Remembering Bill Boggs

Beth Gallagher

Beth Gallagher

Well-known member
A post from @Joe Riley reminded me of our old friend Bill Boggs and the stories he used to share with us on SOC-1. I miss many of our departed friends, including some who just disappeared and have not returned, leaving us to wonder how they are or if they have passed on.

But... back to Bill, my favorite harmonica player. I tried to read Bill's old diary entries on SOC-1 with the "Wayback Machine" but it is spotty and cumbersome. Then I remembered that Bill participated on the other senior forum for many years, so I checked over there and found a treasure trove. Bill's nickname there was "Drifter", and here is a link to his diary. https://www.seniorforums.com/threads/from-a-wide-spot-in-the-road.41118/

I might copy/paste a few of his tales into this thread for anyone who might be interested, and if any of you have Bill stories feel free to add them. Bill was a talented story teller. I know that he also had an internet blog but I don't have any link to it. Does anyone know where that might be?

Bill and his son.

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Mexicano Pistoleers
by Bill Boggs

He walked down the dusty street from the livery to the saloon. The dust whirled in the street. His hand rested on the butt of his gun which rested in his Mexican styled holster. The street was quiet, the shops were quiet. There were no horses tied off at the saloon. Where was everybody? Watching him from behind dusty windows, no doubt. This was like a dozen towns he knew from Dodge City to Tombstone. He had been running knowing a posse was on his trail.

He didn’t think they were bluffing. They would eventually catch up to him. Even so he'd given them the slip. But he would run no more. Here he’s make his stand. He was good, he knew it and lawmen all over knew it. They would not brace him.

It’s true he had robbed the stage and he had shot the driver and a man in the coach. The driver had a rifle on the seat with him and he picked it up. If the darn fool in the coach had not gone for that derringer he’d still be alive but he had and had died for his trouble. Something was wrong, the town was too quiet. He rode into town minutes before noon. The place should be thriving. No one stirred on the street. There was no traffic. Even the saloon appeared empty.

They would come for him but let them come. He would take care of them as he had done in the past. Posses down here in southern Arizona were always a bunch of Mexican low-life being led by some sheriff who had stayed in office so long he could hardly pick up a heavy pistol. He would show them. His hand still on his gun he started for the saloon when he saw movement in the alley, a lone individual.

“Drop you gun and raise your hands, Senor, you are surrounded.”

Surrounded? A lone man with no gun. This was a game he knew well and he crouched and pull his gun.

A dozen Mexicano pistoleers cut him down.
 
Cigarette
by Bill Boggs

A newspaper lies open on the kitchen table where the old man is drawing on his last cigarette of the day. Smoke curls upwards as he eyes the weather map on the open page.

His mind wanders away from the present, where he has been considering himself old and useless. As he draws the smoke in deeply, the lines on the map remind him of another map, other lines.

Once again he flies above, studying the contour map of hilly ground where soon a parachute will bear him to a new challenge.
Then he has landed, labors up the hill side, muscles aching, short of breath, before coming to the crest, feeling the exhilaration.

He closes the newspaper, taps the ash from his cigarette.
Is it the smoke that stings his eyes, makes them water?

Spent ash drops like a tiny amputated part of his life, old, grey, and useless now.

The past has gone, he must live in the present.

Stubbing out his cigarette, he reflects on the dead matches, butts, and ashes.

He thinks of death.
 
And this is the story that @Joe Riley shared a link to, The Texas Zephyr.

The Texas Zephyr
by Bill Boggs

When I was growing up in north central Texas, I walked to school every day. The most vivid memories I have of that time were those memories associated with junior high school and waiting on a passenger train to load and unload its passengers.

Now the school I attended was about three and a half miles from my house and it took about an hour to walk if I just struck out and walked, which I couldn’t do that because I had to cross a railroad track. From my section of town there were two streets that crossed the tracks on the way up town and on across town to my school.

