Back From Vegas, American Cowboy Culture
I went to the National Rodeo Finals over the last few days in Las Vegas. What a different world from the one I live in. These are guys who live by their skills roping, riding, bucking off broncs and bulls and their world and mine only intersect to the extent that we both are out to live as free from the capitalist system as we can. But they are outlaws and rebels by natural predilection not by any intellectual reasoning based on political theory.
The most sophisticated writer I saw one of them reading was Jack London the self taught socialist who went to the Yukon in search of gold. Robert Service is more their speed. But although these guys aren’t dopers or radicals in the sense that most moderns would think, they are hard drinking partiers who don’t like the law or urban civilization except for the goodies they get to help them in the things they do believe in, booze, pick up trucks, good horses, big bulls and beautiful women and enough land to be able to work a spread of cattle and make a couple of bucks for the next rodeo. Some of them got pretty rich from agribusiness and those are the ones who hate Obama and are generally involved in the business aspect of the Rodeo. Others, cowboys for the most part are pro union, labor types who may or may not become racist right wingers or radical lefties. Many of them related to folkies like Woodie Guthrie and Rambling Jack Elliot is buddies with my dad and Jimi. They used to hang out with the Hollywood cowboys of the sixties, Dan Blocker from Bonanza, Johnny Hartford from the Glen Campbell show and various others who would shift back and forth between the rodeo world of today and the imaginary world of the western that still existed in American Pop culture until the hippie revolution and the English Beat drove it off the map of the main stream. Now it exists as a subculture in America, where cowboy hats and boots and belts are worn as symbols of membership that everyone recognises.
I was allowed to sit in on their tales of daring do because I was not one of those animal rights activists out there calling the rodeo inhumane to animals. I grew up in that culture as a small child and even though I am no longer part of it and have never been as an adult, I certainly understand it and would never judge although I let them know I am mostly vegetarian, many of them are inoculated with new age culture and a belief in herbal remedies via the Hollywood cowboy connection. How else would you find the amalgamated belief in Jesus, reincarnation, UFOs and as much free sex as possible, while holding up the virtue of mother, America and prayer. It is a wierd mix of Reagan’s version of America riding tall in the saddle and the outlaw version of the wild west with the showmanship of P.T. Barnum and the hell raising qualities of frat boys gone wild. Interesting world modern day cowboys have created a hybrid version of capitalism, individualism, syndicalism and mysticism.
But I am back in LA. I got my computer plugged back in and I am ready to return to the world of modern urban man. Although I sure would like to learn how to beat that card shark Lou. He is a buddy of my dads and he played me like a little kid up there when it came to the cowboy game of choice, Pitch, don’t even ask me how to play. I sat there for 2 hours trying to figure out the game and ended up losing my ass. This guy in his better days as a Bronc rider would beat up the judges if he thought he had been mistreated. He made a living for years as a professional poker player and swears up a storm. But he is married to a school teacher who is a health food fanatic. Go figure. Vegas baby….
Tags: Back From Vegas, Impressions of Cowboy Culture in USA Today