A couple of years ago during the annual cowboy poets show in Medora we were browsing the Western Edge bookstore. I looked out the window and saw a comical scene unfold. A new pickup truck parked at the curb and out stepped a full-fashioned cowboy wearing shiny black boots, an unblemished black hat, and a ground length black duster coat. I believe he would have worn a pearl handled six shooter if the law would have allowed. He was the perfect caricature of what has become known as the cowboy. After he spent a few minutes in the store he got back into his truck and drove off, leaving me with that humorous image. I shared the moment with the store owner and he told me one better. A man entered his store another time wearing spurs. Somehow he got one of them snagged on a bookcase and needed his wife's help to come disentangled.
Larry McMurtry, a Texas native cowboy son, writes much of the cowboy culture. His autobiographical book Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen takes a realistic look when he said "...almost at the outset cowboys began to try to cultivate an image that the media told them was theirs - they began to play to the camera as soon as the camera was there." Later he writes "Cowboys, early and late, have been influenced by their own imitations, in pulp fiction, in movies, in rodeo."
Now I don't care if wannabees walk around with their fancy western clothes, in fact I confess to owning a big shiny buckle or two myself. My only point is this, I know a lot of real cowboys who don't don western duds in the morning to do their work. They can be recognized by their work-thick fingers, heavy-calloused hands, lace-up work boots, and baseball caps. Articles of western clothing may hang in their closets for dress-up occasions, but you never think of them fitting a caricature. Some of these other guys are laughable. They do try to pose in a picture drawn by someone else. Several magazines in my local Barnes and Noble bookstore even glorify the western lifestyle by showcasing clothing, furniture, and housing which presents a model for those who think the world should look that way.
