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The VPK: The Soldier's Camera

10/27/2022

The beginning of the twentieth century was a time of massive change in society and in technology. One of the new inventions during this period was a camera so compact, it could slip into a man’s pocket.

One of the first and most successful compact cameras was the Vest Pocket Kodak camera, or

‘VPK.’ Priced between $6 and $15 depending on the features, about 5,500 VPKs were sold in Britain in 1912, the first year it was produced. The next year over 28,000 of these cameras were sold in Britain. By the time the model was discontinued in 1926, over 2 million had been sold, making it one of the most popular and successful cameras of its day.

The Vest Pocket Kodak measured just 1’ by 2½’ by 4¾’. The lens panel expanded away from the film roll by way of a pair of lazy-tongs struts that were either outside or inside a leather bellows, depending on the model. Prior to this period, cameras were made from wood to make them lightweight. The VPK was made from metal.

In 1915, Kodak introduced the ‘Autographic’ Vest Pocket Kodak. Based on a patent taken out in 1913 by American inventor Henry Gaisman, this camera used a roll of film that had a thin tissue of carbon paper inserted between the film and the backing paper. Photographers could open a small flap in the back of the camera to uncover the backing paper. The photographer then used a metal stylus to write information on their negatives which would appear on their finished prints.

The VPK took film negatives that were 1⅝” by 2½” -- larger than a postage stamp. Pictures could be enlarged for easier viewing.

So many soldiers bought cameras to record their travels and experiences that the VPK became known as ‘The Soldier’s Kodak.’ Thousands of American ‘doughboys’ recorded their wartime experiences using this handy little camera.

Heinrich Dieter, one of the characters in Jennifer Bohnhoff's award winning historical novel A Blaze of Poppies, owns and uses a vest pocket Kodak both at home in Southern New Mexico and while serving as a medic on the battlefields of France.

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Halloween-Worthy Horror in the Alps

10/27/2022

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November is National Novel Writing Month, and I’m participating again this year. I’ll be working on a middle grade historical novel inspired by, but not in any way based on my summer hike, the Tour du Mont Blanc. As I researched the scenes of my story, I discovered that Charles Dickens toured Switzerland in the summer of 1846. One of the places that both Dickens and I went to was the hospice at the top of the Great Saint Bernard Pass.

This Hospice is the highest winter habitation in the Alps. It is also the place where the eponymous dog breed got its start. Run by Augustinian monks, it has been sheltering and protecting travelers since its founding, nearly a thousand years ago, by Bernard of Menthon. Etchings from Dicken’s time demonstrate that little has changed in the past two hundred years.

One thing that has changed is access to one of the hospice’s more morbid rooms: the mortuary. In Dickens’ time, the mortuary that still stands beside the Hospice was a great curiosity to travelers. Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Switzerland, published in 1843 included it among the must-see sites. It is known that Dickens took a copy of this travel guide with him. He describes the room in a letter he wrote to John Forster on September 6, 1846:

Beside the convent, in a little outhouse with a grated iron door which you may unbolt for yourself, are the bodies of people found in the snow who have never been claimed and are withering away – not laid down, or stretched out, but standing up, in corners and against walls; some erect and horribly human, with distinct expression on the faces; some sunk down on their knees; some dropping over one on side; some tumbled down altogether, and presenting a heap of skulls and fibrous dust.

The door to the mortuary is closed now. I do not know whether I could have pleaded to gain access, and I suspect that the bodies that had remained there are now long gone.

One set of bodies in particular fascinated both Dickens, who included her in his novel Little Dorrit, and Murray, who includes a description in his travel guide. She is a mother who Dickens describes as “storm-belated many winters ago, still standing in the corner with er baby at her breast.” Dickens pities the mother and gives her voice: “Surrounded by so many and such companions upon whom I never looked, and shall never look, I and my child will dwell together inseparable, on the Great Saint Bernard, outlasting generations who will come to see us, and will never know our name, or one word of our story but the end.” Dickens did not care to create a backstory for the poor, frozen woman and her child. Neither shall I. But his words continue to keep her alive in the hearts of readers some two hundred years after her death.

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes novels for middle grade and adult readers. Many of them are historical in nature.

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The Aisne-Marne American Cemetery: A Monument of Remembrance

10/20/2022

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Americans call November 11th Veteran's Day, and use the day to honor veterans of all wars . But originally November 11th observed Armistice Day, the when World War I ended, at least officially. .