One of those streets crossed the tracks far to the north of where I lived and that route added an extra half hour of walking time. The other route was Seventh Street, a major traffic artery to the east side of town where I lived and most mornings Seventh Street was blocked by a passenger train. I would wait on that train ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes each morning. Some boys in a hurry to cross would crawl under the train.

One morning as I stood by the tracks waiting for the train to load its passengers and move on, an ambulance came up on the blocked crossing. It sat there several minutes with its lights flashing and its siren wailing but the train did not move. Finally, the driver turned around and went off to find another passage across the tracks.

Another time, a boy about my own age became impatient and started to crawl under the train just as it lurched forward, moving. I held my breath and turned away because I had done this several times and I knew how hard it was to crawl under the train in a hurry. The boy didn’t make it. The train ran over his leg, severing it just below the knee. After that I was afraid to try again.

On my way to school most days the train blocking my path was a long silver train with a silver engine and a black streak that ran its entire length. It was the longest passenger train to come through our town. It was said to be one of the fastest trains on the tracks.
I would stand there beside those tracks, my lunch box in hand, looking at the people seated behind those windows staring back at me. Sometimes one of them would wave and I would wave back and I wondered to what far off destinations they were going.

I could see myself seated behind those windows, in the club car, having my breakfast, impatient that the train did not get under way again, taking me to some distant place.

The newest trains had names and this sleek, shining train was the Texas Zephyr. One morning standing there looking in, I saw a porter in his neatly pressed uniform and his distinctive cap lean over and light the cigarettes of a gentleman and his lady. How I longed to ride that train.

Some years later, en-route to Ft. Lewis, Washington I rode the Texas Zephyr. The trip took almost four days and it was a royal experience. Out northwest of Denver the train struggled as we climbed ever higher, seeking out a pass that would let us cross over those majestic mountains. In Wyoming west of Laramie, the train was halted by deep snow. We sat there one evening and all night waiting for a repair train to come from the west to clear the tracks.

We got off the train and threw snowballs at each other and some of us walked back down the tracks several hundred yards and were amazed how steep the grade was. Off in the valley below we could see a herd of elk and a stream that ran through the valley and from where we stood the stream was no bigger than a string and there were a dozen shades of green among the grasses and the shrubbery and the trees and I marveled at such beauty and God’s grand creation.

I did not sleep that night, instead I played gin with some colonel‘s wife. We would play gin for an hour or so then get up and stretch our legs then play some more. Occasionally, the porter would come by to refresh our drinks and to light my cigar. All night there was a party-like atmosphere on the train with much drinking and singing and merry-making. The passengers got to know each other.

At one point that night I got off the train again and walked forward to the engine. The engineer invited me up and he showed me around his domain there in the engine compartment and we talked a while. He told me about his job, how long it took to stop the train when he had a full head of steam and how boring it was to constantly keep his eyes on the track ahead of him.

I asked him if he had ever seen anything on the tracks blocking his way. He said he’d seen trees pushed over on the tracks by rock slides and an occasional boulder on the tracts, and once a stalled vehicle. That had caused an accident; he had hit the stalled car but no one was hurt because its occupants had crawled out of the car when they saw him coming.

He said he was gone from home days at a time and he didn’t like that. He gave me a different perspective on trains and railroading. Later that morning as we passed through a small town in Utah, I saw a small boy, lunchbox in hand, standing by the tracks peering in at us. I waved to him and he waved back. I could imagine what he might be thinking.

I rode the Texas Zephyr several times and it was always a grand experience, yet no other ride on the Zephyr was quite as memorable as that first journey. But that long silver streak with all its comfort and all its speed had somehow lost its mystique.

My earlier memories faded and it became just another mode of transportation. Still, when I heard the railroad was retiring the Zephyr, I was glad I had experienced those rides for I knew there would never be another.
 
Bill was a wonderful guy. He was from Wichita Falls, Texas and although an old time Texas Democrat, he was very nice to me and liked my stories and poetry. He was a cowboy in a stereotypical way rather than someone that was a rancher. I could identify with him, from visiting an old aunt that lived near Wichita Falls. He remembered the year that a tornado wiped out a trailer park. I saw it from a distance when I was visiting my old aunt.

