My favorite Wild West characters

Why do cowboys need guns? Only to shoot the rattlesnakes disturbing the cattle. Why do bison need Tonka bulldozers? Why do alligators ride bucking broncos? Is Two Hat reading his Wanted poster? What do these cowboys eat? Beef, red beans, and coffee, of course!


© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Lois Lenski Rescue Me

The Little Fire Engine is a classic picture book that should NOT be shared with children. I love Lois Lenski's books about Mr. Small and his little dog Tinker. My kids loved Cowboy Small, Policeman Small, Farmer Small, The Little Train, and The Little Sailboat. The powerful, simple images, and day-in-the-life stories are implanted forever in our memories.

Unfortunately, the book about Fireman Small is outdated in a way that is dangerous. Firefighters and teachers emphasize to children that they must get out of a burning building, and meet their family members at an agreed upon place to make sure everyone is out. Under no circumstances should children take time to gather belongings or go back into the house to get something.

In The Little Fire Engine, the family carries the sofa, lamps, tables, chairs, a doll buggy, a bucket, and a frying pan out of the house. The family doesn't even notice that a daughter has not come out of the house for several more pages.

Because this book was part of the fire safety education when I was an elementary student in the Sixties, I know the effect of Lenski's images. Kids chatted on the playground about which of their toys they would rescue from a fire. I dwelled on this question in my insomnia for years. What would I save? Sometimes I favored my Barbie Doll cases, other times my graph paper drawings of Perfect House floorplans. I still hear women my age talk about how they would have to get all their photo albums out of the house.

The message we all need to have implanted in our memory in case of fire is rescue me, not stuff. The City of Plano's Parks and Recreation Department offers fire station tours for children age 3-5. Your city probably does, too. That's a great way for children to be introduced to fire safety by friendly firefighters, and to see the fire trucks up close. There's information for kids at the U.S. Fire Administration site, too.

Like Robert McCloskey, Lois Lenski was an Ohio author. The Ohioana Authors site has useful information on authors' lives and books. Lenski died in 1974.

If you were hoping to find something here about Denis Leary's Tommy Gavin, please try Rescue Me instead.

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Judge Roy Red Beans & the Cantalope West of the Pecos

My job doesn't pay much, but I get five two-week imagination vacations every summer. I'm writing you, my darlin' Clementine, to tell you somebody robbed the stage, and made off with the gold. The buffalo are stampeding, and them nasty outlaws done robbed the First National again.

My elementary art students are creating Old West main street scenes with false fronts worthy of many wild west Front Streets and more than a few Hell's Half-Acres. The preschool students have made Plains Indian shields and headdresses. Now they are making corrugated cardboard Sioux breastplates.

It's easy to forget how far I've gone deep undercover with my Quick Draw McGraw method acting until I realize I'm conversing with the Albertson's checker like I just fell off my hoss, and I'm pullin' cactus prickles outta my britches.

I can't begin to figure the number of times I have read Lois Lenski's Cowboy Small to small children. When Cowboy Small rides out on the range to fix the fences he cooks beef, red beans, and coffee on the campfire. If we didn't have a county burn ban because of the drought(which some Nebraskans pronounce drouth)I'd be tempted by that menu myself.

Holmes Lake Regatta

Put on your life jacket and sunscreen! This blog is going sailing in Lincoln, the capitol of Nebraska. True, Nebraska is landlocked, but memory is not. Memory has to bail sometimes, and may even have to stand on the daggerboard to right the boat when it turns turtle*, but it is free to sail all the way to the edge of this Administration's flat Earth and beyond.





Put on your oldest Keds. They may still squau-ucksh and squirrish from your last day sailing. No need to shower and shampoo before this outing.



My sailing experience is limited to a few golden summers and autumns on Holmes Lake, a Corp of Engineers project completed in 1962, in Sunfish, Dolphin, and Dolphin Junior boats in the years just before I learned to drive. We had fabulous fun learning the sailor lingo of "hard alee", "prepare to jibe", "come about", "high-siding", "tacking", and "running before the wind". Sometimes even the "doldrums" can be exciting.



Captain Small's little dog, Tinker, is more active than Blue Dog. My sons loved Lois Lenski's Big Book of Mr. Small, and my students love each story.

The lake has been dredged and restored in the last two years, and reopened this month. I hope a new generation of kids with slip on their squauuuuckshy tennis shoes and go sailing.

*turn turtle To capsize or turn upside-down: Our sailboat turned turtle during the squall.




My students are looking at images by Van Gogh, Turner, Homer, Whistler, Seurat, and others this week. We're using curves and overlapped triangles to create space and movement. We're off to sail the Seven Landlocked Seas!