Doing research for my current project I expected to find plenty of facts relating to the American West. My third book takes place during the Spanish American War and follows the famed First Volunteers, better known as Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.
I figured I would find plenty of accounts like that of Oklahoma cowboy and bronc buster Bill McGinty. Indeed, the Rough Rider’s had their share of western archetypes. Hard men from the western plains and southwest mountains. Images of sunburnt, crude, slow talking men may fill our imagination thanks to film and books.
What does not come to mind is a cowboy sitting in the shade with a book. Literature is not often associated with our western heroes. However, in 1898 as the Rough Rider’s made their way from the training grounds of San Antonio, Texas to war in Cuba they passed the time reading books and magazines. The popular books at that time were Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. What we consider classics today were best sellers then.
Cosmopolitan magazine serialized The War of the Worlds in 1897. Imagine a hardened veteran of the Apache Wars riding in a train car bound for Tampa, Florida. A waiting him is an armada to carry him and thousands of soldiers to Cuba. From his lips hangs a hand rolled cigarette, smoke hovering in the air. His gaze is fixed on what he holds in his hands. In those sun burnt and scarred hands is an issue of Cosmo.
I would wager that most college graduates today never read one of those books. They might have seen the Tom Cruise movie. If they had an honor’s class, they googled The Red Badge of Courage for a report. More recently they asked A.I. to summarize it before taking a test.
Any generation can fall into the trap of thinking it is more advanced than the ones before them. As literacy rates plummet across the United States more and more people ask A.I. to “explain this please.” I have the feeling that the average cowboy in the 1890’s could pass today’s honor’s classes easily.
