I was born in the summer of ’58, when Texas was still part of the Wild West. Ranches stretched from the Red River to the Rio Grande, and pasture land was commonplace. Texas was cattle country, and where there were cattle, there were cowboys. As a little toot growing up here, I loved everything about the Wild West. Long before Willie warbled the song, my heroes had always been cowboys.
Roy Rogers, Matt Dillon, the Lone Ranger and others captivated my attention as a youngster. With a pair of pearl-handle six-shooters strapped around my skinny waist, I fought it all alongside a couple loyal sidekicks for over a decade. As I aged into a teenager, I realized the frontier had been settled so I put away my guns.
A half-century has passed since I first strapped on a holster, and much of Texas ranchland has been paveds. Cities expanded, filled with folks from foreign lands like California and Ohio.The Lone Star State had become civilized. Our western culture was dying a slow death until Gov. Abbott and his cohorts passed the Open Carry Law and returned Texas to the Wild West.
