Bedichek reports on progress

 Roy Bedichek’s life changed fundamentally when he married Miss Lillian Greer. But before he could marry he had to find a way to make a living.

Picture this: It’s 1910, and Roy has bicycled across West Texas and staked a homestead and desert claim: 320 acres outside Demming, N.M. He had six months to get on the claim. He worked as a stenographer in town to save money. Here he is writing to Lillian about his progress:

 

Well, when my time was getting about up, I borrowed what money I could, got a camping outfit and a man, went out to my place and dug a well and built a shack 12 x 14 and stretched up a tent. During the winter months, I lived in the tent, cooked and ate, slept and read and wrote in it. It is 9½ x 12. I had no success in selling stuff I wrote. I lived on frijole beans and rabbits which I caught in traps — I lived to myself like a lone wolf in a cañon.

 

When the businessmen organized a chamber of commerce in town, Bedichek got a job as its secretary at $75 a month. He also made some money on the side corresponding for newspapers and agricultural journals.

 

I couldn’t afford to keep a pony in town so I sold him, and I walk eight miles night and mourning to my shack and am thus homesteading it.

There are cracks in my shack that you can throw a cat through. My tent is getting a little ragged.

 

I’m not sure why Miss Lillian married Roy and moved to Demming. But she did.

Roy Bedichek became a wise and wonderful writer. But I can’t imagine what he would have been if Miss Lillian hadn’t put him under firmer management. Can you?

• Source: The Roy Bedichek Family Letters, selected by Jane Gracy Bedichek; Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1998, p. 50.