Worth reading

Gdjjr

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Oct 25, 2019
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Texas
There are so many passages that could be used to draw you in-

How Hank the Cowdog Made John R. Erickson the King of the Canine Canon


Erickson rose early this morning, as he has almost every day for 54 years, to write, or, as he likes to say, “to pull the plow.” At 5:30 a.m. he made the short drive from his house to the one-room cabin that he uses as an office. His headlights shone in the predawn dark, and his two dogs—Rosie, a red heeler bounding with energy, and Daisy, a sweet yellow Lab with an age-stiffened gait—picked their way through tall grass and burned-out cedars alongside the pickup. At the cabin, Erickson made some coffee. Then he got to work.


Perseverance is what I see- as well as a decent person


The first time we spoke on the phone to discuss this story, Erickson was wary. “I don’t want to wind up a dead coyote hanging on the fence,” he told me. When we meet, he explains his initial hesitation: “I don’t want to be part of a snotty little article about an old white guy who goes to church.”


He says that a conservative cowboy writer like himself has reason to be suspicious of news outlets and entertainment companies. And he has long resisted compromising his principles for opportunities that might have brought him more fame and money. “I’ve always had a stubborn streak,” he says. “I think it’s natural to people in West Texas. Those who aren’t don’t get past the first dust storm.”
Despite having fans like Nichols, Erickson hasn’t exactly been welcomed by the state’s literary elite. He mentions a time when Larry McMurtry (who wrote the foreword for Erickson’s 1980 book Panhandle Cowboy) shrugged him off at a banquet they attended at Tarleton State University, and the time Larry L. King refused to acknowledge him while they sat at a table together, signing autographs at the Texas Book Festival. But he stopped caring about what the literati thinks of him a long time ago. “I made the decision I wanted to hang out with readers and not writers,” he says.
 

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