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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
About as real as you can get today,
By Stephen J. Hawkins (Manteca, Ca USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Home Ranch (Bison Book) (Paperback)
I grew up in the desert of southern Arizona in the 50's and 60's. Surrounded by real cattle and real cowboys. This book rings true. I loved it as a kid. No gun fights, no bar room fights. Ralph paints a soft, rich picture, that is much more accurate then any movie you ever saw. I have purchased several copies to give to REAL good friends.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Colorado cattle business in transition,
By
This review is from: The Home Ranch (Bison Book) (Paperback)
This is the third in Moody's autobiographical series, but is best read (if you're a continuity freak) between Chapters 25 and 26 of the second, "Man of the Family." It follows young Ralph (12 years old in the summer of 1911) through his first "man's job," riding for Mr. Batchlett, the livestock dealer, for 100 days at a dollar a day--big money to a boy who is lucky to get five cents an hour around his Littleton home, and who feels keenly his obligation to support his widowed mother and five siblings. Like Ralph, the reader plunges right into the job in the second chapter, and the story doesn't let up from there on out.
In 1911 the Colorado cattle business is changing, and Mr. Batchlett, who owns a big ranch, is changing with it, dealing heavily in dairy cattle, trading dry for freshened stock, then letting the drys bear their calves and selling them in turn. Ralph has worked cattle before, but those were range stock, and as he humorously explains, dairy stock is a different kind of animal entirely. Still, there are some things that don't change: picking out a string of horses, cutting out stock aboard Clay, his boss's prize cutting horse, and once getting lost in the mountains for 24 hours. What's more, the book is packed with unforgettable characters, both human and animal: old Hank, the boastful windbag cowboy who is humbled by his and Ralph's ordeal in the mountains, then redeems himself when he saves crew and herd from a flash flood; Blueboy, the half-wild roan gelding Ralph can't resist adding to his string; Jenny Wren, the schoolteacher moonlighting for the summer as home-ranch cook, and Sid, the cowboy who worships her; Zeb, the tall gangly cowhand who by preference rides a diminutive mule; Clay, the cutting horse who can practically do the job all by himself; Trinidad, the troublemaker of the crew; a constellation of dairy cattle, each with name and personality; Watt Bendt, the ranch boss, and Hazel, the oldest of his four daughters, a redheaded, freckle-faced tomboy who prefers rooting cattle out of the brush to wearing a dress (and proves to be better at it than Ralph), and who cleverly manipulates him into choosing a string that will keep him close to the home compound so he can (she's resolved) teach her to do his trick-riding stunts. Moody evokes a time not yet a century past with love and skill, and paces his tale as well as any novelist. Anyone who loves or is curious about the Old West and how it has come to be what it is today should read this book.
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Business Today, Wrapped in the American West of Yesterday,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Home Ranch (Bison Book) (Paperback)
The Home Ranch is more then a slice of the American West. It's a great
slice of business management tucked in the recollections of Ralph Moody's
summer on the Batchlett home ranch in 1910. Located near
Colorado Springs, the home ranch is a metaphor for today's office.
Batchlett sums up every business management theory written when
he tells Moody during a trading trip, "You play the hand you draw." And Batchlett's
hand is an array of characters that I see in the office everyday.
People like, Zeb, quiet and smart, but who doesn't like to be out of sight of Pike's Peak. Hank, a boastrous
old cowhand who's always telling everyone how it should be done but not doing any of it.
Sid, the fiesty redhead with a fondness for "Jenny Wren",
and Trinidad, the arrogant, rhinestone cowboy with the cowards heart. Mix in a manipulative 12 year old girl and a boy who sets his heart on turning a wild
stallion into a good cowhorse and you got a recipe for today's workforce.
Stick it next to Covey, Petersen, and Drucker. But don't be suprised if you use it more often then any of them.<P
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