A Cowboy Code
The origin of this series is a talk I gave to the graduating class of a program for at-risk middle school kids. The program taught the kids life lessons built around learning equine skills and studying the Code of the West. The program director thought being a western writer qualified me to talk about the Cowboy Code. Little did she know . . . actually, little did I know. I thought I knew something about the Cowboy Code, so I agreed.
I started organizing my thoughts, as historical fiction writers do, with a little research. Imagine my surprise when I discovered there isn’t one Cowboy Code, there are lots of them. Like many of you, growing up my heroes rode horses. They had names like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, Lone Ranger and more. It turns out many of those heroes had their own version of the Cowboy Code. The more I looked, the more codes I found.
Each code comprised a list of ten things that make up a cowboy way of doing things. While they had similarities, they were all different. That bothered me at first. How can you have a different code for every cowboy and still call it a Cowboy Code? It had to be the similarities. The similarities must be the code individuals live, each in their own way.
Ten things also struck me as a lot. Surely you could summarize the common elements in the various lists into some more economical number than ten. I took six of the codes and lined them up side by side. The common elements in the six codes summarized into . . . ten things that make up a cowboy way of doing things. So much for economy. Moses ended up with ten too. I guess they’re all important.
The cowboy way of doing things offers all of us values we can use to navigate the cultural turbulence we live in today. You don’t have to be a cowboy to benefit from the Cowboy Code. Those who learn the code and live it find there’s a little cowboy in all of us. Cowboys aren’t defined by boots and hats, or horses and cattle. The things that make a cowboy come from the heart. With that in mind let’s use this next series of posts to look at the values that make up a cowboy way of doing things. If you’ve got a young person you’d like to share these musings with, feel free. They don’t have to be at-risk kids to benefit from positive life lessons.
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Ride easy,
Paul
I started organizing my thoughts, as historical fiction writers do, with a little research. Imagine my surprise when I discovered there isn’t one Cowboy Code, there are lots of them. Like many of you, growing up my heroes rode horses. They had names like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, Lone Ranger and more. It turns out many of those heroes had their own version of the Cowboy Code. The more I looked, the more codes I found.
Each code comprised a list of ten things that make up a cowboy way of doing things. While they had similarities, they were all different. That bothered me at first. How can you have a different code for every cowboy and still call it a Cowboy Code? It had to be the similarities. The similarities must be the code individuals live, each in their own way.
Ten things also struck me as a lot. Surely you could summarize the common elements in the various lists into some more economical number than ten. I took six of the codes and lined them up side by side. The common elements in the six codes summarized into . . . ten things that make up a cowboy way of doing things. So much for economy. Moses ended up with ten too. I guess they’re all important.
The cowboy way of doing things offers all of us values we can use to navigate the cultural turbulence we live in today. You don’t have to be a cowboy to benefit from the Cowboy Code. Those who learn the code and live it find there’s a little cowboy in all of us. Cowboys aren’t defined by boots and hats, or horses and cattle. The things that make a cowboy come from the heart. With that in mind let’s use this next series of posts to look at the values that make up a cowboy way of doing things. If you’ve got a young person you’d like to share these musings with, feel free. They don’t have to be at-risk kids to benefit from positive life lessons.
TO COMMENT BELOW or Return to Facebook
Ride easy,
Paul
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