The Departure of the Cowboy

Many people find it hard to believe when I tell them, but there is quite a western culture in southern Illinois, where I came from. The culture in the southern tip of the state is quite different from the northern part. It is imbued with the twang of the Ozarks on the west and the proximity of the Appalachian Mountains on the east. And it is only a nine-hour drive from Carbondale, Illinois to Dallas, Texas (and only a little over three hours to Nashville, Tennessee).

So, it should not be too surprising that my father, Chuck Smith, from the time he was a young boy, was at heart a cowboy. Somewhere I have a picture of him as a tow-headed three-year-old astride a pony, wearing a cowboy hat.

When I was in junior high, we acquired an honest-to-goodness stereo system. Dad had his own favorite records. He loved Big Band music, and songs by Irish tenors; but the one genre that he - and only he - loved was western music. I’m not talking about twangy country-western music, but what I would term cowboy music. Johnny Cash, The Sons of the Pioneers, and so forth. When he would put one of these albums on the turntable, it was a very limited engagement, because not much time would pass before Mom would ask him to please play something else. But I still have memories of “The Ring of Fire,” “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” and “When It’s Twilight on the Trail.” Dad would always get a little misty when he played this last one.

Let me insert a parenthetical narrative here about myself. I was always one of those girls who loved horses. And it wasn’t from any exposure to them, since we never owned one. I always read books about horses, anything I could get my hands on from the school or public library. For someone who never had much exposure to real, live horses, I knew a lot about them. And when at my Grandma Smith’s house on the edge of town, I would often wander over to the Sniders’ horse barn and feed their horses grass through the fence and pet their velvet noses. Sometimes I would have very vivid dreams about riding a horse, even though I had never been on one alone.

For many years, when my birthday was approaching and my parents (usually my mom) would ask me what I wanted, my answer would be “a horse.” It was explained patiently, year after year, that we had no place to keep a horse. To be honest, I had to agree that a horse didn’t seem like anything I could ever have. Still they haunted my dreams, until a time when, during music camp in DuQuoin I had the opportunity to go on an afternoon trail ride and ended my day with a debilitating asthma attack. I think it was a reaction to the hay; nevertheless, that experience made it obvious that my severe allergies made horse ownership an impossibility.

But back to Dad...

During my early working years, when I was living on my own, yet close to my parents’ house, another trend emerged. My dad developed a fondness for western wear. Perhaps he had always had this penchant, and it was merely waiting for the opportune moment to emerge. He stopped wearing regular shoes and started wearing cowboy boots. He stopped wearing regular suits and wore western suits. And cowboy shirts, the kind that snap up the front. Since I wasn’t living with my parents anymore, it seemed like a sudden transformation. One visit, he was dressed like a normal guy. The next time, he was all tricked out like a cowboy. It was as if like Superman, he had stepped into a special cowboy phone booth. My mom and sister jokingly referred to him as “Cowboy Bob.”

Somewhere during this time, I got married and moved to Maryland.

Fast forward a couple of years. This era is filled with a roller-coaster ride of my parents’ painful divorces and remarriages. My dad had a series of short marriages to a couple of ladies and then a remarriage to my mom, and a divorce shortly after that. At the end of the saga he bought a horse, because as he put it, a horse would probably be easier to deal with than a woman and would treat him better.

I remember the phone conversation where he described Tex, a 15-year-old chestnut quarter horse gelding. Tex at one time had been a working horse, and Dad liked the idea that he was a real cowboy’s horse. He ended his announcement with “So what do you think?” I responded, “I only wish you had done this 20 years ago.”

Given that the ostensible reason I could never have a horse when I was a kid was that we had no place to keep one, I was curious how Dad, who lived in a two-bedroom apartment, was able to pull it off. The answer was boarding. Tex was kept by people who lived halfway between Dad’s office and his apartment and owned several horses themselves. This location was convenient because Dad could stop off and visit on his way home every day, at least long enough to pet Tex and give him an apple.

Dad had big plans to go on trail rides. He took Tex on at least a couple of them; but he told me that he thought it was too hard on Tex. I think it was too hard on Chuck. The two old guys were well matched, and Tex seemed a lot like a big dog - certainly a beloved pet and friend.

I only had a chance to meet Tex twice (both times I was full to the gills with allergy medications) and got to ride him the second time around (being pregnant the first time). Eric was amazed that I could just get on a horse and ride. It was no fancy feat of equestrian finesse, but knowing how to make a horse stop, go, and turn are very basic skills where I come from; especially if you had been obsessed with horses at a young age.

Only a few years passed, and Dad became very ill with a brain tumor. During his illness and subsequent surgeries, we continued boarding Tex at the same location, knowing all the while that Daddy, living six hours north in Chicago with my brother, would never be well enough to ride again. We didn’t even know if he would ever be able to visit his old friend again.

In the meantime, my brother got word from the stables that Tex had passed on. He was not a young horse at this point - probably about 20 years old. They found him in the pasture, where he had been turned out to graze with the other horses. Sometimes we wondered if Tex had pined away for Dad.

My brother called Me “Do you think we should tell Dad?”

“No, it might just kill him.”

Six months after my Dad’s brain surgery, he was doing well enough that he expressed an interest in going south for his class reunion, and my brother brought him home for a visit. Of course, Dad wanted to see Tex.

Fortunately, the folks that had boarded Tex had several horses, one of whom was a chestnut gelding with similar markings. And Dad’s eyes weren’t so good. Charlie drove Dad out to the field where the horses were - at the opposite end of the field. Dad kind of squinted into the distance and looked for a long time. Then he said, with a little catch in his voice, “Well, he looks like he’s happy.”

If Dad was happy, we were happy. And relieved.

Dad passed away less than a year later, from a recurrence of the same brain tumor. We had known from the beginning that we were fighting a losing battle but had hoped for a few more years of quality of life for him. We buried Chuck Smith with a western suit on, wearing his John Wayne bolo tie.

I’m sure he was pleasantly surprised when Tex met him just inside the Pearly Gates.

When It’s Twilight on the Trail

When it’s twilight on the trail,

And I jog along,

The world is like a dream

And the ripple of the stream is my song

When it’s twilight on the trail,

And I rest once more,

My ceiling is the sky

And the grass on which I lie is my floor

Never ever have a nickel in my jeans,

Never ever have a debt to pay,

Still I understand what real contentment means,

Guess I was born that way.

When it’s twilight on the trail,

And my voice is still,

Please plant this heart of mine

Underneath the lonesome pine on the hill.