Be ever true to your first calling

I have listened to between 50-100 Louis L’Amour audio dramatizations and adaptions as I have often crossed the Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Utah, and Nebraska lines on the road to our home in Rock Springs. Louis L’Amour is totally unpredictably predictable. No one knows how the hero or heroes are going to win, but in Louis L’Amour books, the hero or heroes win always. Lonely hours of driving home late from board meetings lends itself to audio presentations of Louis L’Amour, and then, believe it or not, I listen multiple times to tales I especially enjoy.

Louis Dearborn L’Amour said of himself, “I think of myself in the oral tradition — as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way I’d like to be remembered — as a storyteller. A good storyteller.”

Louis L’Amour totally filled the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about. He walked the West where his characters walked. His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research gave him unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier. That is the hallmark of his popularity.

Louis L’Amour is of French-Irish descent and he traced his family roots back to the early 1600s, when they came to North America. He followed their steady progression westward on the Western frontier. He grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota, 100 miles west of Fargo on I-94. Louis L’Amour absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather, who was scalped by Sioux warriors.

Louis L’Amour left home at the age of 15. He enjoyed many trades including being a seaman, a lumberjack, an elephant handler, a skinner of dead cattle, a miner, and an officer in the transportation-corps during World War II. He once circled the globe on a freighter, sailed an Arab sailing dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies, and on another of what he called his “yondering” days, he was stranded in the Mojave Desert. Louis L’Amour won 51 out of his 59 fights as a professional boxer. He also worked as a journalist and lecturer.

He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library had 12,000 more volumes than my own at 17,000. Among his many honors and awards, in 1983, he became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984, he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan. He died on June 10, 1988. His wife Kathy and their two children, Beau and Angelique, have carried on the L’Amour publishing tradition with new unpublished books written by Louis L’Amour.

Will I finish the book I started? I don’t know. What I do know is that I first saw the bookshop at the airport when I stopped to get my boots shined. That was a joyous experience as that man, Leonardo Enrique, is now my brother in Christ. That leather “preservatologist” was eager to receive Jesus. The reason I didn’t get past page 12 in the Louis L’Amour book was because a man by the name of Brett Michael was on that plane. We talked about Jesus the entire journey to Denver. As the plane started its descent, Brett bowed his head and asked Jesus to come into his life. I believe in being dedicated to your calling.

I don’t have any information on whether Louis L’Amour ever found the Lord. I hope he did, as I hope you do. He closed this book saying, “On my desk today, there lies a Dragoon Colt, polished, cleaned and loaded to remind me of the days along the bayous when I invented ‘The First Last Draw.’” I hope to read the book someday, but true to my calling, my first hope is that you take time to find the Lord.

Richard Carlson is the pastor of the Rock Springs Evangelical Free Church. Of his 51-plus years in ministry, he has pastored locally for the last 42 years.