There are many cemeteries in Belgium and France that hold the remains of Americans killed during the First World War. Unlike the cemeteries in Normandy, which contain those killed during the D-Day Invasion in World War Two, many of the World War 1 cemeteries recieve very few visitors each year.

The Aisne-Marne American Cemetery covers 42.5-acres at the foot of the hills that holds Belleau Wood. It contains the graves of 2,289 war dead. Most of these men came from the U.S. 2nd Division, which included the 4th Marine Brigade, and fought in the 20 day long battle for Belleau Wood. Also buried here are soldiers from the 3rd Division who arrived in Château-Thierry and blocked German forces on the north bank of the Marne throughout June.and July of 1918.

The second largest number of New Mexicans killed in France during World War I died at the Battle of Chateau-Thierry. Many of them were part of Battery A of the New Mexico National Guard, which came from Roswell. The 28 New Mexicans killed in this battle are interred at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery together with 2,261 AEF soldiers.

The carved marble at the top of the pillars that flank the entrance to the French Romanesque chapel depict soldiers engaged in battle in the trenches.

One of the stained glass windows inside displays the insignias of American divisions engaged in the area. Another window has the crests of countries on the Allied side of the war.

The inside of the chapel is inscribed with the names of 1060 men who were missing after the battles. Some of those names have a small brass star next to them. That means the body was later found and identified.

It has been over a hundred years since World War I ended. There are no veterans left for us to honor. But we must never forget, and we must continue to honor the men who went "over there" and fought to keep us free.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a native New Mexico with an interest in history. In 2019, she had the privilege of touring the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and walking through Belleau Wood. That experience led her to writing A Blaze of Poppies, a novel about New Mexico's involvement in World War I.

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Following in the Footsteps of Another, Greater Author

10/13/2022

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November is National Novel Writing Month, and I’m participating again this year. I’ll be working on a middle grade historical novel inspired by, but not in any way based on my recent hike around the Mont Blanc massif. I don’t have a title for this work as of yet; perhaps you, dear readers can help me determine a good title sometime during November.

What I do know thus far is that my novel will be set in 1799-1800 and will take place in Great Saint Bernard Pass, a route through the Alps that travels up the Rhone Valley from Martigny, Switzerland to Aosta, Italy. Great Saint Bernard pass is not the prettiest of passes, but it is convenient and offers the additional attraction of the Saint Bernard Hospice, the highest winter habitation in the Alps, at the top of the pass. The Hospice is also the place where the eponymous dog breed got its start.

When I went through the Great Saint Bernard Pass this past September, I traveled by bus: not a city bus or a school bus, but the kind of tour bus that holds perhaps fifty passengers, with two big upholstered seats on each side of a central aisle. The road itself, which is now called highway E27, was paved, but it had only two lanes, one in each direction, and it had more hairpin turns than a roller coaster. More than once, I was convinced that the bus wasn’t going to be able to negotiate a turn. A few times I was right, and the bus driver had to throw the bus into reverse and make an extra cut in order to make it around a tight bend.

I’ve been doing a lot of research this past month, and I’ve discovered that Charles Dickens went through the Great Saint Bernard Pass (and yes, there is a Lesser Saint Bernard Pass.) in September of 1846 when he was touring Switzerland. Dickens did not ride in a tour bus. In his day, the path was so rocky that the only way to travel along what was then called the Chemin des Chanoines, or the pathway taken by the canons of the hospice, was on foot or astride a donkey or horse. Even carriages could not make the journey; they were disassembled at Bourg-Saint-Pierre, the highest village on the Swiss side, then carried over the pass by porters and reassembled on the Italian side.

Dickens includes his perception of traveling Great Saint Bernard Pass in his novel Little Dorrit. In Book 2, chapter 1, his travelers ride through “the searching old of the frosty rarefied night air at a great height,” through a landscape marked by “barrenness and desolation. A craggy track, up which the mules, in single file, scrambled and turned from block to block, as through they were ascending the broken staircase of a gigantic ruin.” In these upper reaches of the pass, “no trees were to be seen, nor any vegetable growth, save a poor brown scrubby moss, freezing in the chinks of rock.” At the front of the mules is “a guide on foot, in his broad-brimmed had and round jacket, carrying a mountain staff or two upon his shoulder.”

I’ve seen a painting of another rider on a mule, guided by another man who knew the trail, but that is a story best saved for another blog.

