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Show Melvin L. "Meb" Whipple Hereford, Texas (formerly from St. George, Utah and Mt. Trumball, Arizona) born: 5 February, 1920 Meb Whipple puts it simply: "I've cowboyed all my life and it used to be a lot different than it is now." He spent his youth on the Arizona Strip, the ranching country between the Utah border and the north rim of the Grand Canyon, working with cattle, day herding, night guarding and helping with the 200 mile roundups each spring and fall. During the 40s when ranching interests began to consolidate under several big outfits, the area became increasingly overgrazed and dry, and both sheep and wild mustangs proliferated. By 1963, Meb, who was then running his own small outfit and working as an Arizona Livestock Inspector, finally gave up and sold out, moving to Colorado to try his hand at farming. Farming wasn't for him and from there he cowboyed in California, Utah, Washington and finally in Hereford, Texas, where since 1977, he's worked at a feed lot, shipping cattle and riding the pens. As he says, "I got in at the end of this cowboyin'." Meb's father was a New Englander who came to the Strip by way of ranches in Montana, Idaho and Nevada. His mother was the daughter of Danish immigrant Hans Peter Iverson, a poetry-writing Mormon who farmed on the west end of the Strip in Littlefield. Meb and his three sisters grew up on the family homestead, south of the settlement of Mt. Trumball. The recitation of cowboy poetry was a common entertainment for the ranchers in the area and 30 Cowboy Poetry From Utah |