Publisher's Synopsis
It is easy to imagine Edith and Rudy Mudra looking at the letter again. Could it be true? Five hundred dollars, it seemed like a fortune in 1933. At age 54, Rudy was laid off from Otto F. Ernst Inc. saddlery in Sheridan, Wyoming. With the Great Depression underway, they were camping in the Big Horn Mountains since they didn't have money for rent. Lucky it was summer.It started in the 1920s. Leather workers were out of work everywhere. Throughout the 1920s, ranching and agricultural industries were struggling economically. The change from a horse power society to a machine powered society devastated the harness and saddle industry. Rudy and Edith had followed leather carving and saddlemaking job offers from Miles City, Montana to Billings, Montana and then to Sheridan, Wyoming. The job at Otto F. Ernst Inc. saddlery looked secure with Sheridan's numerous dude ranches. But in two years, the Depression hit Otto F. Ernest Inc. saddlery and Rudy was let go.It is easy to think that when Edith drove down the steep mountain road to Sheridan yesterday, Rudy hoped there would be a check in the mail from Connolly Saddlery in Billings for the leather belts he had carved earlier this month. Maybe it would cover groceries. After she left, it is likely that he laid his leather carving tools out on the picnic table and began to carve wild roses into scraps of leather for a billfold. But the letter from a lawyer in Minnesota stated that Edith's distant relative had left her a small inheritance in his will. It seemed unreal. Just when things were so grim. With no job, no money, no home, it must have appeared to be a fortune to master saddlemaker, Rudy, and his talented wife, Edith. What they did with the $500 was a statement of faith in Rudy's talent.Rudy Mudra was talented and fun loving. He wove his way through the remarkable changes to saddlemaking that occurred between 1879 and 1966. As the world changed from a horse powered to a machine powered society, he followed saddlemaking work through some of the most famous shops in the west; Buckstaffs, Askews, Miles City Saddlery, Frustnows, Connollys, Ernest and finally owned his own shop, Rudy Mudra's Saddle Shop in Sheridan, Wyoming. This is the story of the remarkable life lived by an extraordinarily talented man.
