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| Photoplay, February, 1925 |
Not much of Tom's life story is true, but it is all entertaining.
MY LIFE STORY
By Tom Mix
He has lived the life he portrays in his pictures, and while he modestly discounts himself as an author, he need not do so. Some college professor might have written it in more flowery language, but no one could tell it more interestingly than Tom has done.
Tom Mix's story is much more than a mere personal record. It is an inspiring narrative of self-reliant manhood -- of a courageous chap who has always stood firmly on his own strong legs.
FRIENDS, I do not pretend to be an author. I have always believed in letting every man rope on his own range and I am not what my fellow cowboys in the old days used to call a "literary gent." Therefore, in putting down these facts about my life, I hope you will take into consideration that I don't aim to adorn the tale with any gems of language. I'll just try to set it down like you and I were sitting around the campfire, and I was spinning a yarn for you.
Such educational advantages as I have hooked up with have been mostly in the school of experience, as you might say, but I was considerably too busy as a youth to spend much time in schoolhouses.
It's funny, too, when you set down and take pen in hand to unveil your past as far back as you retain any impressions at all, what fool things a man'll remember. My life has been pretty full of action, one way and another. I have been a cowboy, and a soldier, a scout and a sheriff and a U. S. marshal, a Texas Ranger, and an enforcement officer, and in childhood I was a swipe and a lumberjack and a football player and a bicycle racer. And I find it's hard to pin down some right important fact and maybe a whole sequence of events will have departed complete, while all sorts of trivial and unimportant ideas keep popping up, making you laugh and cry right unexpected. If I had known I was ever to be called upon to write my life story, I reckon I'd have kept one of these diaries, but usually things were moving too fast for any such endeavor, even if I had considered it, which I never did.
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| Photoplay, February, 1925 |
Anyway, my plum first recollection is of my mother using a shotgun in an argument with a mountain lion.
I guess I must have been about two and a half or three years old when that little fracas took
place. And I can recall, all right, how I began my career in the face of danger, because when mother
opened up the crack in that window and began welcoming those cats with a few rounds of buckshot, I got
right down on my little stomach and crawled under the bed. I reckon you could rightly call it a
bed, though it was used for a couch, too. in the day time. But it had one of those ruffles hung around it,
and I felt safer there, somehow, and I could peek out and watch mother squint along the gun barrel, and then
pull the trigger. Every time the gun would go off, I'd hide my face and then when it was quiet, I'd
peek out again.
I don't mind relating this because I was pretty young at the time and perhaps later happenings will wipe the stain off my name. But there's one funny thing come out of that. A cat animal knows I am just his natural enemy. I can't get along with cats, not any way at all. Don't make any difference whether they're big or little, either. Even house cats that belong to my wife's friends get up and leave the room when I come in. And when I worked with the old Selig company and had to be around the lions and tigers, we both knew right off the bat that we weren't going to be friendly.
I was born in that log cabin in Texas, in 1879. It was a mighty lonely spot, up north of El Paso, and in those early days our neighbors were a long ride away. My father built that cabin with his own hands, and it was snug, and weather-tight, but it was as small and primitive as any pioneer cabin ever was. Anyways, I got the right start in life, because I've heard a lot of times since that being born in a log cabin is one of the best ways to cinch success later on in life. It's now regarded as a heap more lucky than being born with a gold spoon in your mouth. A lot of men would have laid the scene of their entrance into this sphere in a log cabin if they'd been writing their own scenario.
Father was off on the range most of the time, either looking after our stock or riding herd for the other ranchers or working for them, and my mother and I and my sister, and my half-brother and his sister, lived alone in that cabin. We were snowed in a lot of the winter, at least we had to dig paths wherever we wanted to go, but in the summer we had the run of all the hills and prairies for miles around. There was plenty of game around there and plenty of excitement, too, because those were sure enough pioneer days. It was a long ride into town, and the town itself was typical of the early West. It was a long ride to anywhere, for that matter.
My mother was part Scotch and part Cherokee Indian. Her grandfather lived on the White Eagle Reserve and he must have been a marvellous old buck in his way. He was looked up to by everyone on the Reserve as a grand type of our redskin Americans, one of the greatest races that ever inhabited the face of the earth. More than that, he must have been an intelligent and educated man, because he translated the Bible into the Osage language, which stacks up as a job that took some doing. Most folks feel they've done their duty if they get to know the Bible in English, let alone trying to put it into Osage, which is a mighty difficult language. I learned to speak four Indian dialects during my life in the West, and Osage is one of the hardest.
I am proud of that great-grandfather of mine. He represented all that was best of that glorious race of outdoor braves upon whom we now may all look with admiration and pity.
My Dad was mostly Irish and now that I stop to think of it, looks to me like I started life with considerable of what you might term inherited pepper -- Irish, Scotch and Cherokee. I suppose that's responsible for the way I was always looking for a war, or a new territory that was opening up, or something like that. Adventure was the thing that was drilled into every boy's head in those early days in Texas and the border region was always alive with gunplay and private feuds and law and order hadn't been established to any great extent.
