Amen.
Dubya doesn't like horses right (or is that Clint Eastwood)? Anyway, kind of hard to be a cowboy if you're afraid of sitting in the saddle.
He's not a cowboy. He's not even a cow turd. A cow turd provides food for the plants which provide food for the cows which...
All this dipshit knows how to do is steal.
great post
W is scared of horses - but loves his pickup. Putin was invited to Crawford and took riding lessons, anticipating the cowboy on horseback thing, and instead got drove around in the pickup.
oops, meant to say - stunning post. we all know W is no cowboy. Tell your dad he can rest easy.
Beautiful!!
Sorry about your Dad. Could've made your post shorter, though.
It's Saturday. I save the long rambles for weekends.
This one was worth the length. beautifully written, wonderfully rambled.
RIP sara's dad
and god save us all from false cowboys, war profiteers, and all those hell bent on the destruction of what all our moms dads grandmoms and granddads held dear.
thanks Mrs. R.
Wonderful tribute to your dad, may he rest in peace. Mine was kinda like that too, without the music. He couldn't sing a lick.
thanks...
very nice post and nice tribute.
Sara, what a wonderful tribute to your father! My father died a couple of months ago - at the age of 90 - and this life-long Democrat hated with a passion our current preznet. My dad was no cowboy, just a businessman, but he was a well-educated (Dartmouth grad) who was a passionate reader of history and politics until almost the end of his life. I thought he hated Nixon the most of any Republican, until we got to Bush.
My dad was pretty with-it til almost the end of his life and lost little opportunity to talk down Bush. He was very proud of both my 20-something sons because both work for Democratic groups in Washington.
My dad was a proud Democrat.
what beautiful writing, Mrs. Robinson. I reveled in every word and imagined you, your father, and the world of the authentic cowboy.
American cowboys were icons in Germany (the land of my birth). As were many things uniquely USA.
Not anymore. W = the reverse Midas.
I send you warm thoughts, Sara, as you mark a bittersweet anniversary.
My dad lived in small-town Rush Limbaugh red-county hell. His friends were, by and large, what you'd expect in such an area; he loved them dearly, but their conservatism often drove him nuts.
For years, I sent him piles of supporting material for his counter-campaigns: Al Franken's book, Jim Hightower's newsletters, stuff I'd clip out of MoJo and The Nation. It's too bad he didn't live long enough to hear or read Thom Hartmann -- they were in many ways kindred souls. I still walk through bookstores and see titles like Hartmann's "What Would Jefferson Do?," and think, "Oh, I need to get that for Dad!" And then I remember....
Dad worked for Goldwater in '64, and was a local leader in Reagan's '66 gubernatorial bid; but he soured on the GOP after Nixon, and returned to his Democratic roots in the last two decades. Knowing how Dad processed this stuff, I knew why Schwitzer and Tester grabbed hold of Montana's heart so tightly. Dad would have loved those guys, too.
Beautiful writing, Mrs. R., thanks for sharing your father with us.
BTW am linking your post
Wow, Sara.
Just...wow.
That was a simply brilliant piece.
As a city-bred, African-American, a love of cowboys, and the western mythos is looked on in my circles as a mega-curiousity. And yet, it has always fascinated me--held me in deep sway.
From the time I was a little boy, in fact. Perhaps it has to do with the way my mother and father were raised--they were Southern--but they lived the Southern version of that lifestyle. Livestock, farming, the hunting and oh yes...the guns. Quiet people at heart when at home. The chores and work around town. I dunno. I always loved how they just sort of...changed when we all went down there. Accents--drawls and twangs would bubble up from seemingly nowhere.
All I know is that it has absolutely held me in thrall for as long as I can remember. I love all kinds of movies, save for the modern gore-horror genré, but I have a special penchant for westerns. And in the film circles I roll in, I'm an oddity. People in the business just don't seem to hold much truck with the style nowadays--even as a reference point. When I mention a scene from one in an anecdote, or cite one in historical context in discussions, I get blank stares. People have weeded the caring for that whole ethos right out of their psyches.
Me? I can't not stop at a western should I stumble across one when I have clicker in hand. And in my travels west, hanging out in picturesque places like Monument Valley, and The Valley of the Garden of the Gods, and getting a chance to soak in the imagery, as well as meeting actual folks who lived the life, I developed an even more enduring respect for the lifestyle.
