Days of the "Cowboys"...

Memoirs of a Geezer

  

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:        Days of the "Cowboys"...

A random thought, a cliche...  He thought of stuffing a plug of tobacco into the empty pouch of his left facial cheek, just to appear more natural as an authentic chaps-wearing, gun-packin' cowhand!  But, he didn't like chewin' nor did he fancy six guns, or any other bullet-firing contrivance, for that matter.  Didn't have a plug of tobacco in any case.  (Gave up the "shootin' life" when he left military service!)  

Jack was a journalist, a writer.  He sometimes looks behind himself from the heights of GeezerHood and wonders if his memory is intact, accurate, correct...   Years past, he

lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming and his labors earned $75.00...  hmmm, was it per week, or once a month? Must have been per week.  Who could possibly live on $75 a month, even in 1969 and 1970!?
 

Jack worked for a daily newspaper, and often wrote for the morning daily's evening companion paper, and its combined Sunday edition.  He was young, often foolhardy and not terribly conscious of safe behavior or the needs of self-preservation.  Who the hell is at 25 or 26, or thereabouts, in the prime years of youth or early manhood?  

There were two colleagues, or associates, maybe, at the same newspapers.  One was the Sports Editor, the other the Staff Photographer.  The former had some difficulty with strong drink, spirits, alcoholic beverages.  The latter was ancient, maybe old as the geysers at Yellowstone, and magnificently nicotine stained.  Jack thought he resembled a totem made of seasoned wood, or a carved figure standing sentry at a main street cigar store.     

The sports editor sometimes did not appear for days.  The photo chap was often taken ill

or maybe, himself, stupified or overly stimulated by an excess of refreshment --  strong spirits, booze-glutted tumblers of rye whiskey, for example.  As a consequence of the aforementioned, Irving or Edgar -- Editor in Chief and Managing Editor, respectively -- would ask Jack to step in and fill the empty roles.  Jack was delighted to accept, and so he did on several occasions. 

A Cowboy Football Player from the
University of Wyoming, in Laramie

As fill-in sports editor, Jack would feature much of the sports section with appropriate local news (e.g.  Laramie's University or Wyoming Cowboys football squad), but some with stories close to his own heart -- copy featuring Midwestern sports teams -- a bit subjective, maybe selfish or self-absorbed, but no one ever seemed to complain.   

The other fill-in role, as erstwhile photographer, was far more exciting, fun and adventurous...  like a cavalry scout or a horse-mounted cowpoke herding and driving hundreds of head of cattle to a stockyard, or a bold and brave buckskin-clad hunter slaying and bringing home fresh game for denizens of the Wagon Train! 

Hmmm...  Maybe, Possibly...  Jack might have
concealed himself, for safety sake, in that
kind of barrel...  Might could be the 
actual one, come to think....  maybe...

At Cheyenne-based rodeos, as the "man with a camera," Jack would position himself if a padded barrel, pop up as required and shoot pictures of bronc riders, or steer ropers or chuck wagon racers or even bull riders!  It was a helluva hoot was for a cub reporter, an  occasional fill-in editor and photo journalist.   

These are the tales, the adventures and memories he liked to keep in his Psychic album for posterity, to relate to family members, relatives and friends...  Materializing occasionally, like specters that appear to the unsuspecting in old houses and haunted inns or English castles or mist-shrouded city streets on moonless nights.      

Whether people, the aforementioned, wish to believe it or not believe it, the tales were mostly true, if sometimes embellished or enlarged, like a retouched photo or a poster painted by the story-teller him or herself, possibly re-touched to include and suggest something larger or bolder than the thing or event of origin.

When the sports editor and photographer were at their respective desks or at the horseshoe-shaped table near or across from "the slot" occupied by the editor, Jack would return to the more mundane tasks of writing up the days news he had gathered on his rounds, his beat.  At a relatively small newspaper, a reporter would cover everything...  Police news, the State House

(Wyoming's capitol building), crime, fires, accidents, academic news, community services, federal happenings to which the state might have been affected or economically allied...  all of it and more, everything!   

On occasions of so-called "slow news days," Jack longed for the barrel or the sports desk, not always, but on those rare, spare news days, something itched.  Those times when the excitement of the dust-choked rodeo grounds and the hoof beats and the drama of cowpunchers being thrown from bucking broncos and huge, snorting bulls...  The sights and noise of rocketing chuck

wagons, racing round barrels....  When those images came to mind, Jack fell under a spell, a kind of irresistible beckoning, and let his thoughts, his attention and daydreams be lassoed, captured by a band of shadowy cowhands!   

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"Ahem...  Jack..."  Edgar was an excellent managing editor, always quiet and composed.  But he never lost sight of the objective, get the paper out; do it professionally, and on time.  He was always, in Jack's view, an effective leader and manager of the reporters under his supervision.  Edgar coughed lightly and cleared his throat...    "Jack, snap out of it.  We have deadlines to meet."  

Humbly Submitted 03-17-2026...   by Joel K.