The True Memoirs of Charley Blankenship by Benjamin Capps (review)

Reviews The True Memoirs of Charley Blankenship. By Benjamin Capps. (Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1972. 252 pages, $5.95.) T he title to the contrary, this book is a novel — the author’s seventh to date. Part o f the fiction, m oreover, is an account o f the manuscript (“written in 1909”), com plete with description o f paper (“wood pulp, quite cheap, and today brittle”), problems o f transcription (“the present version is as accurate as reasonable care and patience and persistence can make it”), and acknowledgements. “T he title, Mr. Blankenship’s own, is worth consideration,” Capps writes. “Apparently he used the word ‘true’ to describe his ‘mem oirs’ because he was aware o f accounts o f cowboy life which seem ed to him untrue.‘Memoirs’ implies material worthy o f rem em bering.” What was worth remem bering was ten years o f Charley’s life up to 1890, “symbolic o f the closing o f the American frontier,” and what he learns during that time. T he truth in the title is the veracity any good fiction has — the truth o f human experience, which in this case is Charley’s growth from youthful innocence to maturity in his encounters with a multi-faceted panorama o f colorful characters and adventures. Just seventeen in 1880, when “I got a bad itch and could not find the place to scratch” (p. 11), he runs away from the family farm in Missouri because his pa takes seriously the adm onition o f the good book that “he that spareth the rod hateth his son,” and Charley doesn’t like the degree o f his father’s affection. Under the guise o f looking for his older brother Buck som e­ where in the West, Charley lights out to follow his own wanderlust. T he resulting first-person narrative is episodic, each o f the nine chapters being given over to the major incidents in Charley’s history. Mosdy he learns what being a cowboy is, but he learns a great many other things as well: Now, to get along as a cowhand you need to know a lot o f things that have nothing to do with cows. I didn’t know this at the time, but I was fixing to find out . . . They say that experience is a dear teacher, but a fool will learn from no other. Reader, I don’t think you’ve even got to be a fool, though it helps (pp. 49-50). As he wanders from place to place as cowhand, trail driver, bone hunter, buffalo skinner, and captive at one point o f four badmen on the run, he quickly 302 Western American Literature learns the ways o f the world from those he meets — the good ones, the phonies, and those who fleece him. One o f the most interesting o f these is Mr. Dunlap, camp cook and a superb one at that, who predicts failure o f every cooking endeavor (“This bread ain’t going to rise. I can see that. It won’t be fit to eat.”) Another is W eeping Lil, a prostitute who takes him for eighty dollars. T here is also the ne’er-do-well Mr. Crankshaw, “a Jonah for a skinning partner,” who takes advantage o f everyone, Charley included. And Red Paden, professional bronc buster, who gets busted him self by “the meanest horses in the country.” T hese and many more people Charley com es to know as he drifts from one job to another in Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, W yoming, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Charley suddenly realizes one day ten years from the beginning that he is no longer a tenderfoot: I moved north and worked one winter for the Tipton-H all Live­ stock Company in western Nebraska. We had a youngster in that bunch that we called “Kid.” We were sitting around a campfire one cold night shoodng the bull and talking about cold winters. I m ention­ ed that it gets cold even in the Globe country o f Arizona and talked about cutting ice holes for cows...