The Good Old Boys
by Elmer Kelton
Afterword by Don Graham

By the turn of the century the trail drives were over and the footloose cowboy had outlived his day. Yet some, like Hewey Calloway, remained forever “fiddle-footed,” unable to settle down to a hard-scrabble farm existence, facing at best an uncertain future as the old unfettered way of life gave way to fenced pastures and the automobile. This story of Hewey’s struggle to remain footloose is infused with a kind of laconic West Texas humor that leads Hewey, with another cowboy, to “head and heel” one of those confounded new automobiles or to say disparagingly of an unsympathetic character, “He was probably descended from a long line of bachelors.” But it is also a poignant lament for a vanishing way of life, one that was simpler and less pressured. Elmer Kelton’s own strong background in the world of West Texas shows on every page.

Good Old Boys won the Western Heritage Award from the Cowboy Hall of Fame. It was first published in 1978  

ELMER KELTON is the author of over forty novels. Several have won Spur Awards from Western Writers of America and Western Heritage (Wrangler) Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. He has been honored by the Texas Institute of Letters, WWA, and the Western Literature Association for lifetime achievement.

Texas Tradition Series: Number 1