OK. We're watching Siveraldo for the bazillinth time and I finally decide to ask you fine folks this question. In endless westerns our heroes, and also the bad guys, are always brewing coffee over an open fire out in the wide open spaces. How come there's never any coffee pot type bulges in their saddle bags when they're riding around? Where do these coffee pots come from? What the ..uh, "heck", is going on here?

John Wayne wouldn't pitch camp anywhere unless it had a coffee pot. Same as my wife won't stay at a hotel that doesn't have a blow dryer.

Same place where they get the Colts SAA with 17 rounds.

They didn't have back packs?

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Dum vivo cano

cowboys in westerns seem to sleep in little tents quite often to... and on the fire.... where did they get the nice pieces of timber in the desert?

Come to think of it, where did they stash their guitars?

They store them with that eighty-piece orchestra playing behind a big rock.

Think about it--if they had to break camp in a hurry, a pot of scalding coffee in a saddlebag could be a problem.

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Oh well, what the hell.

And why didn't they keep them stashed?

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Oh well, what the hell.

Didn't you know they had folding coffee pots back then?

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Life Is A Gift. Defend it!

I always like the 'ranches' they show in Monument Valley and such places; not a blade of grass visible from here to the horizon. A lot of it was called "The Great American Desert" for a reason!

It's because they carried miniature Keurig brewers and those tiny little 1-cup brew packs that take up only a little room in their saddlebags, leaving plenty of room for hardtack, bacon,
sugar, extra ammo, a couple sets of clean drawers, and a small bag of concentrated horse feed.

Oh, and a bottle of whiskey for him and his horse and a $5 gold piece to help him get lucky at Miss Kitty's

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Gunner, Sabot Up!

Well, you see, there were hundreds of government-sponsored campsites all over the Old West, each equipped with a coffee pot, frying pan, and a quarter cord of firewood. Cowboys, lawmen, and outlaws alike would ride in, kindle a fire, brew up a pot of coffee and chill out. In the morning they'd ride on, unburdened by cookware. No one ever washed anything, particularly the coffee pots, because as everyone knows, "A washed pot never boils."

In the diary of Confederate infantry solider he talked of a issue cast iron skillet of about 4" Dia. and boiling coffee in it and the whole beans were smashed with the rifle but as no grinders were issued. He also mentioned drinking the coffee from the skillet. Seeing as a large number of the western folk were of southern linage, I'm sure they were capable of drinking coffee without a coffee pot. Ivan

I bet these guys would know!

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Life Is A Gift. Defend it!

I've traveled through a lot of the west and one thing that always seemed odd was that where ever I went I never could hear 'Western music' playing. Not even a harmonica.

Oh, the coffee pots..... they were collapsible.

Fanny packs. They carried them in fanny packs.

I've always wondered about the women out on the trail . . . I mean, I drove my family to Disney World last summer in a air conditioned car with state run rest stops along the route, and conveniance stores, and drive thru fast food, and there was still a lot of drama.

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- Change it back -

They are just movies. They are not real. Movies are just fanasties. Larry

I love the old western movies but like you I have wondered about things like a coffee pot. One of the biggest things I wonder about is there is no horse piles on the ground in the western towns. I also wonder if in the real western towns if they had people to pick up all the horse piles. If they did employ people to pick it up and they were government employees , well I don't want to even think about that. Don

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"Don't worry be happy"

Western etiquette was to leave the coffee pots at the campfire for the next hooligan to use so they wouldn't have to pack'em around!

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Dennis
SWCA #2409, SWHF #353

Mules, all that extra stuff was carried by the pack string that was carefully kept out of the picture because if you've ever packed mules the mule skinner makes the cowboys look like wimps ;-)

When I was a wee little lad, I used to see street sweepers, occasionally, in movies. I thought they were cleaning up litter.

When I got grown I discovered they were really picking up horse poop.

Attached Images

1896 NY street sweeper.jpg (76.8 KB, 206 views)

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I always take precautions

The prop department...duh...................

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Forum consigliere

The coffee pot? 12-cup model?

Easy.

In the horse's butt.

Didn't you ever see Support Your Local Sheriff? Walter Brennan said when he found out Jake was the deputy said, "Why just last week he was shovelin" horse...uh, workin' in the stables."

CW

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μολὼν λαβέ

They were Swiss Army guitars....

In some movies , ya occasionally could spot one simply lashed onto the pack mule.

This actually makes the most sense so far.

