Roadside Rest

Roadside Rest Newspaper Ads Were the Words that Wed the West

We all know about the Colt and Winchester, the guns that won the West. Romantic myth spinners would likely ascribe pacification beyond the 100th meridian also to the Stetson hat, Justin boot, Butterfield stage, Santa Fe pufferbelly, Bull Durham tobacco, Pendleton blanket, and Arbuckle coffee.

So much for how the West was won, if only in the movies. But how was the West wed?

Modern perspective might help illuminate the question and its answer. For example, occasionally these days some consumer protection crusader cautions lonesome suitors about the risks and deficiencies of commercial dating services. A typical lament of the recently bilked goes about like this: An optimistic, love-hungry customer has plunked down $500 to $1,000 to ensure romantic bliss. Photographs, resumes, and schedules have been exchanged. Time passes. But instead of the promised dozens of meaningful and gratifying relationships, so far: zip! He or she wants a refund.

Well, too bad for the gullible lovelorn, I say. My heart goes out to the dating services. These diligent matchmakers labor tirelessly, carrying on a legitimate profession of meshing neuroses in a world aswarm with amateurs. If you think this is not so, peek into some of the bistros ballyhooed in the so-called Life & Leisure sections of the dailies, or read the hip want ads on the back pages of the streetsmart weeklies: "A 22 Y F natfood freak closet tattooist will share 30' W'bago w/ older M foot fetishist, mustache OK."

The mind reels. But it may ease our alarm to remember that this sort of thing has transpired in the West for maybe 10,000 years. A great deal of prehistoric rock art is explicitly anatomical and the petroglyphic symbols could have had something to do with the dating game.

In the last century, women grew scarcer as one wended toward the sunset. For bach-elors way out West,

newspapers of that era routinely carried

Amorous advertisements, such as this sample from a Yuma weekly: "Wanted: a nice, plump, healthy, good-natured, goodlooking domestic and affectionate lady to correspond with. Object: matrimony. If anybody doesn't like our way of going about this business... it's none of their business."

Today women in America outnumber men. But the opposite odds prevailed when another ad made the rounds of the pioneer

press, after it originated in a Prescott paper:

"Wanted by a middleaged man, pretty soon: a wife, not under 25 years of age and just a bit on the lazy side; fond of reading; just enough of ambition to keep herself clean and look after the household; very little work to do; washing put out. A lady on the slender side preferred; about a 36-inch bust measure; don't care if she has not the second shirt to her back, if She only has sense enough not to be spoiled by being cared for when she is sick. Ladies that may imagine themselves being hypnotized by gentlemen in the neighborhood need not apply."

How that enterprise turned out is lost to history. But assuming there were several applicants to choose from, the hopeful bridegroom had access to sound advice. Widely printed in Western journals was expert guidance in selecting a mate. Here's

By Don Dedera

the wisdom of Prof. Winfield Hall of Northwestern University: "Four things must be considered: her health, her hereditary qualities, her education and her age.

"Exclude from the ranks a girl in poor health. It's a calamity for a man to marry such a girl. Let her go out into the woods for a year or so, and develop the ability to walk 15 or 20 miles and return without fatigue, and with Dame Nature's priceless rouge upon her cheeks. Look up the health records of her parents and grandparents. Avoid the daughter of a confirmed alcoholic."Don't marry a girl just because she has a pretty figure and large, lustrous eyes and is a beautiful dancer, if at 20 she has only the mind of a girl 12 years old.

"Don't marry an heiress.

"Don't marry a girl just because she knows nothing of Latin and Greek. It is nothing against her if she has had a college education, provided she knows how to cook meals, wash clothes and care for children.

"A man of 21 should marry a girl between 19 and 23; at 25, between 21 and 27; at 30, between 23 and 28; at 40, between 25 and 33; at 45, between 25 and 35; at 50, between 40 and 50; at 60, between 45 and 60; at 70, between 50 and 60; at 80, between 50 and 70."

On second thought, maybe that formula made sense long ago in relatively populated Illinois, but on the Arizona frontier unattached cowmen, prospectors, shopkeepers, soldiers, and freighters had little opportunity to pick and choose. For them, likely the want ads didn't much work. But at least men of the majority didn't have to contend with many lady tattooists willing to share granola and Winnebago RV quarters with mustachioed gentlemen of certain strange proclivities.