Wednesday, March 18, 2026
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Daughter Lovina Shares Humor and Fond Memories

By
Guest Columnist
-
0

Lovina’s Amish Kitchen
Lovina Eitcher,
Old Order Amish
Cook, Wife &
Mother of Eight

 

Dear Readers,
I hope everyone is doing great! This is daughter Lovina, and I decided to write for Mom again.
It’s a cold Tuesday night here. My brother Ben is grilling ribs for supper. Dad, Mom, and my brother Joseph are in the shed making deer jerky, and my brother Kevin is sitting across the table telling me jokes. (Most of them aren’t funny, but at least he tries.)
Yesterday, Dad talked me into helping him in the shed with meat processing. He said he only needed help with “one thing.” Then as I was doing that “one thing,” he’d say, “oh, and while you’re at it . . .” And that’s how it continued.
Luckily, I had a game plan. I told Dad that I needed to go inside to grab rags, and when I got inside, I told Joseph that Dad needed his help. As long as Dad got the help he needed, he wouldn’t bother me. I just had to pretend like I was busy helping Mom every time he came inside.
Today after doing the housework, I considered cleaning the bathrooms too. Then I came back to my senses. I’m proud of myself for even considering it, but I’ll leave that for another day.
I went outside to help Dad again instead and then came inside and mixed up a batch of monster cookies to bake in the morning. We like to have homemade cookies on hand to go with our coffee in the early mornings.
Tomorrow, I’m going to sister Verena’s place for the night. She and I always have a lot of fun when we’re together. We used to stay up late and make brownies at midnight when we couldn’t sleep.
Kevin’s still telling me jokes as I’m writing the column. He said, “why are they called apartments if they’re built together,” and he’s now been laughing about it for a couple of minutes.
Years ago, when Kevin and I were just small kids, we walked to our aunts Verena and Susan’s place with some of our older siblings. Verena and Susan live just down the road, and all of us siblings loved to walk down there. (They always gave us a bunch of candy.)
One time, Kevin and I brought back one of their puppies, and when Mom told us to take it back, we put it in doll clothes to make her think it was a toy. We couldn’t understand how she still knew it was a puppy. Good thing my IQ is a lot higher than it used to be. I can’t speak for Kevin (just joking!).
Anyways, I better wrap this up. Thank you all for the nice comments on my other column. I read them all and had to laugh at the one that said, “Haflingers are workhorse wannabees; they just forget to keep growing.”
Have a great week! God bless!

Monster Cookies

1 1/2 sticks butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
4 eggs
1 pound peanut butter
2 1/2 teaspoons soda
4 1/2 cups oatmeal
12-ounce package chocolate chips
1 cup M&M’s
In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugars. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Mix in baking soda, then add oatmeal, chocolate chips, and M&M’s. Add more oatmeal, if needed, to make a stiff dough. Form into tablespoon-size balls and place on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Do not overbake.

