Little Britches

In the early 1920’s cowboy and dry-range farmer, Ralph Moody, found himself with mountainous debts through the collapse of the livestock market, and the dealings of a crooked partner. He faces the choice of declaring bankruptcy before he turns twenty,...

Young “Little Britches” life is radically changed when his ailing father dies. Then his mother reveals a terrible secret and the family is forced to flee their Colorado ranch to an uncertain future. Fortified with the Yankee ingenuity his father...

Ralph “Little Britches” Moody at age thirteen moves with his mother, Mary Emma, and five siblings “back East” to begin a new life. They survive their first bleak winter in Massachusetts through the help of close relatives and caring friends. Money and...

Now 19-years old, skinny, and suffering from diabetes, Ralph Moody is ordered by his Boston doctor to seek a more healthful climate out West. Remembering his childhood ranching adventures, Ralph is delighted to strike out for new territory and...

Ralph Moody had just turned twenty, with only one dime in his pocket, when he was put off a freight train in Western Nebraska on the Fourth of July, 1919. Three months later Ralph would own eight teams of horses and the rigs to go with them. Everyone...

The fatherless Moody family moves from Colorado to Medford, Massachusetts in 1912 as Ralph enters his teen years. He tries as hard as he can to be a “City boy,” but without much luck. Little things that would have been just fine in Colorado are always...

Ralph “Little Britches” Moody must take on responsibilities as the man of the family after his father’s death. During the summer of his twelfth year he works on a cattle ranch in the shadow of Pike’s Peak, earning “man’s wages” of a dollar a day. It’s...