Which makes George Bush's lukewarm pissing on the idea of "Cowboy" simply maddening to me. This is a man who has NEVER done a hard day's work in his miserable life. Never blistered a hand, save for maybe in college while twisting off opener-tops of Coors. Won't do a meeting longer than 90 minutes--gotta have his 45 minute nap every day, or baby gets cwanky.
Fake.
Phony.
Fraud.
Dicked over the "Cowboy" image as surely as Cheney and Romney have done with what remains of the positive image of hunters.
When I think of what "Curly" would have done to Bush had he gotten his hands of him in a movie...it's too bad Palance is no longer with us, because that kind of film would be a subversive blockbuster were it done today.
excellent job. beautiful writing on a subject very near to my heart. i was thoroughly thrown into cognitive dissonance once by the prospect of having to agree with something that movie cowboy asshole ronald reagan once said the outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man. then i found out it was originally said by the duke of marlborough and that fucking problem was solved.
i own me a few of those beautiful big martin dreadnaughts, i play the old stuff with rare pleasure. one of the biggest jokes ever perpetrated on the working folks of the west was the whole republican bullshit lie. i am, by trade, a musician. i am, by heart, a horseman and westerner. before he began his presidential run we in arizona had the pleasure of hearing barry goldwater's thoughts on georgie and "all hat and no cattle" was nice compared to what the grand saint of conservatives thought about that six feet of shit in some size nine boots.
we do need our cowboys. even the ones off the rez like me. we need you too.
bihiil hishash aaii diji jooni sara's dad
(walk in beauty sara's dad)
Aw, LM, you'd love my piece of the west if you could see it.
On the other hand, you probably have seen it. Being just five hours out of LA, half the westerns in the world were made in my back yard. You've seen it, high and dry in the background, in (...checking IMDB...):
Nevada Smith
High Plains Drifter
How The West Was Won
True Grit
Ride the High Country
Wagon Train
The Hallelujah Trail
The Lone Ranger
And a whole lot of Gunsmoke, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, Red Ryder, Sky King, Have Gun, Will Travel, Death Valley Days, and Bonanza episodes....
On Saturdays, I rode my horse into the same hills as Gary Cooper and John Wayne. My classmates were Indians (real ones, Paiute and Shoshone, no feathers). The mountains were 14,000 feet high on either side, the peaks of the two ranges just 20 miles apart, with the valley floor 10,000 feet below -- twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.
And when I turned 18, I fled the place like a cat with a firecracker tied to her tail. But, at this stage of life, I'd go back in a heartbeat if I had the chance.
Minstrel, my dad had a variation of that same quote: "There's nothing wrong with the inside of a man that the outside of a horse can't cure."
Best thing about cowboys was that they were totally multiracial. There were black ones, white ones, red ones, brown ones up from Mexico, a few assorted Chinese -- nobody gave a damn where you came from, as long as you could step and do the work. Weren't many jobs in America at the time that were that fair-minded. Still aren't, in some places.
Dad was a musician, too -- got through his USAF enlistment in a band flight; played pro trombone for a while in Denver before coming out to California. He spent 20 years directing the best church choir in town, too. He and Mom divorced in 1970; but she says the thing she misses most about him still is singing harmony with him.
I put Dad's D-18 into eBay, just to see how much to insure it for. Just about choked when I saw them going the $6K range, same year, but not in the same pristine shape Dad's was. Thing of it is, though: I could pick that guitar out of a roomful, just by its sound. It's got its own sound; it sounds like Dad.
True story...
I was on a Hollywood backlot on 1994--won't say which one, but at the time, it had one of the last "Old West" street sets still in occasional use (It's since been torn down 
). I was working on a project at the studio and was killing time happily, after having made a semi-successful pitch. Me and several co-horts wer cavorting on the unused Western street set (only three of the buildings had partial, working interiors--and those interiors were scaled to 80% human size to make teh actors look "bigger-than-life"), shooting imaginary guns, dying on the dusty porches and yes, me repeatedly hurling myself through teh corner saloon doors, as if thrown out of the bar.
