STFU About Cowboys
Tony, Topper, Scout, Loco, Trigger, Champion – those are the names of something that you will not see on the Shrubbery’s property in Crawford: horses. Cowboys ride horses, and the Shrubbery apparently has a problem with horses. That property isn’t a ranch, or a farm, the only “stock” are bass in a pond on the property.
My Dad was the weekend projectionist in the local theater when I was a child, so my brothers and I saw a lot of movies, and the majority were B westerns. My maternal grandfather read Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour almost exclusively, so my Mother liked westerns. She would watch all of the westerns on TV, and still watches reruns of Gunsmoke and Bonanza on a nostalgia channel. I know about cowboys.
The Shrubbery has absolutely no connection to the “Code of the West” or any of the things that caused young children to cheer on the sheriff. Remember: the good guy never draws first, and never, ever shoots anyone in the back. There’s a name for people like the Shrubbery in westerns, and he has been rubbing the noses of those who think he’s cowboy hero: he’s a bushwhacker.
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Considering Bush’s wealth of personal possessions and lack of appropriate headgear (which my sainted grandfather would never have been caught without), I’d say Bush is “no hat, all chattel.” Bushwhacker… indeed. Cowboy… MFA.
…actually he’s the city slicker gambler who rolls into town on the evening stage, assumes a prominent roll in the community through mostly foul means, and gets his comeupance in some bloody confrontation in the last reel at the hands of a large lean dark stranger with a big iron on his hip. We’re just waiting for that last reel to start…
I grew up in cattle country and my family owned quarterhorses for a number of years; I always have to turn away from any discussion of Gee Dub’s “ranch” as matter of embarrassment…
He wears boots with riding heels, showing he doesn’t know any better. The lack of hat shows he has never done any serious work on a ranch or a farm – hell, he has never done any serious work, he just had serious jobs. Whacking bushes is as close as he comes to sweating when not on a bicycle.
Jack, my people were in dairy, not beef, and it was draft horses, not quarterhorses, but that place in West Texas is an embarrassment to anyone with any connection to the land. I was stationed in San Angelo in West Texas, and have ridden more horses in West Texas than the Shrubbery. I used to bruise my butt a couple of times of month on a rented horse to take my mind off the course I was taking at Goodfellow AFB.
The thought of the Shrubbery anywhere near a single-action revolver should cause the vapors among anyone who really knew the incompetent. Marrying the “schoolmarm” doesn’t make you a cowboy.