My Dad was once a captain in the 7th U. S. Cavalry and he was pretty well known in Texas in the early days as a man of parts. Everybody knew him and respected him. That's why when there was some talk of me being adopted by Buffalo Bill and taking the name of Cody, I couldn't quite see it. I thought a lot of Buffalo Bill and he was all right, but I was born with the name of Mix and I've got every reason to be proud of it. We've had something to do with making this country of ours. We were pioneers and endured the hardships and fought the battles against odds that every pioneer family fights. The name Mix stood for square-shooting and fearlessness in Texas when Texas was pretty rough and ready, and so, I'm satisfied to die as I was born -- plain Tom Mix.
It was sometime while I was living in that log cabin in Texas that I learned to ride and rope. But I've got to admit I can't just remember how nor when nor any of the circumstances surrounding this part of my education. My mother says I could stick on a horse considerable before I could navigate safely on my own pins, so I guess I got saddle broke right early. I can only tell you this -- I can't recollect any time when I couldn't ride and a horse has always been intimately associated with my thoughts of childhood. A horse to me, as a kid, was a necessity, like your own legs. I never could conceive life without horses. It was a long ride to town and I used to have to make it when I wasn't but five or six, to bring stuff from the store for mother, and I always felt perfectly safe as long as there was a horse under me. I reckon if I'd been alone I'd have been scared half to death.
I can still see the big room of our cabin, rough finished inside. About half the room was taken up by the big stove, and one little thing about that stove comes back to me and I shouldn't wonder if -- like the wild cats -- it left its impress on me and that's maybe why I've never used tobacco. I had an uncle that wasn't accounted to be a very respectable citizen. Most every family's got one of those blots on its escutcheon, I've noticed. Well, the game law was out on uncle most all the time, and mother didn't have any too friendly a feeling for this old coyote, but she was awfully loyal to her folks, and she used to let him come in off the range and sit in front of the big stove and warm up. The snow'd be packed up tight outside the cabin and the fire'd be blazing away, and every few minutes uncle would open the door and spit tobacco juice on that bed of red hot coals. He wouldn't do another thing all day, and it fascinated me so I'd creep closer and closer to watch him. But it sickened me of tobacco.
We kids ran pretty wild in the summer and we had all kinds of exciting adventures. I remember one time my sister and I -- we were awfully good pals -- were playing busting bronchos in the corral and I saw a big black thing hanging on the corral fence. The pony I was busting had been acting up and I thought this was a long, black whip and would be exactly what I needed to throw a scare into him, so I went over and grabbed it. Just then I heard a shriek from my mother and she came prancing in there like a wild woman and hit this thing with an ax. Then I discovered it was the biggest black snake you ever saw. Sure did look enough like the whip they called a blacksnake to fool me. We chopped him in half and then watched and waited for the sun to go down, because we knew if we didn't watch him close until after sundown he'd join himself together again. Then we buried him.
When I was about seven or eight, the first circus come to El Paso, and we rode over to see it. It was Buffalo Bill's, and my goodness, I don't reckon I'll ever get such a thrill again, no matter what happens to me. I was crazy about the wild west show, of course. They had a lot of the best broncho busters and I knew them all by name and they were my heroes, just like Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson are heroes to kids nowadays. But what got me most was a knife-throwing act they had there. I'd never seen anything just like it before and the way the man flipped those knives fascinated me. I could have watched him all night. He had a lady in red silk tights that stood up against the wall and he'd surround her with knives, not missing her more than an eighth of an inch anywhere.
I decided right then and there I'd been mistaken in my calling. I didn't want to be a cowboy. I wanted to be a knife-thrower in a
circus. And one day my father came home and found my sister tied to the cellar door and me practicing knife throwing on her. I had a
couple of jack knives and a butcher knife I'd swiped from the kitchen and I wasn't paying any attention at all to the yelling my
sister was doing when I'd sling one of these knives and just miss her right eyebrow. Well, father was pretty emphatic in exhibiting
his disapproval of my conduct, so I had to abandon my career as a knife-thrower. That was one of the few times father ever laid me
cold, but thinking back I can't see my way clear to blame him much.
When I was eight, we moved up to Pennsylvania. Dad had a good job offered him up there, caring for the stock in some lumber and construction work. We lived in a regular house and I went to school for the first time. But school didn't appeal much to my ideas about life. Besides, there was just as much work to do in Pennsylvania as there'd been in Texas. When I come home from school, I'd start throwing down hay for the mules and horses and tending them generally. I had some stable work to do, but I felt pretty much at home because it was around horses. They had some real thoroughbreds, too, that belonged to the man that owned the place and my heart was won by them without wasting any time at all. Every minute I had a chance I made trail to the thoroughbred barn, and it was a big day for me when I got to be a swipe and had wages of fifty cents a week for doing it.
A lot of motion picture stars have started their careers at pretty low wages, but I reckon I get the booby prize with fifty cents a week. But then I was only nine. But don't get the idea that that was pocket money. I worked as hard for it as a stoker.
