I only know Starling Gray from a faded black-and-white picture in my parents’ wedding album. Years and hard work had bent his shoulders and back. He wore a grand drooping mustache, and even in the picture, his eyes sparkled. Starling Gray was my great-grandfather. My mother assured me that Starling held me when he visited soon after I was born. I have no recollection, of course. But my heart grins when I recall the simple words used to describe him. Starling was a homesteader. He was a rancher. He was a farmer. And the most magical of all.
Starling Gray was a cowboy.
I’m a child of the 1950s. Saturday mornings began with black-and-white episodes of Fury, Sky King, My Friend Flicka, and Rin Tin Tin. Westerns were on TV every night of the week. Cheyenne was my favorite. On Saturday nights, my father would let me stay up past my bedtime to watch Gunsmoke.
But the stories about Starling were real.
He was the oldest in his family. He was married, and my grandfather was his first son. In the summer of 1909, Starling left the family farm in Iowa for land of his own. He opted to purchase a relinquishment of a tree claim and laid a homestead claim to the northeast quarter of the same section. His new home was four miles south of the town of Kit Carson, Colorado in Cheyenne County.
While other newcomers to the Colorado plains lived in soddies, lean-tos, or dugouts. Starling hauled lumber from the town of Wild Horse and built a two-story house for his family. It had one door and four windows. The building swayed in the strong prairie winds. Folks in Cheyenne County called Starling’s family’s home The Tall House.
My grandfather called the farm at Kit Carson the homeplace. He shared stories of plow horses, cattle sales in Lamar, jackrabbit drives, and the time a spring blizzard forced an antelope herd to shelter near the Tall House.
On October days, uncles, cousins, and nephews gather to hunt antelope or deer on the Starling’s homestead. Now, during those hunts, I spend far too much time parked on a prairie ridge while the young ones walk and stalk.
And I think of Starling.