Great old time harmonica player and story teller, like one might find sitting around the campfire at a cowboy chuckwagon cookout. I remember him hanging out in the diary section and when I started my diary and he welcomed me as one of the "Bottom Feeders." Once I overcame the idea of being a muddy water Texas bullhead catfish, I realized he was bestowing an honor on me. Having played the harmonica from a very young age, I could identify with hanging out with the Bottom Feeders, as the same honor, that of swapping spit, with a fellow harmonica player.

I guess I will always be part of that old group, Bill Boggs and the Bottom Feeders.
 
Oklahoma
by Bill Boggs

I live in Oklahoma, the former Indian Territory, situated across the lower Red River from Texas and south of the states of Kansas, Nebraska, South and North Dakotas. There are thirty-nine Indian tribes in Oklahoma but only five of them native to the Territory.

The thirty-four other tribes were rounded up and transported to Oklahoma by the US military, that is what was left of them. There is one exception. The Cherokee nation, who was marched from Georgia to Oklahoma under escort of the US military. That walk is know as the Trail of Tears. Many Cherokees died during that migration. The word, Oklahoma in the Choctaw language means ‘red man.’

I have an association with some of them.

After the Civil War or War Between The States as some prefer, A land grant was established along the South side of the Red River. It was located north of Nocona, Texas. The land across the Red River belonged to the Wichita Indians and it was hoped trade between the new settlers and the peoples of the Wichita Indians could and would be established and a friendly environment maintained. And for a while this did indeed happen.

My great grandfather and his family were living in the township of Winchester in Clark County, in Kentucky and were some of the Clark County residents who took advantage of this particular land grant in Texas.

They traveled mostly by covered wagon but there were some who didn’t have or couldn’t afford a covered wagon but instead, loaded what they could carry onto their topless wagon, loaded up the kids and headed west, their hope and spirits uplifted by the promise of free land in the new territory.

A colony was organized, property settled on, and duly recorded, and the new settlers went about the business of planting crops and schooling their children. It was hard work and much bartering look place. It was to their great advantage that game was readily available. The settlement began to thrive. They built cabins and looked forward to their first harvest. Trade with the indians was generally a good thing. They traded what they could do without for hides which could be used for a number of purposes.

Not sure how the trouble started. It has been suggested an Indian tried to steal a gun, a treasured possession of the frontiersmen, was caught and shot. It had previously been established that much petty thievery was carried on by the Indians. However it started, the settlers were not prepared for the attacks that followed. Many settlers were killed, men, women, and children. In several surprise raids the settlers were forced to abandon their homes and the settlers were eventually driven on South and Southwest to a site north of present day Albany, Texas, where a US Fort was being built to protect settlers. A troop of calvary was already in place. It was called Fort Griffin. Outside the fort a community of settlers had gathered seeking protection from Indian raids, mostly Comanches. The families driven from their grants along the Red River moved into this new community known first as the Flats and later took on the name of the Fort and became Fort Griffin. Their land grants of course abandoned. Life was a struggle. Indian raids were common and continued until the US Calvary and armed civilians at last prevailed.

I come from this environment of settlers, these pioneers, moving west seeking a better life. I can draw a direct line to those brave, desperate souls who left their homeland in Ireland and Scotland and trekked however they could to America, seeking a better way and a better life. My wife ’s family was part of the Oklahoma land rush that settled Oklahoma. Her family settled on the north side of the Red River in Southwest Oklahoma, beginning life here living in dirt dugout until they could afford to build a house.

All that remains of the original settlement along the Texas side of the Red River, north of Nocona, Texas is a metal marker. I have been there several times. It tells the story of these settlers of which you have here read
 
Books
by Bill Boggs

I am something of a reader, albeit a slow reader. My wife sometime tells me I move my lips when I read. She notices this because sometimes and it is usually after we have been to the library, we turn off the TV off and read the evening away,she sipping her iceboater, me sipping tea.

