How YouTube Destroyed My Inner Cowboy

I grew up during a time when your average boy thought he wanted to grow up to be a cowboy.This was a time when the big thing on TV was westerns and there were a ton of them. At one point, Warner Brothers was churning out westerns so fast and furious that they ran on an odd, rotating schedule. I forget now exactly how it worked, but one week they would show "Cheyenne" then, the next week they would show "Maverick" and so on and so on.

Everyone in my group had a different favorite western. My best buddy, Pat, favored Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earpp while I tended to be more a fan of "Rawhide" and "Maverick." Still, for me at least, there was nobody quite like Roy Rogers.

Roy Rogers, in my mind, truly was the "King of the Cowboys." Rogers embodied all the qualities of, not just a good cowboy, but a good person. yeah, it was as unreal as the other images of cowboys on the screen, but Rogers really stood for something and always tried to do what was right and I loved and still do love him that.

An important part of being a Kid Cowboy was your firearms. Now, real cowboys always had really cool looking guns. Sleek, smooth, stylish and deadly accurate guns that looked cool in one's hand. I had to have a gun-set from all my favorite shows. At one point in my life, I could have formed and armed my own posse.

Well, I found this video this morning and I wanted to share it with my fellow cowboys and cowgirls because I had my bubble burst and now it's time to pass it on. As it turns out, those TV and movie cowboys never really existed. Oh, there were cowboys all right, but they had nothing in common with the dudes on TV.

You have to watch the video to truly have your image of the cowboy shattered, but it's a quick watch and I think you'll find it interesting, to say the least.

If you wanted to be a cowboy, this should take some of the sting out of the fact that you didn't become one!