Today is my birthday.
Spring in North Dakota in 1908 was dragging her feet and taking her time getting ready to dance in the rain.
On mornings like that one when the frost is snapping at her heels you think she might just hike up her skirts and leave us to wrestle with Winter for another while.
So I was born and so I grew up.
My head full of words wrestled from the ground and washed in the water that comes from the sky.
Chapped all day in the burning sun then gently oiled around the fire each night.
My family farmed. And ranched. And read books.
I’ve filled books with my stories, you know that, so we won’t do that here.
We’ll just skip a rock across the peaks of the waves that swelled my years.
High school dropped out of me in the tenth grade.
I punched cows for some years which is a term unfairly used, the cattle did most of the punching.
Baled lots a hay in New Mexico. It’s not all desert and most folks don’t know that.
Tasted dust in Nevada mines, Arizona saw mills and Utah lumber yards.
Did some actual punching on the pro boxing circuit. Won some too.
Hopped more freight trains than you probably should, they were going somewhere and I wanted to.
Hobo villages are somewhere and I lived in a few.
Bummed on the beach in southern California for a few months.
The ocean was bigger from the freighters I rode around the world, working as a merchant sailor.
And I wrote it all down as I went.
Guess I read a fair amount too. Usually around 150 books a year.
1945 found me fighting in France and Germany.
They made me a company commander before it was done.
Went back home, I just wrote.
Sold a story every week in those years.
All the kids always ask how it’s done.
Just write.
Kathy married me in 1956.
Stories came easier in the 60’s and 70’s.
And folks bought ‘em.
Somewhere along the way we passed up old Steinbeck, more than 41,000,000 copies sold.
A few years later it was 100 million.
The awards flooded in.
Golden Saddleman Award, Teddy Roosevelt Rough Rider Award, then it was a Congressional National Gold Medal and a Medal of Freedom.
All for a few good stories.
It was all for learning, really. I just wanted to learn.
“Ask and you will receive” they said. I believed it.
I learned the roughest hands can have the softest hearts.
I learned that saying nothing can be thunderous speech.
I learned the woman will always mystify, bewilder and bewitch a man.
She is both a part of him missing and something wholly other.
I learned to be friendly to a man who smiles at death.
He makes a good friend and a terrifying enemy.
I tried to fill my stories with these men and their hopes and fears and the mysterious woman.
“A dying breed.” they say. Maybe.
Somebody’s buying all these books. I’d like to think they’re finding themselves in that saddle.
I hope the words that spilled out of me over the years are filling their hearts with a bit of wonder and a reminder of how all good stories end.
The good guys win. The gentleman marries the lady. They live happily ever after on a ranch in Texas.
If a story doesn’t end that way, it must not be over yet.
All stories are good stories, in the end, you know.
Just keep reading.
A man always smiles at death, who knows how the story ends.
And I did smile.
—
Louis L’Amour loved life and learning, all of it.
And he put all of it in stories so we could too.
God bless Louis L’Amour.
Grateful to my Papa, for introducing us.