By KAREN MADORIN
From earliest times, troubadours and bards have shared people’s stories. Centuries pass, technology changes, but cultures count on gifted wordsmiths to pass heritage through song and poem.
For the past three years, Rooks County Historical Museum has invited the public to welcome regional singers and poets to celebrate an old-fashion Christmas.
This year Zerf, Betty Burlingham, and Museum Coordinator Rick Gianni performed. To enjoy stunning tree displays, homemade snacks, auction donations, and performances, folks need to make this a red-letter calendar day every year.
In small gatherings, audiences often know performers. It was almost old home week as these three recognized friends and supporters who welcomed their personal stories.
Zerf shared how he became a cowboy singer. Like many western Kansans, he migrated to California for a spell. Playing in a band and seeking musical inspiration led him to the Burbank Public Library where he struck paydirt with WPA song collections from each state--oldies our great-greats sang during settlement years. Recognizing treasure, he copied them for his personal collection, initiating the question, “What will I do with these?”
The answer emerged as a singing cowboy persona allowing him to channel lyrics written by long dead musicians. Those folksy tunes present listeners with a peek at ancestors’ challenges. One ditty relayed they had “no corn, cabbage, potatoes, or tomatoes.” It makes you wonder if they ate anything that dry year besides dust.
In addition to singing other’s songs, Zerf writes original tunes that invite audiences to time travel to Wild West towns like Sheridan and Ellsworth where memorable characters often end up buried in Boot Hill. Another about the ladder of rivers and streams reminds listeners that some of those tales are “So lost, we’ve forgotten the cost.”
Adding more sad sagas, he sang the traditional “Little Joe the Wrangler” and a caballero-inspired piece in Spanish about another young cowboy gone too soon. I could listen all day to learn Kansas history from this regional troubadour.
To lighten matters, Betty Burlingham confessed she started life as a science nerd turned molecular biologist before marrying a rancher/professor and recreating herself as an award-winning cowboy poet.
While she may no longer study life under a microscope or in a test tube, her poetry reveals that humor drives her daily observations. Verses about her husband’s proposal warmed our chucklers up so we could outright guffaw when she energetically recited “Special Delivery” about the night her water broke before she and hubs picked up new bulls and ground feed for them before heading to the hospital for their own delivery.
She kept the audience in stitches with stories of cursers and crooners in “Yelling at Cows” and a graphic “Cowgirl’s Revenge” recitation. Her insights about humans, animals, and nature make fine use of her scientific method training.
Museum coordinator Rick Gianni, an Italian descendent from Indiana who knows his pasta, is a rootin' tooti'n cowboy poet with quirky twists to regional humor.
Keeping laughs rolling, he contributed rhymes about a cowboy sent to shop for his spouse’s lingerie. Who knew a fella could use his hat size to buy the correct support garment. He followed that with a clever poem about one-upping a cocky relative.
Like every good cowboy poet, he makes folks laugh and cry. The audience headed home wiping tears, thinking about lessons Smitty and Badger shared.
Heads up! Put Rooks County Historical Society and Museum’s Cowboy Christmas on next year’s calendar. Those prairie troubadours and poets will have you laughing and crying 'til it’s hard to see the best Christmas tree display ever.
Karen Madorin is a retired teacher, writer, photographer, outdoors lover, and sixth-generation Kansan.