The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #45656 Message #2134287
Posted By: Joe Offer
27-Aug-07 - 01:16 AM
Thread Name: Origins:The Goodnight-Loving Trail (Utah Phillips)
Subject: RE: Origins:The Goodnight-Loving Trail (Utah Phillips)
I got this this by e-mail from somebody who was a bit shy about posting, so I'll leave his name out:
The description on this song leaves out one irony I suspect the song's author knew: Charles Goodnight isn't simply "an Army officer", he was the inventor of the chuck wagon. (The sources I've seen all say it was actually named after him -- certainly you couldn't just "chuck" things into it as you'd run out of room.) Having somebody soliloquize on the chuck-wagon staff, on the trail also named after its inventor, adds an aspect to the song.
The chuckwagon (a cowboy's portable kitchen wagon used on the cattle trails) was invented by Charles Goodnight in 1866. Goodnight, a former Texas Ranger, owned the first cattle ranch in the Texas Panhandle
My link above to the Goodnight-Loving Trail Home Page no longer seems to work, but maybe this Wayback Machine link will. Anybody want to post useful excerpts from the now-dead Website? -Joe-