It was around that time that I got into a real scrape. I was pretty proud of what I could do with a rope. Pennsylvania was quite a place, but the boys around there hadn't had my advantages in education, the way I looked at it, and I daresay I was a little cocky when it come to showing them the stunts I could do with a rope. But I discovered to my amazement that ropes weren't the common thing in Pennsylvania they had been down Texas way. Rope was considered something to tie things up with, or lead horses around by. and that was all. Everybody didn't have lariat, the way I'd been accustomed to think they should. So I started out making me a collection of ropes, so's I'd be safe. And the best rope I saw around there was the one on the flag on top of the ball park. Seemed to me it was wasted up there and so I climbed up on the roof of the grandstand and nearly broke my neck getting it down. There was quite a riot when the folks discovered it was gone and Dad's eagle eye lighted on it right away, where I had hidden it away in a stall under some hay. I had to give it back, all right, and besides that, Dad sure took a lot of elbow grease explaining to me how it was bad form and bad manners to go climbing roofs taking what didn't belong to you.
Pennsylvania was all right, I guess, but I always had a hankering for Texas, all the time I was there. The West was in my blood. It was the life I loved and was always to love best, the life to which my whole work has been dedicated. So, as soon as I was old enough, I started back to Texas. I'd saved up some money from my fifty cent pieces and what other money I could earn and so when I was fifteen I was back on the range, working as a regular cowboy and getting along fine. I was pretty young but just the same I was a good hand and folks were more than willing to hire me.
I don't mind relating this because I was pretty young at the time and perhaps later happenings will wipe the stain off my name. But there's one funny thing come out of that. A cat animal knows I am just his natural enemy. I can't get along with cats, not any way at all. Don't make any difference whether they're big or little, either. Even house cats that belong to my wife's friends get up and leave the room when I come in. And when I worked with the old Selig company and had to be around the lions and tigers, we both knew right off the bat that we weren't going to be friendly.
I was born in that log cabin in Texas, in 1879. It was a mighty lonely spot, up north of El Paso, and in those early days our neighbors were a long ride away. My father built that cabin with his own hands, and it was snug, and weather-tight, but it was as small and primitive as any pioneer cabin ever was. Anyways, I got the right start in life, because I've heard a lot of times since that being born in a log cabin is one of the best ways to cinch success later on in life. It's now regarded as a heap more lucky than being born with a gold spoon in your mouth. A lot of men would have laid the scene of their entrance into this sphere in a log cabin if they'd been writing their own scenario.
Father was off on the range most of the time, either looking after our stock or riding herd for the other ranchers or working for them, and my mother and I and my sister, and my half-brother and his sister, lived alone in that cabin. We were snowed in a lot of the winter, at least we had to dig paths wherever we wanted to go, but in the summer we had the run of all the hills and prairies for miles around. There was plenty of game around there and plenty of excitement, too, because those were sure enough pioneer days. It was a long ride into town, and the town itself was typical of the early West. It was a long ride to anywhere, for that matter.
My mother was part Scotch and part Cherokee Indian. Her grandfather lived on the White Eagle Reserve and he must have been a marvellous old buck in his way. He was looked up to by everyone on the Reserve as a grand type of our redskin Americans, one of the greatest races that ever inhabited the face of the earth. More than that, he must have been an intelligent and educated man, because he translated the Bible into the Osage language, which stacks up as a job that took some doing. Most folks feel they've done their duty if they get to know the Bible in English, let alone trying to put it into Osage, which is a mighty difficult language. I learned to speak four Indian dialects during my life in the West, and Osage is one of the hardest.
I am proud of that great-grandfather of mine. He represented all that was best of that glorious race of outdoor braves upon whom we now may all look with admiration and pity.
My Dad was mostly Irish and now that I stop to think of it, looks to me like I started life with considerable of what you might term inherited pepper -- Irish, Scotch and Cherokee. I suppose that's responsible for the way I was always looking for a war, or a new territory that was opening up, or something like that. Adventure was the thing that was drilled into every boy's head in those early days in Texas and the border region was always alive with gunplay and private feuds and law and order hadn't been established to any great extent.
My Dad was once a captain in the 7th U. S. Cavalry and he was pretty well known in Texas in the early days as a man of parts. Everybody knew him and respected him. That's why when there was some talk of me being adopted by Buffalo Bill and taking the name of Cody, I couldn't quite see it. I thought a lot of Buffalo Bill and he was all right, but I was born with the name of Mix and I've got every reason to be proud of it. We've had something to do with making this country of ours. We were pioneers and endured the hardships and fought the battles against odds that every pioneer family fights. The name Mix stood for square-shooting and fearlessness in Texas when Texas was pretty rough and ready, and so, I'm satisfied to die as I was born -- plain Tom Mix.
It was sometime while I was living in that log cabin in Texas that I learned to ride and rope. But I've got to admit I can't just remember how nor when nor any of the circumstances surrounding this part of my education. My mother says I could stick on a horse considerable before I could navigate safely on my own pins, so I guess I got saddle broke right early. I can only tell you this -- I can't recollect any time when I couldn't ride and a horse has always been intimately associated with my thoughts of childhood. A horse to me, as a kid, was a necessity, like your own legs. I never could conceive life without horses. It was a long ride to town and I used to have to make it when I wasn't but five or six, to bring stuff from the store for mother, and I always felt perfectly safe as long as there was a horse under me. I reckon if I'd been alone I'd have been scared half to death.