Ace Reid’s Cowpokes Cartoons Riding Into The Sunset

By
Frank Buchman
-
0

Frank J. Buchman
Columnist

“Hard time cowboy Jake, his sidekick Zeb, the banker Tuffernell, and horse trader Wilbur are riding off into the sunset.”
Few ranchers and farmers have not been longtime smiling followers of Ace Reid’s Cowpokes Cartoons.
As of this month, they will be no more. Other than in calendars, books, collections, and taped around common loafing areas.
Publications received notice from Madge Reid, Ace’s widow, last month that she’s ceasing distribution of the popular cartoons.
“After much thought, Cowpokes Cartoons has decided to begin the retirement process,” Madge said. “Cowpokes and publications have had a good long ride together. But for us, it is time to put our cartoon service to bed.”
Moving toward that goal, Cowpokes Cartoons Syndicate Service will not supply Cowpokes Cartoons to publications after January 15, 2023.
“Cowpokes and fans have been good to us for lots of years but at 95 it was time to retire,” Madge said. “We have the Cowpokes calendar and I guess through Ace Reid Enterprises there will always be something to do.
“My husband Ace’s talent and his experiences of early ranch life are a great record of earlier times,” Madge verified.
Ace Reid always said he was raised on 4,000 acres of old pasture. He “sorta studied in the school of hard knocks under very, very droughty conditions.” Cowpokes Cartoons were always drawn from his early ranch experiences.
Remembering the drought, Ace said he was 21 years old before he saw a fat cow. This likely explains the skinny cattle and hungry look on faces of Jake and Zeb, Ace’s favorite Cowpokes characters.
He “drew” on his boyhood on the ranch and going with his father to auction barns and trading pens. His character Jake took on the hard-scrabble cowboy life with the humor that sprang from Reid’s life experiences.
They’re earthly people which everyone who know about farms and ranches recognize as authentic, since Ace Reid knew the life.
Cowpokes followers often comment “seen the same thing happen,” or “gosh, that looks just like the man down the road.”
The cartoons speak a known rancher-farmer language as Ace Reid knew and chronicled the trials and tribulations of everyday living.
Reid became one of the clearest and most honest recorders and interpreters in twentieth-century Texas West that was no more. His captions and sketches plumbed the region’s culture.
“Ace saved savored his memories from boyhood on,” Madge said. “He added his rich story of happenings and stories in Cowpokes Cartoons giving a unique record of the times.”
Asa Elmer “Ace” Reid, Jr. was born March 10, 1925, in Lelia Lake, Donley County, Texas, to Asa E. Reid and Callie Miles Bishop. The family moved to an Electra, Wichita County, Texas, ranch where Ace lived until leaving high school to join the Navy in 1943.
Reid was assigned to the attack transport USS Lanier which participated in the battles of Iwo Jima, Saipan, and Okinawa. It was aboard the USS Lanier that Ace began drawing cartoons for the ship’s newspaper.
His main character was “The Sorry Salt” which evolved into his postwar cowpoke “Jake.” For a few years following his release from the Navy, Reid lived and worked at various jobs in Texas.
In 1949, Reid married Madge Parmley, daughter of Dr. Tim Hennessee Parmley of Electra, Texas, where the family lived many years. Their home had the distinction of being the only residence in town to have an alligator as a backyard pet.
After married, Ace and Madge lived in various Texas towns as Ace tried several businesses before becoming a professional cowboy cartoonist. The couple moved to the 250-acres’ Draggin’ S Ranch, Kerrville, Kerr County, Texas, where they remained for the rest of his life.
Starting out, Ace traveled and sold cartoons from door to door. Cowpokes Cartoons were soon appearing widely in local and national publications.
“We started the syndication is 1955,” Madge said. “At one time we mailed out cartoons to more than 400 newspapers. “
At least 15 books were produced by Ace Reid with most now out of stock. The others are still available online.
Ace appeared in one feature film, a western called Pony Express Rider, for director Robert C. Totten. Produced and filmed in Kerrville, the movie cast also included Ken Curtis, Slim Pickens, Jack Elam, and Dub Taylor.
“All my kinfolks were horse breeders, ranchers, or bank robbers,” Ace often joked. “There was nothing middle class about us.”
Millions of devoted readers and fans identified with such timeless and seemingly simple humor. Reid was described by one critic as a “Texas pen-and-ink Will Rogers,”
Ace died on November 10, 1991, from cancer, which may have been contributed to by his visits to Nagasaki during the war.
But his light-hearted cartoons survived to chronicle Ace’s whimsical view of Texas and the cowboy lifestyle.
“After Ace’s death I started to send out the cartoon reproductions,” Maude said. “The cartoons used now are reproductions of originals and emailed to the newspapers and magazines.”
All the original cartoons have been donated to Texas State University. “They just recently had an exhibit of some of them,” Madge noted.
“Cowpokes calendars have been selling since 1959 and they are still on the market,” Madge said. The calendars are presently produced by Tru Art Calendars in Iowa City, Iowa.
Ace Reid has a son James Stanley Reid born in 1954. He is a retired attorney in Austin Texas.
“No one can draw or copy a Cowpokes cartoon,” Madge emphasized. “There have been imitators but there is still only one Cowpokes.” In her ending-syndication announcement to publications, Madge said, “Cowpokes and Cowpokes fans have been very good to me. I am grateful for all.”
Additional information about Ace Reid is available from the Handbook of Texas, the www.cowpokes.com website, and a Facebook page.

