A couple of other movies are worth watching regarding cowboys, steers and whatever ... Full Metal Jacket and Officer and a Gentleman.
Rub a Dub
A question for my friends in the USA about cowboys.
by punkofnice 87 Replies latest social current
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talesin
Rub-a-Dub
Full Metal Jacket - best flick EVER abuyt Vietnam ................ and hahaha, are you saying "Animal" was the cowboy? Or another character?
tal
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Terry
As far as I know the 'wild west' as shown on TVdidn't actually exist.
Are there people that believe it did?
Is that why they dress up as a classic movie cowboys and cowgirls?
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Howdy Pard'ner,
I grew in Texas.
The city is Fort Worth, otherwise known as COWTOWN.
The city limit sign says, "WelcomE to Ft.Worth: WHERE THE WEST BEGINS".
As a young boy I dressed up like Hoppalong Cassidy, rode a stick horse and never missed a Western on TV or in the movies.
I lived with my great grandmother, grandmother and grandfather.
My Great grandmother rode to Texas from Tennesee in a covered wagon. When they passed through Oklahoma they were
chased by a band of Injuns (excuse me, Native Americans) and barely escaped with their lives.
He traveled to Ft.Worth to marry the sherriff whose name was Jim Rushing.
He was a lawman and a gambler. It was feast or famine in the house which was built by his own hands on blocks of cement.
I grew up in that house. It was surrounded by all kinds of trees: pecan, walnut, chinaberry etc. as well as honeysuckle, plum trees, blueberry bushes and we had plenty of shade in the hottest summers.
But--you didn't ask any of that, did you? No.
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Jim Rushing was shot in the back in the streets of downtown Ft.Worth.
His widow, my great grandmother, remarried a man named Avery who was a boiler maker. He worked at a foundry making giant cylinders out of steel which held water to create steam for steam engines.
When my grandfather was born, he was so small (how small was he?) his mom put him in a shoebox and placed it in her saddle bags as she rode her horse to town.
He was born in 1890.
Fort Was built on cattle.
The cattle drives only lasted until the railroads were well-established as a viable alternative to the trail drives.
You see, Longhorn cattle lost a lot of fat ona strenuous journey along the Chisolm Trail. By the time they arrive
at market, they were all stringy meat tough to cut even with the sharpest blade, and so chewy you had to spit out part of each mouthful.
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The trains came through the middle of Ft.Worth as a better conveyance and I grew up not 400 yards from the Katy Railroad where the sound
of boxcars clackety, clacking all night was the most restful sleep a boy could have.
The first night I spent away from home, I couldn't get to sleep because it was TOO QUIET!
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FORT WORTH had a section of town called HELL'S HALF ACRE where criminals of every sort hung out and many a dastardly deed was performed.
The area was famous for its attractive prostitutes who were referred to as "Lonesome Doves."
This area thrived in the late 1800s, when cowboys on the Chisholm Trail would stop by, kick up their heels, and patronize the "lonesome doves." Some of the most famous folks in the Old West also visited the Acre: Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Sam Bass, Etta Place, Longhair Jim Courtright, Luke Short, and, of course, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
On November 29, 1878, the Fort Worth Democrat described the range of patrons at the dance halls as “...lewd women of all ages 16 to 40... the most respectable of citizens, the experienced thief... the ordinary murderer, the average cowboy and the ordinary young man of the town.”
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Fort Worth has never outgrown this legacy and heritage. We have Log Cabin villages, police on horseback, Stock Yards, saloons with sawdust on the floor and an inexplicable pride in hard times and hard men and feminine women:)
Fort Worth has had the benefit of billionaires interested in preserving the city. Amon Carter, Charles Tandy, Richard Rainwater and the Bass family.
We have never become a real metropolitan city like Dallas, but we are a strange hybrid of the past and the present; with only flickers of the future in the skyline.
This is Ft.Worth today:
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talesin
Thanks for sharing your personal heritage, Terry ........... wow.
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RubaDub
Full Metal Jacket - best flick EVER abuyt Vietnam ................ and hahaha, are you saying "Animal" was the cowboy? Or another character?
talesin ...
I guess I was being too vague in my mention of Full Metal Jacket and Officer and a Gentleman.
They both just contain references to that the only things that come out of Texas/Oklahoma are steers and ... well ....
I'll leave it at that.
Rub a Dub
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undercover
Don't forget the oulaw 'Cowboys' of Arizona during the Wyatt Earp years...
The movies about Earps/Tombstone/etc make for good theater, but really gloss over a lot of the background and politics of the Earp/Clanton fight. The real story is actually more fascinating than just the shootout at OK Corral
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talesin
Rub a Dub, I'm sorry, wasn't dissing you, but being a bit silly, but in the framwork of bieng a 'cowboy', set off from most folks, and decision-making, I do think Animal was the 'cowboy' in that way ............ the guy who has no fear, and does what 'needs to be done', crazy mofo he was.
:D
tks for your reply
xx
tal
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DwainBowman
You have to watch the really old western, to get a some what realistic look at the cowboy era.
And as far as the cowboy presdent, the longer time goes on, the more truth comes out bit by bit, that he was not the idiot the news painted him to be. He was a gentaman, that for some missguided reason, felt it best not to respond to all the crap that was thrown at him. And sadly the more crap thrown without responce, the more people belive it to be true. Just look at what is there now, no matter if it's true or not, his gang is quick to respond and claim it's all lies, and because of doing that, a lot of people belive him no matter what. But cracks are really startting to take a toll on him and his bunch!!!
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jgnat
"Recently, you might be interested to know, I met an actual cowboy. He described to me how cowboys do their job today, herding thousands of cattle. They have tightly organized teams, with everyone assigned specific positions and communicating with each other constantly. They have protocols and checklists for bad weather, emergencies, the inoculations they must dispense. Even the cowboys, it turns out, function like pit crews now." - Atul Gawande
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/cowboys-and-pit-crews
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3rdgen
I never shared my California heritage with JW's so I can tell you about it now. My paternal grandmother was the great grandaughter of William B Ide who was an Eastern college educated well-to-do attorney who with his wife came to Cali in the early 1840's shortly before the gold rush. They had everything going for them. Why leave their lifestyle to come out West? Hubby quips, "Probably to get away from their relatives." Who knows? That's as good a reason as any. Ide was elected the 1st and only president of the "Bear Flag Republic".They fought "Indians", Mexicans, Spaniards. His is quite a story. He and his offspring were cattle ranchers in Northern Cali. and so my dad, the firstborn son, was a "born in" cowboy. Grandma became an IBSA and exposed her children to the beliefs. My dad HATED being a cowboy and left home in the 1920's for college and never did ranchwork again. He loved to watch TV Westerns and point out where they were incorrect. He liked the show "Rawhide" staring a young Clint Eastwood.
