Reprise: A Cowboy Code
Some years ago I was asked to address the graduating class of a program for at-risk middle school kids. The program taught kids life lessons built around learning equine skills and studying the cowboy code; or code of the west as some call it. That invitation gave birth to this series. It’s the only series we’ve ever repeated on these pages. Why run it again you ask? Two reasons. The life lessons are timeless and as relevant to young people today as they were back in our day. The problem is, where do young people go to learn these values today? The second reason follows the first. There is a real hunger to impart these values today. Both times we’ve run this series, it reached over sixty thousand readers a week. Reasons enough to do it again.
I started organizing my thoughts for that little talk with some 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 had names like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, Lone Ranger and more. Many of those heroes had their own version of the cowboy code.
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. Ten things also struck me as a lot. Surely you could summarize the similarities in the various lists to come up with some more economical number than ten. I took six codes and lined them up side by side. The similarities 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.
My generation learned life lessons from family, home, church, school and those heroes who rode horses. I found myself asking: where do kids today learn those lessons? Sadly for many kids, home and family aren’t what they used to be. Broken homes and families are all too common. Religious influence has declined with church attendance. For too many kids, schools have deteriorated from respected educational institutions to day-care centers, featuring social promotion and participation academic standards. Kids drop out or find themselves on the threshold of graduation, unable to read or do basic mathematics.
Popular culture doesn’t offer up heroes as role models either. Kids get a steady diet of digital noise, from violent games, music and a culture that glorifies alcohol, drugs, sex and violence. They idolize celebrity in glamourous walks of life, who set examples by lying, cheating, stealing and every moral depravity the mind can summon; because it’s all cool. Anything goes. If it feels good, do it. What are the chances a kid is going to come out of that sewer with the kind of moral and ethical standards of behavior a civilized society is predicated on? Small wonder civil discourse is so coarse. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one worried about the problem.
Cowboys aren’t defined by boots and hats, or horses and cattle. You don’t have to be a cowboy to benefit from the cowboy code. The things that make a cowboy come from the heart. The cowboy way of doing things offers all of us life lessons we can use to navigate today’s cultural turbulence. Those who learn the code and live it, find there’s a little cowboy in all of us. With that in mind let’s use this series 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.
RETURN TO FACEBOOK to comment.
Ride easy, Photo-art by Jim Hatzell
Paul https://www.flickr.com/photos/fiddler...
I started organizing my thoughts for that little talk with some 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 had names like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, Lone Ranger and more. Many of those heroes had their own version of the cowboy code.
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. Ten things also struck me as a lot. Surely you could summarize the similarities in the various lists to come up with some more economical number than ten. I took six codes and lined them up side by side. The similarities 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.
My generation learned life lessons from family, home, church, school and those heroes who rode horses. I found myself asking: where do kids today learn those lessons? Sadly for many kids, home and family aren’t what they used to be. Broken homes and families are all too common. Religious influence has declined with church attendance. For too many kids, schools have deteriorated from respected educational institutions to day-care centers, featuring social promotion and participation academic standards. Kids drop out or find themselves on the threshold of graduation, unable to read or do basic mathematics.
Popular culture doesn’t offer up heroes as role models either. Kids get a steady diet of digital noise, from violent games, music and a culture that glorifies alcohol, drugs, sex and violence. They idolize celebrity in glamourous walks of life, who set examples by lying, cheating, stealing and every moral depravity the mind can summon; because it’s all cool. Anything goes. If it feels good, do it. What are the chances a kid is going to come out of that sewer with the kind of moral and ethical standards of behavior a civilized society is predicated on? Small wonder civil discourse is so coarse. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one worried about the problem.
Cowboys aren’t defined by boots and hats, or horses and cattle. You don’t have to be a cowboy to benefit from the cowboy code. The things that make a cowboy come from the heart. The cowboy way of doing things offers all of us life lessons we can use to navigate today’s cultural turbulence. Those who learn the code and live it, find there’s a little cowboy in all of us. With that in mind let’s use this series 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.
RETURN TO FACEBOOK to comment.
Ride easy, Photo-art by Jim Hatzell
Paul https://www.flickr.com/photos/fiddler...
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