Digital Edition 01.04.23

By
Guest Columnist
-
0
digital edition

Digital Edition 01.04.23

Beaver on a Stick

By
Steve Gilliland
-
0

The first year I trapped beavers here in Kansas was a terribly dry year, much like 2022 was, but I learned just how resourceful beavers are. A landowner north of where I live had pasture along the Little Arkansas River and was complaining about beavers dropping trees across his electric fence. As dry as it had been, and as low as the river appeared to be from the road, I surmised there was no way beavers were the culprit. I carried traps and equipment through downed tree limbs and briars and found a rogue stretch of river not visible from the road that still held water; lots of water! There were holes in this stretch too deep for me to wade into with chest waders, yet from there the river turned east, and was bone dry as far as the eye could see. In this deep portion was a colony of beavers and this particular morning I had caught my first Kansas beaver from that colony, and luckily my wife Joyce was with me.

I don’t know what I was thinking when I set that trap. It was a challenge just to get to, let along tote out anything that I might catch. So, picture this; my wife (who is at least a head shorter than me) and I standing in the middle of the dry river bed, she about 6 feet in front of me, with an 8-foot tree limb between us across our shoulders. Trussed up with a rope and dangling precariously from that limb hung a 50-pound beaver. This was my wife’s idea and at first, I had scoffed. But aside from the fact that we must have looked like 2 natives hauling a dead monkey from the jungle for dinner, it worked pretty well.

Telling you we were 300 yards from our pickup doesn’t begin to give you the whole picture. For starters, the first 50 yards included a short trek along the dry river bed then straight up a deer trail to the bank 10 feet above. After a much-needed break, we followed that same deer trail through an obstacle course of briars and downed tree limbs for another 50 yards to the edge of an alfalfa field, took another breather and then untrussed the beaver and literally drug it and ourselves the final 200 yards through the alfalfa to the truck.

River beaver usually dig large den holes into the bank with the entrance below the water line. Wading along the river can often locate the dens, but that wasn’t an option here since the water was so deep. The only way to catch these beavers was to place traps to take advantage of the creature’s movements and social behaviors. Beavers are very territorial and mark their boundaries by building mounds of mud and debris on the bank called castor mounds. They scent these mounds with secretion from glands at the base of their tail called “castor glands.” Other beavers that travel through the area stop and place their scent on these mounds too, so the resident adults are always checking them to see if any intruders are present. I found one of those mounds that didn’t appear to be used anymore, and “spiced” it up with some lure to make the residents believe they needed to check it again, and one of them soon found himself dangling from the tree limb between us.

Trapping, like hunting and fishing, is a harvest. With that stretch of river being one of very few holding water enough for beavers that year their population could easily have grown out of control. I caught 3 beavers from that short stretch of river; certainly not enough to hurt there population much, or for my wife’s fur coat, but maybe enough to keep them out of trouble with their landlord for a spell!
Steve can be contacted by email at [email protected].

 