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes for middle grade and adult readers. Most of her books are works of historical fiction. You can read more about her and her book on her website.

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The Big Guy/ Little Guy Trope in Middle Grade Literature and Beyond

10/6/2022

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Merriam Webster defines a trope as a recurring element or a frequently used plot device in a work of literature or art. One common trope in not only literature but in cartoons is the mismatched duo, particularly a big guy partnered with a little guy. Often the smaller character is also physically weaker and needs the protection of his big friend. In return, he supplies the ideas that move the story forward. The big guy, often a misunderstood gentle giant or suffering a mental deficiency or disability, needs his little buddy to keep him out of trouble.

The big guy/little guy partnership has been used repeatedly in cartoons. When my sons were little, the TV cartoon that used this trope most obviously was Pinky and the Brain. The cartoon focused on two genetically enhanced laboratory mice who resided in a cage inside the Acme Labs research facility. Brain, the littler of the two mice, was highly intelligent, self-centered and scheming. Pinky was Brain’s sweet-natured but feeble-minded henchman. In every episode, Brain devised a new plan to take over the world, but his plans always failed, with hilarious results.

Not all works that use the big guy/ little guy trope are funny, however. Probably the most famous and most literary of the trope’s treatments has been in Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck’s 1937 novella. In it, George Milton is the little, smart guy who tries to protect Lennie Small, a slow thinking giant of a man who does not understand his own strength. The two displaced ranch workers move from job to job in Depression-era California, until fate catches up to them and Lennie can no longer protect his friend. The story is a tragedy and appears on the American Library Association's list of the Most Challenged Books of the 21st Century because many consider the material both offensive and racist, but it is also a beautiful depiction of the difficulties some people seem to never be able to shrug off, and the importance of watching after each other. It is a book that is, by turns, noble and base, vulgar and tender, and is frequently taught in high school courses. I consider it a little too mature for middle school readers, but hope that middle schoolers will have the chance to encounter it when they are older.

A book that features the big guy/ little guy trope, but is appropriate for middle school readers is Rodman Philbrick’s Freak the Mighty (Scholastic Paperbacks; Reprint edition, June 1, 2001, ISBN-13:‎ 978-0439286060) In this novel, the big guy is Max, a teenage giant with a learning disability and a terrible secret. The little guy is Kevin, whose tiny body is wracked with a syndrome that is slowly killing him. Together, they are Freak the Mighty, and they can overcome bullies and brutes. This story does not end up happily, either, but the reader is left with a sense of hope for the future. The book was made into a movie titled The Mighty, and stars Kieran Culkin and an all-star cast. When I taught middle school Language Arts, this was one of my favorite books to share. The movie to book comparison always led to good discussions on how characters were presented and what and why certain plots lines, scenes and themes were left out of the movie version.

The most hopeful middle grade big guy/ little guy book I found was Leslie Connor’s multiple-award winning The Truth As Told by Mason Buttle (Katherine Tegen Books; Reprint edition, January 7, 2020, ISBN-10:‎ 0062491458.) Mason is a big, sweaty kid whose learning disabilities make reading and writing impossible. His down and out family has suffered several deaths and the sell-off of their orchard land that had been their livelihood for generations. Then, the body of Mason’s best friend, Benny Kilmartin, was found in what remained of the family orchard and he is shunned by the town and bullied by neighboring boys. Mason’s luck begins to change when little guy Calvin Chumsky befriends him. Together, the two manage to enjoy their circumstances while the investigation drags on, and Mason tries to convince Lieutenant Baird that he is not responsible for Benny’s death. The truth does come out, in ways that no one has anticipated.

I think it is important for parents and teachers to talk with children about the big guy/little guy trope. The line between trope and stereotype is slim, indeed. Not every big guy is a gentle giant with limited mental ability. Some big guys are big on brains, too. Others are not gentle at all. Nor is every little guy a genius trapped in a weak frame. But regardless of its limitations, the trope remains an important one in literature and worthy of study. I think comparing books to cartoon depictions and movies is a good place to start. Perhaps middle schoolers would be better prepared for Steinbeck if they began with Philbrick and Connor.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a retired High School and Middle School Language Arts and History teacher. She is the author of historical novels for both middle grade and adult readers.

The book links in this article are to Bookshop.org, an online bookseller that gives 75% of its profits to independent bookstores, authors, and reviewers. As an affiliate, Jennifer Bohnhoff receives a commission when people buy books by clicking through links on her blog or browsing her shop at bookshop.org/shop/jenniferbohnhoff. A matching commission goes to independent booksellers. However, Ms. Bohnhoff is just as happy when people borrow books from their local library or shop at their local independent booksellers.