I can still see the big room of our cabin, rough finished inside. About half the room was taken up by the big stove, and one little thing about that stove comes back to me and I shouldn't wonder if -- like the wild cats -- it left its impress on me and that's maybe why I've never used tobacco. I had an uncle that wasn't accounted to be a very respectable citizen. Most every family's got one of those blots on its escutcheon, I've noticed. Well, the game law was out on uncle most all the time, and mother didn't have any too friendly a feeling for this old coyote, but she was awfully loyal to her folks, and she used to let him come in off the range and sit in front of the big stove and warm up. The snow'd be packed up tight outside the cabin and the fire'd be blazing away, and every few minutes uncle would open the door and spit tobacco juice on that bed of red hot coals. He wouldn't do another thing all day, and it fascinated me so I'd creep closer and closer to watch him. But it sickened me of tobacco.
We kids ran pretty wild in the summer and we had all kinds of exciting adventures. I remember one time my sister and I -- we were awfully good pals -- were playing busting bronchos in the corral and I saw a big black thing hanging on the corral fence. The pony I was busting had been acting up and I thought this was a long, black whip and would be exactly what I needed to throw a scare into him, so I went over and grabbed it. Just then I heard a shriek from my mother and she came prancing in there like a wild woman and hit this thing with an ax. Then I discovered it was the biggest black snake you ever saw. Sure did look enough like the whip they called a blacksnake to fool me. We chopped him in half and then watched and waited for the sun to go down, because we knew if we didn't watch him close until after sundown he'd join himself together again. Then we buried him.
When I was about seven or eight, the first circus come to El Paso, and we rode over to see it. It was Buffalo Bill's, and my goodness, I don't reckon I'll ever get such a thrill again, no matter what happens to me. I was crazy about the wild west show, of course. They had a lot of the best broncho busters and I knew them all by name and they were my heroes, just like Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson are heroes to kids nowadays. But what got me most was a knife-throwing act they had there. I'd never seen anything just like it before and the way the man flipped those knives fascinated me. I could have watched him all night. He had a lady in red silk tights that stood up against the wall and he'd surround her with knives, not missing her more than an eighth of an inch anywhere.
Young Tom Decides to Be a
Knife-Thrower
When I was eight, we moved up to Pennsylvania. Dad had a good job offered him up there, caring for the stock in some lumber and construction work. We lived in a regular house and I went to school for the first time. But school didn't appeal much to my ideas about life. Besides, there was just as much work to do in Pennsylvania as there'd been in Texas. When I come home from school, I'd start throwing down hay for the mules and horses and tending them generally. I had some stable work to do, but I felt pretty much at home because it was around horses. They had some real thoroughbreds, too, that belonged to the man that owned the place and my heart was won by them without wasting any time at all. Every minute I had a chance I made trail to the thoroughbred barn, and it was a big day for me when I got to be a swipe and had wages of fifty cents a week for doing it.
A lot of motion picture stars have started their careers at pretty low wages, but I reckon I get the booby prize with fifty cents a week. But then I was only nine. But don't get the idea that that was pocket money. I worked as hard for it as a stoker.
It was around that time that I got into a real scrape. I was pretty proud of what I could do with a rope. Pennsylvania was quite a place, but the boys around there hadn't had my advantages in education, the way I looked at it, and I daresay I was a little cocky when it come to showing them the stunts I could do with a rope. But I discovered to my amazement that ropes weren't the common thing in Pennsylvania they had been down Texas way. Rope was considered something to tie things up with, or lead horses around by. and that was all. Everybody didn't have lariat, the way I'd been accustomed to think they should. So I started out making me a collection of ropes, so's I'd be safe. And the best rope I saw around there was the one on the flag on top of the ball park. Seemed to me it was wasted up there and so I climbed up on the roof of the grandstand and nearly broke my neck getting it down. There was quite a riot when the folks discovered it was gone and Dad's eagle eye lighted on it right away, where I had hidden it away in a stall under some hay. I had to give it back, all right, and besides that, Dad sure took a lot of elbow grease explaining to me how it was bad form and bad manners to go climbing roofs taking what didn't belong to you.
Tom Yearns for Texas
Pennsylvania was all right, I guess, but I always had a hankering for Texas, all the time I was there. The West was in my blood. It was the life I loved and was always to love best, the life to which my whole work has been dedicated. So, as soon as I was old enough, I started back to Texas. I'd saved up some money from my fifty cent pieces and what other money I could earn and so when I was fifteen I was back on the range, working as a regular cowboy and getting along fine. I was pretty young but just the same I was a good hand and folks were more than willing to hire me.
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| Photoplay, February, 1925 |
The next months of my life were wonderful. I've never forgotten them. I was happy as only a boy can be happy. I had no responsibilities
and all the things I loved best. And those were the days when the West was the real West. A cowboy was a right romantic figure in
those days. Guns were just as much part of a man's equipment as his shoes, and his lariat was as important to his wardrobe as his
toothbrush is today.