Tumbling in the orange dirt, time and again--a grown-ass man, playing like a little boy in the world's biggest 3-D diorama. I had just careened through the doors again and was getting up to dust myself off to go one more time, when who should I find myself face-to-face with but Denzel Washington and his wife Pauletta.
Looking at my dumb, dirt-covered ass, rightfully as though I had nineteen heads.
"You...allright?", he asked cautiously, realizing that yes..I had thrown myself through the saloon door. His wife's faace was frozen in a soft "What the fuck? expression.
"I'm...I'm fine. I'm just,,,choreographing something.", I lamely said.
"Oh-kay.", he said as he continued by--headed to a small screening theater that was around the bend a piece. Pauletta kept looking back over her shoulder at me as she hustled on by.
"Don't hurt yourself, stuntman." he chuckled as he disappeared.
I stood there, embarrassed and laughing, because, it was quite evident--especially to him. that I wasn't a stuntman--just some dude grab-assing on an empty backlot, who got caught by a big star. 
Later in that same week, I found myself at "Gower Gulch"--the corner of Sunset and Gower, where a little western store remains (and the abandoned CBS/KNX Radio and TV studios) as a reminder of why it was called that.
It was the spot where actual cowboys rode in from Arizona, Texas, Nevada and anyplace else, looking for wok as extras in the westerns being made at the time. Some days folks say, you'd see seventy to eighty "dudes" hanging there hoping to get a "hustle" job on set for an oater shot on one of the ranch/studios nearby.
"You. You. You. And you with the rope burn on your neck. The rest of you, sorry. RKO's guy'll be through here tomorrow, though."
God. That must have been painful -- about six different ways.
Great story about the Gower Gulch place, though. I lived in LA for most of a decade, some of it not far from there, and never knew that story.
Some of those guys lived up in our neck of the woods, and came down to LA to work. One of those was Elisha Cook, one of those character actors you've seen a hundred times but whose name may not have registered. Cookie was one of the guys who hung out on the back porch. When I was 13, he was the first one to teach me to touch-dance -- to jitterbug, in fact.
There were various Sons of the Pioneers who'd come by on fishing trips, too. A couple of well-known western artists whose stuff is in galleries in Jackson Hole and Santa Fe. And Dalton Smith, who'd been Stan Kenton's lead trumpet player -- if you remember the killer solo horn in old "Ironsides" theme, that was Uncle Dalton, who could out-blow Doc Sevrinsen (and proved it on more than one occasion). IIRC, he may also have been the trumpet lead on the Hawaii-Five-O theme as well. Dalton got around.
Sittin' by the pond of a July evening, feeding the trout and drinking beer and signing along with Dad's guitar. Good times.
Great post, Mrs. R. Rest easy, Dad.
lovely piece, Mrs. Robinson. peace to your Dad
And this post set me to thinking about my dad as well. I had one of the "greats".
What with Lindsay B. (at Majikthise) having lost her dad two weeks ago, I already had :dads" on the brain, and what they mean.
Am working on a post--featuring a great link to a piece that is sooooo well written, and reminds me of this one, that it's scary.
You were blessed, Sara. I was too. And so was Lindsay. Thanks for reminding me of just how lucky I was.
Best,
LM
Beautiful article, Sara. Brought tears to my eyes.
phoebes -- my condolences on the loss of your father.
I've lived all over the United States and in Austria as well. My father was a professor and while he was working his way through grad school we moved around a bunch. We settled in Tucson back when it was only 250 thousand people, not the three-quarters of a million in greater Tucson whom live there now.
We lived at Speedway and Swan. The desert started two miles from my home, to the North (Wilmont) and to the East (Ft. Lowell.) Necking at the end of Swan Road, driving my car through the dry River, going up to Lookout Point halfway up Mt. Lemon. I love the Tucson that was. I started riding horses at age 8 at summer camp as well as learning to shoot both rifles and arrows. The spirit of the West lived in Tucson in the Catalinas and down in the valley before it was overrun with sunbirds and people moving from the east coast who would die if they ever had to climb on the roof to fix the swamp cooler, for whom refrigeration is part of their birthright. The spirit of the west still lives on in Tucson especially if you've lived there a good while; it's just a tetch harder to find. *smiles*
There's nothing like sitting on your porch in mid-July watching a thunder-storm with 50 massive lightening strikes an hour roll from 30 to 40 miles away across the desert towards you till finally the rain slams down on top of you, the drops large as your thumb, stinging as they hit, bolts so close you JUMP the lightening LIGHTING up the whole world, ozone smelling and then as the rain passes, the smell of fresh desert flowers in the air and the water three feet deep in the street, children in inner-tubes rushing to ride down the streets towards the rivers, jumping out just in time then running a mile back up to Grant and Alvernon to do it again before the water is gone, only to have the water magically reappear all over again in a day or so with another afternoon storm.
