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Passion for Old West keeps couple on road
Dakota Livesay was just another sales rep for just another corporation, who just happened to have an almost perfect name for a passion he was to turn into a second career.
His wife Sunny was a corporate trainer. Their separate travels kept them apart for the majority of the year.
Then, in 1999, Dakota decided to chuck the corporate world and pursue his passion. Sunny did as well, and the two, with their dog Jake, now travel together, almost continuously.
"Living in and travelling in an RV like this, we're home all the time now," Dakota said. "Now, our neighborhood changes. We really enjoy it. We meet some great people, do some great things."
Added Sunny: "You get to have some wonderful adventures. ... I love meeting the people. It's fun seeing their enthusiasm."
Dakota, Sunny and Jake made the trip to Fort Stockton as part of the passion that removed them from their corporate travels. Their passion: "Chronicle of the Old West," a monthly newspaper, and a daily and weekly radio show dedicated to the history of the Old West.
The newspaper is a collection of reprinted articles taken from newspapers in the 1800s. The daily radio show, 3 1-2 minutes in length, and the weekly show feature Dakota in conversations with experts on the Old West and various celebrities.
Dakota and Sunny are based out of Show Low, Ariz., but the house they own is rented out. Their home is the RV in which they travel to almost anywhere west of the Mississippi River in search of material for the newspapers and the radio shows.
"I'm not quite as adamant about it as (Dakota)," Sunny said. "But it's amazing. It really works out well."
A small area of the RV functions as both a recording studio and newsroom. With a computer, the Livesays send their copy to the printer and send the voiced parts of their segments to their son Scott in North Hollywood, Calif., where he produces the shows.
In addition, Dakota is a columnist for "Cowboys and Indians" magazine. Sunny assists in the research and takes care of mailing out CDs of the radio shows to 110 stations for the daily segment and 55 for the weekly, as well as performing other "odd jobs." The radio show is heard locally on KFST.
Dakota, who grew up in Benton, Ill., said he's always had an interest in the Old West.
"Here's the thing about the Old West," he said. "No other country has had an era that we had with the Old West. ... The Pilgrims came here about 400 years ago. For 300 of those 400 years, we've had a frontier. The last frontier was the Western Frontier. Our frontiers have made us the great country that we are."
Dakota said that the creativity and the work ethic demonstrated by those generations of Americans who lived on their respective frontiers helped this country's development. He's concerned that we've lost those traits that helped make the country what it is.
In search of the information for the newspaper and the radio shows, the Livesays spend much of their time in libraries, looking through periodicals, old newspapers and microfilm. The content is often determined by what they're able to find, Dakota said. And while the newspaper contains stories about some of the more notable characters of the Old West, it also tells about how ordinary Americans lived more than 100 years ago.
In the July issue of "Chronicles," there's a reprint of an 1894 article from "Cosmopolitan" magazine on long-distance horse riding. There's also a story from the "Democrat" out of Albuquerque, N.M., on ladies fashions in 1895.
"Our newspaper is a lot like a newspaper today," Dakota said. "If it bleeds, it leads. But inside, there's a slice of life of what the Old West was really like. It tells about the average person's life.
"Ninety-nine percent of life was routine in the Old West. It was just hard work, trying to overcome the elements. Very seldom were there exciting shootouts."
The sesquicentennial of the founding of Camp Stockton in 1859 is what's brought the Livesays to Fort Stockton for the second time since they founded "Chronicles." They're working with Brad Newton and the Fort Stockton Chamber of Commerce to produce future articles and shows.
There's a lot of history here, Dakota said. He envisages stories and radio packages on the heritage of local cowboys, the Buffalo Soldiers and perhaps the "Great Camel Experiment," a scheme that involved then Secretary of War Jefferson Davis and then Union officer Robert E. Lee in the bringing of camels to the American Southwest, Dakota said.
Then, Dakota said, it'll be off to another location, searching out information to continue to bring the Old West to modern America.
"God gave this to us," he said. "Sometimes we say, 'Thank you,' and sometimes we say, 'Why us?'"
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