The movie, “The Cowboys” with John Wayne is one of my all time favorites. In the movie he owns a big ranch. He needs to take some cattle on a cattle drive so he can sell them and pay his bills. All of the grown men that worked for him left because of a gold strike. So, he hires a bunch of kids from the local school. Hence the name of the movie, cow boys, meaning he has a bunch of boys to drive cattle. They get into all sorts of trouble along the way on the cattle drive.
The last couple of years I’ve became involved with some school kids over near Fort Smith, Arkansas. I’m the 4H leader. Now, these kids, are mostly what’d I label city kids. They live in town in a house or an apartment. They like 4H because we plant a garden, show animals and do stuff they think is cool. I’ve even been teaching them to rope a roping dummy.
Last year we had our end of the year banquet in the school gym. This year I wasn’t able to do as much with them as I wanted. So, this weekend I rented an indoor arena and I brought our old roping horses for them to ride. We ate bbq, fried potatoes and bbq beans. They roped the dummies and rode horses until they were give out.
My wife counted and we had a little over fifty people in attendance. I was a little nervous we wouldn’t have enough food.
As I watched them rope and ride I couldn’t help but remember the John Wayne movie. Each kid had their own strengths and weaknesses, much like the characters in the movie. Near the end of the movie all of the kids worked together and defeated a bunch of bad outlaws. We didn’t have outlaws to defeat, but they did pick up the trash and help put up all of the ropes and roping dummies.
As the day was ending one little boy asked me if he could come work for me on my ranch this summer. I laughed and said I don’t know. In my mind I could hear John Wayne saying, throw some bacon on a biscuit and get a move on! We’re burning daylight!” Who knows, maybe next year we will break a colt in a wooden round pen with them. I was danged proud of my cow boys and cow girls this weekend though.
James Lockhart lives near the Kiamichi mountains in southeast Oklahoma. He writes cowboy stories and fools with cows and horses.
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