Blog 3686 – 12.08.2026
When Cowboys Were King
I grew up in the nineteen fifties when cowboys were still king if only in black and white movies on Saturday mornings starring Gene Autry and Roy Rogers who both at one time wore the title King of the Cowboys. My Uncle Joe gave me one of my most treasured Christmas gifts as a boy. It was a Lone Ranger six-gun set complete with holster, and belt with loops for carrying plastic silver bullets. It was a cap gun and I fired many a red roll of caps in that pistol.
I suppose my life long dream of owning a horse ranch originated watching those old black and white cowboy movies. A Willie Nelson lyric comes to mind, “My heroes have always been cowboys, and they still are today.” It was inevitable that I would spend the greater part of my journey in a state like Texas were cowboys are still king even in the big city of Houston at least once a year when the Houston Livestock and Rodeo comes to town in February.
Last week I posted a picture and wrote a piece about Buddhist monks marching from Fort Worth to Washington, D.C. for peace. Today I am thinking of all the trail drives from all over the state of Texas that converge on Houston to celebrate the annual cowboy convention in Houston each year.
Last night I rewatched one of my favorite westerns, Rio Lobo with John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and Angie Dickinson. John Wayne, perhaps one of the most well-known cowboy stars of all, was born Marion Robert Morrison in Winterset, Iowa on May 26, 1907. As a young man he began his movie career as a cowboy. Of his 169 feature films almost half were westerns. There is a young cowboy still lives in many an old guy my age ready to ride the range again with our cowboy heroes.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David James White
Sweet Baby James & Long Ago and Far Away
theencouragingword 