The 2008 ”Cowboy Symposium” is dust. I didn’t go.
My non-attendance was in spite of their featuring three of my favorite performers: Don Edwards, Sons of the San Joaquin, and Waddy Mitchell. I first saw those three on PBS’ Austin City Limits as part of the Michael Martin Murphy show. I thought they were all great. Still do.
Don Edwards had a song that began “pushin’ horns weren’t easy…” that I consider about the best real cowboy song I ever heard. And as for the Sons of the San Joaquin, well, if I were to rub my laptop and invoke a genie who offered me three wishes, one of those wishes would be to sing like the lead of that group. Or like Colm Wilkinson, depending on my mood. I have always loved beautiful voices and harmonies. Waddy Mitchell is a leader among cowboy storytellers and poets making the rounds, and he is an authentic cowboy, or drover, buckaroo, or vaquero–whatever he prefers to be called. (I recollect that Northerners like buckaroo.)
But I didn’t go.
Various reasons. The $25 ticket wasn’t exactly cheap, but is in line with live entertainment at the Cactus Theater. And I was busy with little things, and didn’t have a date. And the last time I went, a strange and, for me, alienating thing happened.
Wilford Brimley, a marvelous actor, was being honored. Mr. Brimley got his award and spoke. He happened to comment that he would not be unpleased were the whole Arab region in the Middle East to be nuked into radioactive slag. Or words closely to that effect. That got a lot of applause. In fact, the only ones who did not applaud with enthusiasm were me and mine. All of the $500 boots and XXX Stetson hat set attending were real receptive to Mr. Brimley’s proposal. The rest of the program was enjoyable and entertaining, an excellent mix of storyteling, jokes and music. But a few words left a bad taste in our mouths.
Then there is the odd cultivated anachronism of the Cowboy Symposium. As I cycled by Thursday evening as they were getting set up, I looked at all the $250,000 RVs and giant pick-up trucks and $30,000 trailers and the old-looking chuck wagons and tack and livestock they unloaded and thought to myself, “it’s like a spaceship landing. A hatch opens and out comes…a whiskered prospector on a mule.”
Most of the spectators wearing boots use those boots mostly for the gas pedal and brake pedal of their trucks and SUVs and to limp a few feet to house or office. It’s a rare boot that ever gets put in a stirrup. It’s a rare hat that gets worn to keep away the snow or the rain.
I would like to say that the performers are at least keeping alive a way of life. But as I look at their fancy RVs, and the life they appear to lead, I don’t see that. It all seems a show, a pretense, unreal fantasy like an old Red Rider western flick.
