Galloping Gardner

"It really disappointed my mother when I became a cowpuncher, after I'd had all that education." This is Gail Gardner '14 being quoted in the Arizona Daily Star.

But back to Prescott from Dartmouth was the route he took and Prescott is where he has stayed except for a short year in Texas as an Air Service cadet during World War I.

Winner last year of an award by the Arizona Historical Society "for his creative preservation of the folklore and history of the American cowboy," Gail has made considerable contribution of his own to western folklore, not the least of which is his famed cowboy song, "Tying the Knot in the Devil's Tale."

The verses detail the return to camp of two cowboys from an earlier era's "R & R" along Prescott's Whiskey Row.

Oh, they starts her in at the Kaintucky Bar, At the head of Whiskey Row. And they winds up down by the Depot House Some forty drinks below.

The Devil waits for the two along the path home but such expert cowpunchers are able to rope and dehorn him, tie a knot in his tail, and leave him tied to a "black-jack oak."

Gail made some pungent contributions to political lore, too, including his assertion that conservative Republican Barry Goldwater is a direct political descendent of his uncle Morris Goldwater, even though they belonged to different parties.

"They just didn't call them Republicans then. Nobody around here knew what a Republican was. If anybody had told me he was a Republican, I'd have said, 'What do I want with a registered Republican: I ain't got nothing to breed him with."

Historian, postmaster, songwriter, rancher, Gail Gardner has lived a full and colorful life since he hightailed it out of Hanover for the wide open spaces. But be it noted that some of "The Ivy" remained with him, at least his son James is a member of the Class of 1952.