The days of the lone cowboy, complete with sweat-stained, Montana-creased hat, oil skin duster and a hardship-weathered face seem far too distant.

That solitary figure, silhouetted against the blistering sun out on the sagebrush range following the herd are long gone now, unless you know where to look... Images from the silver screen of a dusty trail, a gal with a tear rolling down her cheek back home and the crusted statement of "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" brought high adventure and danger to the legends of the west. The man who was hardened by the elements and the solitary lifestyle that he led always knew his best friend, the horse. Poking the late-night campfire with a mesquite stick while sitting on a log and well-used branding irons leaning against the same 'cowboy furniture', his friend could always be found nearby.

Every kid on the block during the heyday of those golden years of the American cinema proudly wore a set of engraved 'pearl-handled six-guns', cowboy hat and envisioned they were headed "out west" when they grew up.

Heaven help the poor neighborhood dog who reluctantly was commissioned to act as their make-believe horse. When asked "Where out west might be?", the adolescent finger pointed in the direction wherever the boy happened to be facing. Somehow, "out west" was a different and pure country that embraced honor, respect and something that most subdivisions lacked...integrity.

It was a home of sorts that gave the time-honored ideals of how and why America was meant to be. That barbed- wire, fence-mending cowboy was a spirit that indelibly pierced the nations' heart and provided virtues to the world way back then.

Those same kids used to say "Out west, it's bushwhackin', rattler-infested, coyote country" and point to the golden setting sun and added, "Varmints and scoundrels lurk 'round every corner and a man's gotta watch his step". Hangin's and shoot-outs were common on the school playground with a youthful finger pointed to the faces of the dirty rustlers as the four-foot, three-inch third grader marched his prisoners to the makeshift jail by the swingsets and merry-go-round.

With a vivid imagination one of those kids got carried away and made a mustache of sorts from his mother's make-up case and everyone laughed. He thought he looked like Wyatt Earp, he said, but he never did do that again. Nevertheless, the west sagebrush and wonderful horses beckoned many of those kids and later in life they moved there.

Continues........