Ace Reid’s Cowpokes Cartoons Riding Into The Sunset

By
Frank Buchman
-
0

“Hard time cowboy Jake, his sidekick Zeb, the banker Tuffernell, and horse trader Wilbur are riding off into the sunset.”
Few ranchers and farmers have not been longtime smiling followers of Ace Reid’s Cowpokes Cartoons.
As of this month, they will be no more. Other than in calendars, books, collections, and taped around common loafing areas.
Publications received notice from Madge Reid, Ace’s widow, last month that she’s ceasing distribution of the popular cartoons.
“After much thought, Cowpokes Cartoons has decided to begin the retirement process,” Madge said. “Cowpokes and publications have had a good long ride together. But for us, it is time to put our cartoon service to bed.”
Moving toward that goal, Cowpokes Cartoons Syndicate Service will not supply Cowpokes Cartoons to publications after January 15, 2023.
“Cowpokes and fans have been good to us for lots of years but at 95 it was time to retire,” Madge said. “We have the Cowpokes calendar and I guess through Ace Reid Enterprises there will always be something to do.
“My husband Ace’s talent and his experiences of early ranch life are a great record of earlier times,” Madge verified.
Ace Reid always said he was raised on 4,000 acres of old pasture. He “sorta studied in the school of hard knocks under very, very droughty conditions.” Cowpokes Cartoons were always drawn from his early ranch experiences.
Remembering the drought, Ace said he was 21 years old before he saw a fat cow. This likely explains the skinny cattle and hungry look on faces of Jake and Zeb, Ace’s favorite Cowpokes characters.
He “drew” on his boyhood on the ranch and going with his father to auction barns and trading pens. His character Jake took on the hard-scrabble cowboy life with the humor that sprang from Reid’s life experiences.
They’re earthly people which everyone who know about farms and ranches recognize as authentic, since Ace Reid knew the life.
Cowpokes followers often comment “seen the same thing happen,” or “gosh, that looks just like the man down the road.”
The cartoons speak a known rancher-farmer language as Ace Reid knew and chronicled the trials and tribulations of everyday living.
Reid became one of the clearest and most honest recorders and interpreters in twentieth-century Texas West that was no more. His captions and sketches plumbed the region’s culture.
“Ace saved savored his memories from boyhood on,” Madge said. “He added his rich story of happenings and stories in Cowpokes Cartoons giving a unique record of the times.”
Asa Elmer “Ace” Reid, Jr. was born March 10, 1925, in Lelia Lake, Donley County, Texas, to Asa E. Reid and Callie Miles Bishop. The family moved to an Electra, Wichita County, Texas, ranch where Ace lived until leaving high school to join the Navy in 1943.
Reid was assigned to the attack transport USS Lanier which participated in the battles of Iwo Jima, Saipan, and Okinawa. It was aboard the USS Lanier that Ace began drawing cartoons for the ship’s newspaper.
His main character was “The Sorry Salt” which evolved into his postwar cowpoke “Jake.” For a few years following his release from the Navy, Reid lived and worked at various jobs in Texas.
In 1949, Reid married Madge Parmley, daughter of Dr. Tim Hennessee Parmley of Electra, Texas, where the family lived many years. Their home had the distinction of being the only residence in town to have an alligator as a backyard pet.
After married, Ace and Madge lived in various Texas towns as Ace tried several businesses before becoming a professional cowboy cartoonist. The couple moved to the 250-acres’ Draggin’ S Ranch, Kerrville, Kerr County, Texas, where they remained for the rest of his life.
Starting out, Ace traveled and sold cartoons from door to door. Cowpokes Cartoons were soon appearing widely in local and national publications.
“We started the syndication is 1955,” Madge said. “At one time we mailed out cartoons to more than 400 newspapers. “
At least 15 books were produced by Ace Reid with most now out of stock. The others are still available online.
Ace appeared in one feature film, a western called Pony Express Rider, for director Robert C. Totten. Produced and filmed in Kerrville, the movie cast also included Ken Curtis, Slim Pickens, Jack Elam, and Dub Taylor.
“All my kinfolks were horse breeders, ranchers, or bank robbers,” Ace often joked. “There was nothing middle class about us.”
Millions of devoted readers and fans identified with such timeless and seemingly simple humor. Reid was described by one critic as a “Texas pen-and-ink Will Rogers,”
Ace died on November 10, 1991, from cancer, which may have been contributed to by his visits to Nagasaki during the war.
But his light-hearted cartoons survived to chronicle Ace’s whimsical view of Texas and the cowboy lifestyle.
“After Ace’s death I started to send out the cartoon reproductions,” Maude said. “The cartoons used now are reproductions of originals and emailed to the newspapers and magazines.”
All the original cartoons have been donated to Texas State University. “They just recently had an exhibit of some of them,” Madge noted.
“Cowpokes calendars have been selling since 1959 and they are still on the market,” Madge said. The calendars are presently produced by Tru Art Calendars in Iowa City, Iowa.
Ace Reid has a son James Stanley Reid born in 1954. He is a retired attorney in Austin Texas.
“No one can draw or copy a Cowpokes cartoon,” Madge emphasized. “There have been imitators but there is still only one Cowpokes.” In her ending-syndication announcement to publications, Madge said, “Cowpokes and Cowpokes fans have been very good to me. I am grateful for all.”
Additional information about Ace Reid is available from the Handbook of Texas, the www.cowpokes.com website, and a Facebook page.
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