Watch your mouth

I have a bone to pick with urban journalists, politicians and Hollywood celebrities who frequently refer to immoral, vulgar, unethical, reckless bullies as “cowboys.” Such pseudo-cowboys wouldn’t know the difference between a Hereford and a heifer.

Unless you’re willing to stay up all night with a colicky horse, a sick dog or a pen of expectant heifers, you are no cowboy.

I really doubt those celebrity frauds the pundits call “cowboys” can sew up a prolapse with a hair from the mane of his horse. A horse, by the way, that was once a rank lunatic colt but was transformed into a trusted colleague, co-worker and friend for life by a real cowboy with years of patience and quiet prodding.

A bonafide cowboy knows instinctively when a neighbor is in trouble and needs assistance. A cowboy is there in a flash when a neighbor’s grass fire needs putting out.

Every year at branding time, a true cowboy donates his services to work the calves of his friends just as they will do for him when his turn comes. There’s no roll call, formal invitation or record kept. A real cowboy simply shows up, usually with his family intact, and the whole family finds some way to help, even if it’s just herding the flies away from the doughnuts. It’s called “neighborin’,” a concept foreign to the so-called “cowboys” the talking heads on TV refer to.

A real-life cowboy can rope a cow in brush so thick that deer get lost.

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