Bottom of the Hill Publishing

admin July 30th, 2010

Ballad of a Small Town, Adventures of Logan West (ISBN: 978-1-935785-01-9) is now available in print and Kindle form.

Hal Swift’s Ballad of a Small Town is the story of banjo pickin’ Logan West, Shorty and a unique mountain settlement in western Utah Territory, called Drytown.

Drytown, originally Big Bend, Utah Territory, was a small community near the cross-country Overland Trail, used by travelers in the mid-to-late 1800s. Drytown was important, mainly because it was on the way to somewhere else. What that means is that Drytown was a major transfer point, where supply wagons traveling east and west, off-loaded merchandise to other wagons that carried it to towns and ranches north and south of Drytown.

In 1864–the last year of the Civil War–the western part of Utah Territory became the state of Nevada.

In 1869, when the Central Pacific Railroad in its westward expansion reached Drytown, company officials renamed it Wadsworth, in honor of the respected Civil War Union general, James Wadsworth. The story is that, when he was killed in battle, both sides ceased fighting until his body was removed from the field of combat.

Many of the characters in the tales are real people. Others are fictional. They are a very accepting group of people and mix together with few problems.

The town of Wadsworth is located 27 miles northeast of Lake’s Crossing, which now is Reno. Shorty’s Place is based on Shorty’s Lunchroom, a popular refreshment spot in mid to the late 1860’s Wadsworth. I got the idea for Shorty’s Place from a hectographed newspaper, the Wadsworth Bee, from the early 1870’s. The late Carl Shelly, former state senator, and owner of Shelly’s Hardware in Sparks, also was instrumental in the founding of the Sparks Museum. It was he who showed me the Wadsworth Bee, and wondered if it might give me some story ideas. It did.

By the way, most of the drinks served in Shorty’s Place are buttermilk, sassafras tea, and sasparilla. Which, as everyone knows, are the choice of all real cowboys.

You can get it now for Kindle form Amazon or get it in print from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other fine booksellers.

Look for a collection of Hal’s Cowboy Poems soon to be released.

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admin April 27th, 2010

Drytown History

Drytown, originally Big Bend, Utah Territory, was a small community near the cross-country Overland Trail, used by travelers in the mid-to-late 1800s. Drytown was important, mainly because it was on the way to somewhere else.

What that means is that Drytown was a major transfer point, where supply wagons traveling east and west, off-loaded merchandise to other wagons that carried it to towns and ranches north and south of Drytown.

In 1864–the last year of the Civil War–the western part of Utah Territory became the state of Nevada.

In 1869, when the Central Pacific Railroad in its westward expansion reached Drytown, company officials renamed it Wadsworth, in honor of the respected Civil War Union general, James Wadsworth. The story is that, when he was killed in battle, both sides ceased fighting until his body was removed from the field of combat.

Many of the characters in the tales are real people. Others are fictional. They are a very accepting group of people and mix together with few problems.

The town of Wadsworth is located 27 miles northeast of Lake’s Crossing, which now is Reno. Shorty’s Place is based on Shorty’s Lunchroom, a popular refreshment spot in mid to the late 1860’s Wadsworth. I got the idea for Shorty’s Place from a hectographed newspaper, the Wadsworth Bee, from the early 1870’s. The late Carl Shelly, former state senator, and owner of Shelly’s Hardware in Sparks, also was instrumental in the founding of the Sparks Museum. It was he who showed me the Wadsworth Bee, and wondered if it might give me some story ideas. It did.

By the way, most of the drinks served in Shorty’s Place are buttermilk, sassafras tea, and sasparilla. Which, as everyone knows, are the choice of all real cowboys.

Ballad of a Small Town, Adventures of Logan West has been released for Kindle and will soon be available in print.

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admin April 27th, 2010

Ballad’s Genesis

The idea for Ballad of a Small Town was born when I saw a copy of the Wadsworth, NV newspaper* from around 1869. In it was an ad for Shorty’s Lunchroom. Shorty’s Place grew out of that, and I put it in Drytown, which was still Wadsworth’s name in 1864–it was also called Big Bend, referring to the bend in the Truckee River as it headed north toward what we whites call Pyramid Lake. The Numa (Paiutes) call it Panunadu.

In January of 1996, Dorman Nelson, editor and publisher of Western Tales Magazine, bought “Letter From Shorty,”–a short story based on Shorty’s Lunchroom–but he had to shut down the magazine for various reasons. He advised me to continue writing, but to put my western short stories into a collection, with a unifying theme or character and make them into a novel.

Working on that idea, I found what I wanted in Logan West, a journalism graduate from Indiana, whose bride eloped with their best man. Logan heads west to write the novel he’s long thought about doing, takes his banjo along, and winds up working in Shorty’s Place.

Before the first story was finished, the idea for “the ballad” manifested. As a troubadour of sorts, it seemed natural for Logan to write a ballad based on his travels, and “Ballad of a Small Town,” was born. Each chapter is prefaced by an excerpt from the ballad.

Although I have a melody for the ballad in my head, I’ve left it to the reader to compose his or her own. Just remember, it’s being accompanied by a really mellow-sounding banjo.

*Newspapers of the day often were printed on a Hectograph. A special gel was poured into a shallow pan–much like a cookie pan–and a paper “master” copy was laid on top of the gel, face down. The master copy was rolled gently with a rubber roller and the gel took on the impression of what was on the paper master copy. After the master copy was removed, blank paper was laid on the gel and it was gently pressed down with the same roller. The information on the gel was impressed on the surface of the paper. One-hundred copies could be made before the gel lost its efficiency. Hectograph comes from Greek. Hecto means one-hundred, and graph means “drawn”.

Ballad of a Small Town, Adventures of Logan West has been released for Kindle and will soon be available in print.

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admin April 26th, 2010

Bottom of the Hill Publishing will help bring the cowboy poetry and stories of Hal Swift to print.

Hal has lived and worked in Indiana, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, California and Nevada–he knows the rural life and the West. His life experiences are many and varied.

A Navy Morse Code radio operator, he’s a veteran of the Japan Occupation Forces, and the Korean War. He’s worked as a musician, store clerk, security guard, disc jockey, reporter, and news editor. He’s gained national attention as a writer of Western short stories, and cowboy poetry. His book, “Cowboy Poems and Outright Lies,” published in 2001, is on the shelf of the Fife Folklore Archives at Utah State University, Logan, Utah, and is in the Dickinsen Research Center National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City. It also is in a section of the Washoe County Nevada Library, known as “The Nevada Shelf.”

Many of his poems are on various websites, available by going to a search engine and typing in Hal Swift, Cowboy Poet.
Although he’s semi-retired now, he still considers himself a writer and reporter of the human condition, past and present. He lives within a half-hour’s drive from Drytown–now Wadsworth, Nevada–where the events depicted in his novel, Ballad of a Small Town take place.

Ballad of a Small Town, Adventures of Logan West has been released for Kindle and will soon be available in print.

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