Something Very Different

She did not want to be called a cowgirl

This the autobiography of an truly unusual Grant County, Oregon resident. In the book she states that she disliked being referred to as a "cowgirl" preferring to call herself a "lady buckaroo." Considering that she spent much of her life on horseback doing a cowboy's work on one ranch or another, I think that is fair. There probably have been other women who made their living doing cowboy work in the American west but I do not actually know of any and there certainly never were very many. For that reason you are not going to find many books like this one.

Message From Another World

People are different there

Grace Rice was born in 1913 in eastern Oregon, a region that is still very different from the world most of my readers know and at that time was almost unimaginably different. Horses remained a vital part of ranching and farm life in eastern Oregon into the 1960's. Roads remained mostly unpaved until the late 20's. Where phone service was available it was usually party lines and in many places there was no phone service. These circumstances necessitated a high degree of self reliance that endures even today. In 1963 when she was 50 years old Grace was working alone on a remote cow camp when she was very seriously injured when her horse fell on her. She suffered multiple broken bones and it took her three days to make her way to where she could get help. I my lifetime I have known several cases in Oregon where people got lost or stranded and passively waited for help and eventually succumbed to exposure. I am pretty sure that the majority of people today if they were in Grace's position would have given up and died. As it was, she lived into her mid 70s.

No Time for Sentiment

Married twice or was it three times?

She tells us a lot about every horse she ever owned. We get detailed descriptions of numerous cattle drives and hunting trips. But after reading this book, I am not sure whether she was married twice or three times. And she does not tell us the names on any of her husbands. A marriage got a paragraph or less. To quote: "The last of March I married a subject, and we went to Hamilton and worked for Floy and Katie Hinton in April." a page later in a one line paragraph she says "I gave him his freedom." and that is the whole of what she has to say about that marriage. The other does not get much more space and there is one more passing reference that sounds like she might be referring to a divorce but I am not sure if that was a restatement of the previously mentioned divorce or if she is referring to the dissolution of a third marriage that wasn't even worth a sentence. In any case I can say that this is not a typical woman's memoir.

Memoir from Another Time as Well

When horses were everything

I grew up on a ranch and did my share of haying but by that time we had tractors and baling machines. The old timers used horse drawn equipment and stacked their hay loose which is a lost art today. When I read "When I was taking in a slip load of hay, Old Dick horse's hame pin wore into on one tug, which scared the team and away we went for a runaway. I turned the team uphill and let them run until they got tired, then I stopped them. Here came my father to see what had gone wrong. He hay wired the tug and broken hame pin so I could finish unloading." I have absolutely no idea what is going on. Horse-drawn farming is a very different process from what we do today. As another old timer explained in another book, it was much more labor intensive and much less capital intensive. We might need to relearn these techniques someday. At the very least, I would like to see a re-creation of a working 19th century ranch and if it ever happens it will be books like this one that make it possible.

Everybody's Story is Different

This one is very different

I find memoirs the most interesting form of literature because they are the most unfiltered kind of story. Each memoir reflects the unique character of one human being. They may contain various forms of exaggeration and concealment but even that reflects the unique nature of that writer. One thing that struck me was that most of her life was filled with hard work to a degree almost unknown today which she never complained about because she did not expect anything else. She does complain of poor health but I can only say that I am glad I have not had anywhere near as many problems. All in all, I would say she did not have a bad life but it was a hard one. Recently a customer at the book store told me that he had known Grace personally and this book understates her toughness. If that is true she was a remarkable character even for a region notable for its rugged inhabitants. Every person has one book in them; their life story. And they almost all have their interest because we all share the same human nature. But that being said, some people's lives are minor variations on the human theme and some are radical departures from the norm. I feel safe in saying that for most of you this book is your only chance of meeting anyone remotely similar to Grace Rice.