My husband is 81 now but he cowboyed, rodeoed and broke horses (Mostly in Montana, some in Texas, one winter/spring in California from 1950 until 1955 or so. He broke his leg so badly in a horse accident that he could only return to his mother's house in Minneapolis, MN and wait for it to heal. He enrolled at the University of Minnesota and....did well. There he met and married his first wife. they followed an academic life together, but he got more and more away from teaching. More and more back to horses and cattle.
Then he met me.
We ended up doing a lot of things that had to do with cattle and horses--though I knew nothing about it. Most of which did not fit any classic old west version of cowboying. We lived in the Ozark mountains. But made a foray into Nebraska in a covered wagon in 1981. We had 9 horses and a mule, a crazy dog, a cat who bailed out in the first half mile out of the Kansas leg of the journey. And three children. One a nursing toddler--(No delicate baby food to be had. I could eat rough-anything and it always came out as milk.)
My husband left Dec 1, 1980 alone in the wagon. He went for a couple weeks and got a job as night watchman in a stockyard at Parsons, KS. He sent for me and the three children we arived on a Greyhound bus after Christmas and lived in a shack by a river outside of town. Resumed the journey when the spring grass came in. Around May 1st. Arrived Maxwell Nebraska June 21, 1981. 43 days of actual road time for the 850 mile journey. We eventually had to return to Arkansas with a ridiculous number of goats and a milk cow, 5 bottle calves, cat (she stayed),and one more baby.
Our checkered past. We did all kinds of stuff to live with his horses, on the land. Many times it was a mess. Often it was beautiful. Just Beautiful. Sometime, as time went on it became --at least for us-- impossible. Others do manage, we cared for others land and cattle, kept some ourselves--a motley lot of odd lots from the sale barn-- but now we make our living this way and that. for God's sake--he is 81 and been brokenup alot. I will not say this is normal. But we people do strange things, don't we?
A book my husband Dick recommends for the life of the old time cowboy: A Texas Cowby: or, Fifteen years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony by Charles Siringo. This fellow was born in 1855 and came of age in the golden age of the cowboy.
If there were any way to post pictures, I would. I will see if my son can do it some time.
Was I crazy? I became one of Jehovah's Witnesses, right? So there's no defense for me.