Images, do you remember when...?

I grew up in a small town in the Colorado mountains. The many ranchers around us raised beef cattle. They grew and cut the hay to feed the cattle. When they harvested the hay, ranch hands came from all over the country to work in the hay fields. Hard work but they made money and lived the dream while in the mountains. They all were real cowboys some even had their own horses they would use around the ranches.

All the ranchers and their hired hands and their sons were real cowboys and wore boots, jeans, snap shirts, and cowboy hats everyday year-round. I went to school with many of these kids and played sports with many. They were good kids, in great physical shape, usually real 'quite' but very athletic. We had a rodeo every summer and many of the kids competed on bucking horses and riding Brama bulls. Like I said they were tough kids...

I still go back to visit, and they still are the same...real cowboys do exist! Everything you think except know side arms, but if you are a coyote, you are not safe, they can shoot a rifle very well when protecting their cattle and horses...
 
Thanks, Timewise 60+. Yes, once I got into my 20s I was traveling around, including into Alberta & Montana. And in my 30s I went down into Arizona, New Mexico, and west Texas.

The real guys, unlike the fellow in the picture I posted, seem to have no requirement for a hat that could conceal a corn sheaf. And that cowboy in that picture must've had a real bad cold to need such a sizable kerchief.
 
Cattle Cowboy by thebadgerman -- Fur Affinity [dot] net
 
Yes, I think often it was so. The artist N.C. Wyeth was a strapping young man who rode horses while growing up, I believe in New England. Sometime in the early 1900s, he went out West to be around cowboys and to sketch, possibly to paint. He lived on the trail and in camps among them. He got grossed out by the cowboys of those days being such crude men (in his view).

But you know, there could have been some decent guys embodied as coarse hombres.
 
Long before the West opened up, in Georgia and northern Florida they were known as "crackers" for the their constant whipping of animals. Communities dreaded them coming through. It wasn't peaceful.

I remember a book being read in installments on NPR that covered this period. It might have been "Strawberry Girl" by Lois Lenski.
 
Yeah, men like Wyatt Earp participated in the rowdy, ethics-deficient side of those old days, and in the more level-headed, law-enforcing, culture-valuing side.

While on the general subject, I've seen recorded interviews in which historians of the Old West have insisted there've been far more men gunned down in American Western movies and TV shows (not to mention the Italian "western" films) than were ever deliberately shot in the western states in that 30-year or so wild period.
 
An awful lot that's been written about "The Old West" actually was retelling of older tales from East of the Mississippi.

I read a diary of a Michigan pioneer woman, and events played out there that were identical to a Western film. Turned out that her published diary did get a movie credit.
 
How about sidekicks? I grew up watching Jay Silverheels as Tonto, where the well-educated Native American was given broken English dialogue to speak. Johnny Depp’s Tonto turned the stereotype on its head, with a startling visual appearance, a tragic history, and top billing over The Lone Ranger… 😸

IMG_2050.jpeg
 
What you mention is quite interesting. You sure are right that, again, as TV watchers we were introduced to the myth more than the reality.

I had my first experiences on "Indian reserves" at about 20. Part of my education had introduced me to aspects of Native American/Canadian life & culture. But I also have to suppose the character Tonto on the L.R. program made the Indigenous man seem more human in a way.
 
Well, and then there was "the future"... Old re-run B&W adventure "sci-fi" of a sort... cheap for American TV-networks to rent for Saturdays, I suppose. More food for thought & imagination for us.
Intrigues, coming in a near-future century to Planet Earth and nearby galaxies!😲
 

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