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Historical Novels that bring New Mexico History to Life

10/3/2022

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I am always deeply saddened when I hear people tell me that New Mexico History is boring. I used to teach the subject at the middle school level, and I confess that the textbook was, indeed boring. Fitting thousands of years of history into a book involves leaving out all the details that makes the story exciting I strived to tell those stories in my classroom, and the result was that a lot of kids found that history wasn’t just a list of names, dates, treaties and battles. History was the story of people who were trying, just like my students, to do the best they could under whatever circumstances they were given. These four novels to a good job of giving the history of New Mexico a human face.

Dennis Herrick’s Winter of the Metal People: The Untold Story of America's First Indian War (Sunbury Press, 2013, ISBN-10 ‏ 1620062372) tells the story of Spanish conquistador Francisco Coronado's 1540-1542.expedition into New Mexico and his occupation of a pueblo near what is now Bernalillo, on the banks of the Rio Grande. The site, which may be at what is now called Coronado Monument, Told from both a Spanish perspective derived from the chronicles the explorers left behind and from the (largely conjectured) perspective of the Puebloans, this well researched novel depicts the Tiguex War, the first battle between Europeans and Indians on what was to become American soil.

Loretta Miles Tollefson’s There Will Be Consequences: A Biographical Novel of Old New Mexico (Palo Flechado Press, 2022, ISBN 1952026059) tells the story of a very tumultuous time in New Mexico history. New Mexico, the distant and neglected area on the wild edge of the Spanish New World, had long been left to its own devices. The Spanish, busy with European wars and other colonies, had provided little, and expected little in return. New Mexicans had expected the same kind of negligence from the Mexican government when it revolted against Spain and established its own government. However, by 1837, Mexico had decided to exert more control over New Mexico, appointing governors from beyond its territory and demanding taxes that had long been waived. The northern half of the territory responded with a rebellion that left the Governor and key members of his administration dead, and a local man with indigenous ancestry and a set of local alcaldes set up in their place. In this well researched novelization of the events, Tollefson tells the story of this rebellion through the eyes of twelve of its participants and witnesses. Anyone who’s read anything of the period will recognize names such as Albino Pérez, José Angel Gonzales, Gertrudes "Doña Tules" Barceló, Father Antonio José Martinez, and Manuel Armijo. But Tollefson isn’t just reciting names and events. Her narrative makes the people in it come alive.

Mary Armstrong’s The Mesilla: Two Valleys Saga: Book One (Enchanted Writing Company, 2021, ASIN ‏ B093CPZ71B) tells its story through the eyes of fourteen years old, Jesus ‘Chuy’ Perez Contreras Verazzi Messi, who is apprenticed to his by his uncle, the noted Las Cruces attorney and politician, Colonel Albert Jennings Fountain. Bronco Sue, Oliver Lee, and Frenchy Rochas are among the historical figures that appear in this novel that takes place in the territorial period, when the area was struggling with range wars and trying to appear legitimate and worthy of statehood. It is filled with courtroom drama and the kind of background stories that spice up history and make the characters come alive. The first in a trilogy, this novel sets up the events that may have led to the unsolved murder of Fountain ten years later.

Finally, I am pleased to share that my own novel A Blaze of Poppies (Thin Air Publishing, 2021, ASIN B09HG16WBX) recently won the 2022 New Mexico Book Award in the category of New Mexico Historical Fiction. This novel tells the story of a young, female rancher in Southern New Mexico who is determined to keep the Sunrise Ranch in the family. Threatened first by Pancho Villa’s raid on nearby Columbus, New Mexico and by her own mother’s refusal to support her, Agnes Day becomes a nurse and serves behind the trenches in World War I France that are occupied by members of the New Mexico National Guard.

New Mexico has a vibrant history made all the more interesting because of the mix of people who have inhabited a difficult to conquer landscape. Try one of these books and see for yourself.

The book links in this article are to Bookshop.org, an online bookseller that gives 75% of its profits to independent bookstores, authors, and reviewers. As an affiliate, Jennifer Bohnhoff receives a commission when people buy books by clicking through links on her blog or browsing her shop at bookshop.org/shop/jenniferbohnhoff. A matching commission goes to independent booksellers. However, Ms. Bohnhoff is pleased if you borrow books from your local library or shop at your own local independent bookseller.

