Elmer Kelton

“I admired him as an author and citizen of the Concho Valley,” said Rep. Drew Darby. “He will be missed.” Fazlur Rahman said San Angelo has experienced a great loss. “He was a wise man, not only a great writer,” he said. “He had a great life, and brought honor and prestige to our community.” (from Friends Mourn Elmer Kelton, Brandi Ramirez, GoSanAngelo.com)

That's not too bad for a country boy from West Texas who got his start as the farm and ranch editor of the San Angelo Standard Times and later the Sheep and Goat Raisers magazine and Livestock Weekly. Obviously he was much more than an editor of some small West Texas publications, in many people's eyes he was the greatest western author ever.

Elmer grew up around Crane, Texas and graduated from Crane High School. After high school he attended the University of Texas and then joined the U.S. Army as an infantryman and saw combat in Europe during WWII. His wife Ann is a native of Austria, they settled in San Angelo and raised a family while he edited papers and wrote novels on the side.

I know Louis L'Amour is the most famous western novelist of all time, and he is great, I am not disputing that. The difference is that Louis' westerns sound more like stories that are ready to be made into Hollywood movies. Elmer's westerns sound more like the stories you would hear about your neighbors while hanging around the feed store or meeting for lunch after church on Sunday.

The characters are written to be real people with real problems and not sure about the solutions. In Elmer's novels there is no great hero riding in on a big stallion with a white hat and six guns blazing. Maybe that is the reason only one of his novels has been made into a movie.

That movie just happens to be my second favorite western of all time. The Good Old Boys is absolutely fantastic. It comes across less like a movie and more like a documentary of people living in West Texas at the turn of last century. The jist of the story is Matt Damon's, Cotton Calloway, character is a farm boy looking to leave the country and help build the future in some big city, Tommy Lee Jones's character, Hewey Calloway, is an old cowboy living in 1906. The cattle drives are gone and barbed wire is strung up everywhere. Cattle are shipped on rail cars, electric power lines and automobiles are springing up everywhere and he knows he is losing the life he loves to progress. In the mean time they both have to figure out how to save Hewey's brother (Cotton's dad's) farm.

The Good Old Boys is just one of many fantastic tales about regular people in Texas. I have also read The Smiling Country, Bowie's Mine, and parts of The Time it Never Rained and The Day the Cowboys Quit. One of these days I'll get around to finishing all of them.

There was a line from The Good Old Boys that Tommy Lee Jones said at an old cowboy's funeral. After naming off all the things that he and men like him did in their lifetimes he said "...Well here he is and we all better take a good look at him because they aint makin' no more like 'em!" That goes for Elmer himself and I would add that goes for an entire generation of men and women who grew up in the depression, fought in WWII, raised families in the 1950's and '60's and later spoiled grand kids who are now about my age. If you are a native Texan or just a fan of the real west, you should pick up an Elmer Kelton novel. R.I.P.

God and Texas,

Jason Watson