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Cowboy's Pr
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first
in a series of four stories written by stu
dents in the Depth Reporting Class of the
School of Journalism. This series repre
sents an experiment at using the informa
tion in a new book to write a news story.
By Jim Risser
A cowboy, with a long growth of
whiskers acquired during a summer of
riding the range, lay down in the shade
of a wagon to take a nap one afternoon
in the 1890's.
One of his comrades, taking some
warm pie dough from the chuck-wagon,
plastered it gently over the sleeping cow
boy's face. As the dough cooled, the
victim began to suffocate. When he
awakened and jumped up, fighting for
air, he cracked his head on the bottom
The difference between a
moral mand and a man of
honor is that the latter re
grets a discretitable act,
even when it has worked and
he has not been caught.
Henry Louis Mencken
Tuesday, June 23, 1964
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Parents,
Freshman
Visit NU
A new summer program to acquaint
entering freshmen and their parents with
the University began yesterday.
The first group of students and their
parents met in the Nebraska Union. There
was a one-day program for parents and
a half day program for freshmen.
Other groups of freshmen and their par
ents have been invited to attend similar
sessions during the summer.
According to Curtis Siemers, coordi
nator of student activities, there were
about 55 students and 65 parents in this
first group.
Students in this program are resid
ing in Piper hall. The parents may also
stay in Piper Hall if there is room, Siem
ers said, or at the Nebraska Center on Ag
campus.
"Through this program, we hope to
make the University experience as valu
able as possible," said Dr. G. Robert
Ross, vice chancellor for student affairs.
New students who take part will be
able to complete their physical reviews
and also their advising sessions. Each
new student will be given a maximum
of individual attention so that all ques
tions about academic work and student
life can be fully and personally answered
before the fall term, Dean Ross said.
When fall comes, they will be ready to
pay fees and begin classes with few
preliminaries.
Parents and new students will have
many opportunities to visit with Univer
sity staff members, junior students and
June graduates who will assist with the
program.
Union Presents
Guitarist, Films
The Union will present Juan Serrano,
a Flamenco guitarist, tomorrow evening
in the ballroom.
Serrano, who is considered one of the
foremost Flamenco guitarist in the world
was taught to play by his father. At
nine he gave his first concert which was
received so well that he started traveling
with a dance company.
Serrano comes from Cordova, Spain
where there Is a clock in the town square
which strikes the hour by playing record
ings of his music.
Serrano has been in the United States
since 1961. He has appeared on the "To
day" TV show and at different coffee
houses in Greenwich Villager
This second in the Summer Artist
Series will begin at 8:00.
"Potemkin", a Cinema Classic, will
be shown in Love Library Thursday. This
movie was made in 1925 and is one of
the greatest Russian films ever made.
The "Mouse That Roared" an amus
ing film starring Peter Sellers will be
presented by the Union in Love Library
next Monday.
of the wagon. To the cowboy's friends,
it was all a great joke.
The prank was typical of the peculiar
brand of humor of the early Nebraska
cowboy.
His jokes matched his life on t h e
Western frontier rough and often
cruel. The practical joke relieved the
strain of hot summer days when he
would put in up to 18 hours roping, herd
ing, and branding cattle.
As he camped for the night some
where in western Nebraska, during a
long cattle drive to Montana, there was
little to do but tie a sleeping friend's
feet together, awaken him with a shout
ed warning of a stampede, and watch
him sprawl in the dirt.
Hiding another cowboy's sleeping
bag was guaranteed to cause a big dis
turbance and laughs for everyone at
Teachers College Up 265
tifnrollmen
Registration
Summer Sessions enrollment should
top 5,500 students if registration during
last Saturday and yesterday continued
at the rate of the first four days.
This record breaking figure would
Collect Call
To Australia
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LET'S CALL HOME June Fleming (left) is watched by her traveling and
teaching partner Irene Davidovs. Miss Fleming is preparing to call her sister
in Australia. Both Miss Fleming and Miss Davidovs are from Australia.
Travel By Bus
Australians Teaching Here
By Barbara Troublhorn
Two young Australian school teachers
are spending their summer in Lincoln
teaching at the University Lab school in
Bancroft Hall.
Irene Davidovs and June Fleming
left their homes in Melbourne about four
months ago with plans to travel across
the United States and then teach in Cana
da for a year.
They have traveled across the coun
try by bus making stops at the homes
of people whom they had met on their
boat.
When they stopped in Lincoln in
March they visited Dr. Frank Sorenson,
director of the University's Summer
School, who had also been on their boat.
He invited them to teach in Lincoln for
the summer.
Book Describes Early
anks
least, for those who weren't hurt in the
fight that often followed.
In his book, PINNACLE JAKE, A.
B. Snyder recounts the rough and hu
morous episodes of his experiences on
the western plains. The book, published
by the University of Nebraska Press,
contains the author's reminiscences as
he told them to his daughter after retir
ing to the gentler life of North Platte.