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Stories about Living During the Vietnam War Era for Middle Grade Readers

9/23/2022

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The author and her Uncle, probably in 1965. I don't believe he served in Vietnam, but I don't really remember.

It’s stunning to me that the Vietnam War is ancient history for today’s middle schoolers. To old folks like me, who grew up while our soldiers were wading through rice paddies and jungles, it seems unbelievable that today’s kids wouldn’t know anything about the Vietnam War, or what it was like here on the home front during that tumultuous period. But then I got to analyzing how much time has passed, using real numbers (something I don’t often do!) and I realized that it’s perfectly understandable that today’s middle grade readers know so little.

I am just slightly too young to have much personal experience with the Vietnam War. The war ended when Saigon fell on the 30th of April 1975. I was in high school by then, but the war was old news that few people cared about. For many Americans, the war was over in December of 1972, when the last draft call was held, or in March of 1973, when the last of our ground troops left Vietnam. I was still in Junior High then. I had some friends whose older brothers were in the draft, and a few who went over and served, but most of the people I knew where involved in the war were a generation removed from me, and were fathers of friends, old enough to have command or desk jobs. My husband registered for the draft, but the draft had ceased before he could be called up.

My grandfather served during World War I, which ended 41 years before I was born. I remember thinking that he was a very old man, and that the war he had served in much have been long, long ago. I assume that an average twelve-year-old, who would have been born thirty-five years after the end of the Vietnam feels the same. If they know anyone involved in Vietnam, it would be a grandparent or even a great grandparent. Ancient history.

Maybe one of the reasons I loved Gary D. Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars, a middle grade historical novel that won a Newberry Honor in 2008 is that Schmidt is two years older than I am, so his memories of the period would be much like my own. Reading this novel is much like a trip into my own reminiscences of the period. I remember arguments similar to the one between the protagonist’s conservative father and would-be flower child sister. I remember VW bugs with flower decals, and the horrific shock of the deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. The world felt like it was unraveling, and Walter Cronkite was there every evening to explain it all to us.

But The Wednesday Wars isn’t just a book about a particular point in time; it’s also a book about a boy at a particular point in his own development into manhood. Holling Hoodhood may be a seventh grader during the 1967–1968 school year, but many of the problems he faces are similar to those that seventh grade boys still encounter.

Holling’s father is a self-centered architect who is so busy becoming the Chamber of Commerce Businessman of the year that he can’t attend his son’s performance in The Tempest. The father sees every relationship as a potential business association and demands that he, his family, and their house all be above reproach and perfect at all times. It’s a tough standard to attain, particularly for a middle school boy who, as most boys his age, feels gawky and unsure of himself.

Holling finds an unlikely ally in Mrs. Baker, his no-nonsense teacher. On Wednesday afternoons, half of Holling's classmates leave school early for catechism class and the other half attends Hebrew school leaving Holling, the only Presbyterian, alone in the classroom. Holling thinks Mrs. Baker hates him because of this, but after an unexpected disaster involving cream puffs and chalk board erasers, Mrs. Baker introduces Holling to Shakespeare. The Bard becomes the lens through which Holling processes the world around him, including his relationship with his father, with Meryl Lee Kowalski, the daughter of a rival architect, his sister Heather, and even Mickey Mantle. I couldn’t help but love the awkward, fumbling Holling.

If you’d like to read a story set in the Vietnam War era that has a female protagonist, consider Shooting the Moon, by Frances O'Roark Dowell. Twelve-year-old Jamie Dexter is a military brat whose father is a colonel stationed in Texas. Jamie is proud and excited when her older brother enlists in the Army and is sent to Vietnam. She can't wait to get letters from the front lines describing the excitement of real-life combat, the sound of helicopters, the smell of gunpowder, the exhilaration of being right in the thick of it. But her brother doesn’t send letters. Instead, he sends roll after roll of undeveloped film that shows photos of the moon and gritty pictures that depict a side to war that she has never considered. While Jamie works in the base’s rec office, she begins to question everything she’s ever believed, and when her brother goes MIA and her father can do nothing, Jamie’s innocence is lost and she must grow up quickly.

Other books about the Vietnam War

Summer's End, by Audrey Couloumbis, is another book featuring a girl growing up during the Vietnam War. When her older brother is drafted but burns his draft card, thirteen-year-old Grace finds herself in the middle of a war raging within her own family.

