Sometime vaguely in the 19th century after Lewis and Clark hitchhiked their way across the 'Land Pond' as they say in jolly ol' England, America decided that it was so bursting with flavor that it needed to take over the world. To this end, the geniuses in Marketing invented the Cowboy.
Here was a rough and tumble sack of trouble with scruff and brawn that would tame the vast plains and prairies in spite of people already living there in a thriving ecosystem.
Yes, the cowboy. A man with the freedom to die for anything and by anything. Shooting his gun. Pew Pew. Get the bad guy and then I'm your huckleberry. His powers were many. Horse, gun, hat, lasso, spurs, bandanna, The West Texas Town of El Paso, and the Town of Agua Fria. But like any good historian, we must ask the question: "what puts the cow in cowboy?"
The cow in cowboy comes from the cows. If you can believe it, cows can't just be fine on their own. You've gotta get a feller on his horse to run around and say "HYAH!" and "GET ALONG" and just run em around and kick up a big cloud of dust. It soothes them so. Probably makes the meat taste better too I guess. Cowboys don't work with dairy cows. That's the for softies up in New England. Western cowboys are only interested in thick slabs of beef and making a bunch of cattle stand in a space as if to say, "Yep. That's mine right there. You stay where you are, Kemosabe."
But between running the cows around, the cowboys would also have to sneak around and have adventures and keep their rodeo counts up. Cowboys hated having a low rodeo count so much that they popularized the phrase, "it's not my first rodeo". But really, rodeos were just to hang out with clowns. The whole endeavor was quickly discovered to be ridiculous but by then they were all too invested and embarrassed so they kept doing it for decades until the resale value on their britches and boots went up enough.
At its core, the only profitable venture for Cowboys was the Pony Express. They successfully delivered all of America's mail until the invention of email. Only the fastest horses could compete with the speeds of early Internet connections. Sadly, horses could not get any faster because Henry Ford invented the Model T which put a stop to making horses faster despite all automobiles depending on their power.
Today all cowboys have moved on to crypto. Many are calling it the Wild West of the World Wibe Western Web. or WWWWW for short. People said 'wub wub wub wub wub' so much that it invented the genre of dubstep which later evolved into its perfect evolution: grime step.
a million dollars John, I told you, a million dollars, John!
However, even the internet has made everything bad, an unlikely corner of society has continued on the tradition of the bond between horse and human: horse girls. This powerful faction has taken up the mantle and may one day complete the promise of cowboys by creating functional Centaurs that live in the magic wood and give advice to destined teenagers and single mothers who have lost their way.
Dang I keep forgetting to check when my car inspection is due. I think it's this month but maybe it's October.
Oh nice it is October.
I hope you learned a lot. Be sure to read Crab's revisionist history of the Cowboys in the comments. He'll probably go in on my careless omission of the Dallas Cowboys. Try to claim that everything we know about Cowboys is just lore made up by the football team. It's like that scene in Goodwill Hunting. You know the one.
