WRECKPAN CODE OF THE WEST~ By Shayna Matthews

Texas "groanin' cart"

"Wake up, snakes, an' bite a biscuit!"

Not exactly the most heart-warming call to dinner, is it? Hopefully, you won't be invited to your next meal with such biting enthusiasm. (If you are, I want to hear about it!) But to a cowpuncher runnin' on four hours sleep, this was just one of the dough wrangler's many colorful calls to the grub-pile.

The groanin' cart, or the chuckwagon, was the center spoke of a cowboy's harsh and lonesome world. While the wagon meant dry bedrolls and warbags, the chuckwagon meant grub.

Grubwagons housed barrels, sacks and air-tights, or canned goods. It was the belly-cheater's job to cook for ornery cowboys bent on breaking the monotony of trailin' cattle with playful tricks and jokes. Belly-achin' wasn't tolerated around the cook's camp, for his sensitivities were easily tramped upon. Swearing around or at the cook was generally avoided, (no matter that he could exercise his own tongue at will), an offended dough-roller made for lousy eats.

Cooks were often older men, those who had been thrown by a bone-crunchin' bronc one too many times. Stoved up and surly, "coosies" were often rough in nature...as rough as the backside of sandpaper. Quick to take offense and slow to forgive, spite often reared its ugly head around a cowpuncher's meal. Grudges meant succulent morsels would be shaved off a roast to be fed to cook himself, the leavings going toward the men. Syrups would be hidden, and an exhausted cowpuncher, eager for a good dose of Arbuckles, might find his coffee sweetened with molasses instead of sugar, meager portions or "altered" foodstuffs.

fine dining

A cowboy trailed herds from two to three months at a time, usually twice a year. Loving the open range, they rode for low pay, averaging $3.00 a day. Long as they didn't anger Cookie, the job was worth it. To keep that ole' biscuit shooter appeased, cowboys followed the "Wreckpan Code". It was a rule not to be violated - each man scraped his own plate and rinsed it out in the communal wreckpan. No cook ever collected dishes from the cowmen. Cowboys, or camp volunteers if they had any, coddled "Miss Sally" (yet another intriguing label for the trail cook) by chopping wood, peeling 'taters, drying dishes and packin' the man's personal bedroll.

The cowhand's day started 30 minutes before daybreak, regardless of how late they had stayed up nighthawkin' the herd. If grub was slim, a call of humiliation might be heard: "Here's hell, boys!" Chants, songs and diddies might be sung if the outfit's grubline was well funded. Either way, most of those calls are worth hearin', but probably not printin'.

Coffee, probably Arbuckles, awaited the cowman. But before you nod your head in agreement, here's a gem you may not have thought of. Cowboy coffee, on the trail, was often brewed with bog water...a bog being a stream dammed off to collect rain for range stock. This water, more often than not, was tainted by the bloated bodies of cows that had staggered into the mud, got stuck and died. A volunteer, (never the cook, for that would make him surly) would "pull bog" and yank out the offendin' critter. Later, the boys would straddle their haunches, drinkin' a stout cup of Arbuckles without battin' an eye.
Coffee, anyone?

Arbuckles on the boil at a cowboy camp

No cowboy ever went without his coffee, and he rarely drank it plain. Course brown sugar had to be chipped free from the barrel and run through a meat grinder to soften.

A lean outfit's menu consisted of arbuckles, (with or without the bloated cow and meat grinder brown sugar), beans, bacon and hoecakes. Wealthier outfits afforded a much more satisfying spread, consisting of anything between beans and barbeque. Frijoles, also called whistleberries, were a cowhand's staple. Sour-doughs or hot rocks, were a close second. Air-tights, maybe canned peaches or other canned goodies would be pulled out - if that dough-roller was in a good mood.

Ever one for a good wollop of sarcasm, the cowboy's "fried chicken" was actually fried bacon. Canned cow held the stamp of the Eagle Brand", and sow bosom or chuckwagon chicken was salt pork. 

In discussing an outfit where the cook fed salt pork exclusively instead of beef, one cowboy stated that he "lived on hog side 'til he near starved to death." He further stated that his system was "so saturated with hog fat that he sweated straight leaf lard and his hide got so slick he could hardly keep his clothes on." His friend added that he "et so much hog belly that he grunted in his sleep an' was afraid to look for fear he'd sprouted a curly tail."

(from Cowboy Lingo by Ramon F. Adams)

In the spirit of fine dining, family gatherings and "fluff-duffs" - cowboy terminology for fancy, throat-ticklin' grub - I urge you to remember the wreckpan code of the west...and perhaps, your guests at the next gathering will even hear the call of the coosie:

"Boneheads, boneheads, take it away...wake up, snakes, an' bite a biscuit!"

HEASTER BEARS & SPEECHIFYIN' FLANNEL MOUTHS by Shayna Matthews

I have a confession. Actually, it is more like a badly kept secret.

