The Haxtun-Fleming Herald - What can we reason but from what we know? -Alexander Pope

When my wife moved to Colorado years ago from extreme Southeastern Kansas, she remembers expecting everyone to be packing a six shooter, riding horses and living in the Wild West she’d always heard about. Some new arrivals, I’m told, still expect a little less civilization than they find. If they look hard enough, though, they can still find many of us carrying on the traditions of our Western heritage.

I’m here to tell you, however, it is darn hard to be a cowboy in Colorado. Cattlemen, farmers, ranchers and others making their living from agriculture tend to be very traditional. We value our heritage and look to it for answers even in modern times. That’s where the problem arises. The past keeps disappearing! Take me for an example. I was born in a farming and ranching community. My father was born seven miles from where I was raised. In fact, he spent the first 45 years of his life living on the same road. The biggest building I remember was the Prep Feed Store. I believe it was located on Pearl Street. That’s right, Pearl Street in Boulder. Ag community? Yep, it was then. Needless to say that town, part of my heritage, disappeared, replaced by ... well, you know. Gone is my boyhood home on Arapahoe Road, as is the two-room school on Baseline. I’m not really that old, but things have changed a bunch.

Next my family moved to another little ag community. They bragged of streets laid out wide enough to turn around a team and wagon. Nobody used horses and wagons anymore, of course, but the traffic was usually light enough on College Avenue in Fort Collins that you could have. We ranched in the area many years. Eventually, I moved after they closed the high school I’d planned to graduate from, LaPorte and opened the new one where I hardly knew anyone, Poudre. A pasture down the road that used to contain cows was converted to hold Rams, Hughes Stadium. A pond was built in a horse pasture we visited on trips to the veterinary hospital. It was not to water horses, but to gaze at from the new C.S.U. Student Center. It was time once again for a cowboy to move on.

Next came Ordway in Colorado’s Crowley County. You could still be a cowboy there. Crowley County had good folks, land and ... water. Cities to the West wanted that water. Soon they had it. Most of the cowboys and good people stayed, but my teaching career required me to move on.

That teaching gig led me to Akron, where once again I liked the people but wasn’t fond of my boss. It was really hard to find a cowboy superintendent of schools, so I just kept moving.

Now Sue and I are in Brush. Finally got out of that teaching thing so I could stay put. It’s a good place to be. You can still wear your spurs to town. The town’s tallest building is the old elevator that was Cargill. There’s a lot of tradition around Brush. Third and fourth generation families farm, ranch and work here. It’s been nice the past 30 or so years I’ve been here, a chance to catch my old-fashioned breath. I’m experienced in seeing the signs of change and they are around me once more. There’s nothing I can do to change that. People have a right to live where they want.

The places I’ve left over the years obviously went on. There are still farms and ranches near them all. They have changed and more people live there. That’s OK I’m suppose to say, but the truth is, it just makes being me a little more difficult. Once the hazards of being a cowboy were stampedes, rustlers and no good place to buy Bull Durham tobacco. Today’s challenges are a bit different, but it’s still a challenge to be cowboy in Colorado. Actually, my wife and I are thinking seriously about retracing her path back to just a little south and east of Parsons, Kan. I hear everyone there packs a six shooter, rides a horse and is living the way we used to here in the Wild West. That may just be a myth but it’s worth a try. I don’t like change.