Posted: 3/17/2010 6:58:03 PM EDT
I have heard of him, and a little about him. I want to learn more, but his book "Hell I was there" is $231 on Amazon Does anyone have a good resource to read/learn more about Mr. Keith? What are your thoughts on him?
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I found this video of the Museum in Boise Idaho on Youtube for ya...
If folks are real interested, I could go take a better video of the place. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZH1ki12yJU |
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"Letters from Elmer Keith: A Half Century of Advice on Guns, Ammo, Handloading, Hunting, and Other Pursuits"
http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Elmer-Keith-Handloading-Pursuits/dp/1581606532/ref=pd_sim_b_1 |
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When he was alive you could just call him on the phone, he'd shoot the sh!t with anybody.
Anybody but Jack O'Connor I guess.
I got all his books from the library, along with Cactus Jack's, Ruark's, Jim Corbett's, and more. [eta: Yes –– I returned them all. Even the rare copy of Corbett's "Leopard of Rudraprayag".] |
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Wow! $231 for his book? My dad has his book, and I read it as a kid, and even did a book report on it in the 6th grade. He was an awesome man. Maybe you can find it in a library? I remember one story about him in the book (if I remember it correctly...it has been a few years since I read it). When he was a kid, he got caught in a fire. Somehow, his hand (I believe) was broken, and the burnt skin healed in such a way that his hand was permanently bent at the wrist. Doctors said that there wasn't much they could do for him. Being the tough SOB that he was, he told his father that he couldn't stand to be that way, and wanted it fixed..one way or another. His father got him liquored up, took a skinning board, set it on his hand, and used his weight to re-break it. He passed out of course, but it ended up healing, and he was able to use it again. Its a great read, if you can find it. |
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Quoted: I remember one story about him in the book (if I remember it correctly...it has been a few years since I read it). When he was a kid, he got caught in a fire. Somehow, his hand (I believe) was broken, and the burnt skin healed in such a way that his hand was permanently bent at the wrist. Doctors said that there wasn't much they could do for him. Being the tough SOB that he was, he told his father that he couldn't stand to be that way, and wanted it fixed..one way or another. His father got him liquored up, took a skinning board, set it on his hand, and used his weight to re-break it. He passed out of course, but it ended up healing, and he was able to use it again. The Cabela's robot tells that story too. |
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The story of how his arm got messed up was amazing, not in a good way. His family was staying on the third floor of a boarding house, and the owner, a (in Elmer's words) 'Shiftless Half-French Canuck', decided to take out three or four insurance policies on the place then burn it down (with the Keith family still inside.)! The owner poured coal oil in the hallways and lit the place in the middle of the night. The entire boarding house was aflame. His family awoke but couldn't get out, so his father hung his wife from the thirdfloor window and had the kids climb down his and her bodies to drop fifteen feet or so to the ground. Elmer was in another room with his brother. He threw his brother out the window to safety and then passed out from the smoke, landing face-down on his arm, breaking his wrist and bending his hand backwards so the back of his hand was fused to his forearm. His neck and jaw got fused to his collarbone as well. Elmer's dad didn't have a ladder tall enough to reach the third floor window of Elmer''s room, so he climbed onto the roof of the building next door and JUMPED from the fourth-floor roof trying to hit Elmer's window across the alley. He missed, falling to the alley below ( ) and tried two or three times before the fire department showed up. They finally rescued Elmer and he was quite a mess.
The story about his dad re-breaking his wrist and tying it to a board is true. When Elmer was seventeen or eighteen, he learned the landlord/owner of the boarding house was back in town. He got a Colt single-action .45 and went looking for him. The Sheriff learned of this and told Elmer that if he killed the sonofvabitch it was okay with him, and the sheriff would do whatever he could to help Elmer afterwards. Apparently the Canuck heard Keith was gunning for him and beat it out of town before 'justice' could be applied. He was a real character. He tells a story of how he and his little brother Silas used to go watch 'The Darkies" partying down on the wrong side of the tracks. One night a big black guy started chasing the two of them. (Elmer was about 12, 13 years old) So this guy is sprinting after them, really chasing them full-bore down some street. Elmer, running as fast as he can, pulls a slingshot out of his pocket, made from a Y-shaped tree limb and a bunch of condoms braided together. He has a pocketfull of loose 00 buckshot. He grabbs five or six buckshot pellets and still running, turns and lets fly with the slingshot, hits the black guy in the mouth at a distance of like fifteen feet. He said the black guy cried out, "Oh Lawdy !!!" and stopped chasing them. They went and got Elmer's dad, who went back with a shotgun. At the scene of the 'Slingshotting' they found a half-dozen busted and bloody teeth but no black guy. 
