Fort Scott residents get an old time treat

Joe Lester, of Kansas, Okla., recites poetry for a small audience inside Fort Scott Community College at Saturday's Echoes of the Trail Cowboy Gathering. In addition to being a cowboy poet, Lester is a leather worker, rawhide braider, singer/guitar player, and chuck wagon cook with experience on Kansas ranches and feedlots.The weekend event highlighted songs, poetry and chuckwagon cooking. Michael Glover/Tribune Photo

Don Collop is a chuckwagon cook. Cowboys on cattle drives referred to these cooks as "cookies."

His camp is set up just like what you would see on a cattle drive. A Peter Schutler chuckwagon, an open fire pit and hanging kettle pans and pots.

Collop wants to preserve the life of a cowboy on cattle drives. That's why he traveled 300 miles one way to Fort Scott to be a part of the annual Echoes of the Trail Cowboy Gathering over the weekend at the Fort Scott Community College.

"The American cowboy is a hero," he said. "It's part of our heritage that I hate to see go to pot. As long as I'm able, I hope to be able to bring these demonstrations out and show them to young people."

Collop owns and operates the "Flying T Bar E Ranch" at Colony, Mo. He's one of the founders of the Missouri Cowboy Poets Association. That affiliation led to an interest in chuckwagon cooking.

Collup served breakfast and "dinner" or what we now call lunch. They cooked up chuck stew, ham and beans, corn bread and cobbler, all made from scratch over an open fire.

"It's been a fantastic day, you couldn't ask for it to be any better," Collop said Saturday at his campsite under shade trees on the campus lawn. "We've had a good day here."

Collop has attended all but one of the 12 Echoes events. Collop, who's from Rutledge, Mo., a small town in Northeast Missouri, has to haul his two wagons and other equipment around in a large truck. The truck likes gas -- rich and expensive gas. The high prices have affected Collop's ability to attend other cowboy events, but not Echoes.

"If we didn't love coming down here, we wouldn't be here," Collop said. "We love it. The people here are really fine people."

He mostly travels around to schools and talks about the cowboy way of life. He speaks about what a cowboy's life was like on a cattle drive. He said by talking to the kids, he can promote the preservation of cowboys.

A cattle drive consisted of about a dozen cowboys to handle around 1,000 cattle. The cook would make three meals a day: breakfast, dinner and supper. They'd start out early in the morning and travel about six or seven miles a day. The cowboys would allow the cattle to graze along the way so they would be as fat as possible when they reached the market.

The Echoes of the Trail gives people the opportunity to take a trip back to the Old West. It included original and traditional cowboy poetry, stories and music. Vendors also sold pottery and crafts.