Cowboy Bard Back in Saddle Sharing Range Rhymes

Poetry readings aren’t exactly what you might imagine a group of ranchers gathering to hear after a long day’s work running pack trains into the wild Trinity Mountains.

But the poems Lyle Charter recites aren’t exactly Shakespeare--and as his sonorous voice rises and falls under a crescent moon and a million stars, the verses seem to fit the occasion like a well-worn saddle.

Charter, 68, a rancher all his life, has been running pack trains on hunting and fishing trips all over the West for 25 years. For relaxation, he keeps alive a campfire tradition--cowboy poetry.

Born and raised on a Sacramento Valley ranch near Arbuckle, he now lives on 29 acres outside Coffee Creek, a wide spot in the road to the Trinity Alps Wilderness Area in northwestern California.

He spends his spare time entertaining schoolchildren and civic clubs with stories of fictional cowpokes like Boomer Johnson and Purt-Near Perkins. In all, he’s memorized about 40 such epic poems.

Just four days after doctors turned him loose after a near-fatal accident last year, he was back swapping lies and telling tall tales--all in verse.

“I retired and came up here [to Coffee Creek] to rest, but all I’ve been doing is working,” Charter said. “I’m not kicking--I could be in a wheelchair.”

A tall, raw-boned man, Charter walks as if he has a ramrod down his spine--which he very nearly does.

Little more than a year ago, doctors replaced four of the vertebrae in his neck with titanium replicas.

“One of my mules knocked me down and paralyzed me,” Charter said. “It wasn’t the mule’s fault-- sometimes your brain kicks out of gear.”

Charter had thought it would be a great idea to let his Jack Russell terrier ride on the mule. He rigged a box on top of the mule and chained the dog inside. The problem was the dog didn’t think it was such a great idea, and jumped out of the box.

“It was like one of those great-grandfather clocks, swinging back and forth,” Charter recalled. “She was just swinging by the neck and scratching him.”

Charter ran to save his dog from strangling, the mule spooked, and the next thing Charter knew, he was in a hospital. The dog slipped out of its collar and escaped, unhurt.

Charter was operated on May 3, 1999, and released by his doctors on Aug. 1 of that year, just in time to entertain an annual gathering of the Backcountry Horsemen of California’s Shasta Trinity Chapter.

He was back again this year to tell of Purt-Near Perkins, who saves a man from being purt-near hanged, and of Boomer Johnson, an outlaw-turned-cook who stirs his pot of beans with his six-shooter.

There’s the cowboy who wonders why he can’t attract women on his first trip to the beach--until he’s advised to leave behind his 10-gallon hat and boots. And there’s the Eastern gal on her first trip West who confuses Rocky Mountain oysters with the seafood she left behind, with disastrous results.

Charter’s dad recited similar poetry, but Charter didn’t get interested until about a decade ago when he attended a cowboy poetry gathering in Elko, Nev.

He hasn’t taken to writing his own poetry, however.

“There’s so many good ones out there [already],” Charter said. “Good, classic poems.”

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‘Boomer Johnson’

Now, Mr. Boomer Johnson, he was gettin’ old in spots

But you don’t expect a badman to go wrasslin’ pans and pots

He’d done his share of killin’, but his draw was gettin’ slow

So he quits a-punchin’ cattle and starts a-punchin’ dough. . . .

He didn’t use matches--just left them layin’ on the shelf

Just some kerosene and cussin’, and the kindling lit itself. . . .

He built his doughnuts solid, and it sure did curl your hair

To see him plug them doughnuts as he tossed ‘em in the air.

He plugged ‘em all dead center every time that pistol spoke

‘Til the can was full of doughnuts and the shack was full of smoke. . . .

Well, he kept right on performin’, and I guess it was no surprise

When he started carvin’ tombstones on the covers of his pies.

They didn’t taste no better and they didn’t taste no worse

But settin’ at that table was like ridin’ in a hearse.

You didn’t do no talkin’ and you took just what you got

And you ate ‘til you foundered--just to keep from gettin’ shot. . . .

--Excerpts from “Boomer Johnson,” by Henry Herbert Knibbs, as told by Lyle Charter