Oh bury me not on the lone prairie, where the wind blows wild and the land is free...or something like that.
These were the opening lines of an old cowboy ballad. I don't mind admitting I am a cowboy. Sort of. Once I even rode on a 100-mile cattle drive, herding 300 cows across the southern Arizona desert!
The men driving the cattle, except for me, were real cowboys. They went by nicknames like Slake, Tiger, Hoss, One Eye, Slim and J.R. They knew how to ride, throw a rope and play poker.
It was 1976 and America was celebrating its bicentennial. I was a staff writer on the Phoenix Gazette and my adventure-loving editor Vic Thornton felt the cattle drive merited some space in his newspaper. He chose me for the assignment, bless him.
I was married then and my wife drove me to Wilcox, AZ., where she dropped me off. She promised to pick me up in a week and left me there, alone, in a sunbaked spot in the desert. I had to wait about an hour before a ranch foreman named Jimmy gathered me up in a pickup and drove me to a ranch house about 10 miles away.
There I met a tobacco-chewing rancher named Ed. He shook my hand in a gnarly grip that made me wince and asked if I knew how to ride a horse.
"I do," I said. "Been riding them since I was six years old."
Ed nodded:
"Good. 'Cause if this drive don't make you saddle sore, nothing will."
He had volunteered his ranch, cowhands, horses and cattle to re-enact the cattle drive as part of America's bi-centennial celebration. I had dinner with the ranch hands and spent the night in the bunkhouse.
Around 6 a.m. someone came by with a handheld cowbell and rang it.
"Everybody up for breakfast! Come and eat it 'fore I toss it out!"
After a hearty breakfast of steak and eggs and stout desert coffee, I headed for the corral where a brown horse named Bucky pranced nervously.
"This is your pony, Tenderfoot," said Slim, a young redheaded cowboy. "Treat him nice and he won't dump you into a cactus plant."
It took nearly an hour to get the cattle moving. By then, the Arizona sun was up over the Dragoon Mountains. With a yell and a "Move 'em out," we began pushing the bawling cows down the trail.
I tried to stay out of the way of the other cowboys, but Slim wouldn't tolerate it. He told me I was a cowhand just like the rest of them and that it was my job to make sure no cows strayed outside the herd. No problem, I assured him. I would do my job!
We rode all morning and all afternoon. The cowboys knew what they were doing and kept the herd in line. Around 6 p.m., Ed galloped up to me on his horse.
"We're bedding down for the night," he said. "I've arranged for you to spend the night in a sleeping bag in the rare of a pickup. It ain't the Statler Hilton but it'll do. Any objections?"
"No objections, Sir," I said flippantly.
"Don't call me Sir. Reserve that for my grandpap. We got a poker game scheduled in a Mexican bar just down the road. You do play poker, don't you?"
"I've been known to play a hand or two."
"Good. I told Vic Thornton to send me someone who could fit into the cowboy way of life."
We unsaddled the horses and settled them in a makeshift corral. Then we headed for the bar. The game was dealer's choice and several Mexicans decided they wanted to join us. We made room for them.
The game lasted from around 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. An attractive waitress named Conchita served the drinks -- tequila, beer and wine -- and the game turned wild. The cowboys were decent, but not great players and we had fun.
I decided to quit the game at 1 a.m. and stuffed my winnings, about $100, into my jeans. J.R., one of the cowboys, came by and asked me how I was doing.
"I'm hanging in there," I said. "It's turning into a pretty good story."
"Happy to hear that," he said. Make us famous."
At 6 a.m., we were up, had breakfast around a campfire, and remounted or horses. I rode for several hours until we came to a small town. Nan was waiting there for me with the car. I took photos of the cowboys on their horses, the cattle, and had one taken of me with Ed and Rick.
Rick threw an arm around me and said the other cowboys had voted to make me an honorary cowpoke. He shook my hand and my wife and I got into the car and headed for Phoenix.
