Brenda Clem Black - Black & Kiddo: A True Story of Dust, Determination, and Cowboy Dreams

Praise for Black & Kiddo

I treasure this book about a man who was almost famous and the feisty woman who was the love of his life. The story unfolds against a background of rural America as it undergoes decades of important change. The people youll meet here are extraordinary in their resilience and their passion for each other, their families, and for a life that included enough hard work to have stopped me in my tracks. Brenda Blacks writing brings out the adventures, the humor and, best of all, her own palpable affection for Black and Kiddo. Well done.

Anne Hillerman , New York Times bestselling author, Spider Womans Daughter, Rocks with Wings, Song of the Lion, Cave of Bones

This true American saga captures the spirit of the West and makes a music of eternal hope. By the end, Black and Kiddo will feel like kin. A heartening tale thick with humor, honesty, and insight that will deepen your sense of Home.

Max Evans , The Rounders, The Hi Lo Country

Parallel stories of Black and Kiddo merge into a remarkable love story. Love dominates this booklove of land, love of family, love of animals, love of music and art, love of serving othersmade even more precious with the sacrifices. Not a religious book by nature, sincere trust in God permeates throughout. Quiet humor, gentle wisdom, life-long passions and dreaming, and an unbelievable strength and courage. No tears was the rule in Kiddos family but fortunately does not apply to the reader. I sobbed when I read the last line. This book is a treasure.

Marilyn H. Collins , CHS Publishing, Step-by-Step Writing Guides: Market Yourself, Market Your Book; Memoir Writing Guide

The structure is brilliant, the history is fascinating and accurate. The characters are clearly defined and I do love them. Loa is a prize villain. The story flows well, beautifully. And the ending is perfect. Not a dry eye in THIS house!

Linda M. Hasselstrom , Award-winning South Dakota author, Gathering from the Grassland, Dakota: Bones, Grass, Sky

One of the most human stories Ive ever read.

Gerald Klingaman, PhD , University of Arkansas Professor Emeritus, author of The Civil War Diary of John Klingaman

Copyright 2018 Brenda Clem Black

Edited by Erin Wood

Developmental editing by Linda M. Hasselstrom, windbreakhouse.com
Back cover photograph by Andrew Kilgore, andrewkilgore.com
Cover design by Rebecca Black, rebeccablackdesign.com
Interior layout design by Amy Ashford, ashford-design-studio.com

ISBN: 978-1-944528-04-01

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018948559
Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of reviews. Contact publisher for permission under any circumstances aside from book reviews.

Et Alia Press titles are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity directly from the Press. For details, contact etaliapressbooks@gmail.com or the address below.

Published in the United States of America by:
Et Alia Press
PO Box 7948
Little Rock, AR 72217
etaliapressbooks@gmail.com
etaliapress.com

For my extraordinary family.
To Russell,
who inherited
his work ethic from both parents,
his mothers verve, and
his fathers dreaming.
In memory of my parents,
Lewis and Myrtle Clem,
who understood.

Contents

Introduction

She called him Black. He called her Kiddo.

Keith Leroy Black and Johnnie Dorris McSpadden.

I called them Mom and Pop though they were not my parents. They belonged to my soulmate but treated me as their own. Consummate storytellers, they freely shared their memories, sometimes just for the fun of it but mostly for the lessons learned, to leave those following behind a roadmap to better navigate lifes dusty trail.

This compilation is my song to them in gratitude for enriching my life. It is a three-part symphony, composed mostly by me, but the fast-moving allegro comes through Kiddos spunky writings distilled from forty years of her journals and round-robin letters to her large Scots-Irish family. Blacks slice-of-life scrivenings create a calmer adagio. He wrote his childhood memories in longhand on a yellow legal pad when he was in his eighties, focusing each tale on a favorite horse. The stories are here, transcribed as I found them though shortened, labeled Horses I Have Known, his nod to 1940s author Will James.

I scribed his adult story, writing, among other things, about his stab at Hollywood stardom as a singing cowboy when he almost became Roy Rogers. This secret tale Black revealed piecemeal in old age, holding onto a promise he had made to never speak of it. Lacking specific details due to his reluctance, his sojourn is how I imagined this true event happened.

Kiddo interlaced her stories like the yarns she wove into fabric on her antique loom, telling them over and over, until they felt like my own. Her struggle to become a real lady despite dust and deprivation speaks to the long arc of dreams.

Blacks and Kiddos voices speak through me, their words and mine layering to tell the ongoing story of their journey through the twentieth century as they overcome a series of disasters and disappointments. Black and Kiddo didnt dwell on bad times but took life as it came, leaning into love, music, and storytelling to survive the hardships. Isak Dinesen said, All sorrows can be borne, if you put them into a story.

That is how I have chosen to tell their story, not in 3D, but with rose-colored glassesmuch like an old B-Western movie where you are guaranteed a pleasant ride and a happy ending. Songs of the time accompany the reel. If you arent familiar with the tunes, I hope youll seek out Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and others to sing them for you.

Prologue

If youre lucky, your life can span a century. And if you listen closely to the stories your elders tell, you can absorb parts of another century. Assimilate the stories and you have a sense of the culture that produced someone as unique as yourself. Though you are extraordinary, you are also an ordinary citizen of the specific time and place that you inhabit.

Following Americas frontier as it opened, Blacks and Kiddos people had pushed farther west for over two hundred years. The Black (Schwartz) family emigrated from Germany in the mid-1700s, fleeing religious persecution. Stops on their journey west included Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, and Kansas, before they landed in New Mexico shortly after it became a state in 1912.

Before there was a United States of America, Kiddos ancestral family arrived from County Down in Northern Ireland. The Scots-Irish McSpaddens also pushed west searching for a better life. Their southern route took them from Virginia through the Cumberland Gap and on west to Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas. During this trek, McSpadden men fought for their freedom and their dreams in the war of their respective generationsRevolutionary, 1812, Mexican-American, Civil, Indian, and eventually the World Wars.

Not all Scots-Irish immigrants stayed in the hills of Appalachia or the Ozarks to become Americans hillbillies . Many, like the McSpaddens and Blacks mothers family, the Thorntons, moved on with the frontier and populated the West.

By the twentieth century, most of America was settled. In 1890, the director of the U. S. Census Bureau declared that the frontier was closed. The new nation no longer had Frederick Jackson Turners safety relief valve for those individuals seeking freedom and a natural way of life. What do families who have pushed the frontier for 200 years do when it closes?