Tat Tvam Asi, Sara; that thou art. Your writing -- really a kind of eulogy -- for your father, moves me like deep poetry.
Thank you.
Thanks, Jesse.
Oh, Sara, that was a wonderful tribute to your father and a mighty smack in the face to monkeyboy. I thank you for your writing. It made me tear up and smile all in the same piece. All of us who grew up with fathers of that same era, no matter what they did for a living, kind of have the same feelings for their dads. Things were truly different then. My dad worked for the railroad and while he did not ride the trains, he did travel in South Texas to talk to landowners about the right of way where the tracks went through their property. He left every day with the Open Road Stetson on his head and with the certain little jaunt that he wore that hat. I can never see a photo of someone with one of those hats and not think of my dad.
Nice piece, Mrs. Robinson. Very evocative of a lifestyle I have zero experience with, but I'll be damned if you didn't bring it to life for me.
And I have to echo LM's sad bemusement of the scam that a certain murdering chimp-faced cretin has somehow managed to pull off. It really is amazing when you think about it: Bush is so obviously a fourflusher, a fake, a phony and an opportunistic lightweight that it boggles the mind that even the dullest, laziest intellect ever took his faux cowboy act seriously to begin with. The "man" (and I use the term loosely) is scared of horses, for Christ's sake! He's never done a day's work in his entire, misbegotten life! Never even mind the larger issues, he's a swaggering pipsqueak, a mincing little creep. A vindictive brat, playing at being a He-man. Even now, I just can't quite believe that he's gotten away with that.
George Bush is to cowboys as plastic plates are to dinnerware. That is, fake and cheap.
Perhaps the post was just right, but I finished it too soon. I didn't realize before how many cowgirls and boys trotted by here. I did appreciate the cowboy aroma description, very accurate.
This piece and many others here should be seen by a much wider readership. These jewels shine for a few hours and then they fall into the archives, seldom seen again.
The cow herding life is not over at all. It is less than it once was in terms of employment, but it still exists and it exists in the US. Just saying, for those of you that still want to grow up to be cowboys. Thank you Mrs. R for your wonderful memory.
I often see hundreds of riders of all ages, many of them herders, others trainers of Paso Fino, riding past my home on a Cabalgata {Cavalcade}. And I live in the Caribbean!
That was a moving, beautifully written tribute, Mrs. R. I wish I'd had a chance to meet your father, and hang out on that back porch on a desert evening.
That's so cool that you were buddies with Elisha Cook. I've admired his work for a long time. Particularly since he's graced so much of my favorite film noir, starting with his turn as Wilmer, Guttmann's hapless psycho gunsel, in The Maltese Falcon. Somehow, it figures he'd be a pussycat in real life.
As for Bush, I know it's hardly an original thought, but when you come right down to it, he's the ultimate triumph of late 20th Century marketing science. He's all packaging, with nothing but the stench of a stale beer-and-Taco Belle fart inside.
Still, I think you have the wrong ethos: It's not the cowboy he's trying to ape now, in his usual cosmically omni-incompetent way. Oh, sure, he got close enough to steal the first election by playing a sort of loveably inarticulate red state Will Rogers, but (after the initial freak-out and cowering on AF One) it was 9/11 that gave Bush Baby the chance to morph that persona into the role he really craved: the steely-eyed gunslinger/bounty hunter.
Putz for the ages that he is, of course Whistlebritches made just as much of an epic botch of that one, too.
I can understand why you take it kind of personal, but I wouldn't worry too much about the cowboy archetype. Anyone who believes Bush represents the tiniest sliver of a smidgen of what a real cowboy is about is plainly standing in the shallow end of the gene pool. And I suspect most who disparagingly refer to Little Boots as a "cowboy" fully understand that it's in the sense of "twisted, pathetic little wannabee.