I have probably twelve or fifteen books picked up and checked out from the library this year and read, wall to wall or is it, cover to cover. That’s not many, you may think for a whole year, and I’d have to agree, but then I’d have to tell you about my Kindle books and the ninety-four books therein. And I have deleted a dozen or more. Why delete? Because they were, if not deplorable, certainly not the books I thought they would be. But to be fair some of these ninety-four kindle books have been on my computer awhile.

Some I have fondness for. For instance, “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser. I don’t remember when I first picked it up and read it first but I have read the book at least twice and have used it as a reference book for many years. The Kindle edition is the 30th Anniversary Edition. I treasure it and go back from time to time and read passages for inspiration. I have a fondness for the book and the author who has passed on.

Another book I have a fondness for is Semper Fi by W.E.B. Griffin. It is a story of the Corp, I have read all his early books twice and several three times. They seem to suit me. Some of those books I would purchase again, if i could find them, but they are out of print. They are not stories of war but rather stories of people at war.

There is a thread that runs through my reading that goes back to when I was twelve years old. My uncle came to visit and when he went to leave he reached behind his truck seat and handed me a paperback western novel, saying, ‘you might like this’. I did and have been reading western novels since. I am just starting to read again, “Riders of the Purple Sage.”

My reading varies. Looking at all my westerns you might think me frivolous in my reading habits but I have some of the classics, I have mysteries from best seller lists and writings by Thomas Paine. My list of books may not rise up to your own reading experience but again, I might surprise you.

I read for entertainment and to learn. I have writing books, some I have read two and three times. Sometime I learn a bit from each book. If i like them I keep them and read them again. After all, I am retired and not much to do, and if I were totally honest, there’s not much I can do now days.

Well, this is not about what I can or cannot do but what I read. A number of books I have purchased, I did so on somebody’s recommendation. Some I read but most I toss. I also read some from Flipboard. Flipboard is an accumulator of reading material. Many of the subjects you like to read and you can choose. And when I am out of anything to read I have an online thing called, “The Electric Typewriter,” where I can always find something to keep me reading and happy. I’m always trying to read a little better and a little faster. So if you are a reader, happy reading.
 
I particularly like this one; it is perfect for a Senior Forum.

Silent March
by Bill Boggs

Once upon a time two old people lived in an old house on a street of many old houses. The old house was not a fine house or even a good house, it was just a house with some cracks in the ceiling, with windows that had stood too many tests of time against driving rains and high winds and dust storms and now suffered warped panes and rain rot and looked out upon the world in a state of dilapidation.

The once stately doors crinkled and squeaked and one had the impression they could hardly stand upright. The roof's shingles curled at the edges and some were missing and the outside paint resembled not paint at all but thousands of tiny brown leaves stuck on its walls to hide its embarrassment.

Inside the old couple greatly resembled the house where they had lived so long. They both used canes which they used to tap their way around the house, arising early they tapped their way to the kitchen, there to make the morning coffee and a solitary piece of toast for each. For many years they had eaten oatmeal with their toast and in the years of plenty they often had a strip or two of bacon to supplement their breakfast but that was long ago for the years of plenty never came around anymore. Now they were simply old grand-parents.

But it was a day of joy for word had come to them that their son and daughter-in-law and two grand children were coming for a visit. It had been a whole year. My, how the grand children must have grown!, they said to each other in their excitement and anticipation.

They changed the linen on the guest room bed and tided up the bathroom and placed a glass and bottled water on the vanity for convenience and a vase of flowers from their garden on the dresser and dusted and cleaned, their canes tapping happily all bout the house as preparations were made for the coming guests.

At last the appointed time arrived and their children and grand children pulled up in their driveway. They tapped their way out onto the porch to greet the new arrivals. It was indeed a happy reunion.

Grandmother, after shopping for the anticipated visit, prepared an evening meal of fried chicken, green beans, scalloped potatoes, yeast rolls and iced tea. And in the oven, two homemade chocolate pies. Grandfather thought this a scrumptious meal and wished guests would come around more often so grandmother would have cause to prepare such a meal.

