It was early afternoon, and I was still fairly deeply entrenched in what was supposed to be the morning chores. I tried to simultaneously go through my mental to-do list for the day and keep my mind at least mildly focused on my current task as I hurried from the horse pasture up to the broken corner post before the cows discovered the accompanying gaping hole in the fence. The particular road I was on is pretty much a locals-only road, so naturally I took notice of the flatbed pickup coming toward me about a half-mile up in the distance. As our two vehicles approached each other, I recognized the outfit and its driver. It was Chris, who lived about 4 miles to the west, on the road into town. I figured he qualified as a local, so I quickly dropped any suspicions I may have harbored toward him had he been one of the bow-hunting minions who skulked about this time of year.
By the time I reached Chris’s vehicle and pulled up even with him, he had come to a stop; a clear sign to me that I was expected to do the same. I’m pretty sure it’s one of the main tenets of the unwritten, unspoken but all-important code of the rural West. You always stop when your neighbor stops. Any traffic approaching from either direction must yield to an impromptu road meeting. Of course, I believe it’s also stated in the unwritten bylaws that the meeting participants are required to leave enough room for vehicles to pass in the borrow pit on either side of the road. And there are provisions for drivers of subsequent oncoming vehicles to join the meeting, regardless of how far the meeting may already have progressed at the time of their arrival.
Our ad hoc meeting had no real purpose other than for one neighbor to give a friendly salutation to another. Chris inquired about how weaning and shipping had gone and whether I’d found all of my cows that were late coming off the mountain that year. Taking note of the saddle resting in the corner of the bed of my pickup, he said he figured I’d been up to some cowboying earlier that day. With his observation came decision time for me, and since Chris was a bona fide member of the club, I chose the path of truth. I hadn’t been on a horse that day. The saddle had, in fact, been in the back of the pickup for two days. I’d unsaddled my horse and turned him loose in the pen behind the house, and since I was late for some appointment or other, I’d left the saddle in the back of the truck rather than return it to the tack shed. I’m sure that was in clear violation of section something and subsection something else of the code, but lying about my indiscretion would have trumped all other violations and perhaps resulted in my already tenuous membership in the Code of the West Club being revoked.
Chris was cool with my candor and confessed that he too was in occasional violation of the code. In the midst of the discussion that followed, we concluded that there was indeed some merit to minor code infractions outside the realm of those who understood and lived by the code. For instance, if I drove into town with my saddle in the back of my pickup, it would send a clear message to town dwellers that I was the real deal. That notion would of course be verified by my felt hat placed squarely on the dash of the pickup. The black-and-white border collie pacing back and forth on the bed of the truck would further legitimize the illusion.
Chris and I both knew, though, that an illusion is all that it really would be. Anyone who was a true member of the club would see right through the glass house of deception. “How?” you might ask.
Well, I don’t really know the clear answer as to how a poser can be spotted and smelled out by someone who truly is the real deal, but I know it’s a reality. Truth will always eventually win out and expose the fraud. On a superficial level, it’s like the dude who may dress up in the Wrangler 47s, shoulder hide Ariats and paisley print Cinch shirt and strut around behind the chutes while he makes his Christian Dior commercial. He may have all the trappings and look the part to most of the world, but to those of us in the club, it’s subtly obvious that he just doesn’t wear the hat right.
Now, my purpose here is not to make an arrogant statement on cowboy fashion. My first favorite song was “The Cowboy in the Continental Suit,” and I know a silver Garcia bit, taps on stirrups, a rawhide romal and buck rolls on a Wade tree don’t make a person a cowboy any more than a Speedo makes a fat guy at the lake an Olympic swimmer. My purpose is to call out the error in the worship of appearance and the misguided belief that what we see on the surface is an obvious indicator of what lies beneath.
The most valuable treasure is rarely the brightest or the shiniest.
