My Western Heritage

I grew up in an area of Massachusetts known as the Berkshires. Now my Western friends would consider this as far removed from the real West as a person can be. However, back in the 1950s and 1960s, the Berkshires was a place of woods, mountains, rivers, lakes, and small towns. Whenever Dad would go someplace, we would ask him where he was going. Dad always would say, “I’m going to see a man about a horse.” Of course, he always came home with a bag of groceries but no horse.

Still, we hoped one day Dad would show up with that horse. Summers were spent wandering the woods, playing cowboys and Indians, and sleeping outdoors. A little-known fact is that Deerfield, Massachusetts, has the dubious distinction of being the town most frequently attacked by Indians. So, at one time, this area was the Wild West.

The first time I earned any money was when my friend and I collected soda bottles and mowed lawns. We did this to raise enough money to ride the horses at Kimball’s horse farm. Dad taught us how to fish and hunt. Mom gave me a love of reading and a restless spirit. Every few years, she and Dad would come back from a car ride and say, “We found a house that we want to buy.” We use to joke that if it was back in the frontier days, we’d be heading West in a covered wagon.

My Dad loved Louis L’Armour. I believe Dad read every L’Armour book in the library. To make sure Dad didn’t pick the same book twice. He put a small ‘t’ in the upper left corner of the last page. I like to think that Dad’s brand is still on some of those books.

I write in the “L’amour Style.” By that, I mean you won’t find a lot of cussing and sex scenes in my book. As Louis L’Amour once said, and I paraphrase: “I’ve lived and worked among some of the roughest men. Men whose speech was filled with profanity. However, I never felt it was necessary to use foul language in my writing.”

This website is dedicated to my Mom and Dad, Eleanor, and Peter. Who gave a boy a wonderful childhood, a love of the outdoors, and of reading.