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The crowd erupted. Mark liked that. I may have understated the matter. When Mark returned to Wapiti Valley, Wyoming, in the summer of 1940, Ken began teaching him rodeo. At first they stayed fairly close to home, practicing at the dude ranch and at nearby events. Ken knew rodeo. Mark
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Mark had gone West to become a cowboy. Then Ken told him he was going to teach him how to be a hazer. There was only one problem. Mark had no idea what a hazer was. He had met Ken the previous year on a combine crew in South Dakota.
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After fifth grade, Mark King’s education became a rather intermittent affair. On the farm in Wisconsin, he had faithfully walked five miles each way to school, even through snow. When he and his mother returned to New Jersey, where the schoolyard could become a battlefield, Mark chose work instead.
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Not often you get three summers in one year. Mark King managed it before he turned 14. His first was ending in New Jersey in August 1939. School was approaching, and doing nothing would make the decision for him. On his 13th birthday, Mark chose west. By autumn he had
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Mark King had crossed the Pacific once by ship. He was going home by air. At 13, Mark had never been in an airplane. Now he wore a borrowed shirt, carried a military bag and tried to behave as though being the seventh member of an American military flight crew
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For the first time in five months in Australia, Mark King had money in his pocket and nowhere he had to be. The cattle season was over. After the final roundup, one of the family drove Mark back to Perth. They had treated the 13-year-old American warmly, and
Religion
Guest Contributor: Father Tom Nelson My name is Father Tom Nelson and I am the Pastor at Saint Ann’s Catholic Church in Dayton, NV. Saint Ann’s was officially established on Pike Street in 1937 up until then Catholic services had been celebrated in parishioners homes or Saint Mary
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For several days, the station had been getting ready. The shearing shed, quiet for much of the year, was swept and cleared. Equipment was checked, extra food laid in, sleeping space prepared, and sheep gathered near the shed. Thirteen-year-old Mark King pitched in wherever another pair of hands
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Light filtered through the window well before the 5:09 sunrise, announcing another long summer day. Even after supper, the sun would still be hanging above the western horizon. It was Christmas Day. For someone raised in the northern United States, almost everything about that sentence feels wrong. Christmas belongs
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When I was young, I fell in love with a dark blue 1930 Ford Model A Coupe with a rumble seat. It took nine loads to bring the parts home and another nine months before it became a car again. In Southern California, where freeways ruled the landscape, it barely
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Sometimes God chooses the most ordinary day to begin His greatest work. For my father, Mark King, one such day began in December 1939. At thirteen, Mark had recently arrived on a sheep station in the hills east of Perth, Western Australia. To Mark it was an adventure. To the
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Sometimes you reach a place in life where you quietly wonder whether you've made the right decision. Thirteen-year-old Mark King wondered exactly that as the Australian coastline slowly rose from the Indian Ocean. Behind him lay nearly a month at sea caring for 20 cattle and