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Show high as a six-story building. Some houses I hadn't counted before stuck their heads up to gawk over the ridge that had hidden them. Witchcraft that turned sheds into skyscrapers was like our frontier optimism. Anything favorable we inflated beyond its actual importance. Consider the wild horse bands grazing along the foothills. Perhaps two million untamed mustangs then roamed the West. Some said they were descendants of old Spanish stock. To the optimists, the forage they ate proved fertile soil and sufficient rainfall. The animals themselves might become saddle horses for ranch "remudas." To us boys they testified, "You're in the Wild West for sure." And to me they raised a dream of roping a fierce black stallion, tearing him away from his harem of mares, and riding him faster^than the wind. We hungered for both the fantastic-romantic and the meat-and-potatoes. One reassurance in hours of doubt was the Land. A man could walk for three miles and only encircle his own Land! Without liquor, LSD or "speed," all who visited the store tended to feel a frontier drunkenness. Father shared this happy feeling and added to it. His hopefulness was the afterglow from frontiers which had owned a sounder foundation than ours. Our boom and the thousand similar booms on the Sub-marginal Frontier from Canada to Mexico in the Teens of this century borrowed brightness from all victories won before in the westward march across America. Father must receive the largest share of the doubtful credit for heightening that afterglow over Nada. His optimism, his unstinting expenditures of energy and other resources did much. But many contributed. We took delusions sold us by Nash-Avery and we made a blend of spiritual and physical faith. Addressing our desert, our Bible-readers quoted Isaiah: "Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken. . .Desolate; but thou shalt be called. . .Beulah; for the Lord delighteth in thee." More substantial encouragements were success stories from the Middle Border, rich yields from soil lately virgin; land taken free then sold for thousands of dollars per acre; or better, cut into building lots and sold at thousands per lot. |