Me & Wilse Lambert

I remember my granddad used to always tell tales about the time him and Wilse Lambert went to Kansas. As far as I ever knew, my granddad never was in Kansas so these were tales that he either came up with by himself or he borrowed them and made them his own. I remember they always used to start, “One time when me and Wilse Lambert was down in Kansas….”!

I recall that one of these stories was about the time him and Wilse were riding their horses through a heavy snowstorm and come about evening, they had to stop and rest. They knew they were near the town they were headed for because they found a hitching post to tie their mounts to. Well, they hitched up their horses and set up camp for the night, thinking they’d go on into town in the morning. Well, it just so happened that night there was a big change in the weather and it warmed up a good bit, so much so that when they awoke, it felt like a heatwave. They also found that they were camping in the middle of a street. They wondered about this but were most concerned because they couldn’t find their horses. Wilse, after thinking for a moment, whistled for his horse and listened for it to whinny in response. Sure enough it did but the whinny was coming from on top of a building, and they looked up to find both horses hitched to the town church steeple. When they came in the night before, the snow was so deep that it made the church steeple look like a hitching post.



My granddad would tell about a story that Wilse used to tell all the time about one time when he was in Kansas. Wilse was riding along and it come to be that he was being chased by Indians. Well, Wilse tried to outrun them and thought he had lost them by running up in a small gully. Well, it turned out that the gully was a dead-end with cliffs that were at least 100 feet straight up. Wilse saw the only way out was the way they had come in, but just as he figured that out, the Indians were starting up the gully blocking any escape. Wilse found himself face to face with a group of wild Indians. At this point in the story, Wilse would stop talking and someone would inevitably ask “What happened then?” My granddad said Wilse would then just lean back in his chair, rub his whiskers and indignantly answer them, “By God, they killed me!”

I remember my granddad told countless, “Me and Wilse Lambert” stories, I wish I could remember more of them. They were always good for a laugh, and the best part is that my granddad never let on that they were anything less than the gospel truth!