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INTERVIEW WITH ELMER KELTON MAYES: I understand that poor eyesight played a big role in
your limitations as a cowboy.
Kelton: We [my family and I] didn’t realize I was
nearsighted, but when we went out on drives to round up cattle, I couldn’t see
very far. I’d miss cattle and others would come along and have to pick them up.
MAYES: If you hadn’t been nearsighted, do you think you
would be a stove-up cowboy now instead of an award-winning author?
Kelton: If I’d
been a real good cowboy, like I wanted to be, I’d probably be babysitting
somebody’s ranch out on the Pecos River.
MAYES: That’s a good example of how things often work out
for the best even though it’s disappointing at the time.
Kelton: Another example is The Time It Never Rained. I wrote
that book three times before the publisher would take it. I’ve always been
grateful it didn’t sell those first two times because it would have gone out
there and died and nobody would have heard of it again. As it is, it’s my
signature book.
MAYES: It’s my favorite of all your books. I’ve heard it’s
yours, too. Why?
Kelton: It’s more personal to me because I lived it. My
historical novels I lived vicariously, but that one I lived for real.
 Kelton estimates that he spent the equivalent of seven years of his life at San Angelo's auction rings while covering farm and ranch news for several publications.
MAYES: I love that line you wrote in your memoir about your
dad’s reaction to the Great Depression, “He could never forget those mortgaged
cows that for so long bore down on his shoulders like the weight of the world.”
KELTON: Well, that kind of tainted his life because it was
such a hard experience. And he was always afraid the next depression was just
about to start. From the standpoint of economics, he was always pessimistic. If
it didn’t start this afternoon, it’d probably start tomorrow. It left him
pretty badly scarred.
[Kelton writes in his memoir that when he and his wife
wanted to purchase their first home in 1948 for $6,500, his father gave him
this advice: “You’d better wait until they’re cheaper.” He also shares his father’s
reaction when he told him at age 16 that he wanted to become a writer: “… That’s
the way with you kids nowadays, you all want to make a living without working
for it.”]
MAYES: I also love the first line of Cloudy
in the West, when you describe the main character chopping weeds: “All afternoon Joey Shipman had been
killing his stepmother with the hoe, chopping her to pieces an inch at a time …
.” How could you not keep reading after that sentence!
Kelton: I think that’s one of my best first lines, but I
think my very best is in The Good Old Boys: “For the last five or six days Hewey
Calloway had realized he needed a bath.”
MAYES: With more than 50 books to your credit, how do you
continually create such distinctive characters?
KELTON: The world is full of distinctive characters. [Grin.]
I just pick and choose.
MAYES: After seeing other parts of the world during your
years in the service, and meeting your wife, Ann, in Austria, you still came
back to West Texas, which you call your querencia, or place of the heart. What
is it about that area that makes it paradise to some and purgatory to others?
Kelton: At first glance, West Texas can be pretty
off-putting. Dry, flat land, blowing sand, and these long droughts that we
have. But if you’re born and brought up in West Texas, you can see that it has
a wild beauty of its own. And if newcomers stay long enough, they generally
begin to get drawn into it.
MAYES: You’ve lived the last six decades in San Angelo. If I
had just one day to spend there, what would you suggest I see?
Kelton: I would urge you to visit old Fort Concho, the frontier
fort that spawned what became San Angelo. It is probably the most intact—as
contrasted to reconstructed—frontier-era fort in the West.
MAYES: In your memoir you wrote: “I will stop almost
anything I’m doing to listen
to a good fiddle player.” Does that still hold true?
Kelton: Yes, it does. My first clear recollection of
listening to country music was when we were living at a line camp on the
McElroy Ranch in Crane County called Sand Camp. My dad had an old,
battery-powered Atwater Kent radio with a morning-glory horn on it. He ran an
antenna up the windmill tower, and we could pick up WFAA in Dallas-Fort Worth
and some Mexican border stations. With the limited amount of time that he’d
play that radio, because of the battery, we almost always listened to country
music. I still enjoy the old-fashioned, raw country music as it was in the ’20s
and ’30s, the old artists—Jimmie Rodgers, the early Sons of the Pioneers, Bob
Wills, Gene Autry—a lot more than I enjoy the general run of what we call country
music today.
MAYES: What current Texas music artists do you enjoy?
Kelton: Red Steagall, Don Edwards, Michael Martin Murphey,
Willie Nelson. And I like the music that’s played at cowboy symposiums like the
one in Lubbock [National Cowboy Symposium & Celebration].
MAYES: What about George Strait?
Kelton: I like George Strait. It’s too bad he didn’t come
along in time to sing with Bob Wills; I think they would have fit together
beautifully.
MAYES: What parts of Texas do you like to visit?
Kelton: I love the Hill Country, its history and the beauty
of the landscape. And the people—they’re just solid, old bedrock Texas people
with a strong German influence. I’ve always liked them and felt a kinship to
them.
MAYES: When you travel in the state, where do you like to eat?
Kelton: In Fredericksburg, we like Friedhelm’s [Bavarian
Inn] and the Old German Bakery & Restaurant; in Kerrville, Mamacita’s and
Annemarie’s Alpine Lodge; and in Boerne, the one here—Limestone Grille. In my teenage years, going to rodeos and other places, I
fell in love with chicken-fried steak and gravy. But I guess my favorite of all
foods continues to be Tex-Mex. During my travels I’ve tried Mexican food just about
everywhere. We have several excellent Mexican restaurants in San Angelo—Henry’s
Diner, Fuentes Cafe Downtown, Los Panchitos. We just take our pick.
MAYES: As a youngster, you thrilled at every chance to go to
the movies, and during your UT years in Austin you went to a lot of movies at
the Ritz and Cactus theaters down on East 6th, right?
KELTON: Yes, I just loved Westerns, and those theaters
specialized in them. And they were cheap.
MAYES: How did you feel when The Good Old Boys was adapted
as a film?
KELTON: It came as a surprise because it had been optioned
once many years earlier, and nothing came of it. Then somebody sold TNT on the
idea, and they asked Tommy Lee [Jones] if he would do it. He said, “If you’ll
let me direct it, I’ll do it. Then Tommy Lee the actor will do what Tommy Lee
the director tells him to do.”
[Chuckle.] I was really pleased with the way it turned out ... he
followed the book pretty closely.
MAYES: How do you feel about being
voted “All-time Best Western Author“
by your peers in the Western Writers
of America?
Kelton: I’d hate to have to stand up and defend that in
front of a jury. I appreciate the compliment, but I can’t say that I believe
it.
MAYES: I read that you were greatly influenced by J. Frank
Dobie. What about him, specifically, made him your hero?
Kelton: Because he wrote about the kind of people I knew
when I was growing up, people who lived in small towns and in the country. He
saw the importance in local history and local culture.
In 1990, Kelton retired from a journalism career that spanned
more than four decades, including stretches at the San Angelo Standard-Times, Sheep
and Goat Raisers’ Magazine, and Livestock Weekly. He’s fond of saying, “It took
me 42 years to quit my day job.”
But he has no intention of quitting writing. Hard Trail to Follow was
released in January; Many A River is due out late this month.
“Nature has slowed me down some,” he says, “but it has not
stopped me.”
See the full article in the May 2008 issue. Subscribe Order back issues |
