The Cowboy Way

What does it mean to be a cowboy in this modern day?
Is it possible, in this high-tech age, to live the Cowboy Way?
With trucks and cars and line-dance bars, and bulls with motor drives,
If you think a Stetson makes you a cowboy…what you’re livin’ is a lie.

Today, “Go West Young Man” means you catch a plane,
While in the days of old, you’d have formed a wagon train.
Instead of pistols on our hips, now we have a phone,
Instead of talking face-to-face, we leave a message at the tone.

The horse is now a novelty, when it was a way of life,
And a woman that could shoot and rope made the perfect wife.
Back then you would wake at dawn, at dark you went to bed,
And as you taught your kids to read, the Bible was what they read.

Though the Cowboy Way is lost to most, in a few it still shines through.
You do not take the easy way out—the right thing is what you do.
Your word and handshake are like a bond—it’s something you don’t break.
I’d love to go back to ‘the good old days,’ before it gets too late.

The Cowboy Way is an attitude that is lived from day-to-day,
When what you say, is what you mean, and what you mean, you say.
Boots and chaps and cowboy hats do not a cowboy make,
Love of life, and land, and the Old Way, is really what it takes.

The real cowboy’s not out all night, wearing a sequined shirt;
His hands are callused, his lips are chapped, beneath his nails there’s dirt.
And though we gather just once a month, to shoot our guns and play,
The Cowboy Way is the way to live, each and every day.

Copyright © 2001 by Gary Arrants
Tennessee Tombstone SASS #34723