Taken from Gary Cooper's The Real West, a 1961 NBC presentation (video below - click "Read More"): "That was some big piece of country. It stretched, some said, from Beelzebub to breakfast. "All it lacked to be paradise was plenty of water and society ... which of course is all they lack in hell. "The real West lasted only forty years. It took place between two go-and-get-its and two hoots-and-a-holler. "Those who wested, it was said, were those who needed a fresh deal, all around. "If it is a good land and it grows good people, it’s because it's been irrigated by a lot of sweat and spit and blood. Tears have fallen on it too and a little snakehead whiskey. "An old timer put it best. 'It’s big and pretty now alright, and I helped build it, but by damn … wouldn’t it be fun to tear down and start all over again.' " I'm also a man of the west, and I too helped build it. By the time I was twelve I was putting in twelve hours a day on a tractor, a combine, or driving a truck, or sometimes I was on horseback punching cattle. My family were dust bowl dry land farmers. Wheat and cattle mainly. The opening page of In Cold Blood describes, exactly, the area where I was born and raised. It's interesting that my family followed the western movement to the area of Abilene, Hays and Dodge City, but they didn't find it necessary during the Dirty Thirties to follow the movement on west to Oregon or California. They stayed during what Tim Egan referred to as The Worst Hard Time. They stayed and endured the "Grapes of Wrath" as God, it seemed, was telling everyone to move on. I left the West long enough to gain my doctor of optometry degree. I then returned to resume building The West, but continued further west to the Palouse.
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