Unbridled Cowboy is a riveting firsthand account of a defiant hell-raiser in the wild and tumultuous American Southwest. At the age of fourteen, Joe Fussell hopped trains to escape from school and the authority he scorned. Joe became a roving cowpuncher across the Texas territory, tilling the land, wrangling cattle, and working in livery stables, moving on whenever his feet began to itch. In a time and place with no law, Joe took it upon himself to exact revenge on those who trespassed him or those who were abusing authority. Joe recounts tales of cowboy adventures, narrow escapes, undercover work as a Texas Ranger, and life on the railroads. Even after he was married, Joe maintained a spark of his wild cowboy spirit as he continued his work as a railman during the rise of the railroad in the Southwest. In his time on the railroads, Joe worked up from switchman to yardmaster, traveling everywhere from New Orleans to San Francisco. Joe's unadorned prose is as exposed and simple as the wide, open Texas plains. Joe presents an unpretentious, unique voice that embodies the spirit of the old West.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Despite any questions of authenticity, this book takes readers back to the tumultuous time at the turn of the 19th century when the cowboy gave way to the railroader and those many changes from an almost lawless land to a modern, complex world. Even if Joe Fussell did not really live the cowboys way, he invokes the cowboy spirit in his language and attitude, making this story an extraordinary one. --Texas Books in Review
It s difficult to gauge the veracity of the stories Joseph B. Fussell, the editor s late grandfather who cowboyed throughout the Old West, recounts in his memoirs especially the one about sneaking below the border to single-handedly dispatch an entire posse of Mexicans who had done him wrong. But with tales this detailed and entertaining, and with writing that sounds straight from a cowboy s mouth, it hardly matters. The famous quote from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance comes to mind: When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. --American Cowboy, October/November 2008
This richly detailed, entertaining memoir, written by a hell-raising Texas gunslinger who died an old man in 1957, may be mostly true. Or it may be rife with Wild West and late-19th-century exaggerations. In either case, it is good reading. But it has left its editor, E. R. Fussell, one of the author s grandsons, with an enduring dilemma: [W]ould I rather think of him as a liar or a killer? --Si Dunn, Dallas Morning News, August 4, 2008
It s difficult to gauge the veracity of the stories Joseph B. Fussell, the editor s late grandfather who cowboyed throughout the Old West, recounts in his memoirs especially the one about sneaking below the border to single-handedly dispatch an entire posse of Mexicans who had done him wrong. But with tales this detailed and entertaining, and with writing that sounds straight from a cowboy s mouth, it hardly matters. The famous quote from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance comes to mind: When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. --American Cowboy, October/November 2008
This richly detailed, entertaining memoir, written by a hell-raising Texas gunslinger who died an old man in 1957, may be mostly true. Or it may be rife with Wild West and late-19th-century exaggerations. In either case, it is good reading. But it has left its editor, E. R. Fussell, one of the author s grandsons, with an enduring dilemma: [W]ould I rather think of him as a liar or a killer? --Si Dunn, Dallas Morning News, August 4, 2008
About the Author
Joseph B. Fussell was born in Tyler, Texas, in 1879, the son of a cowboy and buffalo hunter. He ran away from home and school at age fourteen after nearly killing the school bully with a brick. Fussell trekked most of the Southwest and worked as a cowboy, livery stable operator, and at any other jobs he could find. When he was a ranch hand in northern Mexico, he barely escaped the fate of his American friend who died at the bottom of a well. Fussell worked as an undercover Texas ranger before beginning his railroad career. He married at age 27, and he and his wife, Mary, had two children. In 1916 when Mexico was in the throes of civil war, Fussell took a perilous journey to Vera Cruz to check on the suitability of land for oil drilling. He lived in Arizona working as yardmaster and librarian for the Santa Fe and became politically active with compelling letters to politicians and newspapers. After retiring from the Santa Fe in 1945, Fussell moved to Alhambra, California, to be near his daughter and family. With little formal training, Fussell wrote his riveting memoir about real life in the West at the turn of the century. He died in 1957.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
