Romance on the Range

Geno Lawrenzi 06:30 Sep 24th, 2021 Land Based Online Gambling

Home, home on the range, where the deer and

the antelope play and where cowboys drink and

get their friends in trouble.

In the 1950s, I was a writer for the tabloids -- weekly national magazines like the STAR, GLOBE, MIDNIGHT, the NATIONAL ENQUIRER and others. They paid good money for offbeat articles about interesting subjects across America.

Each morning, I would scan the daily and weekly newspapers in my area for offbeat stories that had a national interest. I was living in Phoenix, scanning the Arizona Republic, when I came across a story headlined LONELY ARIZONA SEEKS WIFE.

According to the article a rancher named Maxwell Grant was tired of being a bachelor. He lived on a ranch called the Doll Baby just outside Payson, Ar. and he wanted a wife. He wanted single women to send him a letter and a photograph. Within a week, Grant received over 40 letters. Several contained photos of attractive women in bikini bathing suits.

It turned out that Maxwell had not sent the letter. A bunch of his cowboy friends penned it after an evening of drinking and didn't tell Grant about the joke.

Well, I knew nothing about the facts but it sounded like a good story and I planned to milk it for all it was worth. That Saturday morning, I loaded my brother John into our car and we set off for Payson about 180 miles northeast of Phoenix. We were driving a sports car -- a British MGA convertible.

Lonely Arizona Bachelor

As we drove into Payson, the car attracted the interest of a group of local girls. They admired the racy looks of the convertible and asked if it was a race car. We told them it was, of course, and then we asked for directions to the Doll Baby Ranch.

One of the girls knew Maxwell Grant and warned us about him.

"Watch out," she said. "He and his buddies are drinkers and they're with their guns. They're crazy cowboys. Hell, they're liable to shoot you."

I smiled. "We're fearless journalists and we're after a story. Nothing scares us. Just tell us how to get to his ranch."

The ranch was about six miles from town on a narrow one-lane road. We drove until we found it. A pickup truck was parked in the yard in front of a ranch-style home. We parked our car and I walked up to the door and knocked.

A voice inside said, "Come on in, watch out for rattlesnakes."

Matrimonial Ad Prank

We walked in. The place was empty. Then we saw a parrot in a cage, the greeter. My brother and I exchanged surprised glances. At that moment we looked out the window and saw a big man on a brown horse who had just ridden into the yard. He got off the horse about the same time a little grey-haired woman came out of the barn.

My brother and I walked about the door and apologized for entering the empty house.

"Your parrot invited us inside," I stammered. "We're here to interview the rancher who advertised for a wife."

The cowboy glared at us. "I am the cowboy and I didn't advertise for a wife. A couple of my friends did and when I find out who it was, they're gonna be dead meat. Who do you fellows work for"

I was afraid to tell him the National Enquirer.

Maxwell and his mother turned out to be friendly folks. They even invited us to have lunch with them. We enjoyed the lunch and then followed the rancher into town. He took us to the bar where his friends had gotten inebriated before they wrote the letter.

Well, I didn't write the story until now. Maxwell threatened to shoot me if I did. I hope he was just kidding. He showed me the letters and the photos and I even tried to talk him into responding to a couple of the girls.

The cowboy rancher glared at me and reached for his gun. I backed off.

"Maxwell, I was just kidding," I said.

His mother grinned at my brother. "I'm a widow,"she said. "Are you married?"