Does the cowboy have a place in the 21st century, or has George Bush ruined the concept entirely?
He simply did what had to be done ... It would be easy, he told himself, to throw everything overboard and disclaim any responsibility. All he had to do was saddle up and ride out of the country. It sounded easy, but it was not that easy, even if a man could leave behind his sense of guilt at having deserted a cause. To be a man was to be responsible. It was as simple as that. To be a man was to build something, to try to make the world about him a bit easier to live in for himself and those who followed. You could sneer at that, you could scoff, you could refuse to acknowledge it, but when it came right down to it, [Conagher] decided it was the man who planted a tree, dug a well, or graded a road who mattered.
That's Louis L'Amour, describing Conagher, the title character of one of his novels. That description, argues Jeffrey Lockwood in the cover story for the current edition of High Country News exemplifies why we still need the Cowboy Myth to solve not only the problems facing us in the West, but in the nation.
Many well-meaning efforts to make sense of the West’s past and future misunderstand the meaning of Myth and risk aggravating social and environmental problems. I propose that we grasp the rich nature and complex role of these stories, rather than simply tossing out our cultural legacy and groping for whatever new perspective is most in fashion. We might find that our problems could be effectively addressed if we took seriously the Cowboy Myth. Many Western states are faced with the same challenges: How do we respond to the widening gulf between the rich and poor? What should we do about the high rates of drug abuse and suicide? How do we handle urban sprawl and uncontrolled development? Who should bear the costs and reap the benefits of mineral extraction? How do we foster viable livelihoods consistent with our cultural character and natural environment? Perhaps Conagher provides the answers we need.
I have to admit that I automatically bristle when the notions of "cowboy" and "politics" come together these days. After eight years of hearing the term (wrongly) applied to the would-be Texan who occupies the Oval Office, I'm more than a little defensive about the whole idea of cowboys. Particularly since this one would rather be on a mountain bike than a horse on his "ranch," the former pig farm in Texas. What "cowboy" has come to mean in the context of George W. Bush--the macho, go it alone and damn the consequences adventurism, informed more by testosterone than by intellect--is directly at odds with the reality of cowboys that I've known my entire life.
See, I'm the daughter and granddaughter of cowboys. Real ones. My grandfather, in fact, was among the last of them to ride the open range in Idaho and Montana at the turn of the last century. Thus, I'm just a little proprietary about the idea. So I approached Lockwood's essay with trepidation, particularly since he falls back on Louis L'Amour for his model. At least Lockwood comes to praise the cowboy, or at least what he calls the Cowboy Myth, and his understanding of what being a cowboy means: honesty, compassion, self-reliance.
Applied to leaders and citizens in the contemporary West, this means we must take responsibility for ourselves and one another, blaming nobody else for our problems and relying on ourselves for the solutions. As candidates aspire to public office, we must ask if they ride "for the brand" -- for the people. Leaders must be autonomous and possess a sense of duty to craft programs, laws and policies on behalf of the public, rather than allow mineral companies or real estate developers to define and (maybe) solve the problems. At a national level, perhaps what we need in the White House is an authentic Cowboy (not to be mistaken for a president who saddles up for corporations and rides away from his role while fostering economic suffering, environmental degradation and international terrorism).
All of this is very true, but it's all still based on a problematic Hollywood concept of cowboy, the Myth that has given people the idea that Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush could in any shape or form be considered cowboys. As much as I love the Myth, and as many times as I'll watch Lonesome Dove and True Grit over and over again, Louis L'Amour and John Wayne just don't cut the mustard for role models in a troubled world.
See, most kinds of battles most cowboys had to fight weren't battles of good vs. evil. They weren't having exciting shootouts. They weren't galloping their horses for miles under the Big Sky, chasing down the bad guys. No, the kinds of fights real cowboys waged were against the more basic forces of life and nature. The tedium of day after day on the trail with nothing to look at but a herd of bovine asses, all while eating their dust. Being alternately cold to the bone, or frying in the sun. Broken reins, balky horses, hard biscuits and bad, mundane, stupid, and tragic accidents. And those are just the things that you had a modicum of control over. Drought, grasshopper infestations, hail storms in July that wipe out a season's crops--you get all that, too.
These, at least, are the things that my Grandpa talked about it in his declining years, when I remember him, and the stories that Dad tells from his childhood. Grandpa left home in 1904, when he was still in his early teens. By the time he was 17 he drew top hand wages from one of the biggest cow outfits in the state of Idaho, but not before turning his hand at sheepherding (the beginning of his lifelong enmity to all things sheep-related), putting up hay, dam building, logging and doing whatever he had to do to between jobs ahorseback.
Grandpa was modest--he didn't approve of Grandma ever wearing any red clothing, because in his day, only "fast" women wore red. He chewed tobacco from childhood until his eighties, when a stroke paralyzed him, but his only other vice was ice cream. He took impeccable care of his stock and his tools. He always had three pair of Levis that he kept in careful rotation: one pair for outside work, the pair he changed into when he came into the house, then the "good" pair for dress up. He would never allow Grandma to wash any of them. When the outside pair stood up on the back porch on their own, he bought a new pair and rotated the other two down a notch. At Christmas time, the first present he'd open would be the book, and he would immediately set to reading, letting the rest of the presents sit, unopened, for days.
He kept a rifle or two, used only when necessary--acts of mercy with injured stock or the rare problem predator. He didn't believe in pesticides, poisoning rodents or coyotes, or chemical fertilizers, and much preferred his team of draft horses to the tractor. He'd been ruined by a bank closing on him right after he'd made the deposit after the one year that he turned a truly healthy profit as a cowman, back in the pre-FDIC days. That experience, and probably also being raised in the household of one of Idaho's first legislators, a populist, cemented him as a Roosevelt Democrat.
He would take sometimes irrational positions on a person, deciding for no discernible reason that they were good for nothing. But if that same person was in dire straits, he'd be there to help, because that's just what you did and because the favor might have to be returned some day. He and Grandma taught their children, my father and aunts, the lessons I learned growing up. That you're capable of more than you think you are. To finish your chores and clean up after yourself (a lesson that still occasionally escapes both Dad and me when it comes to kitchen duty). That dirt never killed anybody and if you don't get back on that horse now, you might never.
And the phrase that I heard from my Dad again and again, and that still rings in my head when approaching something that I'd just as soon put off a bit: "There's no time like the present."
There are many practical gifts I got from Dad and Grandpa, though I don't employ them much in my current life: how to ride, how to work cattle, change a tire, drive a tractor, or replace a light fixture. In addition, I also inherited a life-long love affair with the written word and a keen interest in politics. All of those things are valued. But the basic lessons taking care of where you live and how you live, I learned in large part from Dad and Grandpa. They certainly aren't lessons that only a cowboy could teach you, but the fact of living so close to the earth and being so subject to its whims sort of intensified the curriculum.
There's not a whole lot of glamor in any of that, and it hardly competes with Western romance in print and on screen. But I think it's far more instructive image of the cowboy way to have in mind when facing the kinds of challenges the 21st century is going to pose. Nothing that Hollywood has shown us is going to be of much assistance in getting out of this recession, in dividing up and preserving as much of our precious resources as we can, in trying to keep the best of what's left.
We don't need the Myth of the Cowboy to guide us. We need the reality of the cowboy.
Happy Father's Day, Pop. To you and all the dads out there.