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My congratulations to all who had a part in putting this short film together. It makes home in the San Joaquin Valley richer for everyone. My apologies that the link below begins with a short advertisement, but well worth your endurance and patience.
Loren’s story of colored horses, the great plume
of dust rising into the sky as they descended
from Buckeye – the same high ridge and deep
drop into the flat along the Kaweah that Dad & I
kicked cattle off each June – I could see it
in his eyes from the hillside across the canyon.
Bays, sorrels and duns bumping, leaping downwards,
single file – Fred Ward’s gather for the cavalry
strung for half-a-mile. It happened then, he said,
when he wanted to be a cowboy. Gills, Salinas,
Arizona rodeos, knotted tail of a paint horse
disappearing with the crack of manzanita,
forsaking the bunch for a wild one – working best
on his own. Old and cranky, put his pocket knife
to Leroy’s throat for riding in front of him
on the Roble Lomas. You could see dying
come back to life in his brown eyes, a sudden
damp reflection riding up the creek to Ishom
atop a wagon full of carp dried upon the rocks
at Belle Point. We shared it gently, heard
voices in the same place for a long time.
- for Loren Fredricks
The opinions expressed in the Western Folklife Center's Deep West online journals are those of the online journal participants and not the Western Folklife Center. The Western Folklife Center does not moderate these journals and as such does not guarantee the veracity, reliability or completeness of any information provided in the journals or in any hyperlink appearing within them.