Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

The West isn’t dead 

By Julie Carter

Only in a small ranching community do you get a phone call like this. “Two of your bulls got out. They are behind the Tasty Freeze and headed toward the town swimming pool.”

Additionally, only in a small ranching community will you arrive to find a half dozen or more helpful folks already fixing the fence, putting the bulls back through the gate into the pasture before returning to their coffee drinking at the corner gas station/coffee shop.

God Bless this country and those things that remain with the stamp of a Currier and Ives Americana-- Western style.

I do know that in the majority of the good old USA, people find it hard to believe there are still people who “live like that.” But it’s the truth.

We are at least one generation and maybe two into a world where it is a genuine belief the West is dead and can only be found in Hollywood or in a book. Those people live in a concrete and asphalt world defined by Wall Street and where travel by subway, train and taxi is the norm. If they own a pickup it is because its trendy-- functional is not a factor.

The work-place fashion never includes a pair of five-buckle over shoes and the fine canvas duck wear by Walls or Carhart is unheard of. They actually think Powder River is just a place and Panhandle Slim probably is some guy who advertises for the tobacco company along with that Marlboro guy.

Honest, cross my heart, it is the truth. I heard her say it. “I couldn’t finish the cookies I was baking until one of the chickens laid an egg.”

Not ever did the former domestic diva of daytime, Martha Stewart, ever tip-toe to the barn to check the nests in the haystack to see if she had one more very fresh egg to finish her baking project.

There are just some things that brand rural life as unique, genuine and almost unbelievable, unless you live there.

Calving season on the domestic front means the not so rare event of thawing out a half-frozen baby calf in the house bath tub filled with warm water. This is another event not glorified in the halls of polite company.

Somehow we need to not let people forget there are places in our country where a big Saturday night event is watching a family movie on the television with popcorn and Kool-Aid for refreshments. Remember there are places where nuisance varmints are not gangs with guns and knives but black “kitties” with big white stripes down their backs and the occasional raccoon or possum.

The West isn’t dead and nobody knows it better than those that live in the West. We carry on day to day pretty much as we did decades ago. Fashion trends come and go, markets rise and fall, it rains or it doesn’t. Constants are the cows need fed, the water pipeline needs fixed and Ma is still nagging about the hole in the floor of the house where the snake keeps getting in.

Just try to tell her the West is dead!

Julie, a living testimony of Western life,  can be reached for comment a jcarternm@gmail.com