Ellen Emerson White’s contribution to the Dear America series is Where Have All the Flowers Gone?: The Diary of Molly MacKenzie Flaherty, Boston, Massachusetts, 1968. The book is set up to be the diary entries of a brother who is a Marine stationed in Vietnam, and his sister, a peace activist back in the states.

Georgie's Moon, by Chris Woodworth tells the story of Georgie Collins, whose father gave her standing orders never to let anyone mess with her before he left for Vietnam. Despite "peacenik" classmates who think the war is wrong and being forced to visit old people in a nursing home, Georgie tries to survive seventh grade in Glendale, Indiana as she waits for her father’s return.

Elizabeth Partridge’s Dogtag Summer tells the story of twelve-year-old Tracy, who was once named Tuyet. Half Vietnamese and half American GI, Tracy has never felt she fit in with her adoptive California family. Finding a soldier's dog tag hidden among her father's things begins a set of events that promise to change everything.

Times change. Events happen, impress themselves on us, and then we move on. The Vietnam War no longer lives large in the American psyche. It has been replaced by 9/11, COVID, and a dozen other events. But being in the 7th grade and finding oneself on the teetering brink of adulthood remains an important time for individuals. I think it's important for today's middle grade readers to know that their parents, and their grandparents, and all the generations who came before that also struggled with what it meant to become oneself.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former high school and middle school English and history teacher who is now old enough to get to stay home and write. She lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque, New Mexico with her very patient and equally old husband, and a big, rambunctious black dog named Panzer. You can read more about her and her books on her website.

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Giving Back New Mexico

8/31/2022

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New Mexico has been peopled for tens of thousands of years. The radiocarbon dating of footprints found at White Sands has pushed back human occupation to somewhere between 23,000 and 21,000 years ago. As far as we know, for much of that time, the different people occupied different areas without any formal boundaries.Spheres of influence overlapped. People shared the same hunting grounds and wintering areas, sometimes peacefully and sometimes not.

That all changed with the coming of the Spanish in the sixteenth century. The first peoples with a written system to document their intentions, they declared the land the property of the Spanish King and divided it into grants. From early on, the Spanish recognized three different types of land grants. Private grants were awarded to soldiers, nobility, and important people. Community grants were given to groups of people, particularly genizaro. The settled Indian populations, which means the Puebloans, received grants that protected their pueblos and fields from Spanish incursion to some degree. Those tribes that did not live a settled lifestyle did not receive land grants.

Following the Mexican-American War, the United States took control of the territory. The treaty ending the war recognized the Pueblo land grants. In 1863, President Lincoln presented 19 Pueblo Governors with canes to show that the Federal government recognized their authority. Today there are still 19 Pueblo tribes in New Mexico. Each pueblo is a sovereign nation.

1923 photograph of Pueblo leaders in Washington, D.C. to protest the Bursum Bill, which threatened the Pueblos with land loss. They are each holding their Lincoln cane.

Not all Indigenous peoples in New Mexico lived settled lives. The nomadic tribes: the Apache, Navajo and Comanche tended to live within a range of land, but they did not stay in one place. The Navajo had fields and orchards, but they did not tend them year round. These groups were not given land grants by either the Spanish or the Mexican governments when they controlled New Mexico.

Comancheria, as envisioned by Michael Trinklein in Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and other States that Never Made it.

In 1837, Sam Houston, the President of the Republic of Texas, proposed that the Comanches be given their own land. Their summer range encompassed much of western Texas, large portions of what is now Oklahoma and New Mexico, and the edges of Colorado and Kansas. The Comanches were fierce fighters. Giving them their own territory would, the Texans hoped, stop them from killing settlers and attacking wagon trains. The Texas congress did not ratify Houston's proposal, and the Comanche's were eventually given a reservation in Oklahoma. Apache tribes have little reservations scattered over several western states, and the Navajo reservation straddles the states of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.

In the 1970s, Navajo tribal chairman Peter McDonald suggested that the Navajo homeland become the fifty-first state, giving its occupants more autonomy and control. The biggest issue at the time was the refusal of Utah to allow the Ft. Hall Navajos to build a casino on their land. While his proposal received national attention in 1974, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah all refused to support it. If the population within the reservation grows, this proposal might be renewed.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a retired New Mexico History teacher who now writes historical fiction. She has written about the state during the Civil War in Where Duty Calls, during World War I in A Blaze of Poppies, and is currently at work on a novel set 12,000 years ago during the Folsom period.