The ranches were enormous places, big as a lot of these European principalities where they have kings and queens, and the herds were mighty herds and the round-ups were stupendous affairs never to be forgotten. They had a majesty, and a danger, and a thrill all their own. We had some of the finest horses down there that any man ever put a leg over. There was plenty of danger, too, and I was a good shot and learned to take care of myself, even if I was the youngest cowboy on the Texas ranges. I slept in my blankets by the camp fire, under the bright Texas stars. I rode miles every day, on one of the best ponies that ever wore a saddle. I got into a little disagreement with a couple of Mexicans and came out on top. I measured myself man to man against my fellows, and sometimes I won and sometimes I lost, and the code of the West and of the ranges was that you must be a good loser and a good winner both. Altogether, those days stand out in my memory as being rare and fine.
But my folks got anxious to see me again, and I began anyway to think about seeing something of the world beside Texas, even if that was the best spot on the globe. When I was young I had the wanderlust some, I reckon. A man ought to travel around some, and get an idea what a big place the world is and then there isn't much chance of him getting any exalted idea of his own importance. So I thought I'd go and make my folks a little visit, though as a matter of fact I wasn't ever home to live with my folks after I went back to Texas that first time. I always took care of myself and earned my own bread from the time I left Pennsylvania on.
I went to work in a foundry when I got back there, and that was hard work. I was what was called a pincove boy and I had to go round with my wheelbarrow, supplying the men with pincoves to put in the red hot molds when they needed them. And, believe me, they needed them fast and frequent. Those foundry workers were what you might term rough and ready customers, too. They were a fine set of men, but I couldn't exactly recommend them for delicacy of speech or anything like that. When they started to bellow for the pincove boy was like a lot of pirates yelling for the cabin boy. But it was good discipline. It made a man out of me; I guess. And it taught me a right good lesson that has stood me well many a time since. And that's how far a little joke and a smile and amiable ways will go with folks. I was a good-natured kid, husky and well-set-up, too, and life was a lot of fun to me. So I nearly always could think up something to say that'd make 'em laugh and they liked me and my work was easier as I went along.
It was while I was there that I first played football. We had a team at the foundry, and I got to be regarded as a fairly good player. It's the game I like best -- and it's sort of a regret to me a man can't play football by way of recreation afternoons, the way they play golf and tennis and such fiddling games as that. Funny, Andy Smith, who is now the coach for the California Bears that hold the Western football championship and have held it for four years, was on that team with me. He was pretty good, too, having some intelligence about the matter and depending on his head as well as his feet to get him down the field. Now he's regarded by experts as one of the biggest authorities in the game and whenever he comes to Los Angeles with his wonder teams, he comes out to my ranch and we ramble along talking about old times. I played end, then, because being still in my 'teens I was pretty light. Later, I developed into a half, and when I was in the artillery in the army and played on the championship army team in 1901, I got to be a fullback. That's the position I liked best.
Now it was just about here that the Spanish-American war broke out, and that was the biggest thing that had ever happened in my life. I don't suppose I'd been praying for a war, exactly, but deep down somewhere I'd surely been estimating that a war would be a heap of fun and excitement.
I was working as a lumberjack when this come off, cutting lumber up in the Pennsyl-vania forests. And it's my private opinion that there isn't anyone in these here United States recalls the day of April 25th, 1898, any better than I do. I was way up on top of a mountain, swinging my ax and plum deaf and dumb to everything around me, calculating on what I'd do next in life and where I'd better go to find me a little excitement. Up comes the little tram car that brings us our news and supplies. After if stops, I hear the men give a big yell and commence dancing around, and first thing I know somebody hollers over to me, "Hi, Tom, America's declared war on Spain and the President has issued a call for volunteers."
It must have dazed me, being as I wasn't expecting anything like that, for I didn't exactly keep up with international questions in those days, and I just stood there like a plumb idiot, and pretty soon the little tram car turned around and went back. That woke me up. America was going to war with Spain. That meant we would send troops to Cuba. It meant -- and right there in my thoughts I took my ax and threw it as far as I could, and I started running down that mountain like a pack of coyotes was after me.
When I got to the little town that had been our lumber headquarters, I started figuring what I'd better do and pretty soon I come to the conclusion that the best thing for me to do was to enlist in the navy. Goodness knows why a man like me that hadn't ever seen the ocean, besides being fairly expert and familiar with horses and guns like I was, should have picked the navy. But it was something I'd never done and besides it seemed to me the navy was pretty apt to be sent over there and get in the excitement. I knew about the Maine, and that sounded to me like where the real scrapping was going to be was in the navy.
The big difficulty that confronted me then was that I didn't have any money. The only thing I had any legal ropes on was a bicycle and all my savings had gone into that. You see, bicycle racing had become quite the thing and it was considered to be a sport that a man could compete at and gain himself quite a lot of glory. In those days, anything like that appealed a lot to me, and so I'd been indulging therein some frequent. I had grown to be estimated as one of the best bicycle riders in that neck of the woods and I'd won quite a few races. Being some set up over these aforementioned victories, I'd squandered all my pay on a racing bicycle. I was buying it on the weekly installment plan, so I went to the man and asked him if I could sell my share of it for enough to get me to Philadelphia. That's where the navy headquarters were that I wanted to reach. He said all right, so I sold him back the bike.
And then, by gosh, they wouldn't let me enlist in the navy.
