FOREWORD

 ** 

You

*
may find a poem

* 

in this little book

*
that will make you smile ?

*
perhaps laugh aloud.

**

Some

*
may even cause you to sorrow?

*
some to wonder.

**
If I can

*
but open your understanding

*
to the goodness and mercies

*
that would give one soul

*
the desire to thank God

*
and acknowledge His mercies

*
in prayer?

**

I would feel graciously paid

*

for all my efforts in writing

*

this book of poems,

Homer M. Tate

Christmas - 1965
                                                                                                                                                             
 

 
HOMER MARTIN TATE

is well qualified to write poetry in the tradition of the Old West.

He was born into a typical pioneering family in Poetry, Texas, on September 7, 1884.

They moved on in 1892 to a small settlement in Indian Territory? now Graham, Oklahoma.

His family pushed farther westward to Spanish Fork, Utah, three years later in two covered wagons with "a span of mules, a span of horses, and a saddle horse," according to their journal. The same mules were to carry them in 1898 on a five-week journey to Central, Arizona. The family grew there to include ten children, Homer being third from the oldest.

As a young man he worked for a time in copper mines at Globe, where in 1908 he married Emma Coombs. They raised four children in the Gila Valley after returning there to farm. Later, he was elected sheriff of Graham County, and operated a motel and service station in Safford. In 1945 he moved to Phoenix and started a unique manufacturing business creating strange circus and carnival "oddities* in the lath-house of which he writes.

 At the time of this books publication,

He was engaged in religious work for his church in Mesa, Arizona

Homer past to his eternal reward February 21st 1975 at the age of 90