With many of the cowboys' tricks
ending with cuts, bruises and bumps on
the head for the victim, today's Nebras
kan might find it a little hard to see
just what was so funny about this fron
tier humor.
Pinnacle Jake (Snyder's nickname')
describes one episode when the cook for
Jake's outfit noticed that the men wait
ing around the fire for dinner had gone
to sleep. He sneaked over with some
rope, tying their feet to a large log.
When he yelled, "Dinner", the sleepy
cowboys jumped up and ran for the
chuckwagon.
"Charlie 'd left me eight or ten feet
of slack rope and I sure went down hard
when I hit the end of it," Jake says.
"When we were all down," Charlie said,
innocently, 'Oh boys, you'll have to wait
a little. Dinner ain't quite ready yet.' "
Sometimes the jokes backfired on the
perpetrator, to the great delight of the
whole outfit. Pinnacle Jake tells of one
old cook called Gray Jack who had
grown tired of cowboys who left their
bedrolls unmade in the morning, forcing
the cook to roll them up and toss them
in the chuckwagon.
One morning, Gray Jack saw an un
rolled bed, and decking he would teach
the offender a lesson, rolled up the bed,
tied it to the axle of the chuckwagon, and
dragged it all the way to the next camp.
When it was time to turn in that night,
Gray Jack discovered that he had been
the forgetful cowboy that morning, and
the shredded and dirty bedroll was his.
The frontier cowboys didn't confine
their practical jokes to their friends. A
stranger was always fair game, and the
Summer Nebraskan
mean that in the last ten years the sum-
mer enrollment has doubled. In 1954 the
enrollment was 2,680 students.
Registration for the first four days
ran 25 per cent above last summers with
a total of 4,425 enrolled which already
Miss Davidovs is teaching a class of
fifth-graders on "Australia, the Sunburnt
Country" and Miss Fleming is teaching
a pre-kindergarten class.
Both plan to teach in Grand Junction,
Colorado, next fall. After teaching there
a year, they plan to travel to Europe
and teach for another year or two.
There is nothing unusual about young
Australians leaving their homes to work
in Europe or the United States, accord
ing to Miss Davidovs. In fact, she said,
so many are leaving that they have
found it necessary to establish quotas.
What has been the most difficult
thing for the two to get used to? The
food. In Australia pancakes are con
sidered a dessert, and a salad is con
sidered a whole meal, said Miss Fleming.
May
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Fun
Rough-
outfit would band together to bedevil the
unfortunate visitor.
A wandering hobo was likely to be
subjected to a mock trial, with either
himself or one of the outfit's cowboys as
the defendant.
With a hobo in camp for dinner one
evening, the men pretended that Pin
nacle Jake was a captured horse thief.
Within a matter of minutes, they had
tried him, returned a verdict of guilty,
and sentenced him to hang. The bewil
dered hobo, apparently shocked at the
barbaric justice of his hosts, fled down
the nearby railroad tracks as fast a he
could go,
Dudes from the East were always
good for a laugh. Pinnacle Jake tells of
two Easterners who butted in on an ar
gument between two cowboys in the old
town of Belle Fourche, South Dakota,
with its high wooden si-dewalks.
When one dude jokingly protested the
lack of Wild West shooting, one of the
arguing cowboys, who had spent the ear
ly part of the evening drinking, said,
"You're goin' to hear some now."
With bullets popping into the board
walk at their feet, "the fellows lost no
time taking to their heels down that
walk," Pinnacle Jake writes. The end of
the old wooden sidewalk was four or five
feet above the ground.
"The Easterners' heels were crack
ing on the boards, pretty lively, for a
short time, but they quit all of a sudden
when they came to the end of the walk
in the dark," Jake says.
Not all of the cowboys' humor was
rough though. Pinnacle Jake once start
ed a rumor around the camp that a big
gray horse which had been assigned to
one of the men was the hardest pitch
ing horse in the outfit.
When the man who was assigned the
horse heard the rumor, he offered Jake,
who had a reputation as a broncbuster,
a pound of tobacco if he would take
some of the fight out of the horse. Jake
held out for two pounds of tobacco, and
when the butt of the joke accepted, Jake
climbed on the gentle animal, rode him
Top
25
uns
, betters last summer's 4,300 completed en
rolhnent.
According to Floyd W. Hoover, regis
trar, the enrollment at the end of four
days last year was 3,209.
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'Let Us Be Leaders'
Chancellor Clifford M. Hardin takes
a look at the future of the University.
In his address at the Alumni Round-up
Hardin said "Let us move forward rapid
ly enough to be leaders in whatever we
attempt."
Hardin wonders " . . if we can re
kindle that spirit of pride and burning
zeal we seemed to have possessed a half
century ago."
