I’m fascinated by the old West.
I think it all started with Bonanza and Gunsmoke and just grew from there. I wanted to hang out at the Ponderosa, drink root beer in Miss Kitty’s saloon and eat beans from a big iron pot out on the prairie.
Two of my favorite movies of all time are Young Guns and Tombstone — so it’s no wonder that I got caught up in searching out details about Johnny Ringo when I saw a FB book friend’s post of photos from her tour of Tombstone, Arizona. That would have been a wild time to be alive.
As much as I love reading about the old West and watching movies about it, I don’t know that I actually wish I could have lived back then…
It was a hard life. If you so much as looked crosseyed at somebody, they might have gunned you down, blown the smoke off their gun and kept on going.
Then as my imagination runs away, I wondered what life was like for the preachers back then. How did they get people to come to church — especially the outlaws? I mean, if anybody needed to be in church hearing the Word, it was them!
How would an outlaw have reacted to somebody handing them a tract and inviting them to a church social — hmmmm… I can imagine the conversation.
“I said I don’t want no church. Now I’m gonna give you to the count ‘a two ta git outta here.”
Yep, inviting outlaws to church could have been hazardous to your health.
The other things I like about the Old West are the cowboy boots and that the main mode of transportation was horsepower.
Life seemed simpler back then- sort of. I think they had their own issues to face. It just seems better to us because there were no tv’s or social media and everybody didn’t know what everybody else was having for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I plan to tour the Old West one of these old days. When I do, I’ll be sure to share pics.
For now, I’m going to practice drinking root beer and see what beans taste like from a can.