John R. Erickson

When John Erickson, author of the Hank the Cowdog book series, saved up and purchased a tract of Panhandle property near Perryton, it set off a chain of discovery. Who lived in Texas over a thousand years ago? In Porch Talk, John Erickson and his archaeologist friend Doug Boyd investigate this question while explaining the art and science of archaeology for middle readers. On the Perryton ranch, John and his friends unearthed a ghost town that dated back to around 1300 CE. They found a sprawl of widely spaced pit houses occupying an area of 300 acres in John's West Pasture. It is unclear how many people lived there, but it was a place where babies were born and the elderly died and were buried. Women nursed children, made cornmeal in stone metates, and stitched clothes of leather while the men hunted bison using arrows tipped with points made from Alibates flint.Porch Talk features the kind of conversation John and Doug might have on the porch after a day of work in the field. For more than twenty years, they worked together on this and other prehistoric sites, sharing a fascination for the ancient people who occupied the area. How did these people work, play, and survive?Any person today who picks up Porch Talk, young or old, will learn about archaeology, prehistoric Texas, and the importance of taking care of the land. The conversation will ignite your curiosity and make you aware of the brave and sturdy people who occupied this land long ago.

More than fifty years ago, John R. Erickson took a vow of discipline. Every day, he would retreat to some quiet place and write for four hours. For nearly as many years, readers have eagerly awaited the fruits of those labors, whether they be in the form of Hank the Cowdog installments or other books on ranching and the writing life in Texas.Small Town Author documents the journey of a young man eager to escape his Panhandle childhood to the adult who returned to write books for the rural readers he had previously scorned.The hurricane years of the '60s swept young Erickson to Denver, Austin, Cambridge, New York, and back. From big city to small town, from social activist to flunky bartender, from church work to ranch work, from literary aspirations to self-publishing, this winding path gave contemporary literature one of its singular voices.Erickson’s journey as an artist also intersected with much of the Texas literati. He documents his memories of J. Evetts Haley, Larry McMurtry, Al Dewlen, Elmer Kelton, and many others.While a story about literature and writers, Small Town Author also considers universal questions of how we come of age, how leaving home changes us, and how returning can make us whole.

From his home on the Texas Panhandle, John R. Erickson, rancher and author of the bestselling Hank the Cowdog series, saw firsthand the raw power of two megafires that swept across the high plains in 2006 and 2017. “These were landmark events that are etched onto the memory of an entire generation and will be passed down to the next. They made the old-time methods of fighting fire with shovels, wet gunny sacks, and ranch spray rigs a pathetic joke.”Yet Bad Smoke, Good Smoke, while relating a tale of gut-wrenching destruction, also provides a more nuanced view of what is often a natural event, giving the two-sided story of our relationship with fire. Not just a first-hand account, Bad Smoke, Good Smoke also synthesizes and explains the latest research in range management, climate, and fire. Having experienced the bad smoke, Erickson tries to understand a rancher’s relationship to good smoke and to reconcile the symbiotic relationship that a rancher has with fire.Evocatively chronicled, and now newly updated with information from the 2024 Smokehouse Creek Fire, Erickson tells what it is like trying to stop the unstoppable. Bad Smoke, Good Smoke gives voice to the particular pains that ranchers must face in our era of climate change and ever more powerful natural disasters.