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| Dusty with an Indian friend in Nevada several years ago. |
Somewhere in the
before life I wanted to be a writer.
Lots of folks do the wanna be thing, but few follow through and even
less of them end up published. I laugh about it now, but in the typewriter days
we didn’t have spell checker or any real correction method. I wrote a column for three rural weekly
magazines and each was about two pages double-spaced. Writing a column teaches you to be ready and
write on a deadline. One week, a particular job hung over my head. The story line was about the spit tobacco in
the box gang of farmers who hung around a general store’s stove and told yarns,
commented on events, and settled the world’s problems.
People would comment and laugh about
their tall tales often called current news.
I recall one about calves to big for their cows to have, a problem that
often resulted in the death of the cow.
This one old farmer in front of the
stove said. “Yeah my neighbor has one of those bulls gets small calves, but he
has to keep the calves in the barn for weeks to grow up enough so the hawks
don’t get them.”
So even after several years of
writing a successful local column, I couldn’t get a spot in a big magazine that
paid nor get my column syndicated. So skip the newspaper business. Meanwhile if I couldn’t find a western book
to read, I wrote them in long hand on a loose leaf note book like Zane Grey
did. Only I didn’t have his wife Dolly
to later type and to edit them. But my
girls found them as teens and read them—then cornered me up. Dad why
don’t you sell your westerns—they’re good?
“Girls, they have Louie and lots more
good writers. I figure selling western books would be like writing songs in
Nashville. Do you know how to get a
songwriter off your porch?”
“No.”
“Pay him for the pizza.”
But I’d written imaginary book
reports in high school—English teachers never read western. Texas
Ranger Sam Brown comes to Low Gap, he captures the rustlers, marries Mary Ann
and cleans up the whole place. Lots of
fist fighting and shooting—great book to read. I charged a dollar for each book report when teenage
wages were still fifty cents an hour. I sold some every week for spending
money. Boys were dumb about not reading
books.
I then got into chicken doctoring
for Tyson, I was over about thirty large farms. One day I met a farmer’s wife
who could type. Her neighbor had a registered Angus operation and an expensive
big electric typewriter for typing registrations papers. She borrowed it in
turn agreeing to type in his small needs.
I had found my Dolly. Linda was such a busy woman even without my
books to do, and I felt guilty, but I wrote and she typed and soon I sold some
books. I still give her my books each
year in payment and each time she says, “I told you you’d be famous.”
Famous or not she and my wife Pat
pushed me along on this road to publication. Next the computer age came on the
scene and I bought two huge Commodores. I
had written most of my books in legible long hand, but I knew to get the books
written that I had in my head, I’d have to learn to create on that monster machine. It wasn’t an easy switch but I did it. You
had to type a header on a page along with the page number, then reprint the
page. Oh it was draggy compared to today.
But to show how much my wife Pat
supported me, quite a few years ago we went on a Saturday and shopped around
for a computer. I wasn’t going to spend
the money for real computer until I sold a major book, but we were
looking.
We ended up at Mac and a guy had me
sit down to type. He said they had a
half dozen sales people there every day and I could call even on weekends if I
had a problem. The price was high for a typewriter and I started to walk away
when Pat caught my arm. “Aren’t you going to buy it?”
“I want to think on it.”
She shook her head. “If it had been
a dang tractor, you’d already had it loaded on the trailer. Buy it.”
I did of course.
Thanks, I’ll tell you more about my
start in this business in the future. Check out my website www.dustyrichards.com I answer email too dustyrichards@cox.net
