The dyin' cowboy

By GEORGE OSTROM

"HELP WANTED —Ranch hand. The day will begin at 8 a.m. and end when the work is done. Pay is $600 per month for experienced person. Mostly outside under good as well as severe conditions. Board and room furnished."

Were there buckaroos and wranglers leaping at that help-wanted item in a Job Service ad a few years back? Sorry pardner. The job went begging. In spite of the Marlboro man rounding up those dogies on giant billboards, in spite of our TV and movies glamorizing the he-men of the west, the American cowboy is on his last bowed legs.

I've told you personal stories of the suffering I endured as a child of the range, a chaser of steers. Earned two bucks a day breaking horses and doing other ranch chores as a young teenager in the early forties; but! did my sniveling bring down this American institution? NO! For me, the American Cowboy had begun to die in 1980 when I went on a roundup and the "trail boss" was wearing a baseball cap and riding a Honda.

I remember only too well, sitting astride my horse on a high bluff near Elmo as the small brown river of cattle flowed off toward the sunset. Below me were all parts of the west I loved, from the yelling flank riders to the colorful drovers on swing, astride prancing ponies to turn back the quitters, and on point, a 72-year-old man who remembered when steers had horns, but how romantic can western memories be, when over the bellowing of the cattle can be heard the whine of a purple Japanese motorcycle?

Is this the nation where only 120 years ago young men volunteered to spend four months of "dust, thirst, blisters, cold, and danger for the price of a new hat and a fancy pair of boots?" (Average drovers got $30 a month while a good trail boss got $100) A teenaged Bayliss Fletcher signed on to drive cattle up the old Chisholm Trail in 1879 because of "the sheer necessity of finding a job… any job." Maybe that's the answer. There were not many "social services" in 1879. People worked at something or they didn't eat.

Nowadays, "Nobody wants to be a cowboy," according to Oralia Mercado, "It's hard work, it's dirty work, it's round-the-clock work. It is not something a U.S. worker wants to do."

Mercado ought to know. He is the executive director of the Mountain Plains Ag Service, which helps ranchers locate suitable workers, and it's getting tougher. In fact, ranchers in Wyoming long ago started importing Mexican cowboys under a Federal ruling that allows them to hire immigrants, since not enough American cowboys could be found.

Can Marlboro adjust? Will they pick a macho man named Jose? Let us not forget the first cattle and ponies in the west came from south of the border where the Spanish and Latin vaquero descendants had established the beef business. Why did the first great cattle drive up the Shawnee Trail in 1840 originate in Texas, just above the Rio Grande? Because the whole cowboy industry of the 1800s had its roots in Spain via Mexico. Now they are taking it back.

I feel bad. We had something romantic and precious for awhile. The paintings of Remington and Russell turned the dream into a reality everyone could see, and writers like Zane Gray and Max Brand let us all ride the open range. Think of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies. We had it all… stampedes in the storm, gunfights at the OK Corral, guitars around the campfire, show-downs in Dodge City, the painted ladies of Abilene and sunny days in the purple sage.

Near as I can tell, several things killed the cowboy business. First was the Japanese Hondas and Yamahas with their lowrange transmissions. Not only do they go just about anyplace a horse can, but they also go faster and require less maintenance. Because of the higher speeds, the riders had to get a hat that didn't blow off as easily, and right there we had the beginning of the end.

Picture Gary Cooper walking down the street in "High Noon" wearing a baseball hat with "Purina" across the front?

Then there was OSHA. One dude temporarily ruled that no cowboy should ever be made to work more than five minutes away from a regular toilet. Many potential cowboys got to thinking about squatting down out there on the range in howling sand, dust, and snow storms, and that probably discouraged 15 to 20 percent from going pro.

Another 20 or 30 percent were undoubtedly affected by the new 1960s perception that if a person couldn't find a job they liked, then they should go on unemployment and live off people who have jobs.

In spite of all this, if I was a young man and had to choose between going on welfare, or being a cowboy… I'd be out at the ranch before sundown… but I wouldn't wear a baseball cap.