"A narrative of a man's life in the southwest what brought him there and how he came to love the land, its peoples, and its challenges. John Duncklee's memoirs remind us that individualism, personal courage, and honesty can still thrive in America." Jim Woolard award winning author of Thunder in the Valley, Winds of Autumn, Blood at Dawn and Cold Moon "In his fascinating memoir, John Duncklee shows how an East Coast outcast became a cowboy, rancher, student, wrangler, teacher, environmentalist, lecturer, furniture marker, rebel, reprobate, and one of the original voices of contemporary Southwestern literature. Writers, readers, ranchers, and working cowhands everywhere should all be grateful John Duncklee bit that silver spoon and lived to write about it." Johnny D. Boggs two-time Spur Award-winning author of Camp Ford and East of the Border "I Bit the Silver Spoon in the authentic life-story of a died-in-the-wool cowpoke still writing and raising hell down New Mexico-way. John Duncklee is the last of a dying breed-a cowboy-adventurer out of the pages of Louis L'Amour or Luke Short, with a torch of the mad, irascible poet added like whiskey to campfire coffee. How Big John came West, and all he did out there amidst the sage and saguaros, after growing up amongst Eastern wealth, is riveting poetic, inspiring, bittersweet reading. Peter Brandold author of the Lou Prophet and Rogue Lawman novels published by Berkley"