one of the finest personal reminiscences of life in the American West,
By
This review is from: Unbridled Cowboy (Paperback)
Arguably, this is one of the finest personal reminiscences of life in the American West. Few memoirs exhibit such breadth--legitimate breadth, that is to say. The writer was a ranch hand, a railroader, a Texas Ranger, an adventurer, and a hobo. He lived through one of the most fascinating periods of American history, including the close of the frontier, the rise of the labor movement, the development of America's transcontinental railroads, and the depths of the Great Depression. He saw the Mexican Revolution from within. The credibility of his observations lie in the wealth of details he provides. His observations on Mexican "exchange rates" during the Revolution are priceless. The point is that these memoirs read with conviction; the writer does not apologize for the truth. He apologizes for some of his actions, and regrets many of them, especially his vendetta against the Mexican cowboys. Simply, the primary contribution of this manuscript is to remind us of the Real West--of human nature in a raw and often dangerous land. The fictional writer that comes to mind is Larry McMurtry. The style is wonderful for someone who claims never to have made it past fifth grade. The word choice is excellent, the descriptions riveting, and written with nouns and verbs. It is as if the author read Strunk and White.
--Alfred Runte, author of Allies of the Earth: Railroads and the Soul of Preservation
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An exceptional tale of the Wild West,
By
This review is from: Unbridled Cowboy (Paperback)
This is a captivating memoir. It is not only a great story in its own right, but a window into the social and ethnic history of the wild west (not the urbanizing west) from 1890 to the eve of the Vietnam War. Joe Fussell was a railroad worker, a ranch hand, a husband, an outlaw, a killer, and a cowboy. He was a free spirit who viewed authority about as reverently as Captain Kidd. But I don't want to overemphasize the outlaw side. In a paradoxical way, Fussell respected authority, and though he experienced memorable moments of violence, he was never cruel. He was imaginative and inventive and independent, but he wasn't selfish or mean. Most importantly, he was a master of his own fate. He refused to be pigeon-holed into a life of respectability and social conformity at a time when corporations and state governments were taming the west. What sets this story apart from other memoirs and historical accounts is its honesty, its energy, and its range (sorry, an unintentional pun). Fussell spent decades wandering between Texas and Southern California, from his frontier youth in the 1890s to the conformist 1950s. If some of this book seems politically incorrect in respect to its treatment of women and Mexicans, that's because it is, but let's remember that the concept of political correctness had yet to be invented. Can everything that Fussell writes be verified? Not a chance. There are no stuffy footnotes in this memoir. Yet the story is credible because Fussell never seems to preen. He writes for himself. He doesn't try to impress us, even when his conduct does impress us. And it impresses us because Fussell really does embody the old-fashioned virtues of courage, loyalty, and individualism. His America is mostly gone, which may be why this book has a mythic quality to it. Maybe I can sum up my enthusiasm about "Unbridled Cowboy" by saying that I wish I had the opportunity to know Fussell. Well, in a sense, I do know him. I guess that's what terrific memoirs allow us to do.
One last thing: I had the opportunity to read this memoir even before it was published. I knew nothing of Fussell or of his grandson, Bob, who edited this volume. Because I am an American historian, a mutual friend referred Bob Fussell to me. I said I'd look over the manuscript. I initially figured that reading it would be a quasi-academic chore. It turned out to be a privilege. Gary Ostrower Professor of History Alfred University
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unbridled Cowboy,
By
This review is from: Unbridled Cowboy (Paperback)
Unbridled Cowboy, the autobiography of Joe Fussell, is well written and brings the reader a vivid and realistic portrait of the man and his life. His story telling ability paints a vivid and sometimes raw reality. He brings to life a period of American and western history from a personal point of view that was fraught with change and upheaval.
While reading I found myself sitting next to Joe and hearing him telling me his life story. The ease with which he wrote of his life makes this book an enjoyable journey with a fascinating man.
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