A Colt .45 and a Chili Queen
The New Classics
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3m 40s
Drum tells a hilarious tale of self reliance gone wrong...or maybe right.
This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts.gov.
Drum Hadley recites "A Colt .45 and a Chili Queen" during the very first Cowboy Poetry Gathering in 1985. Drum was a longtime resident of Arizona who was a rancher, poet, and one of the visionaries of the sustainable ranching movement. He was a founding member of the Animas Foundation, which bought the Gray Ranch in New Mexico from the Nature Conservancy and operated it as a cattle ranch—what he and his colleagues in the Malpai Borderlands Group called "a working wilderness." He was a frequent participant in the early years of the Gathering, presenting poetry as well as participating in panel discussions on rangeland issues. He passed in 2016 at the age of 77.
"A Colt .45 and a Chili Queen" was published in the book "Voice of the Borderlands,” which sought to tell of his region’s people and landscape through narrative poetry.
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