He says that ". . . it is possible to
make progress but so slowly that we
can get trampled from behind."
You'll find this article on Page 4.
j.i v
Can Pornography
Be Slopped?
Two journalism students as a part
of their depth reporting study describe
an "expensive com e-on game in
Nebraska." They report that "approxi
mately 200 Lincolnites have received and
reported the receipt of letters from Cana
da offering pornography and that "Al
though laws regulating pornography are
often made stiffer, it's getting harder all
the time to successfully prosecute t h e
distributors."
A fairly recent addition to the federal
code has been aiding the prosecutors:
In addition to the person sending the
material or receiving it, the person who
sends for the material can now be prose
cuted. Be sure to read this timely report on
Page 2.
(i
Works of All-Staters
Journalism students in All-S t a t e
classes' compete in a writing and photo
graphy contest. Be sure to read "Ne
braskland" and "Human Talent" and
learn just what Nebraska's teenagers
think of their state and summer experi
ence. Also see the results when All-State
Students take to cameras.
See Page 3.
Tough
twice around the corral, and came back
to claim his tobacco.
Occasionally, one of the jokes would
result in damage to the outfit's equip
ment and upset the owner more than a
little.
Wiley DeLashman, the prize practi
cal joker cf Jake's outfit, started a
grudge race between two chuckwagon
drivers by telling each that the other had
said he could outrun any chuckwagon
driver around. With feelings running
high and the speed building up, neither
driver would give up.
One wagon hit a deep rut, jerking
the wheels out from under It and break
ing an axle. The whole roundup had to
wait two or three days until a new wagon
arrived.
Some of the cowboys' jokes involved
cruelty to animals which today would
bring the humane society and the SPCA
running. Catching a rabbit and tying
a piece of rag to its tail was considered
great fun. The frightened animal would
turn complete flips in the air, trying to
shake the rag loose.
Practical jokes involving a chase
sometimes ended with a horse or two in
jured. One cowboy who had stolen a mel
on from a settler's field was told that
the man coming over the distant hill was
the sheriff looking for him. In the mad
dash to get away, the cowboy blindly
rode his horse into a hole, and cowboy
and horse sailed through the air.
The men convinced the frightened
cowboy that it was all a joke and brought
him back to camp. "The little roan horse
was all stove up, though, and so lame
that we had to leave him behind," Jake
writes. '
The cowboys are gone now and the
Wild West has been tamed. The frontier
humor of yesterday seems cruel and
rough today, but perhaps it was approp
riate then. And as Pinnacle Jake said lat
er in a letter to another ex-cowboy, "It's
a good thing some of the old timers are
writing about what really happened then,
and how we worked and lived in those
days."
Thou speakest wiser than
thou art ware of.
Shakespeare
No. 2
5,500
0
Total enrollment figures include not
only regular undergraduates and gradu
ates but also those registered for insti
tutes, workshops, thesis research, and
the post sessions.
With the figure for last Saturday
and yesterday yet to be compiled, mark
gains are shown in Teachers College for
both undergraduates and advance profes
sionals. For the first four days , undergradu
ate enrollment for Teachers College was
958 which betters by 265 students the
enrollment during the first four days last
year; the advance professional enroll
ment was up 248 students to 743.
According to Hoover's figures, the
Graduate College also showed a signifi
cant gain with over 40 per cent more
students registered at the end of the
fourth day this year (1,096) than at the
end of the fourth day last year (769).
Arts and Science enrollment was up
196 to 680 for the first four days.
Engineering College showed a gain
of 60 students to 294, and Business Ad
ministration gained 39 students for 278.
Frank Sorenson, director of Summer
Sessions said that the teaching staff this
year (including full professors to assist
ants) has been increased to 432 which
would be a 5 per cent increase over the
412 instructors of the last Summer Ses
sions. Sorenson said that the expenditures
for the 1963 Summer Session was $422,
824.51. The predicted expenditure for this
summer is $467,624.40 or an increase of
$44,799.89. Sorenson said that this was
largely instructional cost and did not in
clude operational cost of facilities.
Sorenson also noted that practically
every state was represented in the en
rollment. In 1963 there was 109 students
from foreign countries and United States
dependences enrolled in the Summer Ses
sions. Hoover said that while he did not ex
pect the record enrollment this summer
fie was not surprised.
He explained the enrollment increase
as being due to the "interest factor"
which lumps together the social and eco
nomic changes which are bringing about
an unprecedented interest in education
beyond high school.
Hoover compared the present college
enrollment situation to the high school
enrollment situation right after World
War I when for the first time the adole
sent was released from remunerative
work, and students who previously would
have dropped out of school after the
eighth grade started going on to high
school. .
A repetition of this moving upward
is occuring now but on the college level,
Hoover said, as now people from all
walks of life can afford to end their
children to college.
Higher