The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1930-03-06
Another Fade-Out Of the Frontier

1t requires the passing out of a character such a.
Poker Alice" Tubbs from the drama Of the West tt
bring to realization just how far the wild and woody era
Of the frontier has receded into the perspective of time
With the buffalo. the adventurous scouts, the Indiar
warpath, the gold digging days, the trapper, the path
finder and the covered wagon, such characters of a vr-
lie and romantic period mainly have gone over the hori-
zon into the limbo Of the remote.
Yet the death Of this frontier woman serves to remind
us that her era was not along ago. that when it faded
out she fingered as a leftover. The amazing feature Of
it all is that such characters as this woman still are
left with us.
There is something very melancholy about the passing
Of the frontier veterans. These people like Poker Alice
belonged in the period of the nations youth. They were
so to speak. youthful outbursts; they could not have
existed in an older, more settled civilization. Now they
are going-and the nation, by the same token, is losing
its youth. We are growing up, in spite of ourselves.
We do not always realize the extent to which we are
all affected by the nearness of the old frontier.
Every American living today has that as part of his
heritage. He grew up with the wild west still a living
memory. Poker Alice. Calamity Jane, Deadwood Dick,
Buffalo Bill and the others, with their picturesque names
and their wild, untaned manners, were still on the hori-
zon, or just over it. The tradition that they represented
had not yet died out. It formed a strong part of what
we like to call 1.-The American spirit"
But that could not last. The science and industry of
VAN ~ AAOSNOAA " A0 VuVA OOWA w a OA4C4 OIdlIs Xix
railroads brought the west close to the east, and the au-
tomobile pulled it closer: and then came such things as
the radio and the airplane to weld east and west into
one u~nity-and the frontier was gone forever.
But there is a danger in waxing too sentimental over
it. For the old west-the frontier, where hard-fisted
men and women whipped nature into submission-was
gaudy, alive and interesting, but it was not an unmixed
blessing. II it gave the national character strength,
courage and a reckless hardwood, it also stunted its ar
tistic and humanitarian impulses. It condemned gen.
erations Of people to live lives in which there was ex-
element, hard work. achievement-but very little of
beauty.
This era of the wild west was an era that had to be-;
but We are fortunate, after all, that it ended as soon as
1t did. For on the frontier men are compelled to live by
bread alone. They cannot, by the very nature of the
case, pay any attention to anything but the material
side Of their civilization. And that attitude, along with
the finer qualities, is one Of the things our pioneer ira
dition has bred into us.
We are slowly getting away from it; already, on the
far horizon, one can get a glimpse. now and then, of the
fine things that shall be done in this land in the future.
But We shall not do them until we have left our frontier
a little bit farther behind. The passing of the old char
acters like Poker Alice calls for a look ahead as well as a
look backward. E
Every girl is looking for a husband-both before and
after marriage.
Some fellows work their way through school; others
work their parents.
when they grow up! -