Ch 5—Nuff Sed (Desert Steve), Career and Disappointing his Father (historical & literary background)

This is part 5 of a series of posts exploring the rich historical and literary background to my novel, Nuff Sed: a Novel of Desert Steve.

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This chapter, “God Alone Can Understand” picks up immediately after the end of the last chapter, in 1892, and covers the Steve Ragsdale’s life through 1901.

Historicity and Fiction

This chapter picks up with the family around the dinner table, with’s Steve’s father reading the newspaper report of the demise of the Dalton Gang, which mentions Steve Ragsdale. As noted in the last chapter, while the Dalton gang shootout is historical, and Steve and his family lived in the town at that time, the role of Steve and the story is fictional. It shows Steve’s abilities, maturity, and cleverness.

The information about the robbery that Steve’s father reads is from an article published in the Coffeyville Journal about the robbery.

We also get a bit more interplay between Steve’s family, setting up further themes and conflicts.

In the scene where Steve’s brother finds his poetry and reads some of it, the lines were written by me, trying to imitate his bad writing style. Here is the full poem:

Farming in Coffeyville

Among them rolling plains and golden fields,
And the sun beats down and the earth yields,
Are the farms of Coffeyville, proud and strong,
The farmers work hard all day long.

From sowing the seeds to reaping crops,
The labor never stops, it never stops,
For they know the land, the sky, and the rain,
And that’s the key to success and gain.

And though the work is tough and the days are long,
Their spirits remain high, their hearts are strong,
For they are the backbone of this land,
The farmers of Coffeyville, with calloused hands.

Can I write poetry as terrible as Desert Steve? I think he out-classes me in this department, but I gave it my best shot.

This scene shows Steve’s interest in writing and poetry, which will continue for the rest of his life.

We also get a hint of what Steve is thinking to do as a career, and he knows his father will not like it. At the end of the chapter when it comes out, we see some of Steve’s stubbornness (and we could argue he got it from his father from his father), and his desire to make a difference in the world. Which he will do, but not as he first envisioned it.

Desert Steve’s Quotes

The title of this chapter comes from Desert Steve’s little booklet entitled Philosophy and Sayings of Desert Steve. This one comes from a line in his poem, entitled “Automogitis,” about when his model T broke down in the desert. While this reads like it is the event that led to his founding of Desert Center, the details he includes are not the same. Poetic license, I suppose.

The phrase comes in a section where he’s talking about how tough one must be to live in the desert, and whether anyone would understand his poem except God.

Other Historical Events

• Grover Cleveland was reelected in the fall of 1892, as mentioned by Steve’s father in the chapter.
• The first city lighting system was installed in New Jersey, by Thomas Edison using overhead wires on January 19, 1893.
• The first telephone call in history was made between Chicago and New York, on March 24, 1893.
• The state of Colorado voted to allow women to vote on November 7, 1893.
• Steve’s youngest sibling, Daniel Arthur Ragsdale, was born on April 26, 1894.
• There was a major crash on the New York Stock Exchange on May 5, 1893. This was known as the Panic of 1893
• The Spanish-American War officially began on April 21, 1898.
• On November 6, 1900, Republican US president William McKinley, with his vice president Theodore Roosevelt, defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryant for the presidency.
• On July 7, 1900, the Boston Bender’s pitcher Kid Nichols won his 300th career Major League Baseball victory over the Chicago Orphans.
• As Steve mentioned in this chapter, his brother Charles got married and moved out of the house. He married Coral Alice “Isabel” Axtell on December 5, 1900.
  

Onward

The next chapter, “God Alone Can Understand,” picks up where the last chapter left off and continues through 1901, depicting Steve as growing up, a love interest, and his choice of career.

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