The American cowboy; Fiction, fancy, and fact

With the lonely skies shoving down on his shoulders and the dust of a continent taking his throat he left his brand on the front tier of our history. I squinted ahead into savagery. Civilization dogging his heels and we give him to you who can take him straight. The American cowboy. Thank you Campbell I know dear says the old lady. That part he. Radio-TV the University of Texas presents the American Council. A series of programs reflecting the true place and picture of the significant historical figure of this unique folk hero. The American cowboy has produced and recorded by radio television the University of Texas under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National

Association of educational broadcast. Consider the cowboy a paperback fiction hoss riden heavy of six gun addiction. Consider the cowboy of myth and romance is notably propulsion to fit every fantasy is vice death entice and his virtue attract Today programme to fiction fantasy and fact. Mr. Jay Frank dhobi tells us the Irish have a saying in County Cork how he has found a way. How hot and if we appear with a discerning eye through time and distance we can see such a cow critter trailing up from Texas making history with every hoof print nooning is over on the trail now. And homesick scribes must backlight those massive harnes with memory. But their shadows fall know what longer across the page and then shadows of the herdsman whose world was framed within the

reaching prongs for cowboys far away increase in measure to the cattle country was thinly inhabited and those who read about it were not of it. To them it was a far off country that was still near and real in which strange men the most daring of their own kind rode into adventures every day and whose very occupation itself was an adventure for the eager ears of a later day knocked of web fashion a proxy Pied Piper. The film cowboy William asked Hart and from the granite geisha of this hero's mouth he pretended there issued these symbolic seduction of Congo's million I'll take you for a vacation in a wild way. If I had a few frills it will not matter. You can make no distinction when you're ignorant of both the truth and the fiction of comrade when they are about it.

Who could resist. Who could resist ever in 1870 when the Great Plains from western Kansas to the Sierra Nevada from the Red River to Canada were still unclaimed when hardly a white man lived in the western half of Texas. Fifteen years later with the rain staked out in vast pastoral Dominion or even now when the herds toiled endlessly across a 21 inch front tier. Pell mell willy nilly the bow which still all ages have sprung up behind the saddle and his saddle and gone Pell to go up to the promise land over the play into the mountain through the park paper across the silver screen. Why. Did. We. Go. In search of The Far Country its delights and its dangers its recklessness and romance.

News. Would you come lead out here for your handlers in your horse he would. Yeah I don't know about romance Guinea man whoever made a trip over the drain or was caught in a rainstorm with no fuel but overall chips and ask him how many days he passed without being able to make a cup of coffee. Ask him if we ever worked in the north when every morning he shook the drifted snow off his blankets in the eye of a blizzard rode out to turn a wind adrift again Oh and if you're still unsatisfied ask him from a sanitary standpoint if there was anything would be to spread these clothes on an anti you know to remove the vermin and in the likelihood you want to push the matter further. Never mind friend they won't listen to reason. There are colors brighter than yours for painting the cowboy siren song Sweeter voices

far far more. Come my son it is time you're getting ready for the spring and I can see you and your mind is made up to go west. A few words of advice. I should stop every Indian I shot. Matt only looks more business like to do so. But that's what you've got to stop in my book. I don't skimp on Bill you know. I for at least one was enough to kill one day. What if you were my forebears. What if it was written with tongue in cheek it was read with heart and throat and many a lad fell Popeye asleep only to emerge as Candace carrying all the red right hand and his own dream version of William F. Cody's half dime novel. Did you see the party again after the night no medical Red Hand of the old miner. Yeah Noah is a brave man. Who had always tramped along.

