The Best Cowboys
There’s a lot of controversy over who the best cowboys were.
If you boil the term down to its truest meaning, you are looking for the men who steered cattle across the plains from ranches to slaughterhouses in the days of the wild west which begins around the 1840’s and trails off in the early 20th century, closing out around World War I. Basically just historical figures here, Wyatt Erpp, Billy the Kid, etc.
On the other end of the spectrum, you can define a cowboy as anyone of any era who is a pioneer, a lone gunman with a cause, a man who dwells in a new territory, orderless or lawless, and makes something of himself and his land. Buzz Aldron could be called a space cowboy. Donal Trump a sort of real estate cowboy, forging paths and taking risks. Is the man who designs a fuel efficient car a cowboy? Or the man who searches for and creates the best multivitamin? Is Bill Gates the cowboy of the wild wild web? Maybe, but I’m a bit more of a traditionalist myself.
And finally there are cowboy symbols. John Wayne. Was the man really a cowboy, or did he just play one on the screen? And Cowboy poets like Gene Autry. I say yes, these men had just as much strength and soul as men like Erpp, with the right amount of real cowboy grit too.
So, who is the best Cowboy? One man fits all three categories. He was a real ranchman, he lived in the west, ate beans, and hunted bears. He was a pioneer, charging into lawless territory, and eventually changing the face of the world. And he was a symbol, an American soul, and a country’s figurehead. The man was Theodore Roosevelt, and I consider him to be the best cowboy living or dead.
