"Far from Home on the Range," Plains Folk #512 (Copyright Hoy & Isern)

This is my Kansas Day column, although it won't seem like it at first. Trust me.

A few weeks ago I mentioned the New Zealand shepherd-poet, Ross McMillan. I went to New Zealand to study the tussock grasslands there in comparison with our own North American plains. This meant looking at more than just the crops and livestock. I wanted to find out if people there felt about their country the way we do about ours. So I went to find Ross, thinking that his pastoral verse might be akin to the cowboy poetry of my homeland.

It is, and it isn't. In some respects his verse is like the cowboy poetry of North America. It's full of place names--sheep stations, country towns, peaks and valleys; and full of characters--shepherds, shearers, hard-working women. Where a cowboy poet might celebrate a cutting horse, he makes over a heading dog. He says Wilf Carter, the singing Alberta cowboy (known in the states as Montana Slim), was a favorite of his, and nowadays he likes Tom T. Hall for his story-songs.

But certain things distinctive of New Zealand, especially the pub scene, are prominent in Ross's poetry. And many of his meters and modes of expression would strike most cowboy poets as too unconventional. I like his poetry a lot. It's the genuine stuff of life in Central Otago.

When I caught up with Ross he was on a centennial trail ride across the South Island. The riders, most of them sheep-station people, were stopping for the night and having a beer-becue in a big tent. I got to talk to Ross, as planned, and also had some welcome surprises.

This was where I found out how popular American country & western music is in the southern reaches of New Zealand. A local boy made good, John Hore Grennell, was providing entertainment. His repertoire was a mix of American C & W and his own original material, songs like "The Sheep-Crutching Blues."

Some folks sat around on haybales, and others danced, mainly two-steps and waltzes. The men mostly wore jeans, oilskin drover's coats, American cowboy boots, and felt hats of Australasian blocking. The women mostly wore moleskins cut jean-style, and otherwise were costumed more variably.

This scene was homey to me. If I stepped outside, of course, the stars were all wrong, but inside the tent, the atmosphere was all right.

There was a powerful sense of place in there. Grennell uses the C & W tune, "Welcome to My World," as his themesong. I asked a few people, some of whom were singing along, and they all thought it was a New Zealand song about the Maniototo Valley.

And then I saw something that I, native son of Kansas, never saw before. Grennell started in on a familiar three-four tune, I quickly doffed my hat in respect, but the couples all commenced waltzing--dancing to "Home on the Range"! Back in the 1870s, "Home on the Range" was a dance song. In my time, I never even heard it played at a dance. I had to fly away eleven thousand miles to see it. That, fellow patriots, was a Kansas Day for me.

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