The  cowboy pictured below is Les Fontaine  of Russell Country. He is the  grandfather of the poet featured on this web page- DAVE P. FISHER. As regards his grandfather, Dave says this:   He died when I was about 7 years old.  He was Blackfoot and was born in a tepee on the Blackfoot reservation in Columbia Falls, Montana.  This was before the turn of the century.  He hunted the Mission Range with his father.  When he was young he left the reservation and worked as a cowboy and did some rodeoing (thus this rare photo of him).  One of my most prized possessions.  He was an avid hunter and fisherman.   He fought in World War Two. He was in the SeeBees and he fought in many of the major island battles in the Pacific.      He and  my father hunted and fished together for many years. My father  told me all kinds of hunting and fishing stories about the two of them. One of the things my father (he passed away in 1992 at 87 years) talked about was grandpa's telling of how the soldiers gave the tribe blankets infected with smallpox and it killed most of the people.  Many jumped off a cliff to avoid infecting their families.  He was always proud of being Blackfoot, and never felt like a victim, things were as they were.  However, he saw the ill effects of poverty and alcoholism in the tribe and knew he could rise above all that and that's why he left and never went back.  He had a tremendous amount of influence on the nature of the family, much of which was passed on to me.   To show how we were influenced, when I was a deputy sheriff in Colorado, we had to take a cultural diversity class taught by a Hoppe woman.  We talked a lot and discussed matters of race and family values.  She was amazed at how much my ways and attitude paralleled the Indian way.  I told her about grandpa, and she said "Oh yes, I can see that in you and your ideas are definitely Blackfoot."  I was pretty proud of that.  That shows how much influence he had on us.                                                                                                                             Dave P. Fisher

 

The Lord's Creation   Now, the Lord had made everything in the world, Each thing perfectly placed, nothing was hurled. All was well, each serving the purpose it should, He looked around, smiled and said it was good. As He walked through the West he started to think, On the banks of the Bighorn He paused for a drink. He wondered what was missing, what still wasn't right? There was just something needed to equal the might. There must be something special, a thing that stands apart, Its greatest value must be to the mind and the heart. It must be a thing of beauty to match this great land, As a symbol of this big country it forever would stand. Then He knew what was missing and what must be done, For nowhere at all was a place like this under His sun. He made a creature with strength and heart as its source, The Lord smiled with pride and called it a horse. Yet, there is one more thing that is in need, A creature to love my horse, a different breed, He scooped a handful of river, between His fingers it ran, He mixed it with sage and granite and built up a man. Not just any man, but a man of mountains and sky, A man of courage who took hardships and never asked why. The man was placed on the land with the horse to employ. His West was complete and God called him cowboy. Dave P Fisher copyright © 2004

 

ABOUT HIMSELF,  DAVE P. FISHER SAYS:   I'm from Oregon, and lived in the West all my life, in fact I've never even seen the east bank of the Mississippi River.  School drove me crazy; it seriously cut into more important aspects of my life -- like hunting and fishing.  As soon as I cut the lead rope that kept me tied to the school building I started looking around for wider ranging adventures - and I found them.  In fact some of them about scared me to death, but now they make for great stories! I ran with a bunch of good ol' farm boys chasing rodeos.  I rode saddle broncs and had the time of my life. The bronc riders of that day had little to fear from me, although I heard the whistle a time or two, my six-foot-four frame made me less than a stylish rider. (The picture to the left is Dave Fisher at a rodeo in Oregon.) I went on to punch cows for a cattle company in western Oregon, and then moved on to wrangling horses and packing for hunting and guide outfitters. I worked in the wilds of the Alaska Bush for three years where I saw some of the greatest beauty left on earth.  I also served as the official horse shoer at two different outfits.  These horses received one shoeing a year, and except for hunting season, ranged free most of the year fighting off wolves.  Anyone who ever did any shoeing can imagine what it was like to shoe these guys.  In fact I told the story in a poem called Packstring Shoer. (You can read this poem at http://www.cowboypoetry.com  (The picture to the right of Dave was taken in Horsfeld, Alaska,while he was shoeing and calming a particularly skittish packhorse.)      In Montana, I  took out ten day, 100 mile trips over the divide through the Bob Marshal.  I later went to Wyoming and ran horses in the shadow of the Tetons.  I finally ended up in Colorado packing for Rocky Mountain National Park, that was the best job I ever had.  Along the way I broke horses in the good old way.  Unlike rodeo, style isn't important when breaking horses to ride, they still bucked as hard, but no one was scoring. Now I'm in Reno, Nevada, working my way up the writer's ladder.       For a good many years I spent more time with horses and mules than people. I could understand the four-legged critters, but to this day I still scratch my head trying to figure out the two legged variety.  I met my wife in Colorado, I was barely housebroke and she came from a cultured background. Over the years she has managed to have some positive influence over me and can actually take me places now.  She is raising our three daughters to be fine young ladies and has succeeded wonderfully.  As I always tell the girls, "Listen to your mother and she'll make ladies out of you, but I'll teach you how to fight."  When she wasn't looking I taught the girls how to spit like a cowboy, but I warned them not to tell their mother.    In addition to my years in the world of the cowboy I spent several years as a Deputy Sheriff in Colorado.  It was here that I gained an inside view of what the modern lawman is up against, his Old West counterpart had his hands equally as full.  I knew lawmen that were as honest as the day was long and others who had no business with a badge on their chest.  You will find lawmen a frequent subject in my stories, the good and the bad.   I spend as much time as possible hunting and fishing, my passion is fly fishing and fly tying.  I tied professionally for over twenty-five years and still do.  I've had several articles on fly tying and my outdoor experiences published in outdoor magazines and hope to continue adding outdoor articles in between my westerns. My attention these days is mainly focused on writing Western novels and short stories.  I used to write small poems on the bottom of letters to friends and when they insisted I write longer poems and publish them - I did.  I published Reflections in the Stocktank, Vol. 1 - Cowboy Life and Vol. 2 - Reflections.  My third book of Cowboy Poetry is called Shootout at the Old Pancake Corral, a poem telling the story of a deranged cook I worked with once in Alaska.  My fourth book is Campfire Yarns, which is a collection of short stories put to rhyme in the Robert Service tradition.                                                                                                                  Dave P. Fisher                         You can read more of Dave's poetry at : http://www.cowboypoetry.com Dave has published two novels: Yates, U. S. Marshall and The Strawberry Mountain War.     Dave's novel, Yates, U. S. Marshall, which takes place in a fictional town in Nevada. Dave's book, The Strawberry Mountain War is about a range war in eastern Oregon. To order a copy, log on to Dave's web site:                          www.DavePFisher.com                   Your comments are invited - DavePFisher@aol.com

HOME                       NEXT