The Old West of this page is defined loosely as the legend and reality of 19th Century America west of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers and anything and anybody associated with it, past and present.  After all, the Old West is not really a time or a place but a state of mind.

                                                     Jim Janke

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

                                   Abraham Lincoln
                                   Second Inaugural Address

  Eternal Father, Strong to save,
  Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
  Who bid'st the mighty Ocean deep
  Its own appointed limits keep;
  O hear us when we cry to thee,
       for those in peril on the sea.

                                                The Navy Hymn

Writing

"As every author- and every reader- knows,
  writing well is the best trip of them all."

                                                       Gore Vidal

He took a look around. "But the country grows on you. You'll see."
                                  Marshal Otis MacKenzie
                                  in Jeremiah Bacon

   

    The west is dead, my Friend,
  But writers hold the seed,
     And what they saw
       Will live and grow
 Again to those who read.

                                             Charles M. Russell

Nautical Tales

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.
                                                 John Masefield
                                                 Sea Fever

I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm's way.
                                              John Paul Jones

                                                                  First solo, 11/22/75

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
   of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and
   swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

                                   John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
                                   High Flight

"The irony is that this is a money game and money is the way we keep score.  But the real object of the Game is not money; it is the playing of the Game itself.  For the true players, you could take all the trophies away and substitute plastic beads or whales' teeth; as long as there is a way to keep score, they will play."
                                               "Adam Smith"
                                               The Money Game