Alamo Cowboy Writer Mike Prince
After a distinguished career as an engineer with the Hughes Corporation and a middle school teacher and coach, Mike Prince Sr. of Alamo is a published author.
In early April this year, Prince was invited to be one of the guest speakers and do a book signing at the monthly meeting of the Las Vegas Historical Society.
“It was a meeting where the invited speakers were several of the ladies who were former rodeo queens of the Helldorado Days celebration in Las Vegas dating as far back as the early 1940’s, and what that experience had meant to them. And a number of them did come.”
But Prince was invited, too, and explained, “It was because one of the women invited to share her story was a former resident of Lincoln County, Naomi Lytle (Gibbs), who was Helldorado rodeo queen in 1954.”
He said, “Mrs. Gibbs husband suggested to the historical society that they invite me, as a southern Nevada boy and successful author, to speak at the meeting also and hold a book signing. And they did. They were very gracious to me and I was well received.”
Prince is also a known author of cowboy poetry and said he read some of his poems to the delight of the audience.
He said he told the group that he was a story teller and “relied on my background and education growing up as a young cowboy in a third-generation ranching family. My father was a ranch hand and rodeo cowboy in the Southwest for a number of years in the ’40s and ’50s. He punched cows in Arizona, California and Nevada, and as a rodeo contestant won the amateur calf roping event at the 1947 Elks Helldorado.”
Prince said he “grew up a lot around story tellers, who were all cowboys.”
He has three books in print at the present time. His first, Toquop, the Warrior Stallion, won the Academy of Western Artists Will Rogers Gold Medallion in 2008. His second and third books are Flint Pierce, The Adventures of a Young Nevada Cowboy (2013), and Charley Weston, the Cowboy and the Kid (2017).
He is currently working on a fourth book which picks up the story of Flint Pierce a little later in his life.
Prince says he is considering doing a follow up with the Charley Weston character as well.
In his stories, he says he often weaves in secondary characters, both men and women, who are based in part on real people he has known at one time or another.
Originally, he notes, his writing was designed for young readers, early teens and young adults, “but we have found out to our surprise that we sell as many to middle age adults as we do to young people. The adults just seem to really like them, too. It’s been a revelation that adults have picked them up as well.”
Happy trails.
— Dave Maxwell
