AMERICA FEVER: A Swede in the West 1914-1923

by Erick H. Youngquist ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1990

The reminiscences of a young Swede who, in 1914, emigrated to the American West. Although Youngquist never experienced the adventures of a Buffalo Bill or Texas Jack, whose tales had inspired the 19-year-old to become a wrangler on a Nebraska cattle ranch, he loved America's vastness and beauty and the camaraderie of his fellow ranchhands. As a ""greenhorn,"" he endured with admirable equanimity their sometimes dangerous practical jokes: e.g., their yoking renegade horses to his wagon. Methodically, he set out to master the wrangler's calling; to learn to ""speak American"" (with the help of a Sears Roebuck catalogue and the Mutt and Jeff comic strip); to educate himself in his new country's ways and history; and, finally, someday, to get a homestead of his own. In elemental prose, he details here the techniques of rounding up, branding, dehorning, and castrating calves; of halter-breaking horses; of mowing hay into windrows. He also describes his seven-year quest (interrupted by military service in WW I) to get a spread of his own. Moving from job to job (on cattle and sheep ranches and railroads, with a logging operation and a sawmill), he investigated land in Wyoming, Utah, and Oregon. At last he established squatter's rights on a well-watered 160 acres in Montana, to which he finally took title in 1923. Alas, his Swedish bride-to-be wanted no part of homesteading. Seemingly unruffled, Youngquist went straight from Sweden to Detroit, where he worked for the Ford Motor company, and later with the police department in nearby Dearborn. An engaging contribution to the annals of the settlement of the West.

Pub Date: March 1, 1990

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Voyageur (P.O. Box 150127, Nashville, TN 37215)

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990

Categories: NONFICTION