BOOKS - They Call Me Old Blue (Or How I Helped Charles Goodnight Invent the Chuck Wagon)
Preston Lewis: 2001
A remarkable book - perhaps the actual story ... perhaps even written by Charles Goodnight himself - about his best ever longhorn lead steer - Old Blue. This is one where you do not judge a book by the cover. From the first chapter - "The Mystery of Old Blue's Memoirs." , Lewis writes:
"In July of 1998 I visited the fabled JA Ranch in the Palo Duro Canyon of the Texas Panhandle .... In all, we picked up 170 boxes of records, maps, photographs and other materials documenting various aspects of the ranch's storied history. ... Near the bottom (of the box he had kept out to dig through while the team drove back to Lubbock) was an interesting manuscript".
This is that manuscript, perhaps as it was written by Goodnight. Fascinating in all respects. This is Old Blue's "autobiography".