Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon by Stephen Bly
Think Like A Cowboy
It’s 1954. In the western cowboy novel, Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon, six Old West cowboys and a 10-year-old boy meet for a weekly cribbage game. While the old men spin tales of days gone by on the trail, a real life adventure stirs around them. The boy with the red straw cowboy hat, cap gun and leather bullet belt with silver-painted wooden bullets remembers it well.
He learned a lot that day, especially how to think like a cowboy. The cowboys passed down a way of life and western tradition that seems to be headed for extinction. He quickly discovered they tended to speak and act in simple, practical, and blunt ways.
Excerpt from Cowboy For A Rainy Afternoon
The Matador Hotel died on July 5, 1965, but they didn’t bother burying it until last fall. New Mexico heat blanketed Albuquerque that July like too many covers in a stuffy cabin. The kind of day you sweat from the inside out and feel sticky dirt in places you don’t ponder much except in the shower.
For Granddaddy and his cowboy pals, they lived real history. You could see it in their cowboy eyes. History rang in their stories. I touched it when I brushed against their Colts or Winchesters, chaps or Stetsons. The taste lingered with the dust ever’ time a dirt devil swirled off the hills and down Central Avenue. And on that day in 1954, I smelled history in the second story hallway of the Matador Hotel.
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Learn more about “How To Think Like A Cowboy” in this AUDIO PODCAST by Stephen Bly
STEPHEN BLY DOWN A WESTERN TRAIL Audio Podcasts available every TUESDAY and THURSDAY. Award-winning western author Stephen Bly speaks through the years on the themes of a) Faith, b) Family, and c) Western Wisdom.
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What an amazing message! Each time I listen to one of these podcasts, I thank Janet for giving me the opportunity to know Stephen a little better. His clear, simple communication always speaks to my heart and challenges me to be a better man, a better Christian, and a better writer.
Wow, Mark, that’s great! Thanks so much for the comments! Blessings, Janet