Note that I say 'worked as'. I was not a cowboy as such. That's a dedicated lifestyle and requires a lot of skills I never developed that take years.
If anyone asked me if I could ride, the answer is yes. I can ride a horse, or at least I have ridden horses. If you asked me if I can ride the answer is an unequivocal no. I can go into the barn and saddle a reasonably well trained and broken horse and ride it. However I really can't hop on a really spirited steed and go galloping across the prairie like a Pony Express rider. A real cowboy can.
I did help move a herd of cattle once or twice but lacked the skills of the other two cowboys. The could get their horses to turn on a dime and give nine cents change. They were good.
Much of the time my steed was a battered old Jeep I'd ride out to ride fence with. It was a tired, rusty old thing and there was a revolver in the glovebox. I never shot it. It wasn't mine and it stayed there.
When I showed up I did have a rifle but it was not a Winchester. It was a WW2 German Mauser bring back I bought in a pawn shop. I never shot that, either.
My tools in the Jeep were sort of a come-along to stretch wire, a bag of staples and a fencing tool* along with a roll of barbed wire.
Anyway, to this day I admire the two cowboys I worked with that were really patient and helpful that lived a very Spartan lifestyle and were very talented at what they did.
A lot of people don't understand when I talk about people that work in jobs like that as being professionals but they really are.
Fairly often I hear someone try to put someone down because of what they do and I instantly ask them the big question. "Do you know how to do that work?"
I usually get the old "Well, no, but..." and some lame excuse that it doesn't take much education and so on.
I countered with, "Yes it does. LIFE is an education.
I met one woman that got it.
A few years back I had the Amish reroof my house. I learned early on that if I wanted to pitch in that I should just move bales of shingles to the bottom of the ladder because if I did anything else I would just get in the way.
That day I met a woman that gets it. She stood there enamored watching the Dutchmen throw shingles. I saw her and approached her and she said she was fascinated watching them work.
I laughed and offered told her to grab a chair is she wanted to watch and she sat there two hours watching the Dutchmen in action. I was outside when she returned the chair and briefly chatted with her.
She had a degree in something useful with a minor in some kind of dance. (Fair enough. You major in something marketable and minor in your passion)
Anyway she told me she was enamored with the choreography of the four Dutchmen and said it was like watching a Bolshoi ballet. She was amazed at how everything flowed so smoothly and how few words had to be said between the crew. She said it was one of the most amazing things she had ever seen.
She got it.
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The above post is very dated. That happened almost 50 years on a small cattle ranch that very possibly is a shopping center, condos, a resort or whatever.
Anyway, time marches on and I understand that quads and dirt bikes have replaced the horse in places. If that is so then I'd bet that some of the all time BEST dirt bike riders are cowboys.
* "Fencing tool! Anybody that's ever seen a roll of barbed wire's lost ten of them!"
Jim Koob
Kodiak, Alaska circa 1982.
Upon seeing a fencing tool in my toolbox
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