Vacation - All I Ever Wanted

So it’s June. School is out or very nearly out for many kids, and it’s time to start thinking about getting away. We leave very soon for Colorado where we will visit family and go up to our property and talk to the builder we’ve chosen. While we’re there, we’ll do some hiking, fishing and resting. I’m emphasizing that last point because frankly I’m needing the resting part.

To me there are two types of vacations. The whirlwind where you’re trying to see and visit everything and the one where you’re just resting. I have to say that the one we’re about to embark on will be a combination of both. There will be some downtime, but there is also the whirlwind where we will visit three different family members in three different cities. There would have been a fourth, but I nixed that one and said sorry. No time.

My favorite vacations are the ones where you rent a house on the beach, and all you do is go down the steps to the ocean get wet and then go back in the house or sit on the veranda and stare at the ocean. You can do this with the mountains as well, but most of the time we’re out hiking or doing something in the mountains.

Saloon Girls of the Old West

Yeah, I knew that would grab your attention right away, and I aim to please. If you were around in the sixties and even the seventies, I’m sure you saw Gunsmoke with Marshal Matt Dillon. And who else…Miss Kitty.

Did anyone else realize that Miss Kitty ran the saloon and would have been a well dressed whore? I was only five years old, how would I have known that she was sleeping with the cowboys for money. And why didn’t the sheriff ever marry her?

Since I like for my westerns to be as historically accurate as possible, I do a lot of research on the west.  One of my favorite books is Hell’s Half Acre by Richard F. Selcer. This book is about the half acre of Fort Worth, Texas back during the height of the cattle driving days.  He talks about prostitution back in the old west and how it contributed to the local economy. Women were not allowed in most saloons, but they were close by. Most women rented rooms above the saloon where the randy cowboys would pay them a visit.  

While we like to think of a prostitute in the old west looking like Miss Kitty, most were between the ages of fourteen and twenty and were hardened women with names like Big Nose Kate, Squirrel-Tooth Alice, Irish Kate and Monkey. Yes, can you imagine a cowboy coming in and asking for Monkey?