Cowboy Spur Maker Book-The Story of Ed Blanchard by Jane Pattie & Tom Kelly-New!

Description

Cowboy Spur Maker
The Story of Ed Blanchard
Jane Pattie & Tom Kelly
"...engaging and well written...the author's crisp writing style, replete with humor and understatement, captures the essence of the oral tradition and the cowboy way of 'spinning a yarn,' but without romanticizing the subject's life."---
B. Byron Price, Buffalo Bill Historical Center
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Ed Blanchard was known to family and friends as a wild, reckless cowboy long before horsemen of the West recognized him as a noted maker of cowboy spurs. But it was his years spent herding snorty cattle and cinching his saddle on broncs that taught him his trade as both a cowboy and a spur maker.
Jane Pattie has researched the times and added historical background, and she has drawn on interviews she did with Blanchard for her earlier book,
Cowboy Spurs and Their Makers
. But it is from New Mexico rancher Tom Kelly, Blanchard's cousin, that she uncovered Blanchard's work in the cattle business and how he learned the
art of hammering hot steel into the shape of spurs to fit a cowboy's boots.
"Spur making was a disease to [Ed]," the authors write. "You've heard of old-timers who would prospect night and day, hunting for a rich strike. They were said to have 'gold fever.' That's the way Ed was with spurs. If he was working at something else, he'd say, 'I could have made two pair of spurs while I was doing this.' He was always saying that the work he had to do was keeping him from making spurs."
Together, Pattie and Kelly tell a dual tale of old times and of change: the story of spur making as experienced by one of its more prolific practitioners and the story of cowboys in the early part of the twentieth century. Through Blanchard's experiences, the authors trace the changes
of Western life, from horse to pickup truck, from hand-forged spurs to commercial manufacture.
Ranch life, the cowboy life, and metalworking in the American West are interwoven through the book, as they were in the real life of Blanchard, who emerges from these pages as a humorous, down-home regional character readers will be glad to get to know.
CONTENTS:
Part 1: ED BLANCHARD COUNTRY
1. As I Know the Story, by Jane Pattie
Part 2: AS TOM KELLY REMEMBERS
2. The Road to Water Canyon
3. The Making of a Cowboy
4. From Horseback to Horsepower
5. Cowboy Ways
6. The Forge and the Anvil
7. Handmade to Order
AFTERWORD: RANCHING IN BLANCHARD COUNTRY THEN AND NOW, BY TOM KELLY
Softcover.. 6.25"x9.5" 160 pages. Black and white photos. Spur Gallery.
BRAND NEW
!