I pretty near landed in jail trying to convince those officers they were wrong. I was pretty argumentative, one way and another, being that I had always been able to back up my differences of opinion with my gun or my fist, and I was all for fighting the whole navy right there and then. It seemed that they didn't need any more people in the navy that had never been to sea before. I don't even remember how I got on board, but I recall distinctly that I was standing up fighting it out with a lot of officers on a big warship and they had enough gold braid on them to decorate a band, so they must have been influential.
Anyway, they were influential enough to keep me out of the navy.
I was awfully sore and disappointed. But I wasn't discouraged. I was plenty filled up with determination that I was going to be in that war somehow. If they wouldn't have me in the navy, maybe the army wasn't so particular. President McKinley was calling for volunteers, all right, but the thing that was worrying me quite a bit was getting into a regiment where I'd see some active service. I wasn't looking any to get stuck somewhere and carry a musket on my shoulder on parade grounds, or play chambermaid to a lot of army mules while the other boys were hunting the Spaniards in Cuba.
I didn't have but five or six dollars left, but I was willing to gamble my last chip that the best thing to do when things are a little scrambled and don't seem to be going your way, is to go to headquarters and talk to the boss. So I started for Washington to interview the adjutant general. I'd made up my mind that he'd know where the fighting was going to be pulled off and if I could get him to share that information with me I'd know where I ought to try to be.
As it turned out, the adjutant general was right sympathetic and when I told him the experience I'd had with horses and guns, and how I'd lived in the border country and knew Spanish well, and my father had been an officer in the cavalry, he sent me right down to see Captain Grimes. He said his battery of artillery was sure to see service at once, and if there was a vacancy left and I could get Captain Grimes to take me, I'd see all the fighting I wanted.
I got it and it wasn't long till I was a full-fledged member of Captain Grimes' battery. I think if I hadn't been taken in there, I'd have busted.
We went to Tampa. Florida, on the 21st of June, sailed at once for Cuba, and saw our first fighting in the battle of Guaymas. soon after we landed. We were with the Rough Riders at Cristabel Hill, where things were pretty hot and heavy for a while. And then, because of my knowledge of the language, I became a scout, and was made courier to General Chaffee who had known my father well in the old days.
Being a scout and a courier was great sport and was pretty near enough action to suit even me. The island was a tough place to get around and I had a lot of little skirmishes one way and another. I can't tell you a lot of detail about those months of fire and fight. It all blends into one in my mind. But it was great. It was pretty much hand to hand fighting, raiding nests of Spaniards that were hidden in all sorts of impossible places. We fought hard and the climate was hell, and the living conditions were terrible, but nobody cared. We'd come out to do a job and we were doing it.
From it there shines in my memory the thought of a man I only saw once during the service, but that once at Cristabel Hill was enough to stamp him forever upon my thought as my idol and hero -- Colonel Theodore Roosevelt.
It was a great experience and great training for any man.
After the Spaniards had surrendered in July, I was picked with the scouts who were sent out to bring in a lot of promiscuous Spanish sharpshooters that didn't seem to have got word that the war was over. They were always popping folks from behind things along the hill roads and stirring up considerable trouble and inconvenience for everybody. So we started out to explain to them that it was all over and they could come in and be good.
I remember I was going up a hill looking around to see if anything was likely to happen and I decided I'd never seen such a peaceful, quiet-looking place in my life. And just then a shot came right at me from a mango tree.
The shot wasn't a bit peaceful, and it blew a good-sized hole in my sleeve, but I couldn't see a thing. No man likes to have something shooting at him that he can't see to shoot back at, but all I could do was to open up on that mango tree on general principles. Well, we had a lively little argument for a few minutes, and he poked his head out like a turtle, and I started to yell at the fool not to be silly, the war was over. I had just got my mouth open to holler when he fired his last bullet at me and got me in the roof of the mouth.
I've always been grateful that bullet was going plenty fast, because it came out the back of my neck and lit somewhere on the Cuban landscape, which was a better place for it than hatching trouble in my head.
I toppled over and some of the other scouts ran up and settled the bird in the mango tree and carried me down to camp. They took me to the hospital at Santiago and I was laid up there better than a month, and that being the first time I'd ever spent anything but the night in bed I nearly went plumb loco. I still have the scars from that sharpshooter's final argument and there are just a few words I can't quite say on account of something it did to my tongue. I don't reckon anyone else would spot it. because there are only six or eight of them, but when I start to use one. I have to rope something else out of my vocabulary pretty quick.
Well, I got back to the States in September and I thought I was a grown man sure enough, having been to war and not done so badly for myself, besides being mentioned a couple of times and getting wounded.
I tried to settle down then, but I couldn't. Soldiering had got into my blood. Everything else seemed so almighty tame and quiet to me after what I'd seen in Cuba. And I liked the companionship of the men. It was the only life I'd struck since I left Texas that suited me and it seemed to me like it was a good chance to get a look at some more of the world.
The ranches were enormous places, big as a lot of these European principalities where they have kings and queens, and the herds were mighty herds and the round-ups were stupendous affairs never to be forgotten. They had a majesty, and a danger, and a thrill all their own. We had some of the finest horses down there that any man ever put a leg over. There was plenty of danger, too, and I was a good shot and learned to take care of myself, even if I was the youngest cowboy on the Texas ranges. I slept in my blankets by the camp fire, under the bright Texas stars. I rode miles every day, on one of the best ponies that ever wore a saddle. I got into a little disagreement with a couple of Mexicans and came out on top. I measured myself man to man against my fellows, and sometimes I won and sometimes I lost, and the code of the West and of the ranges was that you must be a good loser and a good winner both. Altogether, those days stand out in my memory as being rare and fine.
