As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Theodore Roosevelt after his long career set about to assemble a series of letters to his children which he had composed constantly over the years, starting from picture drawings before they could read, to the time they were away and in need of advice and guidance all the more.
The children of Theodore Roosevelt absolutely adored and worshipped their father. He literally was the lion of the pride, and he was so very proud of them and they of him.
When it came to play, even as President, there would be Teddy mud covered and the demanded companion of his children and their playmates.
He always treated them as his equal, and they in turn treated him with the same respect in beating the old man in a climb up the rocks, it was not the President, but their friend Teddy.
I place below a letter the President wrote from Colorado to his son, Ted. On this trip, which the President later recorded into a book on hunting, he tells his son about his adventures in running lions and cats (mountain lions and lynx) in the mountains.
What always struck me on this trip, and I have mentioned it, is the President on Sunday morning rode a dozen miles to attend Church, along with all the other ranch families, some of them coming much further than President Roosevelt did.
I try to remind Americans who they were, as they are not this breed any longer. Church is more of a salve to troubled souls without God to make them believe the lie they are saved, and few are the parents who ever taught their children the virtues of life.
A COUGAR AND LYNX HUNT
Keystone Ranch, Colo., Jan. 14th, 1901.
BLESSED TED,
From the railroad we drove fifty miles to the little frontier town
of Meeker. There we were met by the hunter Goff, a fine, quiet, hardy
fellow, who knows his business thoroughly. Next morning we started on
horseback, while our luggage went by wagon to Goff's ranch. We started
soon after sunrise, and made our way, hunting as we went, across the
high, exceedingly rugged hills, until sunset. We were hunting cougar and
lynx or, as they are called out here, "lion" and "cat." The first cat
we put up gave the dogs a two hours' chase, and got away among some high
cliffs. In the afternoon we put up another, and had a very good hour's
run, the dogs baying until the glens rang again to the echoes, as they
worked hither and thither through the ravines. We walked our ponies up
and down steep, rock-strewn, and tree-clad slopes, where it did not seem
possible a horse could climb, and on the level places we got one or
two smart gallops. At last the lynx went up a tree. Then I saw a really
funny sight. Seven hounds had been doing the trailing, while a large
brindled bloodhound and two half-breeds between collie and bull stayed
behind Goff, running so close to his horse's heels that they continually
bumped into them, which he accepted with philosophic composure. Then the
dogs proceeded literally to _climb the tree_, which was a many-forked
pinon; one of the half-breeds, named Tony, got up certainly sixteen
feet, until the lynx, which looked like a huge and exceedingly
malevolent pussy-cat, made vicious dabs at him. I shot the lynx low, so
as not to hurt his skin.
Yesterday we were in the saddle for ten hours. The dogs ran one lynx
down and killed it among the rocks after a vigorous scuffle. It was in a
hole and only two of them could get at it.
This morning, soon after starting out, we struck the cold trail of a
mountain lion. The hounds puzzled about for nearly two hours, going up
and down the great gorges, until we sometimes absolutely lost even the
sound of the baying. Then they struck the fresh trail, where the cougar
had killed a deer over night. In half an hour a clamorous yelling told
us they had overtaken the quarry; for we had been riding up the slopes
and along the crests, wherever it was possible for the horses to get
footing. As we plunged and scrambled down towards the noise, one of my
companions, Phil Stewart, stopped us while he took a kodak of a rabbit
which sat unconcernedly right beside our path. Soon we saw the lion in a
treetop, with two of the dogs so high up among the branches that he was
striking at them. He was more afraid of us than of the dogs, and as soon
as he saw us he took a great flying leap and was off, the pack close
behind. In a few hundred yards they had him up another tree. Here I
could have shot him (Tony climbed almost up to him, and then fell twenty
feet out of the tree), but waited for Stewart to get a photo; and he
jumped again.
This time, after a couple of hundred yards, the dogs
caught him, and a great fight followed. They could have killed him by
themselves, but he bit or clawed four of them, and for fear he might
kill one I ran in and stabbed him behind the shoulder, thrusting the
knife you loaned me right into his heart. I have always wished to kill a
cougar as I did this one, with dogs and the knife.
I personally take great joy in the manly virtue of President Theodore Roosevelt. Here was a gentleman who had an accomplishment he willed to succeed at, and that was to wade into a pack of claws and fangs, and in the process stick a mountain lion with a knife.
I ponder the last two real American Presidents in President George W. Bush clearing out brush with a chainsaw and President Ronald Reagan riding horse, as the last two gun handlers who actually came close to what American Presidents who were of the people were.
Not to exclude this, but Theodore Roosevelt always wrote to his daughters too. I include a letter to Ethel his daughter, including her in the things which would interest her.
THE PIG NAMED MAUDE
Keystone Ranch, Jan. 29, 1901
DARLING LITTLE ETHEL:
You would be much amused with the animals round the ranch. The most
thoroughly independent and self-possessed of them is a large white pig
which we have christened Maude. She goes everywhere at her own will; she
picks up scraps from the dogs, who bay dismally at her, but know they
have no right to kill her; and then she eats the green alfalfa hay from
the two milch cows who live in the big corral with the horses. One of
the dogs has just had a litter of puppies; you would love them, with
their little wrinkled noses and squeaky voices.
I wonder if the current regime in this 21st century would know the difference between a lynx and a bobcat and what alfalfa hay even is.
"To be an American in the 21st century is to be a fraud, a genetic devolution to the primordial Eurasian, whom the once American fought their way out of."
Lame Cherry
agtG
