mice — like a katydid — likeflieses — And like fleasens. The balloon turned up with its bottom side higher, It fell on the wife of a country squire, She made a noise like a dog hound, like a steam whistle, And also — Like dynamite. Oh, what could you do in a case like that? Oh, what could you do but stamp on your hat, And your toothbrush — and everything — Thafs helpless. As the light suddenly fails and the fire dies, the oldest singer of the outfit will be called on to sing a song that is practically the cowboy's night time prayer. He may like his work, he may never begrudge the perils of a round-up, the weariness of twenty hours in a hard saddle; but when he dies, like this cowboy, he'd rather be buried anywhere than on the lone prairie . . . "Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie, Where the wild kiyo/es will howl o'er me; Where the rattlesnakes hiss and the wind howls free, Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie." "Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie," These words came slowly and mournfully. From the pallid lips of a youth who lay On his cold damp bed at the close of day. They heeded not his dying prayer. They buried him there on the lone prairie, In a little box just six by three, His bones now rot on the lone prairie. And the cowboys now as they roam the plain (For they have marked the spot where his bones have lain) Fling a handful of roses over his grave, With a prayer to him who his soul will save. Cowboy and Horse holding a lassoed cow The score or more men go off to their tents. The cook has been abed an hour or two. For a small herd, a single cowboy goes on duty to watch and keep them quiet through the night. If one cow gets nervous, two will get frightened. And two frightened cattle, starting at a coyote's cry, might start a stampede. And a stampede means each cow of several hundred will lose from four to seven pounds in weight. Since cattle are fattened for profit, it would mean when selling time came, a loss of several thousand dollars to the rancher. So the herding songs are pleasant lullabies, but they are also a form of social insurance . . . Oh, go slow, dogies. Quit rovin around, You have wandered and tramped all over the ground; Oh, graze along, dogies, and feel kind of slow, And don't for ever be on the go. Hi-hoo, hi-hoo-oo-oo-oo. Oh, say. little dogies. When you're gonna lay down'.' And quit this for ever a-siftin' around'.' My legs are weary ind my seal is sore. Oh, lay (/own, dogies, like you've laid down before. Lay down, little dogies. lay down. Hi-hoo, hi-hoo-oo-oo-oo. This was the cowboy. Who beat out trails over tall grass and snow for two thousand miles. Trails south to Mexico. Trails north to Sedalia and Abilene and Chayenne. He tended meat for the north, at first tough meat from longhorns. then as the kingdom prospered delicate rich meat from Herefords and Durhams. For twenty years after the Civil War, the business grew. (Keystone) Till the whole world rushed to be in on a good thing. There came "generations from the four corners of the earth gathered by boom magic." Men who had never seen the range played a rising market. By 1880, those thousands of square miles were overstocked and over-sold. Thirty years before, a cow could wander a day for its food. In the end there were less than four acres for every cow to browse on. A single drought and for ten thousand cattle rounded up on one range, fifteen thousand lay dead and shaggy. The waves of swaying grass the Texans saw were bitten down to desert. 1885 came the crash and the crumbling of the glory that was the cowboy. One by one the symbols of the range have vanished . . . the buffalo, the prairie-dog, the longhorn. Barbed-wire traced out a pattern of decay, strung off ranges into farms. (PLAY GRAND CANYON SUITE -PAINTED DESERT marked band for BACKGROUND . . .) The Cowboy is the last to linger. With his bony frame, his self-sufficiency, his gentleness, his knotted scarf, "his loose arms slightly raised and swinging", as he rides away from our time into the records of the American Dream . . . (FADE UP PAINTED DESERT . . . FADE AWAY . . . FADE UP RIDIN' ROUND CATTLE LIFT PAINTED DESERT for harmonic background FADE AWAY RIDIN' ROUND CATTLE FADE UP PAINTED DESERT.) 215