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| I got a copy through the add in Guns and Ammo when it first came out. I can see it on the bookshelf from where I'm sitting now. During basic training, I got injured and wound up in the MRP, with nothing better to do, I wrote a letter to Mr. Keith, got a reply back that he had had a stroke. Wish I had kept that letter. |
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Quoted:
The story of how his arm got messed up was amazing, not in a good way. His family was staying on the third floor of a boarding house, and the owner, a (in Elmer's words) 'Shiftless Half-French Canuck', decided to take out three or four insurance policies on the place then burn it down (with the Keith family still inside.)! The owner poured coal oil in the hallways and lit the place in the middle of the night. The entire boarding house was aflame. His family awoke but couldn't get out, so his father hung his wife from the thirdfloor window and had the kids climb down his and her bodies to drop fifteen feet or so to the ground. Elmer was in another room with his brother. He threw his brother out the window to safety and then passed out from the smoke, landing face-down on his arm, breaking his wrist and bending his hand backwards so the back of his hand was fused to his forearm. His neck and jaw got fused to his collarbone as well. Elmer's dad didn't have a ladder tall enough to reach the third floor window of Elmer''s room, so he climbed onto the roof of the building next door and JUMPED from the fourth-floor roof trying to hit Elmer's window across the alley. He missed, falling to the alley below ( ) and tried two or three times before the fire department showed up. They finally rescued Elmer and he was quite a mess.
The story about his dad re-breaking his wrist and tying it to a board is true. When Elmer was seventeen or eighteen, he learned the landlord/owner of the boarding house was back in town. He got a Colt single-action .45 and went looking for him. The Sheriff learned of this and told Elmer that if he killed the sonofvabitch it was okay with him, and the sheriff would do whatever he could to help Elmer afterwards. Apparently the Canuck heard Keith was gunning for him and beat it out of town before 'justice' could be applied. He was a real character. He tells a story of how he and his little brother Silas used to go watch 'The Darkies" partying down on the wrong side of the tracks. One night a big black guy started chasing the two of them. (Elmer was about 12, 13 years old) So this guy is sprinting after them, really chasing them full-bore down some street. Elmer, running as fast as he can, pulls a slingshot out of his pocket, made from a Y-shaped tree limb and a bunch of condoms braided together. He has a pocketfull of loose 00 buckshot. He grabbs five or six buckshot pellets and still running, turns and lets fly with the slingshot, hits the black guy in the mouth at a distance of like fifteen feet. He said the black guy cried out, "Oh Lawdy !!!" and stopped chasing them. They went and got Elmer's dad, who went back with a shotgun. At the scene of the 'Slingshotting' they found a half-dozen busted and bloody teeth but no black guy. I love listening to old men 
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Quoted:
I have heard of him, and a little about him. I want to learn more, but his book "Hell I was there" is $231 on Amazon Does anyone have a good resource to read/learn more about Mr. Keith? What are your thoughts on him?Too bad they don't have places where you can pay a small fee, or even for free borrow books, read them, then return them. 
Just started reading "One Ranger". |
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He wrote Sixguns a long time before Hell I Was There. There should be a lot more copies of it floating around. He was the Executive Editor of guns and
Ammo forever it seemed. You can read some of his stuff online at their site. Like a good fisherman, he may have made some of his stories just a little more exciting than others rmember them. |
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He wrote Sixguns a long time before Hell I Was There. There should be a lot more copies of it floating around. He was the Executive Editor of guns and
Ammo forever it seemed. You can read some of his stuff online at their site. Like a good fisherman, he may have made some of his stories just a little more exciting than others rmember them. |