Chores

Born smack dab in the middle of the Baby Boom, I grew up during the Golden Age of TV Westerns. By the end of the 1960s more than 100 westerns had aired on the networks and I probably saw most of them. Before I was out of grade school I could sing the entire theme songs to dozens of cowboy shows. Unfortunately, I still can.

     Cheyenne, Cheyenne, where will you be camping tonight?
     Lonely man, Cheyenne, will your heart stay free and light?

     Have Gun - Will Travel reads the card of a man
     A knight without armor in a savage land

     Sugarfoot, Sugarfoot, 
     Easy lopin', cattle ropin' Sugarfoot

My favorite shows were the ones with the youngest, handsomest cowboys, like Bronco (1958-62), Sugarfoot (57-61), and Cheyenne (55-63), but I also liked Maverick (57-62) and Bat Masterson (58-61) because they were funny. Rin Tin Tin (54-59) made me fester with jealosy because the star was just some dumb kid who had the great good luck to be orphaned and adopted by a cavalry troop. My Friend Flicka (56-57) was even worse because the dumb kid lived in Wyoming and had his own horse. I wanted a horse like Flicka and a dog like Rin Tin Tin. I also wanted a father like Lucas McCain in the Rifleman (58-63).

I didn't realize it at the time, but the vast majority of these series were set in the 1870s and early 1880s, as though the great American West had only one good decade. Many of the protagonists were Civil War veterans starting second careers, like Paladin in Have Gun Will Travel (57-63), a Union officer who became a mercenary, or Lucas McCain, a Union officer who became a rancher, or Seth Adams on Wagon Train (57-62), a Union officer who became a wagon master, or Reese Bennett on Laredo (65-67), a Union officer who joined the Texas Rangers, or Gil Favor on Rawhide (59-65), a Confederate officer who became a trail boss. Bonanza (59-73), an exception, was actually set during the Civil War, which occasionally contributed to the plot, as when Little Joe stirred up trouble by dating the daughter of a Confederate sympathizer.

We may remember TV westerns as shoot-em-ups, but in fact, unlike western movies or contemporary crime shows, the genre generally eschewed violence. The need to resort to force showed a failure of wit, and if fighting was necessary, guns were the last resort. Good guys preferred fist fights to gunslinging. Even the Rifleman, who according to Wikipedia managed to dispatch 120 bad guys during its five year run, preferred to solve problems peacefully. Westerns were also intensely moral. Cowboy ethics included justice, fairness, racial tolerance, honesty, integrity and courage. You could do worse than be a cowboy.

I absorbed a lot from watching westerns. By the 3rd grade I knew I wanted to ride horses, live in Wyoming, and right wrongs wherever I found them. But most of all, I knew I wanted to have chores. There were not a lot of children on TV westerns, but every single one of them had chores. Every morning young boys and girls gathered firewood, lit the hearth, pumped water, milked cows, tended livestock, gathered eggs, and generally made themselves useful before stuffing a chunk of bread in their pockets and walking several miles to school. I knew I could be a better person if only I had chores. I begged my mother, who struggled mightily but failed to come up with anything satisfying. She said I could set the table for dinner, but we rarely had family dinners and that wasn't a before-school chore anyway. Neither was emptying waste baskets or cleaning my room. A real chore had to be necessary, it had to be physical, and it had to be done before breakfast.

Half a century later, I still don't ride or live in Wyoming, but here at Itchy Dog Farm I finally have chores. Every morning I feed the dogs and cats and fill their water bowls. I free the chickens from the Chicken Palace, toss out scratch for their breakfast, and check their water. I feed and medicate the equines, fill the water trough, and make a slurry of moistened alfalfa cubes and beet pulp to supplement their next meal. Only then am I free to make my own breakfast and get to work.

I'm not saying that's why I love Itchy Dog Farm, but it doesn't hurt.