Lassoing the Past

On my first field trip since I was 11 years old, we went to Sinclairville, NY for the Wild Bunch Wild West Show, hosted by Bill Frost and his wife of 32 years Lucile. In addition to a full scale Wild West town built right in their front yard, complete with a Boot Hill (where bad guys go to die), horses, and a beware of Guns and Children sign, Bill and Lucile also are host the the "greatest collection of authentic cowboy saddles you'll find on the East Coast", with items dating back to the early 1800's.

Bill himself is turning 83 years old in October, not that you'd know it by looking at him. Certainly, age is showing in this cowboy's movements and words, but get him talking about his passion and you'd swear you were looking at a man over fifty years younger. Knowledgeable, kind, and sincere, Bill spoke to us about his saddle collection with such enthusiasm you instantly liked and admired the man. He walked us through each and every saddle, pointing out special ones of pride here and there. Rumor has it he owns a saddle ridden by the Annie Oakley herself, of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show fame. As skeptical as my generation is, I want to believe it is really hers, both because of the ruby embedded in heart shaped metal worked into the leather, and because the man who currently owns it is so proud of the idea that it could be hers.

But more than any saddle of Annie Oakley's, the one that touched my heart more than anything else was the last saddle Bill showed us; it was large, black, worked with silver metal and studs, and it had belonged to his father. The story he told us involved something you'd normally only hear in a movie. His father had sold it long before Bill himself was ready to collect cowboy saddles, and it disappeared as sold items do. Decades later, having heard he was the man to go to for the selling of Wild West paraphernalia, a woman showed up at Bill's house, looking to sell the saddle in her trunk. Little did she know that the trunk held Bill's fathers saddle, and that he would have "shot her for it", like any joking cowboy would. But the sentiment was not lost on me, and I could tell how much rediscovering his father's saddle meant to the old cowboy.

What I took away from the field trip was that authenticity mattered to these people, and that you could be a cowboy or cowgirl wherever you were, whoever you were, as long as you stuck true to what it meant to be one. In Bill Frost's case, being a cowboy meant knowing everything there was to know about the Wild West and having the authentic items, but also having the functional use of roping, riding, and gun tricks to back it up. It didn't matter to him that he lives in Western NY; he was true to the idea of the Old West, and in return it was true to him, and continues to be the core of his life. The authenticity in his actions, and the ability to acknowledge a vast difference between what was an actual working cowboy and the flashy trick-ropers of Wild West Shows were what allowed for the Cowboy of the East's self actualization.

But that idea of the cowboy, of the Old West, is a cultivated one, centered around the beginnings of mass pop culture entertainment. Buffalo Bill's Wild West show had only the tiniest sliver of authenticity to it; the scalping of one unfortunate Indian scout validating decades of spectacle and crafting an idea that would breach generations of pop culture, writing a version of history that evoked fond nostalgia for the Old West, right down to our 82 year old Eastern Cowboy and his whip-cracking grandson.

Native American Indians joined up with the barely-legitimate spectacle in order to preserve some form of their own culture, and to have it publicized by their own people in favor of false "White Indians". In a way, I think this was one of the earlier forms of public relations; the Indians assessing that if they presented themselves in a positive way, in a manner that would associate their people with something white culture liked and even adored (the Wild West Show), it would create cognitive dissonance for people to think of their Wild West Indians negatively in future legal procedures, and hopefully give their people a chance for more presence in the national arena.

That willfulness to preserve the more fondly remembered aspects of culture, of cultivating and placing emphasis on a connotative meaning rather than the actual history of events and people exists in all of us, I believe. Either way, any man who can spin a 30 foot loop weighing a pound per foot over his head at the age of 82 is allowed his nostalgia in my book. Truly, if this formulated lens of looking at the Old West creates people who have such shining ideals and manners as Bill Frost, and these people believe in "Cowboy Honor and manners and way of life" because of this crafted American identity, there might just be a bit of authentic silver lining in the the falsification of history. Or maybe, like those who loved the Wild West shows, I'm just a sucker for noble sentiment.