7 Dark Roses - Free Audio ebooks

San Francisco’s Barbary Coast and Denver’s Holladay

Street were probably the wickedest and wildest enclaves in

all the wild, wild West. Even so, there were few Eastern

metropolises that gave such quick and unstinting support

to cultural projects as did

San Francisco and Denver, even

in their raucous infancy.

San Franciscans always showed an appreciation for

music and art—even in the days when the city was a gold-

rush-era Helidorado. There are very few metropolises in the

United States today with higher general levels of taste and

culture than San Francisco—and the city’s cultural

traditions go back well over a century.

Denver had its Occidental Hall and the Tabor Grand

Opera House—the latter built by

H. A. W. Tabor, as crude a

character as can be found in American history. The Tabor

Grand Opera House was a showplace of the West. Operas,

concerts and lectures were given there—and Denverites

packed the auditorium, liste

ned attentively and, if

contemporary accounts are to be believed, appreciatively.

I believe I am qualified to comment personally on the

culture-shunning myth of the American frontier. My own

forebears came to the United States in the Eighteenth

Century. They were pioneers, mainly farmers, who came to

America to build their futures in the wilderness. It was for

one of them, James Getty, th

at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,

was named. Judging by the memorabilia these people left

behind, they and large numbers of their contemporaries

hungered for culture and knowledge in all forms. They read

avidly, passing books—particularly the classics—from hand

to hand. They dreamed of the day when they could have

good oil paintings on the walls of the good homes they

hoped to build. They tried to teach their children to

appreciate and love fine literature, art and music.

My own father was born in 1855 on an Ohio farm—and a

very poor and unproductive farm at that. His widowed

mother was impoverished and life was anything but simple

and easy. Yet, the thirst for intellectual and cultural

betterment was great. My father worked his way through

school and college, and one of his greatest sources of pride

was his membership in the university’s literary society.

I, myself, had a heaping helpin

g of life on America’s last

frontier when, in 1904, my fath

er, mother and I went to the

Oklahoma Territory. Clapboard and raw-pine settlements

had mushroomed overnight around newly discovered oil

fields and newly established drilling sites. Most grown men

habitually carried six-guns strapped to their waists;

shooting affrays were everyday commonplaces.

The oil-field workers and wildcatters were certainly

hard, tough and virile, but I can remember many of the

toughest among them dressing up in their Sunday best and

going to Oklahoma City or Tulsa to hear a touring opera

company or a concert artist perform.

When they struck it rich, a great many oil men—I might

even say most—bought or built homes and purchased

paintings, sculpture and antique furniture and rugs for

them. They also went East, to New York, to see the plays

and hear the operas and concerts.

True, their tastes were seldom refined or matured—at

least not at first. But the fact remains that these rugged,

hard-bitten men

did

thirst for artistic beauty, and they

did

take an active interest in and show appreciation for

things cultural. By no means were they the culture phobes

that so many modern Americans think all frontiersmen and

old timers were and whose imagined example they seek to

emulate in order to prove themselves rugged, two-fisted all-

male men.

There are other factors that help produce such a high

proportion of educated barbarians among American men—

but, regardless of the causes, the results are deplorable.

The saddest part of the whole situation is that the

United States

does

possess outstanding cultural

institutions and facilities. American symphony orchestras

and opera companies are among the finest in the world.

American museums and art galleries—public and private—

have amassed some of the world’s greatest collections of

paintings, sculpture, tapestries, antique furniture—of art

in all its forms from all historical periods.

Great music is available on phonograph records and

recording tapes. Fine works by contemporary painters and

sculptors and fine reproductions of the works of the

masters are well within the reach of most Americans’

pocketbooks. The great classics of literature are available in

editions costing only a few cents per volume. Courses in art

and music appreciation, literature, poetry and drama are

offered, not only in the public schools and colleges, but also

in adult education programs.

Tragically, only a comparatively tiny fraction of the

population—and particularly of

the male population—takes

advantage of the myriad facilities and opportunities that

are offered throughout the country.

Symphony orchestras and opera companies often end

their seasons with staggering deficits. Few, indeed, are the

art museums and galleries that can report regular heavy

attendance. Countless record albums featuring the

caterwaulings of some bosomy

chanteuse

or tone-deaf

crooner are sold for every album of serious music that is

purchased. Even greater numbers of lurid, ill-written

novels are snapped up for every volume of serious literature

that is bought. Save for a few sections of the country,

cultural classes and courses seldom if ever have capacity

enrollments. Teachers and professors who conduct such

classes have told me that a course that should have 30 or

40 students enrolled in it will have only six or eight.

Americans, and especially American men, must realize

that an understanding and appreciation of literature,

drama, art, music—in short, of culture—will give them a

broader, better foundation in life, and will enable them to

enjoy life more, and more fully. It will provide them with

better balance and perspective, with interests that are

pleasing to the senses and inwardly satisfying and

gratifying.

Far from emasculating or effeminizing a man, a cultural

interest serves to make him more completely male as well

as a more complete human being. It stimulates and

vitalizes him as an individual—and sharpens his tastes,

sensibilities and sensitivity for and to all things in life.

The cultured man is almost invariably a self-assured,

urbane and completely confident male. He recognizes,

appreciates and enjoys the subtler shadings and nuances to

be found in the intellectual, emotional and even physical

spheres of human existence—and in the relationships

between human beings. Be it in a board room or a bedroom,

he is much better equipped to play his masculine role than

is the heavy-handed and maladroit educated barbarian.

It isn’t necessary to force-feed oneself with culture nor to

forsake other interests in order to experience the benefits

and pleasures offered by cultural pursuits. One’s

preferences, tastes and knowledge should be developed

slowly, gradually—and enjoyably. Culture is like a fine wine

that one drinks in the compan

y of a beautiful woman. It

should be sipped and savored—never gulped.