Or mud. And those wide dirt streets never seem to raise a puff of dust when somebody rides by. And nobody has a speck of dirt on their clothes. There was one western where the heroine (might have been Joan Crawford) was traipsing about in a white dress, including running around outside at night in the desert, and that dress stayed as white as though it was fresh from a Clorox commercial.

And how they can have those gunfights inside a saloon without the room filling up with powder smoke....

They are carried concealed, most likely IWB.

I'll bet that putting that hot pot back was a real rodeo.

In the movies:

I always wondered about how the single, lone rider left Dodge City aboard a horse with no gear stashed on except a flat set of saddlebags and made it to Tombstone.

I have read all of Louis L'Amour's novels. I still read them, as well others, and know this. If the western writers had strictly adhered to the truth, or the most likely; the solitary, one horse riding, unsupported, six-gun and rifle only "hero" would have been dead by the third chapter.

In a modern western the "lone traveler" would have a brew-machine, a prime selection of coffee blends, a choice set of designer coffee cups; and a "barista" on a mule instead of a silly sidekick.

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Have guns...will shoot'em.

That's just awful!

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Oh well, what the hell.

And they are still shoveling manure today.

You just runied my day.

Hollywood fantasy. To quota a famous Hollywood cowboy, Steve McQueen in 'Tom Horn', "I don't think you know just how raggedy *** the old West really was".

I read my GGF's account from after the War and his journey west, and it was fraught with peril, filth, and very hard work. He was a cabinetmaker by trade, and hired on to move freight for the Mormons to SLC. He ended up in Texas running a brickmaking business in Dallas. This was after stints at silver mining and cabinetry in various locales throughout the west.

Most made it west via wagon until the railroads were established, so that's where they carried coffee pots. Even cowboys had a chuck wagon to carry stores for them. Other pioneers traveled on horseback, usually with a pack animal, or walked with a pack animal. Some just walked with packs.

I think Hollywood uses quite a few assumptions and suspensions of disbelief in their products, as the day to day in the west was 90% boredom and grinding poverty, with the remaining 10% being pure terror ending in sickness and/or death. Not the type of thing that sells seats in a theatre, or commands an audience on TV in order to sell products. Reality mostly sucks, and people don't want to watch it, especially if they have to pay to do so; at least that's my opinion.

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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

I think it was Charlie Goodnight who invented the chuck wagon. Had a place for everything the cook needed and storage for the bedrolls for the drovers.

Before the chuck wagon, they had to use instant coffee

I figured a guy named Cookie carried all the gear in the rear.

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I'm with the banned ...

I tried to find it...but failed. theres a great cartoon from "The Far Side".

Two Cowpokes around the fire...one holding a coffee pot with tubing running around it and a few pressure gauges...He says to the other guy; "Latte Jed"?

Looks like that guy probably stored his coffee pot in his hat.

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M&P40c/15-22/SD9VE/Mossy500

The proper name for those "horse piles" is road apples.

It's a movie. Hollywood is famous for taking "artistic license." Everyone knows real cowboys drink tea.

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Insert short witty words here

Did you ever notice that when someone died on the trail a shovel somehow showed up for burial duties and dissapeared when the fellas left the grave site? In lonesome Dove a man was trying to bury his friends using a tin plate as a shovel. Thats realism in my thinking.

Okay but how'd they strap it on the horse?

I don't know how to post pictures, BUT for those who have mastered this art, a picture of "coffee pot rock" in the Red Rock Country near Sedona, AZ may give some insight to the coffee pot question,

Starbucks delivers?

AKA meadow muffins.

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Oh well, what the hell.

For a very short while in between jobs in early 1965 I worked security for universal studios. By chance right now I am watching the rare breed. I was on that set and met brian keith, maureen ohara, jimmy stewart and the others. They had a very old broken down ex rodeo rider that someone else told me he was a old actor that was walking around with a dust pan and shovel picking up the horse T (dung). I got talking to him and found he had cowboyed with a old friend I had up in the grand tetons. (Dewey van winkle). I had worked with dewey in the park service. He was about 70 in 1961. Dewey had been sheriff of teton county before I knew him. These guys told me they ran cattle in the tetons before there was roads there. Anyway when I lived and worked in north hollywood in 1965 there were quite a few of the real deal cowboys and stuntmen that lived where I did. They worked for the studios and stabels in the area. No big deal but I enjoyed knowing them for a few months.

Now that's cool. Not only get your coffee, but can have sugar with it.

http://sedonaproperty.net/images/poll/coffeepot.jpg

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I always take precautions