Oh I started around noon and stopped at Trader again and then come morning. And here I replied No get you is a real front tears meant for the parents and yes. And why did you follow it. Did he or she read it and felt as how you wouldn't mind having another tonight 7:00 a.m. with your name for this year's OSA dirty Asian country you know. Yes and I have no objection. To getting your good Our little bit. Soon we'll soon discover that five of their fiercest Breyer's whose scalp today what releases did you hear is horrified. Today. After a little skirmishing today. That of mounds sinking lever and Dawson the bundle of scouts. And Walden stuff in his blanket and soon appeared to be fast asleep. Dream stuff of a bygone day printed in the millions by the House of beetle and Adams. So for a nickel to those who look to the wild west through binoculars of the

imagination from the eastern seaboard then as from the twentieth century the focus was faulty. The details blurred the image out of kilter. The cowboy as a man attached to a gigantic pair of spurred he inhabits the praise of Texas and is successfully raised as far north as the thirtieth degree of latitude he has in season all the year round and is a man of strong purpose. If he was a mind to mind elbow his way through the fire alarms the bell in the cottage is the shaps the slang and the horses might separate the myth from the reality as France or the show would have done in their book The American cowboy. The American cowboy exists on three distinct levels the historical level about which the average American cares and knows no more than he does about any other phase of nonmilitary or non political history. The fictional level in which the cowboy occupies a not quite respectable but highly popular position

and the folklore level on which the cowboy sits as an idealized creation of the American Folk Life. A man of keen vision if he was a mind to might sight through the haze of gloss and glory and see the cowboy plain etched in life size as Fred Gibson and Callahan sees fat all for he never shot a man in his life. He never chased a rustler across the Rio Grande. He never rescued a beautiful girl from ruthless bandits and rode off into the sunset with his arm about her waves. But he can rip a cow out of a brush patch. He can make out with patched gear sori mounts and skimpy grub and still get the job done. Yes these things a man could find out if he was a mind to. But how many were are are ever will be of such a mind. The truthful man among the worshippers of the false courts disaster. If he's fool enough to bring the far country to it's all Bush this talk about cowboys learn and enjoy a book and horses read in a book and

horses like heaven but you never get there early used to it. Listen stranger when you say that. Smile. All right Mr.. He's smiling. CNA T. And that's another thing this air gapped mouth is a kind of a trademark in the Callahan profession wagon boss figures a cowhand event had some teeth kicked out of his head as either green horn or did he add thus fact Melson to fiction and fiction into fancy and there are many who would have it no other way. For this is the hallmark of a far country that anything can happen and so something nearly always does. YOU LOOK GOOD SON OF A GUN. You don't quit waving at some Barrow you'll get plotted your way. Wow he's my hero my why did you get down and quit squirm in heaven. You mean Indians know I hate going to Utah back out to

Georgia I got a mini I hate being stared at by a no healer monster. Oh says they don't care how happy I got back us away to get you in the hood. My face. Come over here and give me some water. All right but here quit right here. Oh now anything else yeah. That he was back didn't get a new suit back I had bunch of warts and blew him to Cheyenne WY o this here is worse than the time we cleaned out the Cabo outfit. The myth is mended. The bloom is on the page. The Pied Piper clatters once more across the plains of the imagination. And the wet sponge after his brush poppers in the mosquito they kept

pursuing the fiction in the fantasy even while the crimes of fact tear at their heedless Haydn's the cowboy was a work in and most of the time it was don't work lonely were dirty We're hungry. Well. I ain't never done nothing but eat destiny stared a cow's tail and boyhood upwards. To get what you're going in for nobody and nobody gunning for me Miss savage that's a heap o saddle ballast you know what things weigh. All right. Take one gun away from the cowboy scrape away the wildness and the willingness and the wishful thinking as Raymond Adams has done to find that that average cow handed run his boot heels over sidestep and trouble you will likely have troubled yourself for nothing because

truth seekers in these parts are way yonder outnumbered. There remain so many others who cannot distinguish the fact from the fiction from the fancy and even more who wouldn't do so if they could. Fiction fantasy and fact radio television the University of Texas has brought you program number two of the American cowboy. These broadcasts are based on source materials from the Texas History Library of the barker History Center and the western publications True West and frontier times edited by Joe small. A bibliography is available on request. The American cowboy as directed by Bill Burke from scripts by Mary D Benjamin under the supervision of Robert F. shank producer are senors. Original music by Eleanor Pei are now writer is Cactus Brian.

Student production assistant Alan pate. Daniel Langfield speaking. Fiction fantasy and fact was produced and recorded by radio television at the University of Texas under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio Center and is being distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the NOAA radio network.