Tumbleweeds

[Joyce (AnnieLee)]

Dang, was that a tumbleweed I just saw blow through here? This place is eerily quiet today.


Come back, Slim!!



AnnieLee

[J.W.Neely]

Yes.... yes that was a tumbleweed...

[J.W.Neely]

X

[Joyce (AnnieLee)]

Hrrrmmmm the pic wouldn't show for me, so I went and got it. Let's see if this works:

[Joyce (AnnieLee)]

And now I can see both of them. Go figure, but yes, that is a rotten job. Makes mine seem a WHOLE lot better!


AnnieLee

[Doctor Bill]

Well I can't see anything!  <pout>

Doctor Bill

[Delmonico]

Wa'll maybe out there in Virrginny ya can afford ta waste a tumble weed, but out here they was used in sodhouse's as Christmas trees.  Back when I was goin' through my deevorce I decided to do that one year, was gonna buy cranberries and pop some popcorn and me and the kids was gonna decorate it.  Went to the farm a couple a weeks before Chistmas to get the one I had picked out.
(They don't break off and tumble till late winter early spring) 

Well I'll be durned if my brother had not put the shredder on the ol' Massey Ferguson and mowed that weedy patch and fall plowed it.  I called him up and called him a Grinch, but he tolt me if I had only tolt him he would have brought it to me.  (He just wanted his gift that year and was a fraid he'd made me mad.)

My wife Rita won't let me have a tumbleweed.

[Joyce (AnnieLee)]

Del, the tumbleweed was rolling through a deserted CAS-City!

Virginny could be so lucky as to have few enough people to grow tumbleweeds.


AnnieLee

[Uncle Eph]

out here on the baldies, tumbleweeds are about the only company we get in the early spring, but then a little later the mourning doves arrive and that makes up for a lot.

J.W. I like yer Avitar; looks like John Brown but that looks like a 74 he is holding and not a slantbreech.

[J.W.Neely]

That pic is  Liver-Eating Johnson.

[Joyce (AnnieLee)]

When my mom was young, she would iron her super curly hair in an attempt to get it to look something like Miss Fitches. She'd also suck in her cheeks, trying to look like Katherine Hepburn.

AnnieLee

[Brazos Bucky Smith]

  Looks like he was havin' a bad hair day!

BB

[Delmonico]

Eatin' liver is good fer ya, it's got lots a veeetamines.   

[Micheal Fortune]

Now just what kind of weed was that Miss Annie saw tumbling through town

[Calamity Jane]

Now THIS is the REAL Tumbleweeds

[Four-Eyed Buck]

I'd almost forgot about that one, CJ............Buck

[Joyce (AnnieLee)]

I'd almost forgot about that one, CJ............Buck

So did I! Great find, Calam, thank you!!



AnnieLee

[Delmonico]

Sadly the icon from Hollywood is not correct.  The big round tumbleweed we all think of as "Old West" came to this country in the 1880's with the Mennonites from Russia.  Thats why it is often called the Russian Thistle or to those who like big words: Salsola kali.  The strains of winter wheat that they brought that made this region a gerat wheat growin' area also contained the seeds. 

They did not spread bad till the 1930's and the "Dust Bowl".  There were a few around by the end of the 19th century but not a whole lot, not like a wind on a Hollywood set would make you think.  The sodhouse era really lasted till the Dust Bowl and even though they were used in place of Christmas trees, one would have to search a bit fer one.  But one fore a Christmas tree could be found.   

As a side note on the sod house era, my Ex-wifes Grandmother turned 95 this year and was born in a sodhouse in Western Nebraska.

[Sisquoc]

Back in the day...when Orange County was still LA's country cousin, we had tumbleweeds blowing across the county every time the Santa Ana winds came up.  Folks used to snare 'em in three different sizes, paint 'em white, stack 'em up, and have tumbleweedmen instead of snowmen.

A local community college (Golden West College, in Huntington Beach) is the Rustlers, and Tom K. Ryan, creator of the Tumbleweeds comic strip, drew the logo.   

[Uncle Eph]

Del, having spent a lot of time digging dragging and burning thistles/tumbleweeds here on on the family homestead, which we have owned for more than a 100 years, I can tell you that I really dislike the things.  My source says that they were first recorded in Bon Homme County SD in 1877, most likely imported in flax seed that Russian farmers were planting and they had made it to the west coast by 1900, I know this is true as I have seen many photos taken back then of this area (eastern Oregon) that has tumble weeds in them.

J.W. where did you find that photo of Mr Johnston. I thought I had seen them all but that one is new to me.