I started Cowboy Magazine in 1990 with the intention of helping the American cowboy tell his story and promote his way of life. I did not want to falsely glorify the cowboy the way Hollywood did - with a lot of drunkenness, gunfights, outrageous behavior, and exaggeration. Rather, it was my goal to portray the cowboy as he really is a working man with particular skills and characteristics unique to his profession.The cowboy is a man who tends cattle from the back of a horse and who is usually employed by a rancherthe person who owns the land, the cattle, and often the remuda. The cowboy is knowledgeable in the training and the working of horses, in the ways of cattle, in the proper use of pastureland to maximize beef production, and in the effects of weather and environmental conditions on how he accomplishes his job. He is also a skilled technician with a rope, a tool which, along with his horse, allows the cowboy to gain control over unruly bovine creatures that are often many times his own size.
Further, if the cowboy is fortunate enough to become a family man and stay in the ranching business, he might even become a rancher himself. And, as it turns out, economic conditions dictate that ranchers who earn their entire livings from their ranches may have to be their own cowboys because they can't afford to hire other cowboys to do the work for them. Often, the rancher/cowboy will have his own wife and children as fellow ranch cowboys.
Cowboy Magazine strives to bring you the stories of these cowboys/ranchers. These are rural people with traditional American values God, country, family, hard work, integrity, and honesty, and they serve as role models that I believe we should all follow. If all of America were like these wonderful ranching people, this would be a lot better country than it has come to be in recent times.
Many, if not most, journalists who try to tell the cowboy story almost always get it wrong. That's because they inject their own biases and misconceptions into what they write. We at Cowboy Magazine are often highly embarrassed by the way our fellow journalists inaccurately portray the cowboy/rancher. Thus, we have gone out of our way to let the people who live the lifestyle tell their own stories in their own ways. If the grammar and punctuation are not quite correct, or if the vernacular is not quite understandable by the uneducated masses, so be it. And if the subject matter is not quite what the liberal activists like to read, too bad there, too. We aren't going to publish at the whim of the grammar police, PETA, or the politically correct.
This book is a collection of many of the excellent stories that have graced the pages of Cowboy Magazine. We hope you enjoy it.
-Darrell Arnold
Publisher Cowboy Magazine196 pp., 34 stories and 4 poems from past issues of COWBOY MAGAZINE.
Represented contributors are Darrell Arnold, Lori Babler, Barb Baker, Barbara Bockelman, H.W. Boozer, Margie Bradley, Jimbo Brewer, Tom Bryant, Red Cloud, W. O, "Dub" Covington, Chuck Cusimano, J. Cusimano, Robert Dennis, John Duncklee, Hank Elling, James Fisher, David Frazier, Don Hambrick, Jack Hanks, Oly Hermitt, A.V. Hudson, Don Jones, Frank Jordan, Billy Krieg, Landon Lamb, Walt LaRue, Mike Logan, Bill Lowman, Slim McNaught, Robert M. Miller D.V.M., Robin Morris, Raymond Price, Daryl Reed, Joe Ribary, Kenneth Romriell, Bonnie Shields, Viv Spencer, Red Steagall, Bob Strand, Colen Sweeten, Eugene C. Vories, Justin Wells and Stephen Zimmer.
Softcover, $12 each plus $3 s&h.
Call Darrell Arnold at: 719-742-5250 Write to: P.O. Box 126, La Veta CO 81055 Back to the Books For Sale Page Go to the Cowboy Magazine Home Page