But my folks got anxious to see me again, and I began anyway to think about seeing something of the world beside Texas, even if that was the best spot on the globe. When I was young I had the wanderlust some, I reckon. A man ought to travel around some, and get an idea what a big place the world is and then there isn't much chance of him getting any exalted idea of his own importance. So I thought I'd go and make my folks a little visit, though as a matter of fact I wasn't ever home to live with my folks after I went back to Texas that first time. I always took care of myself and earned my own bread from the time I left Pennsylvania on.
I went to work in a foundry when I got back there, and that was hard work. I was what was called a pincove boy and I had to go round with my wheelbarrow, supplying the men with pincoves to put in the red hot molds when they needed them. And, believe me, they needed them fast and frequent. Those foundry workers were what you might term rough and ready customers, too. They were a fine set of men, but I couldn't exactly recommend them for delicacy of speech or anything like that. When they started to bellow for the pincove boy was like a lot of pirates yelling for the cabin boy. But it was good discipline. It made a man out of me; I guess. And it taught me a right good lesson that has stood me well many a time since. And that's how far a little joke and a smile and amiable ways will go with folks. I was a good-natured kid, husky and well-set-up, too, and life was a lot of fun to me. So I nearly always could think up something to say that'd make 'em laugh and they liked me and my work was easier as I went along.
It was while I was there that I first played football. We had a team at the foundry, and I got to be regarded as a fairly good player. It's the game I like best -- and it's sort of a regret to me a man can't play football by way of recreation afternoons, the way they play golf and tennis and such fiddling games as that. Funny, Andy Smith, who is now the coach for the California Bears that hold the Western football championship and have held it for four years, was on that team with me. He was pretty good, too, having some intelligence about the matter and depending on his head as well as his feet to get him down the field. Now he's regarded by experts as one of the biggest authorities in the game and whenever he comes to Los Angeles with his wonder teams, he comes out to my ranch and we ramble along talking about old times. I played end, then, because being still in my 'teens I was pretty light. Later, I developed into a half, and when I was in the artillery in the army and played on the championship army team in 1901, I got to be a fullback. That's the position I liked best.
Off for the War
Now it was just about here that the Spanish-American war broke out, and that was the biggest thing that had ever happened in my life. I don't suppose I'd been praying for a war, exactly, but deep down somewhere I'd surely been estimating that a war would be a heap of fun and excitement.
I was working as a lumberjack when this come off, cutting lumber up in the Pennsyl-vania forests. And it's my private opinion that there isn't anyone in these here United States recalls the day of April 25th, 1898, any better than I do. I was way up on top of a mountain, swinging my ax and plum deaf and dumb to everything around me, calculating on what I'd do next in life and where I'd better go to find me a little excitement. Up comes the little tram car that brings us our news and supplies. After if stops, I hear the men give a big yell and commence dancing around, and first thing I know somebody hollers over to me, "Hi, Tom, America's declared war on Spain and the President has issued a call for volunteers."
It must have dazed me, being as I wasn't expecting anything like that, for I didn't exactly keep up with international questions in those days, and I just stood there like a plumb idiot, and pretty soon the little tram car turned around and went back. That woke me up. America was going to war with Spain. That meant we would send troops to Cuba. It meant -- and right there in my thoughts I took my ax and threw it as far as I could, and I started running down that mountain like a pack of coyotes was after me.
The Navy Decides it Doesn't
Want Tom
When I got to the little town that had been our lumber headquarters, I started figuring what I'd better do and pretty soon I come to the conclusion that the best thing for me to do was to enlist in the navy. Goodness knows why a man like me that hadn't ever seen the ocean, besides being fairly expert and familiar with horses and guns like I was, should have picked the navy. But it was something I'd never done and besides it seemed to me the navy was pretty apt to be sent over there and get in the excitement. I knew about the Maine, and that sounded to me like where the real scrapping was going to be was in the navy.
The big difficulty that confronted me then was that I didn't have any money. The only thing I had any legal ropes on was a bicycle and all my savings had gone into that. You see, bicycle racing had become quite the thing and it was considered to be a sport that a man could compete at and gain himself quite a lot of glory. In those days, anything like that appealed a lot to me, and so I'd been indulging therein some frequent. I had grown to be estimated as one of the best bicycle riders in that neck of the woods and I'd won quite a few races. Being some set up over these aforementioned victories, I'd squandered all my pay on a racing bicycle. I was buying it on the weekly installment plan, so I went to the man and asked him if I could sell my share of it for enough to get me to Philadelphia. That's where the navy headquarters were that I wanted to reach. He said all right, so I sold him back the bike.
And then, by gosh, they wouldn't let me enlist in the navy.
I pretty near landed in jail trying to convince those officers they were wrong. I was pretty argumentative, one way and another, being that I had always been able to back up my differences of opinion with my gun or my fist, and I was all for fighting the whole navy right there and then. It seemed that they didn't need any more people in the navy that had never been to sea before. I don't even remember how I got on board, but I recall distinctly that I was standing up fighting it out with a lot of officers on a big warship and they had enough gold braid on them to decorate a band, so they must have been influential.
