Editor's note: This piece is from Doug Brewer's book, Life! Fun, Hard and Worth It! Doug has rhymes and reasons for many things. Here you get to find out how he thinks. Given the choice of anything in his book, I picked a piece that doesn't rhyme, because of its reasoning—and, hey, it's a confession. 

And here's where I confess.

 I was only a full time cowboy while I was growin' up.

 Since my youth, I've only been a would be if I could be cowboy.

 But tho' I lived in the city, I squoze a lot in. And I know that doesn't look like the way you spell squoze, but squoozed didn't look like it sounded right, and squeezed was worse than both!

 Anyway, I did. Wye, when I was 10, I rode with a posse, 300 miles along high mountain ranges to Jackson Hole, Wyoming! Honest truth. Ask m' brother Stan.

 A lot of my cowboyin' was riding my horse on the outskirts of Ogden, Utah, racing up and down the barrow pits and in the vast fields around dad's radio station KOPP. 'Needed a lot of undeveloped land around radio stations back then-no neighbors to complain about their reception gettin' fouled up. Good thing. 'Meant there was a lotta "range" way out there on west 12th street.

 "Wayne Moss-Trail Boss," the resident DJ (before the term "DJ" was invented) always helped friend Tom and me got our saddles on Sonny and Spike after school. And we'd ride into and out of every sunset there ever was. And secret caves behind waterfalls!

 I lived for summers to stay with relatives on ranches in Idaho. 'Saw a Utah license plate that read IDAHO on it a while back. I can understand that.

 Dad was a hardworking grocer who "invested" in just enough cattle and sheep ranches up there to indulge a bit, and like me now, dreamed he could somehow go back and drink in a little of the cowboy life he'd grown up with. 

My topics are less about lassos and dallies and hackamores and hoolihans and more about a cowboy way of looking at everyday struggles and events of today's unfortunately more-and-more urban human family.

 Despite bold claims to the contrary, crises and catastrophes-cratastrosies-aren't limited to agriculture. Nor is good humor, altho' today's TV pollution has everything so muddled up, it's pretty tough for modern day to compete.

 I guess my credentials if I got any, are that even tho' ol' Sonny died and I grew up and left home and went to college and got married and had kids and all, I can proudly say that I never remember quittin' bein' a cowboy.

 Do they excommunicate you for lack of ownin' a horse? Nope. You and I know that ain't the cowboy way.

From the book, Life! Fun, Hard and Worth It! 
Copyright (c) 1996 Doug Brewer. All rights reserved.

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