The Copy Cowboy

If you have lived around cowboys all of your life, as I have, you can pick one out even if they are wearing a baseball cap instead of a cowboy hat.  Especially an old cowboy. 

Old cowboys have a certain air about them.  They stand solid wherever they are standing. They look straight ahead.  Their jackets wear vague scars.

While picking up some printing from a copy center the other day, I stepped in line behind a couple other customers, including an old cowboy I would place in his mid-seventies.

I listened as the cowboy talked with the employee behind the counter. The cowboy wanted to pay 13 cents cash for a single copy, but the machine he had chosen had taken his credit card.  He quickly came to realize he was stuck with using the credit card.  The clerk could not covert to a simple cash transaction.   

The man caught my eyes as he stepped away after finishing with the clerk.  “Technology,” he grinned.  “Not sure it’s helping.”

“Not always,” I agreed.

He eagerly flashed his copy in front of me. It was a photograph of a rodeo cowboy diving head first from his horse to bulldog a steer at a rodeo.  “This is my old steer wrestling partner from up in Stanford.  This was take in nineteen-seventy-two.”

“That’s a great photograph,” I told him.  The photo was taken head on with a long lens and was part of an old newspaper article.

“That’s a beautiful horse there.” the cowboy added.  “Fast and strong.  He brought it up here from Oklahoma in the middle of the winter.”

“Takes a good horse for that job,” I said.  “And that is a tough racket.”

“Had more than a few friends hauled away.”  The cowboy agreed.  “But you know, I was never seriously injured.  Took a few horns to the chest, but nothing that crippled me up.”

“Lucky!” I said.

“Yep.” He smiled again and tucked his copy and original under his arm.  “Lucky, for sure.  Well, you have yourself a good day.”

“Have a good day yourself, sir.”

I watched him walked away.

That certain cowboy swagger.

—Mitchell Hegman