Anyway, they were influential enough to keep me out of the navy.
I was awfully sore and disappointed. But I wasn't discouraged. I was plenty filled up with determination that I was going to be in that war somehow. If they wouldn't have me in the navy, maybe the army wasn't so particular. President McKinley was calling for volunteers, all right, but the thing that was worrying me quite a bit was getting into a regiment where I'd see some active service. I wasn't looking any to get stuck somewhere and carry a musket on my shoulder on parade grounds, or play chambermaid to a lot of army mules while the other boys were hunting the Spaniards in Cuba.
I didn't have but five or six dollars left, but I was willing to gamble my last chip that the best thing to do when things are a little scrambled and don't seem to be going your way, is to go to headquarters and talk to the boss. So I started for Washington to interview the adjutant general. I'd made up my mind that he'd know where the fighting was going to be pulled off and if I could get him to share that information with me I'd know where I ought to try to be.
As it turned out, the adjutant general was right sympathetic and when I told him the experience I'd had with horses and guns, and how I'd lived in the border country and knew Spanish well, and my father had been an officer in the cavalry, he sent me right down to see Captain Grimes. He said his battery of artillery was sure to see service at once, and if there was a vacancy left and I could get Captain Grimes to take me, I'd see all the fighting I wanted.
Tom Gets into the Artillery
I got it and it wasn't long till I was a full-fledged member of Captain Grimes' battery. I think if I hadn't been taken in there, I'd have busted.
We went to Tampa. Florida, on the 21st of June, sailed at once for Cuba, and saw our first fighting in the battle of Guaymas. soon after we landed. We were with the Rough Riders at Cristabel Hill, where things were pretty hot and heavy for a while. And then, because of my knowledge of the language, I became a scout, and was made courier to General Chaffee who had known my father well in the old days.
Being a scout and a courier was great sport and was pretty near enough action to suit even me. The island was a tough place to get around and I had a lot of little skirmishes one way and another. I can't tell you a lot of detail about those months of fire and fight. It all blends into one in my mind. But it was great. It was pretty much hand to hand fighting, raiding nests of Spaniards that were hidden in all sorts of impossible places. We fought hard and the climate was hell, and the living conditions were terrible, but nobody cared. We'd come out to do a job and we were doing it.
From it there shines in my memory the thought of a man I only saw once during the service, but that once at Cristabel Hill was enough to stamp him forever upon my thought as my idol and hero -- Colonel Theodore Roosevelt.
It was a great experience and great training for any man.
After the Spaniards had surrendered in July, I was picked with the scouts who were sent out to bring in a lot of promiscuous Spanish sharpshooters that didn't seem to have got word that the war was over. They were always popping folks from behind things along the hill roads and stirring up considerable trouble and inconvenience for everybody. So we started out to explain to them that it was all over and they could come in and be good.
I remember I was going up a hill looking around to see if anything was likely to happen and I decided I'd never seen such a peaceful, quiet-looking place in my life. And just then a shot came right at me from a mango tree.
A Close Call from a Spanish
Bullet
The shot wasn't a bit peaceful, and it blew a good-sized hole in my sleeve, but I couldn't see a thing. No man likes to have something shooting at him that he can't see to shoot back at, but all I could do was to open up on that mango tree on general principles. Well, we had a lively little argument for a few minutes, and he poked his head out like a turtle, and I started to yell at the fool not to be silly, the war was over. I had just got my mouth open to holler when he fired his last bullet at me and got me in the roof of the mouth.
I've always been grateful that bullet was going plenty fast, because it came out the back of my neck and lit somewhere on the Cuban landscape, which was a better place for it than hatching trouble in my head.
I toppled over and some of the other scouts ran up and settled the bird in the mango tree and carried me down to camp. They took me to the hospital at Santiago and I was laid up there better than a month, and that being the first time I'd ever spent anything but the night in bed I nearly went plumb loco. I still have the scars from that sharpshooter's final argument and there are just a few words I can't quite say on account of something it did to my tongue. I don't reckon anyone else would spot it. because there are only six or eight of them, but when I start to use one. I have to rope something else out of my vocabulary pretty quick.
Well, I got back to the States in September and I thought I was a grown man sure enough, having been to war and not done so badly for myself, besides being mentioned a couple of times and getting wounded.
I tried to settle down then, but I couldn't. Soldiering had got into my blood. Everything else seemed so almighty tame and quiet to me after what I'd seen in Cuba. And I liked the companionship of the men. It was the only life I'd struck since I left Texas that suited me and it seemed to me like it was a good chance to get a look at some more of the world.
 |
| Photoplay, February, 1925 |
So I hadn't been mustered out of service many months when I joined up with the provisional army again in the artillery, for service
in the Philippines and started back across the water, not knowing, however, that I was going to see some of the most exciting and
desperate warfare the world has ever known in the Boxer Rising in China before my return to United Stales soil.
[ END OF THE FIRST INSTALLMENT ]
 |
| Davenport Daily Times, 21-February-1925 |
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