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The Bard of the East Mountains

8/15/2022

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A sketch of San Antonio, New Mexico, by A. Petticolas, Confederate soldier

A while back, a neighbor was over and we were talking about the history here on the east side of the Sandia Mountains. He was raised here. I spent my teens in Albuquerque, the city that lies just west of the Sandias. I hiked in the mountains plenty, and I had friends that lived over here, especially after I got to high school. Manzano High School was, and still is the high school that kids from the east mountains attended. I’ve always been interested in the geology of the mountains. Its most ancient of records are the rocks, which tell us that what is now the top of a mountain used to be at the bottom of a sea. But I didn’t become interested in the human history of the east mountains, its small towns, and the people who inhabited them until I moved here in 2017.

This visiting neighbor told me he’d like to get his hands on a novel entitled Fiddlers and Fishermen because it was set in the east mountains. He’d searched, but he’d never been able to find a copy. That set me on a mission that began on Google, went to the public library, and finally to rare booksellers. What I discovered was that Fiddlers and Fishermen is one of two books written by Benjamin Frederick Clark. Born in Kansas in 1873, Clark moved into a cabin in Sandia Park, New Mexico in 1927. He passed away in that same cabin on May 30, 1947. He was 74 years old.

Back in 1947, Sandia Park was the area uphill from the little village of San Antonito. A dirt road went through the middle of it on its way up to the crest of the mountain. My area was on the outskirts of a village called La Madera, whose economy was based on truck farming, limestone mining, and timber. The stream that was the lifeblood of La Madera has ceased to flow and the town has become a ghost town. I drive a little over six miles to get my mail at the Sandia Park Post office.

Clark’s other book is a small tome of poems. Entitled Melodious Poems from the Hills, it was published in 1945 under the pen name of Sandia Bill by Crown Publications. I managed to get a copy delivered to my local library through interlibrary loan. The copy is signed, in pencil, by the author. A second pencil notation, reading “gift of the author 6/30/45” is written along the gutter of the first page. There is a picture of Clark playing his fiddle in the frontpages. I have included it here.

Melodious Poems from the Hills has ninety-six pages. Some pages have two short poems on them. Most have one poem, and a few poems span a couple of pages. The first poem, “When I Am Dead,” is mentioned in his obituary and is the reason he was cremated.

When I Am Dead

When I am dead, don’t cry for me;
Just wrap me in a shroud
And burn me, that the vapors may
Help form some lovely cloud.
Then place my pictures and my dolls,
And my ashes pure and clean,
‘Neath my rosevine and that tree
That always is so green.
Just leave the earth plain and smooth--
I want no omark or stone.
Just let the yard look like it did;
When in flesh, it was my home.
Take care of my sweet rosevine
And that evergreen tree –
This still my home will be;
And may flowers bloom around by tome
While gay robins sing for me.

This was one of my favorites, and seems appropriate in a year that saw so much of the west burning:

The Dying Monarch

Here stands the monarch of the forest,
Slowly expiring on the mountainside,
Who only a few hours ago,
Was the embodiment of health and pride.
His kindred pines for miles around,
And neighboring aspens, oaks, and firs
Are slowly tumbling to the ground
In bulks of smoldering embers.

The Lively squirrels and cheerful birds
From these parts have fled,
And they’ll be homeless for awhile,
For their friendly trees are dead.

Stands here the monarch of the forest,
Preaching a sermon as he expires,
Broadcasting his message to the world:
“Oh, men, be careful with your fires.”

Like the poem above, many of Sandia Bill’s poems are about the nature that surrounded him. Some are about the people, mostly ranchers, who he associated with. A few tell tales of love lost and found, of pretty women, dangerous men, and faithful old dogs, horses, and mules. This one, dear reader, I find speaks his heart, and mine.

I Am Thankful

I am not a rich or famous man,
And perhaps I’ll never be.
But I am in love with many things
And they’re all in love with me.

I am thankful for the sweet sunshine,
For snow, the clouds, and summer showers.
I am thankful for the Love Divine,
For butterflies, the birds, and flowers.
I am thankful for the girl I love
With eyes so soft and blue;
I am thankful for the stars above,
But more thankful, dear, for you.

