-by Greg Hoots- Letter-writing has become a lost art in more ways than one. Once, the majority of Americans corresponded by mail with their relatives or to those with whom they conducted […]
Dear Rita…Letters from Max Palenske
BOOK REVIEW: “Life Lessons from My Father” Provides Guideposts for Life
by Greg Hoots Recently, a good friend of mine whom I’ve never met sent me a book from their home on the East Coast. It was a brief eighty-two pages in length […]
Photo Friday, June 11, 2021: Shirley Richard Gardenhire
-by Greg Hoots- Hi, Everyone, It’s Photo Friday! I have a really good photo for you today. It’s a view from late 1907 of the Alma, Kansas high school football team, posed […]
Michael Alley: A Quest for Freedom
-by Greg Hoots- I would like to gratefully acknowledge the contributions and assistance of Brenda Norris in researching this article. Until I became acquainted with Brenda, I had never heard the life […]
Lucille Mulhall and the Mulhall Wild West Show
-by Greg Hoots- It’s not often that a generic term’s origin which describes a person’s vocation or hobby can be traced to a single individual, but in the case of the moniker, […]
A Cowboy’s Dream
-by Tom Aniello and Family- I am an aerospace engineer by education, but I always wanted to be a cowboy like my grandfather, Edward H. Brinkman. This is the history of the […]
The Life and Times of Hickory Jones
-by Greg Hoots- Elmer Jones was born on January 17, 1878 in Bowling Green, Kentucky. His path to the American West is undocumented, but by 1895, the seventeen-year-old youth had arrived in […]
The Early Career of Photographer, Dave Mathias, 1955-1965
-by Greg Hoots- David “Dave” Mathias was born on May 6, 1937 in Reading, Pennsylvania, the son of David and Margaret Mathias. When Dave was five-years-old, his parents divorced, and for seven years he attended a series of elementary schools, as his mother moved several times during and immediately after World War II. In 1949 […]
Steinmeyer Bros. Garage, Alma, Kansas
-by Greg Hoots- In the 1910s, a wave from the future swept across America. The automobile arrived in the cities and small towns, alike. Ten years earlier, most people had never seen […]
Phelps Oil Company, West Plains, Mo.
-by Greg Hoots- I was born at Christa Hogan Hospital in West Plains, Missouri in the middle of the 1950s. I don’t remember any of the event, although my mother had a […]
Flint Hills Special 