Life is a really good thing. It is enjoyable, happy, wonderful, fascinating, amazing, sad, discouraging, disappointing and in fact, it is every single emotion one can conjure up in one’s mind of all that is real and all that is not real but in fact it, life, is every emotion ever experienced by any and all people who have lived, are living and will live in the future.

Life is also always changing. Change is good; change is bad. Some people hate change; some people love change; some people welcome change, some fight change. But regardless, change is never the same emotion for all. That is sometimes change can be good, sometimes it can be bad. Since life is moving on rather rapidly now for me, change is coming more rapidly than perhaps I might like. I wonder how cowboys view change. Cowboys have seen as much change as any of us, in some ways, yet in other ways, they have seen little change. One thing I wish I could change is my age. It seems when we are born and growing up, we all or at least most of us wish we were “older” so we could be like the older folks, do what the older folks get to do and so forth. And it ends up that most of spend a considerable amount of time wishing we were “older” so that we do, be like or whatever, the older ones we wish we were like. Then, suddenly, out of the clear blue sky, we suddenly miraculously wish we were not so old and in fact, wish we were younger. I certainly wish I was younger, like perhaps maybe oh well, you know sometimes, like the age when I was a freshman in high school so I could do high school all over again, only differently. Then, sometimes I wish I was younger to the point of starting college over again so I could do it all over again, only differently. Maybe, just maybe, I wish I was young enough to get to do the whole thing over again, several times. That way, I could live all my dreams. I could be a cowboy.

In fact, maybe, just maybe I would not, the second time, elect to do college over again, maybe I would elect to “go west young man” and live my live in the west. You see, I love the west. I have never lived there. But, I have traveled extensively throughout the west. I am not talking about interstate highway traveling but rather the back roads where you meet people and see real things you don’t get to see on interstate highways. But, that is not living out west; it is just visiting, for short periods of time. I want to live in the west; live the west, as it really is meant to be lived. You know, ranch, horses, corals, everything the west has to offer. See I look at the U.S. like this: I think God started with Kansas. Kansas has no trees, no nothing. He learned from Kansas and then he did everything east of Kansas next. But still he was perfecting his thing and that is when he did the west and it is perfect. You cannot travel throughout the west without seeing the good work God did in creating that part of the earth as for every high mountain, there is a deep ravine, a deeper canyon. When you are in a meadow and look up at the mountains before you, one must absolutely know there is a God who created those mountains. Every thing, every where you look in the west, you see God’s work and you know it was God who did the work of creating it. Yep, I know all about the scientific explanation of how the mountains sprang up from the oceans. Who says God did not make that happen, or set up the forces to cause it to happen. You can’t use science to explain that there is no God, it doesn’t work and anyone who thinks it does is a fool.

Then, you remember, if you are my age, all those westerns we saw as kids on TV in the movies and just about every where because when I was a kid, there were a lot of westerns everywhere. In watching westerns all those years, one had the opportunity to learn a lot. Even if one did not have good parents, luckily I did, that taught one all the right and wrongs that kids need to be taught, you could learn them from the westerns because cowboys are about the code of the west. And, it is that code that has always made me yearn to live out west where the code of the west, the code of the cowboys, is alive and well and it is in the heads and hearts of most people who live out west. But, unfortunately, as I was growing, rather than doing as I wanted, I went to college, got a job, a great job, moved up the career ladder, made a lot of money, but still was not fulfilled as there was always something missing in my life and I think it was living out west. Some time ago, in September of 1992 to be exact, my wife and I opened a gift shop in our little town of 800 people with 300 gift shops. When we opened it, we did not know what we really wanted to specialize in but everyone was telling us, you have to have a theme that defines your business. When we opened, we had access to some really great catalogs of wholesale items and we picked what we believe were the best items we could find. People said our gift shop was eclectic; we had the best of all; the best of everything for the first 3 or 4 years of our business. Then suddenly a few years later, we realized that somehow, we had switched from eclectic to western, southwestern, ranch, Native American or as we called them, American Indian items. And we picked what we thought were the best items we could find. We were in love with the west but never considered moving to the west, although I don’t really know why; it was probably the kids, we didn’t move to the west but carried all the western things we could find and to do so, we traveled the west going to trade shows and going onto reservations and dealing with American Indians and finding our own artists. We went west each year and the more we went, the more we loved it. And so finally, we found a magazine about the west called “Cowboys & Indians” and we decided to offer it to others who visited our shop which by then had grown rather large, in fact, one of the largest in town. A little later, golly, I am not sure when, we also found another magazine called “American Cowboy”. I think by the time we found this last magazine, I had been diagnosed with kidney failure and so we had been forced to close the business but we kept getting the magazines at home so we could continue to enjoy the west through these two magazines. You see, we kind of look at “Cowboys & Indians” as the magazine for the ranch owners of the west while “American Cowboy” is down to earth, good ol’ cowboy lifestyle magazine so with both, we had it all, sort of, in a way, I guess, in the only way we could.

But now, live is moving on and as all will eventually discover, the older you get, the faster the clock moves and as it does, it brings changes. Change is good; change is bad. Some people hate change; some people love change; some people welcome change, some people fight change. But regardless, change is never the same emotion for all. And when you are in my boots, change is not so good any more. A lot of things that were once very good for me are leaving my life now and that is sad. Hopes and dreams for the future that fell into that category called “some day” are now all gone as now, there is no “some day” any longer; the “some days” are all gone. Our friends are leaving us, that is they are passing on to the other life; the eternal life. And it also comes a time that one of the things we need the most, money, money is now very limited. And that limitation of money brings about something else: we must eliminate things from our life because we simply can no longer afford them. And it gets to a point that we sometimes, like it or not, must eliminate things that mean a lot to us, that are very close to us and bring a lot into our lives for us in our older age. Guess you know where I’m headed now don’t ya? Yep, the time has come when we have no choice but to cut out the dreams, the dream makers as I call the magazines but in fact, “Cowboys & Indians” and “American Cowboy” have to go. All that wishing to be older has brought things I didn’t expect like health issues that cost tons of money. The company I had worked for, before I had to retire at the age of 49, due to health issues also hit hard times and so all that healthcare insurance I had was cancelled January 1, 2008. That hurt a lot. If it weren’t for that, I probably could continue receiving the dream makers even knowin’ that they wouldn’t come true.

But fear not, I still have one really big dream and that is when I pass on to the eternal life, I’ll find it in heaven and it will be out west some where and there will be wild horses and cowboys and mountains, and flats, and canyons every where and just maybe up there in heaven I’ll get to find all my dreams your magazine have brought into my head and I’ll get to live the cowboy life up there just ridin’ across the range herding the cattle or whatever I am called on to do.

And so it is we must say goodbye! Thanks partner for all you brought into my life and it was more than you will ever know. And if it’s alright, I’ll stick around here a bit, as long as can and just kind of hang out til I have to go. If I could afford to keep all the stuff in my life that brings me so much, I definitely would and even if I could just keep only some, I would do that and in that case it would be your magazine so thanks; thanks a million; thanks for it all; thanks for bringing the dreams, thanks again for all of it!