4 Things A Cowboy Needs and the Westerns That Provide Them
The Scoop features personal essays on movie-centric topics.
By Dave Comello
I’ve loved westerns for a long time. One of my fondest memories as a kid in the late 1950s was sitting on my living room floor watching Wagon Train with my brother Rick, cowboy hats on and six-cylinder cap guns in our holsters. When the characters stopped to cook their evening meal of beans or beef stew around a large campfire, we would eat our own beans from the can mom would open for us. We felt like real cowboys.
As I got older and saw more of the world (not to mention more westerns), I still found ways to identify with the cowboy experience and how it informed my real life—and vice versa. Here’s what I learned.
A Cowboy Needs Adventure
At age 11 I joined the Boy Scouts. My brother had already been in for a year so he helped me pass my required tests to become a scout, the first level of Boy Scout. Our Troop 327 made canvas teepees to live in for one week at the state Scout Jamboree in northern Wisconsin. We competed against other troops in physical challenges to collect victory flags and ribbons. It was very exciting.
That same year I got my first BB rifle, which I could fill with shiny copper pellets. I don’t believe I shot any living creature but was a dead-eye on trees, cans, and rocks. There was an isolated wooded area near where I could ride my bike while carrying my rifle and really let loose.
Provision: The Wild Bunch
Director Sam Peckinpah really let loose with 1969’s The Wild Bunch, the story of an aging outlaw getting the boys together for one last robbery. Within the first five minutes, Peckinpah pulls off all the bridles and reins from conventional westerns as William Holden and his gang ride into town to rob a bank, where they’re surprised by a rooftop of armed men waiting for his exit from the bank. A slow-motion bloodbath ensues, with the gang eventually getting away but with a loss of some gang members. I love how Peckinpah places children up close to the action—as if they too are watching how this western genre will play out. Holden and Robert Ryan as the leads both have the old cowboy ways of loyalty, sacrifice, and tenacity, which are on display throughout the slo-mo shooting, explosions, and drama that build toward a conclusion fitting for the western genre.
A Cowboy Needs A Friend
In my late twenties I took up hunting and fishing with my friend Lief. He grew up in northern Wisconsin and his family owned property since the 1930s, which we used for deer hunting, duck hunting, and fishing. We spent many hours together in duck blinds, walking trails, scouting and hunting deer, and fishing, with Lief patiently and skillfully guiding me along the trail of a more accomplished outdoorsman.
One day during a fall deer hunt I got lost in the woods of a state forest where we hunted. There was some snow on the ground but soon it started snowing again and started thickly covering my tracks, so I couldn’t backtrack. I missed our agreed-upon rendezvous time and place, so I knew Lief would be worried. Eventually I found my way back by following someone’s tracks to a cabin. What relief. Two hours later I made it back to our spot with my friend Lief, relieved and greeting me with a big hug. Which I needed.
Provision: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
I saw a similar kinship in 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, directed by George Roy Hill and starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Justly nominated for several Academy Awards and filmed in Zion National Park in Utah, I couldn’t pick a better western to exemplify a friendship. The movie takes its time developing the relationship between Butch and Sundance in various circumstances: playing poker, robbing trains and banks, meeting up with the Hole In The Wall Gang, evading capture, and meeting their inevitable end. Throughout it all they rely on each other’s strengths and reassure each other during the threats of capture, using humorous banter and sarcasm but always with mutual respect and lightheartedness. Life can get lonely, fearful, and hopeless at times, but having a faithful friend alongside as we evade capture from our desperate circumstances in life makes for a cowboy friend indeed.
A Cowboy Needs A Town
No western is complete without a town, if only for a place to go to clear your dusty throat (or “cut the dust” in cowboy lingo) with whiskey, beer, or rye after a full day of riding the open range, roping and branding the beeves, or working the homestead.
One beautiful hot summer afternoon while at Lief’s cabin, we decided to go into town to play billiards and cut the dust. As we were listening to the jukebox and drinking beer, a man named Carl comes sauntering in wearing a blue plaid shirt. He bellies up to the bar, orders a cold beer, and commences drinking.
After a few beers he starts jawing with his work boss who just happens to be in the bar. He’s getting riled up and arguing with his boss, and soon enough starts throwing punches. Before you know it they’re like two polecats thrashing around on the barroom floor. When Carl gets up off the floor he moans about the blood on his new shirt from KMart. By this time some merciful saloon gal phoned Carl’s wife, who arrived at the bar to escort Carl back to the homestead. Unfortunately no chairs or tables were overturned or bottles thrown during this scrape, but it was sure exciting to see.
Provision: The Texican
That local flair shows up in many a western, but especially so in the spaghetti westerns of the 1960s, with Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly arguably the most famous example. That movie title perfectly describes 1966’s The Texican, which starred decorated World War II vet and postwar westerns mainstay Audie Murphy. I affectionately call The Texican a Spaghetti-O’s western given its exaggerated sound dubbing and superficial dialogue. But its appealing Technicolor cinematography makes for great shots of the arid mountains of Spain and chorus girls in brightly colored dresses doing the can-can. There’s also a great fight scene where Murphy’s Jess Carlin, an aging ex-gunslinger out for revenge, takes on some heavies in the town saloon despite being outnumbered. Let’s just say he fares better than Kmart Carl.
A Cowboy Needs An Open Range
In the summer of 1971, my friend Greg and I planned a trip with our mutual friend Sally through southern Canada, Montana, and on to Oregon. We took the backseat out of Greg’s 1960 army green Volkswagen Beetle and filled the space with dry goods, canned vegetables, a portable Coleman stove, and two army-issue ponchos that could be fashioned into a very cozy three-person tent. Setting off from Madison, WI, we steered our westward wagon train towards Ontario by way of International Falls, MN. Before we crossed the border into Canada, Sally threw a cloth bag containing a syringe, needle, spoon, and rubberband out the window of the VW. She was a heroin addict and was using this opportunity to break free from the self-destructive addictions and empty attachments we can easily find ourselves acquiring in this modern life, robbing us of a healthy mindset and positive self-image. Sometimes a change of scenery can help.
Breathing a big sigh of relief as we crossed the border, we spent the first night at a campsite, gazing up into a brilliant star-filled sky. A star-filled sky! I’d never really seen that before. No buildings. No city lights. No city sounds. Truly a breathtaking and awe-inspiring sight. We continued on along the Trans-Canada Highway through rocky Manitoba and into Saskatchewan, where we saw fields of tall sunflower plants as far as the eye could see. Then the Big Sky Country of Montana, where we watched mountain goats bask in the sun and absorbed the beautiful valleys and crystal clear lakes of Glacier National Park and the mountainous vistas of the Road to the Sun highway. Finally, passing through northern Washington, we arrived at the Pacific Ocean in Coos Bay, Oregon. Our own Oregon Trail journey was complete.
Provision: Dances With Wolves
A similar journey happens in Dances With Wolves (1990), the Best Picture-winning western set during the Civil War. Rather than lose his wounded leg, Lt. Dunbar (Kevin Costner) mounts his horse and makes a suicide run along the Confederate line, which inadvertently sparks a successful Union attack. Now with a citation for bravery and saved leg, Dunbar has his choice of posting and opts for the western frontier—to see it before it disappears. He was now alone, leaving behind his personal civil war and self-destructive disillusionment and journeying west in search of a new identity amidst the unknown frontier.