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1 Two Careers in One
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1 1 Two Careers in One Judy Alter AN OVERVIEW OF ELMER KELTON’S LIFE and work seems redundant. Those of us who knew and loved him and listened spellboundtospeechafterspeech ,oftenhearingthesamestoriesrepeated, feel that we already know about his life and career. But it seems important to set the stage for this book of essays and memories. Elmer used to tell the story about an old rancher who came up and asked him, “Elmer, did you know there’s some fellow out there writing novels and using your name?” The story perfectly illustrates Elmer’s dual careers—to the ranching world, he was “one of us,” as rancher John Merrill once said to me; in the world of western literature , he stood with the best of our writers, having earned lifetime achievement awards from Western Writers of America, Inc., the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Western Literature Association. He received seven Spur Awards for individual books from Western Writers of America and four Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. He missed very few WWA conventions in his career and was always a staunch supporter of that organization, always willing to help newcomers or share a beer and talk of old times. When he died in August 2009, WWA members from all over Texas and the American West joined the more than six hundred people who celebrated his life in a service where the anthem Elmer Kelton: Essays and Memories 2 was “The Eyes of Texas,” and the recessional, “Happy Trails.” Noting his passing, The New York Times called him the personification of the term “regionalist” and hailed him as the “novelist who brought the sensibility of the old-style western to bear on a modern Texas landscape of oil fields and financially troubled ranches.” In 1997, the Texas Legislature declared Elmer Kelton Day, and in 1998 he received the first Lone Star Award for lifetime achievement from the Larry McMurtry Center for Arts and Humanities at Midwestern University in Wichita Falls, Texas. Honorary degrees came his way from Hardin-Simmons University and Texas Tech University, along with a Lifetime Achievement award from the National Cowboy Symposium held in Lubbock. In addition, he was an honorary member of the German Association for the Study of the Western, which gives an annual Elmer Kelton Award for Literary Merit. (see http://www.westernforschungszentrum.de). He had his likeness (on horseback) preserved in bronze, met with both Laura and George W. Bush, and has a star in his name in the sidewalk at the Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District (which he claimed was much more appropriate than a star on a sidewalk in Hollywood). In spite of honors and attention, Elmer remained the most modest and self-deprecating man, a genuine gentleman. Raised on the McElroy Ranch in Crane and Upton counties in Texas, he was the oldest of four sons of ranch foreman Buck Kelton and his wife, Bea. Elmer grew up knowing ranch life, but in his own words, he “never made a hand.” His younger brothers, especially Myrle, were better at roping than he was, and Elmer’s idea of watching the herd was to keep one eye on the cattle and the other on the book is his lap. From a young age, he was a bookish youngster, taught early to read by his mother, whose reading included among other things the pulp magazine Ranch Romances, for which Elmer would later write. Because of that he entered school at an advanced grade and was always smaller than his older classmates—and always the last [44.222.212.138] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:12 GMT) Judy Alter 3 chosen when sides were called to play touch football. With his weak eyes, he couldn’t see the ball until it struck him in the face, and he much preferred to sit on the sidelines and watch sports. Being a cowboy, he has said, is a way of life, and boys were expected to follow in their father’s footsteps, but Elmer knew he’d never earn a living that way. He was torn between the two things at which he excelled—writing and drawing. In high school, he studied under the late legendary Texas folklorist Paul Patterson, another bookish kid from a ranch family. He credits Patterson with inspiring him to study journalism. He was a senior in high school when he told his father he wanted to be a journalist. In a story he...