I have yet to get my hands on a copy of Fiddlers and Fishermen. The only copy I’ve managed to locate is housed in the special collections in Zimmerman Library on the University of New Mexico campus, and they are not willing to circulate it through interlibrary loan. The only way I can read this 76 page novella is to make an appointment to read it at the library. Zimmerman’s old reading room is a beautiful, contemplative space. I did much of my undergraduate study there because it was such a peaceful place. Perhaps someday soon I will jump through the hoops to make this appointment happen.

Jennifer Bohnhoff’s newest novel, Where Duty Calls, is set in New Mexico during the Civil War and is the first in a trilogy. Written for middle grade readers, it is a quick, informative read for adults. She lives and writes in the mountains east of Albuquerque, New Mexico, close to the camp the Confederate Army used as they advanced towards Santa Fe in the spring of 1862 that is pictured above. .

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Civil War Mules in Fact, Fiction, and Poetry

7/27/2022

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Mules were the backbone of both Confederate and Union Armies during the American Civil War. According to a page on the Stones River Battlefield site, about three million horses and mules served in the war. They pulled the supply wagons, pulled the limbers and caissons for cannons, and moved the ambulances.

Although mules died in battle, just like the soldiers they supported, a greater percentage died of overwork, disease, or starvation. Rarely was the daily feed ration for Union cavalry horses, ten pounds of hay and fourteen pounds of grain, available during the long campaigns.

Jemmy Martin, one of the lead characters in Where Duty Calls, my middle grade novel about the Civil War in New Mexico, loves the two mules who work on his family's farm. When his brother sells them to the Confederate Army, Jemmy decides to travel with them to protect them. He tries hard to find good forage for his mules after Major General Henry H. Sibley's army crosses into barren New Mexico territory on its way to capture the gold fields of Colorado.

But Jemmy couldn't protect his mules from Union trickery. The night before the battle of Valverde, a Union spy named Paddy Graydon concocted a plan for killing the Confederate hoofstock using a couple of run-down mules as weapons. While his plan didn't work, he managed to spook the Confederate's pack mules. The animals, who'd been denied access to water for several days, stampeded down to the Rio Grande, where Union soldiers rounded them up. Jemmy finds himself continuing to follow the army even though his reason for being with them is gone.

While Jemmy and his mules are fictional characters that I created for my novel, the story of Paddy Graydon is true. Graydon really did spook the Confederacy's pack mules, and the Union Army did really collect over 100 of the beasts when they broke to gain access to water. They lost over 100 animals and had to reconfigure their supply train. Before they left camp, the Confederates burned what they could no longer carry.

In Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life, Civil War veteran John D. Billings shares the story of another mule stampede. During the night of Oct. 28, 1863, Union General John White Geary and Confederate General James Longstreet were fighting at Wauhatchie, Tennessee. The din or battle unnerved about two hundred mules, who stampeded into a body of Rebels commanded by Wade Hampton. The rebels thought they were being attacked by cavalry and fell back.

To commemorate this incident, one Union soldier penned a poem based on Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade.

Charge of the mule brigade

Half a mile, half a mile,
Half a mile onward,
Right through the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.
“Forward the Mule Brigade!”
“Charge for the Rebs!” they neighed.
Straight for the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.

“Forward the Mule Brigade!”
Was there a mule dismayed?
Not when the long ears felt
All their ropes sundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to make Rebs fly.
On! to the Georgia troops
Broke the two hundred.

Mules to the right of them,
Mules to the left of them,
Mules behind them
Pawed, neighed, and thundered.
Breaking their own confines,
Breaking through Longstreet's lines
Into the Georgia troops,
Stormed the two hundred.

Wild all their eyes did glare,
Whisked all their tails in air
Scattering the chivalry there,
While all the world wondered.
Not a mule back bestraddled,
Yet how they all skedaddled--
Fled every Georgian,
Unsabred, unsaddled,
Scattered and sundered!
How they were routed there
By the two hundred!

Mules to the right of them,
Mules to the left of them,
Mules behind them
Pawed, neighed, and thundered;
Followed by hoof and head
Full many a hero fled,
Fain in the last ditch dead,
Back from an ass's jaw
All that was left of them,--
Left by the two hundred.

When can their glory fade?
Oh, the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Mule Brigade,
Long-eared two hundred!

The Stones River Battlefield Website stated that roughly half the horses and mules employed during the Civil War didn't survive. Jemmy Martin loses his to Paddy Graydon's plan. He spends the next two books in the Rebels Along the Rio Grande series trying to find them and return them to his home near San Antonio, Texas.