A few years back I stumbled upon the dark country genre (subgenre?) of music on youtube, took a shine to it and listened to it until I was about sick of it, then largely forgot about it. I never much cared for the 'I have a truck, my wife left me, the dog died, and now I'm drunk and singing about it' strain of country but dark country is mostly songs about outlaws (from their perspective), killing, and dying. Good stuff!
Anyways, I recently started listening to it again and was jamming out to it with my morning coffee when I had one of those light bulb thoughts... How much of the mythos of the outlaws and the American Old West is based upon accepting law enforcement claims as factual?
Around the same time as all that we had lots of feuding, fighting, and gunplay going on in eastern Kentucky. You may have heard of my infamous kin, the Hatfields & McCoys, but there were several more outbreaks of violence in the area that were far bloodier. In pretty much all of these, local law enforcement took sides and were anything but fair and impartial. Makes me wonder how much of that was the case out west with all the ones Wanted: Dead or Alive.
Since I was thinking about out west I had to go and edit a few photos from there. These are all from my road trip to Santa Fe a few years back. We had to stop and see Cadillac Ranch along the way and explore a bit before we got to our destination.
I could revisit Cadillac Ranch endlessly, it's a lot of fun to shoot and constantly changing (in terms of decoration) but somehow I've yet to make it back. Think I'll just blame that on the beer flu too!
Any of y'all out there got a good road trip in the works? If you're interested in learning more about the feuds of eastern Kentucky, check out Days of Darkness: The Feuds of Eastern Kentucky by John Ed Pearce.
Excellent craft, Colonel! Both the pictures and the insight.
Thank you!
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Yeah, once you get to the point of realizing that LEOs can't be trusted, then you start asking these kinds of questions. What does it take to create an outlaw? And who really is the bad guy?
Cadillac Ranch looks dope but I've never seen it, although I was just recently in Santa Fe. I'll be road tripping my way east to Indiana for the holidays, I'm sure it'll be a banger of a good time.
Cadillac Ranch is badass, if you took I-40 out to Santa Fe you drove right past it. It's on the frontage road for the interstate just outside of Amarillo. The only reasons I venture into the land of Hoosiers is to shoot guns or buy fireworks but it's usually a blast.
I went down to Santa Fe from the north, on 285, no interstates involved. But I still gotta check me out that ranch :)
The land of Hoosiers is unfortunately where a good deal of my family insists on living… despite my best efforts I haven't been able to extract them from the flatlands and into the mountains.
Ha! I hadn't made that connection but now that you mention it, I can see it.