Hello, my name is Shayna Matthews, and I'm a grammar nerd. Multiple misspellings in a body of text will give me the shakes, and the misuse of words such as their, there and they're? Nooooooooooo! Please, make it stop! Now, with that said, misused grammar does indeed have benefits...IF it is used as a form of art.

You heard me.

Art. The art of bad grammar. Intrigued yet?

I was introduced to the art of bad grammar every year come Easter. I never really believed in the Easter Bunny-never saw a long-eared varmint hopping down the bunny trail to hide goodies for me. I had a different character altogether visit me every spring. He was big, brown and burly, and made me decipher his own language when I was just knee-high to a grasshopper. My Easter hunts started with a compass, and a letter with horrific spelling and grammar in shaky red pen from...The Heaster Bear. I imagine the shaky writing stemmed from that big bear's paw attempting to grip a pen, not an easy feat, no doubt! Of course, what do Heaster bears care about grammar? Not a whole heck of a lot, I'm here to tell you.

My entire childhood revolved around trying to decipher confounded clues and mentally cursing the necessary use of a compass to obtain a plastic egg filled with a few coins, perhaps a dollar or two? I mean, take clue #3 from 1994:

Frum heer luukin (S) 165 whuts a Pifer on a Beech?

Good golly, Mr. Heaster Bear, aside from the compass reading, I don't know, what the heck is a Pifer???!!! My clues usually included rifle rests, cwotches of twees, varmints, hoaks, currs and tommyhawks. Naturally, my Heaster hunts took me a few hours.

One year, I decided to get smart, and I fooled that old grizzled bear. We had a Mountain Cur dog at the time, and if you've not heard of the breed, look them up. They are an old 18th Century breed of dog known for hunting game, running and jumping. They were prized for the protection of forts and pioneer homesteads against Indian raids. Caddie was black with brindle markings, and I believe every word about the breed. She was the epitome of agility, the dog could jump 7.5 FEET in the air, flat-footed. We measured.

So that year, as I geared up with my Heaster Bear note to decipher, and armed with a compass, I loosed Caddie. That year, the compass was not needed. I merely followed the nose of my trusty Cur-she took me straight from spot to spot, sniffing out the goods, and after the last clue, ran over to my father and sat down, thumping her tail on the grass. Hmmm…was she pointing out the identity of the Heaster Bear? Thank you Caddie, good girl.

You know, come to think of it, I believe the following year the Heaster Bear left rather grumbled words about the use of Curs being against Bear rules. Rats.

I believe writers soak up their talent, drive and inspiration from an early age, based on the environment around them. My fathe-err, I mean, the Heaster Bear's notes were a creative struggle, forcing me to bend the corners of my mind to decipher meaning. Since then, The Bear has succumbed to progress-just a little-and uses a cell phone. I receive grand texts from him regularly, and they always make me smile. You see, I heard the Bear's growling over autocorrect...the system gave up, I swear I could hear auto-correct actually say "what the hell is that supposed to spell?" The app was turned off, and now those messages flow through to me like the art-form they are, unspoiled and uncorrected, bad grammar and all.

Bad grammar. I am a writer, and I fear it, generally speaking. But, aside from Heaster Bears, foul grammar still has its place in a novel. Dialogue. You see, I write westerns, and in some instances proper grammar is about as useful as a wind-break in a cyclone.

"COWBOYS" photograph by Shayna Matthews

Good dialogue is not always easy. One has to climb inside the mind of the character speaking and extract words they would say, even if they go against everything the writer says, thinks or feels. For me, it can be exhausting. But one of my characters in my current novel is easy-breezy. His name is Ryder, and he is an uneducated twenty-one year old Texas cowboy. By uneducated, I mean he hasn’t been "book-learnt". In the 1880’s, by the time you hit sixteen or seventeen years old, you were a man and therefore expected to do a man’s job. At twenty-one, Ryder is practically a veteran and will boast of his ability to fork a horse (or a woman) better’n any other critter on two legs. I asked Ryder what he thought of proper grammar, and he looked at me, tilted his jaw and grinned.

“Ain’t much on them fancy words citified folks sling ’round. Hell, I heard a big city fella speechifyin’ in town once; he was usin’ words so long I figured one of them’d fly outta his mouth and have nowhere to go ‘cept ’round his neck. That flannel-mouth wasn’t foolin’ nobody with his throat ticklin’, he just bragged himself out of a place to lean against the bar. No, never had much paw for them fancy words. Show me a man who can ride good as me, and I’ll think about bein’ impressed. Maybe.”

One of my readers asked me once, where my rich cowboy lingo comes from. I mirrored one of Ryder's broad grins, and answered with a laugh, "Aside from reading, research and imagination? Heaster Bears and the art of bad grammar."