The Lowly Nighthawk Security You know, some names just have a good ring to them. They sound impressive. Take the term nighthawk, for instance. Why, that sounds like a sleek, fast, ferocious sportscar or motorcycle or high tech surveillance equipment with infrared scope. But on the cattle drives in the Old West, the nighthawk security […]
DON’T TAKE MY NIGHT HORSE I suppose some good night horses remain around. But frankly, I don’t know of anyone who needs one. Few men in our country have to work horseback at night, in places with no artificial light. In the old days on the cattle drives, every man had a night horse. This […]
Where Are You? Who Are You? The Old West, being so thinly populated, provided a pretty easy place for hiding. Every other man you’d meet out in the wilderness hid from something or someone. A whole slew of terms sprung up to describe such folks. –among the willows –brushing up –going to Texas –hankering to sniff […]
Horse Thieves Beware! A friend drove me to a conference in a large eastern city where I would speak. Even though security guards patrolled the parking lot at the event facility, I discovered crowbar looking devices bolted across vehicle steering wheels. “To protect from theft,” my friend explained. In the Old West days, most everyone […]
The Cowboy Code Meets the Medieval Code of Chivalry By Janalyn Voigt The worlds of knights and chivalry and the cowboy code of the American West seem quite different, but I’ve noticed striking similarities. Both inhabit feudalistic cultures set on frontiers during times where law-and-order wasn’t yet established. And both developed unwritten codes of honor that […]
Match the line from the cowboy songs lyrics to the title. Keep in mind, since most of these cowboy songs existed as oral tradition before they were written down, several versions of each have survived. The words you remember might be a tad different. Cowboy Songs Titles: A. THE OLD CHISOLM TRAIL B. BUFFALO GIRLS […]
Ketch My Saddle, Boys No one likes to get bucked off a horse, old cowboys especially. But if his broomtail decided to ‘hop for mama,’ ‘take ya to church,’ ‘chin the moon,’ or ‘wrinkle his spine,’ he plowed the ground with his face. Then he must catch the rude horse and holler, “Ketch my saddle!” […]
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