What ever happened to...?

Rick (the drifter) Carson... he was a friend of Al Hepburn. I remember he used to pop in every so often from, who knows where, and have a few drinks with the gang. I think he drove a '49 Chev.

Comment from John Dowson to Richard Dowson Wednesday, Jan 06, 2010 6:38 PM

A number of years ago I watched a TV documentary on cross dressing and they filmed the documentary around a woman in BC just outside of Oliver who owned a ranch and ran a few cattle. She was a tall slender woman about six feet and she dressed in jeans and a jean shirt cowboy boots and passed herself off as a man. The striking thing about her was that she looked a lot like Rick Carson, it wasn't him but she had the same build. She wasn't a lesbian and had no affairs with a woman or a man she just wanted to ride, run a ranch and be a ranch hand.

I've often wondered if Rick was a woman dressed as a man. He never took his shirt off even on the hottest days, he never went in swimming with us, so we never saw him in swimming trunks. Come to think of it we never ever saw him without his clothes on and I can't remember what he did in the washrooms no one that I know of went to the can with him. When we got pulled over by the police, and were driven to the police station in Willowdale he skedaddled right out of the place. When we dropped him off at his house on Parkview he went in the house by the side gate and disappeared. We never went to his house to pick him up. Al Hepburn decided to find out if he lived there, and after we dropped Rick off one night we drove away and dropped Al on Norton Ave. Al watched and he said Rick went over the back fence through the backyard of another house and walked to his car which was parked on Norton Ave. and drove off. It was to late for us to follow because we had to wait for Al at our rendezvous.

If the guy was a undercover agent, why would he never talk off his shirt, or go swimming with the boys and never have a girl friend. Gunny Nygard was a nice blond who was crazy about Rick but he paid no attention to her even as she sat on his lap in the back of the car when we had five in the back seat. In the old west there is a story of a rancher who lived in the west and was welcomed by everyone and he even had a gun fight with a gunfighter. One day he had a stroke and was at deaths door and when the doctor came to see him it turned out he was a woman and fooled everyone. But they buried him under the name they knew him by as a man. He never had a woman friend and always was alone at the ranch. Could be? Think about it, did Rick ever shave? Did he have a beard or mustache, did he ever look like he had a days growth? and he had very little hair on his arms or the calf on his leg when he was putting on his cowboy boots. - JOHN

Reply from Richard Dowson to John Dowson Saturday, Jan 09, 2010 11:11 AM

I did know Rick Carson while in Alberta. We hooked up in the summer of 1960. He'd been visiting brother Bill and June in Drumheller and they let him know I was living in Coaldale Alberta (near Lethbridge) working for the Dept. of HIghways. He dropped down while I was there and took me to Banff before driving me to Drumheller. He'd become quite ill and went back to Penhold where he was living at the time.

I had never thought of him as a cross dresser. He was very interesting. I did meet up with a group of his friends from Calgary and it was just like Willowdale all over again. They had met Rick at a restaurant they hung out at. Most were into motorcycles but not the bike gang type. The restaurant was on 16th in north Calgary but they mostly lived down by the Forest Lawn cemetery.

Rick told me in the fall of 1960 that he was making some changes in his life. He would not say what - but he was making changes and that he would tell me what he had been doing or I would never hear from him again.

I never heard from him again. He just disappeared.

Some things he did say at the time was that he had a university education and that he had worked in the Giant Yellowknife Mine in Yellowknife. I assumed he worked there during his university days to make money.

The cross dressing doesn't fit with me - no pun intended.

After September 1960 he disappeared - poof! - nopoofter jokes please.

He was a great guy. I still have pictures he took of me sitting on the guard rail in front of Mount Eisenhower.

- Richard