Come and Git It!!

Come and Git It!

Or at least that's how we perceive the Chuckwagon Boss calling the cowboys to dinner. His voice ringing out against the clank of a "dinner" triangle…. Is that how it happened??

While some form of the kitchens in wagons had existed for generations, the term chuckwagon or chuck wagon is credited to Charles Goodnight, a rancher from Texas who introduced the concept in 1866. He modified a Studebaker wagon, an army supply wagon, to suit the needs of cowboys driving cattle from Texas to sell in New Mexico. He added a "chuck box" to the back of the wagon with drawers and shelves for storage space and a hinged lid to provide a flat cooking surface. He then attached a water barrel to the wagon and canvas hung underneath to carry firewood.

Chuckwagon food typically included none-spoiling or easy to keep items like beans, salted/ cured meats, coffee, and ingredients to make biscuits. Food would also be gathered as they traveled.  On the cattle drives, it was common for the cook ,"cookie",  to run the wagon and to be second in command -- only to the trailboss. The cookie would often act as cook, barber, dentist, and banker.

The term chuck wagon comes from "chuck", a slang term for food.

Here is a really fun link that tells what kind of supplies a family headed West might pack for their cooking on the trail. It's a very interesting site J

http://www.oregontrailcenter.org/HistoricalTrails/Supplies.htm

www.jenniferjakes.com

Miss Kitty Lied. . .

Oh, Miss Kitty, how you deceived us all. Remember Gunsmoke and Sheriff Matt Dillon’s main squeeze? Perfect silk dress, perfectly styled red curls – perfect beauty mark. How clean and wonderful the life of a Wild West saloon girl must have been. . . 

*insert sound of screeching brakes here*

Um, no. Let’s look at some facts. In descending order there were: Parlor Houses, Brothels, Cribs. Even in a Parlor House *think 5 star hotel* where a night of food, fun and the other “F” word might cost a man $200+, the girl only averaged $10 per week because of the cut the Madam (or the house) took the rest to cover the costs of food, wine and the girl’s room and board.

 Brothel girls could make $2.50 - $7.00 per customer, but she had to pay room and board out of this plus any other expenses she had. Oh, and Brothels were significantly less grand than a Parlor House. Parlor houses the girl probably spent the entire night with one man and her sheets were changed afterward. Brothel girls saw more “traffic” and her sheets might be changed once per week.

 Cribs were a closet-like space where the girls lived and worked. She would rent this room for $10-$20 per week. She charged a man as little as 25 cents depending on how dirty or run-down she and/or her crib was. Her profit was in volume. In a cattle or mining town, she would little more than stay in bed as the men lined up outside her door. Normally, a crib nymph would see 20 to 30 men per night. During a cattle drive, she could see as many as 75 to 100 men per night. And no clean sheets here. She put a rain slicker over the bottom of her bed to protect the sheets from mud and cow manure since the cowboy might take off his hat, but not his boots or pants. Volume, remember?  

Yes, there were Saloon Girls who could just serve drinks, but they could also “go upstairs” for extra money. And Dance Hall Girls, yes, they were there, earning 12 ½ cents per dance. But all in all after researching this topic, I have to say, Miss Kitty lied to us.

What do you think?

*All statistics were found in UPSTAIRS GIRLS: Prostitution in the American West by Michael Rutter