There's only one way to describe Bush: All hat and no cattle.
Cookie was a pussycat. He was also, sadly, usually in his cups -- our most illustrious town drunk, in fact. In his later years, Dad would tend bar at the local Mexican joint on weekend evenings, and Cookie was always one of his regulars.
But he thought I was cute, and he adored my dad, so he was always very sweet to me. And I did become a hell of a ballroom dancer (eventually, a national collegiate champion, in fact) on the start he gave me.
Bush as Will Rogers? Um, maybe not. He was never, ever that articulate -- nor that generous of heart.
But Bush as bounty hunter strikes absolutely true. I've known a few of those, too (thanks to my reprobate brother), and it's not hard to see Bush coming too fast and angry up the drive in a dinged-up 30-year-old muscle car with Bondo on the fenders, greasy haircut, too much jewelry, and really stupid boots (they all wear these cocky-looking cheap Mexican boots) waving his faux law-enforcement badge around trying to pretend he's somebody with real authority so we'll all be impressed.
I eventually learned to tell the sheriff's deputies to get these jerks off my property, and slam the door in their faces. Which is about how the rest of the world is reacting to Bush about now.
That's a damn fine eulogy for your dad, peace be upon him. Anyway, don't worry too much about the damage Bush has done to cowboys. Karl May's ideas of cowboys were more real than Shrubya's, and after 100 years yet. If cowboys can survive John Waynne, they can survive George Bush.
I liked Elisha Cook best in "The Big Sleep," as Jonesy, probably his finest role.
Thank you for the writing. I think the only thing we have a citizens is the ability to use our voice...to share our experiences. A huge travisty has been committed upon our great nation by a group of business men who portrayed themselves as good ol' cowboys. I do hope that your father's prediction is not correct in respect to our generation seeing an end to this nation. But I do know that it has been wounded to the core. Our international image is devastating. We have had our constitutional rights squandered in the name of fear and terrorism. Keep true to yourself. Know that your father has done you, and probably all who knew him, a great service by teaching about America and the constitution. Even after his time on this earth has past he has touched people through you. Again, thank you for making your voice heard.
A gorgeous essay, which transported me to another time and another world. Thank you for sharing your dad and his world with us.
Sara:
Hey, I did prepend "loveably [sic] inarticulate" to that. I probably should have said "red-state Will Rogers (for Dummies)".
Then again, maybe "Lonesome" Rhodes would have been a better comparison.
bcjacques:
I agree. "Jonesy" appeared only briefly in TBS, but damn if he didn't turn in one extraordinary performance. Watching his face, as he prepares to drink what he knows is poison, sends chills down my spine every time; he's just so utterly believable.
There is nothing like a Montana cowboy. I'll bet your dad, if ever asked to swear an oath, would have done so on his favorite working saddle rather than a Bible -- and his word would be his bond.
Beautiful!
Thank you Mrs. R, most beautiful and evocative. May your Dad rest in peace.
I'm always reminded of this wonderful article about the Federation of Black Cowboys whenever I think of cowboys:
Black Cowboys Ride the Range in Queens
Thank you, Mrs. Robinson, for sharing your beautiful memories of your father with us.
W's always reminded me of Curley from Of Mice and Men, but that may just be me.
You Dad didn't have any land....so just because he had horses makes him no cowboy either
I've never seen so much sunshine blown up one's ass in my life. Get over it people.. The demise of this country will be the dependancy the people of this country have from it's government. The lack of personal responsibility...you know, what the democrats run on. Keeping the black man down, citizenship for illegal aliens, welfare, a village raising a child instead of parents, ...the list is endless. These are the people who vote for the LLL (liberal lunatic left).
I've never seen so much sunshine blown up one's ass in all my life.
Get over it people. The demise of this country will be the dpendancy of it's people on the government. 42% of the people of this nation is on some form of gov't dependancy and it's running the country into oblivion. Welfare, illegals, a village raising a child instead of the parents, keeping the minority down...the list is endless. This what the liberal lunatic left (Dems) want and believe in. Responsibility in ones self will save this country. Your Dad a great man he maybe...but he was no cowboy either.
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