As a kid growing up in Cincinnati, I was a cowboy wanna-be and spent many an afternoon looking at books about the West, dreaming of six-shooters and lassos, and envisioning myself in the cavalry uniform displayed in the back pages of the Sears catalog.
One of the books I remember best was on cattle ranchers and the brand marks they burned into the hindquarters of their herds. There was the Double-R brand, the Lazy-E and Rocking M – I can’t remember them all, but I realize now that it was the first logo book I ever saw.
I was drawn to the simplicity of those designs and their importance. Those symbols were serious business. Get caught on a horse with somebody else’s brand and you could get a belly full of lead!