They all sat around the dinner table in their pleasant faces and with their gentle voices and talked of meals past and recalled memories of growing up in this place.

Now these times have become memories. The old house is silent. The grandparents don’t live here anymore. They have moved off life’s stage, first one, then the other, ancestors now, on their long, silent march into history.
 
@Von Jones -- you might enjoy this story from Bill.

Junking
by Bill Boggs

I was going out and run around some today but decided against it. Actually I was going junking. Going to buy some junk. And one of my favorite places to go in my little town is to the Salvation Army store. I go to look, hoping I suppose, to find that diamond in the rough. Maybe an upscale piece of clothing like a good cap.

I look for cups. What kind of cups? I don’t know but I’ll know one when I see it. Which reminds me, I have broken so many dishes this summer. I mean maybe a half a dozen cups, dropped them in the sink and break them into dozens of pieces. I could use a couple of good cups.

By the way, I am trying to find a good wallet, not any ole' wallet but a fine one like I have been carrying around for so long. Now I did buy two or three wallets from the Salvation Store. I thought they might work but they haven’t so I threw them in one of my junk drawers.

When I turned seventeen my dad gave me a wallet. He bought it at a saddle shop in Amarillo, Texas. It was one piece of leather which folded up with slots to hold everything in place. It was good leather and the slots were perfectly cut so they could not work out. It was a beautiful wallet. I carried it with me when I went into military service, then overseas to Korea. Two hitches over there the wallet survived. It was with me during two winters when we had no place to get out of the weather when it dropped down below zero except the trenches. During wet and dry weather we were together. Two monsoon seasons we lived through, the wallet soaked for days on end. it held my stuff, what I was expected to carry and any military pay script. The wallet endured a year and half at Fort Lewis, Washington after we returned stateside.

After discharge the wallet was with me during a variety of jobs till one day while riding in my hip pocket in a pair of shorts on the golf course and during the game doing a little betting, I pulled it out to grab a bill or two to pay off a debt I had incurred and dropped the wallet. I reached over and picked it up and said, “Sorry old buddy.” My three golfing partners laughed. One of them asked, “What’s that thing?” It was sweat soaked, had some wrinkles in the leather and did look much like I did when when feeling ill.

When I got home I decided to retire the wallet. In dog years and maybe wallet years it was getting old. I cleaned it and carefully placed it in my sock drawer to stay until one day, years later, I decided that was foolish and threw it away. I started carrying everything I needed in my front pocket with a rubber band around it.

One day a couple of years later my wife gave me a card holder. It too was fine leather and I used it for several years as a card file, until one day I obtained a rolodex. Remember those? I pitched the leather card holder in my sock drawer.

I bought two or three wallets but didn’t like them. I tried for several months to find another like my old buddy I threw away. I attempted on two or three occasions to have leather shops make me one like that first good wallet. No dice. Then one morning I started to the gym. I stuck my wallet into my front pocket and it was bulky, made too large a bulge. So I took our my drivers license and a credit card and a few dollars I had, folded the money and got that credit card holder out of my sock drawer, put my stuff in the card file, stuck it in my front pocket and off I went.

Now since that time I have sewed both edges of the leather to keep it from coming apart but does really need replacing. I’ve looked online for a replacement. Bought a couple but they were not right, too large or too small or something. So now and every once in a while I stop off at a junk store and I look for something that might replace something good but old that I carry. I’ve also checked antique shops, so far to no avail.

I guess I’ve always been a junker. It seems to have been forever that I needed more than one drawer to hold my junk stuff. I used to look for old fountain pens and ink wells and good old mechanical pencils so I’m sure I’ve got a junker's heart.

I guess what it is, I’m tired of spending money on things that don’t work out. Some things I’ve owned, little things, like a pocket knife, a wallet, a writing instruments had character or maybe they suited me.

Sometime I go out junking because I’ve been in the house too long. I need to get out, to look at people, speak to some, see what working people are about, but know this, when I do I’ve always got my eye peeled, looking for something of yore, that’s useful.

Thanks for listening to me. I was getting lonesome.
 
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