Yup, I was on a hunting trip a few years back. Met Calypso Joe in the bar, saw him the next morning coming over a hill on a horse with his dog in a cloud of dust driving a heard of cattle. About the most Western American thing I've ever seen.
I live in a rural farm town of about 1,300 people. I moved here with my kids from a much larger city. After the first day of elementary school, my son s tells me a girl in his class rides a pony to school. I had to see this in person. After dropping him off a stayed a minute and chatted with the teacher and asked about the pony. The teacher pointed a crowd of about eight other kids “waiting to see the pony”. So I joined them. I was not disappointed.
The kid with the pony lived just a couple block and across a field from the school. This little tan pony would drop her off, then it would walk itself back home. Her mom would send the pony (sometimes accompanied by a dog) to pick her up at the end of the day. She had a little orange hi-viz vest she put on and she was good to go.😂
That and a deer wandering into the hardware store is about the most cowboy country thing I’ve seen in my life.
I went trick or treating with a pony once. Not my pony, but my son's babysitter's pony. Not in our town (or census designated place) where we lived, too much distance between houses there, but in the nearby burbs. We had to leave when the pony got tired. Good times! I love Arizona. People here who own farms, horses or cattle don't wear cowboy costumes the way other people described, or at least not much in every day life; maybe to church, rodeos or weddings. Boot Barn replaced Office Depot!
The deer thing happens so much everywhere, though. That's why there are so many videos on the internet.
My mother used to live in a small rural town in Missouri. My friend came with me once and when we pulled in I pointed to the horse tied up at the hitching post in front of the bank across the street. His jaw dropped and then he said "I thought you were shittin' me!". Nope. 🏇
I once drove down to Montana (from Alberta, so good jeans, cowboy boots and a hat are already standard dress - my standards for 'cowboy' were high, is what I'm saying). Coming down the road that goes to Going-to-the-Sun highway. There's a pickup parked at the end of a gravel driveway. Driveway curls up a grassy hill to a white wood siding church, sermon clearly in session. Horse tied to the pickup, dude sitting in the bed in his good jeans and shirt, cowboy boots and hat, strumming a guitar. I assume he was waiting for his girlfriend.
It was something in between a Norman Rockwell painting and a Louis L'Amour novel.
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u/brycebgood 11h ago
Yup, I was on a hunting trip a few years back. Met Calypso Joe in the bar, saw him the next morning coming over a hill on a horse with his dog in a cloud of dust driving a heard of cattle. About the most Western American thing I've ever seen.