During this weekend of five exciting rodeos in the San Luis Valley, two at Manassa and three at Monte Vista, memories come back of my lifelong admiration for cowboys and cowgirls.

Sure, I wanted to be a cowboy. That started when I was 6 years old and got a Red Ryder outfit (hat, vest, shirt, chaps) and a Red Ryder toy simulated Winchester rifle.

When I outgrew that outfit, the next one was a Lone Ranger outfit, and Gene Autry and Roy Rogers soon followed.

Our family in Northwood, No. Dak., was the only one in town to have a swayback sofa. I would climb up on the arm of the sofa and ride off into the sunset day after day after day, my mind leading me to daring adventures all over the West.

What is it about cowboys, anyway?

Maybe it’s the individuality. Maybe it’s the bravery. Maybe it’s the solitary lifestyle. Maybe it’s the chivalry. Maybe it’s the patriotism.

Or maybe it’s simply the inner peace — being out on the land, caring for one’s horse, looking after the cattle, protecting the homestead, standing up for what’s right.

We still have ranchers today — certainly cowboys in every sense of the word — working hard to make a living and preserve a lifestyle.

But today we tend to find our cowboys at rodeos, many of them young and all hard working, living the cowboy life that we dream about. Don’t be fooled, there’s nothing easy about the cowboy life. Most of us wouldn’t do it very long — tough, physical labor, growing and cutting hay, mending fences, loading up cattle, and falling exhausted into bed. And yet, dreaming about a break in the work that will allow a little rodeo competition here and there.

There’s good money to be made on the rodeo circuit, of course, but it goes to the few, while the majority barely make expenses.

And that’s okay, because the excitement of competing in rodeo fulfills its own inner need. Being part of rodeo is important.

And Willie Nelson sings, “My heroes have always been cowboys, and they still are it seems, sadly in search of and one step in back of themselves, and their slow moving dreams.”

We have country western singers such as Rodney Atkins, performing at Thursday night’s Stampede opener, that bring us the cowboy messages and stories in their own beat-driving styles that have propelled them to the top of the country charts and into the upper tax bracket. They, too, work very hard, traveling from town to town almost non-stop, on the road and away from their homes and families for weeks on end.

There is nothing about being a cowboy that is easy.

There are cowboys of every kind, such as Glenn Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy, “getting cards and letters from people I don’t even know.”

There’s the Smothers Brothers’ humorous take on cowboys to the tune of Streets of Laredo — “I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy. I see by your outfit that you’re a cowboy, too. We see by our outfits that we are both cowboys. If you get an outfit, you can be a cowboy, too.”

If only it were that easy.

According to wikipedia.org the word “cowboy” first appeared in the English language in 1725, apparently an English translation of “vaquero,” the Spanish word for individuals who managed cattle while mounted on horseback. The Spanish are the originators of the cowboy tradition. In the 16th Century, Conquistadors and Spanish settlers brought their cattle raising life, horses and domesticated cattle to the Americas, arriving in what today is Mexico and Florida. What’s more, most of the “vaqueros” were men of mestizo and Native American origin while the ranch owners were Spanish.

I suppose it could be said that the first cowboys were Indians, a seemingly bizarre notion. But the cowboy life was a melting pot of Hispanic, Native American, African American ex-slaves, and Anglos working together to make a living — generally a dollar a day and food rations.

Cattle drives took care of the rest as the Chisholm Trail was formed from Oklahoma to Abilene, Kansas, and the railroad came into the picture to haul the cattle to market for the burgeoning demand for beef.

And the cowboy culture was born — a culture of self-dependence and individualism, with skills honed along the trail eventually creating a desire for competition and thus the beginning of rodeo, with all that singing around the campfire leading to the country western singer.

Back in the 1950s, we were glued to those “new” TV screens to watch westerns — the cowboys were kings, and the gunslinger solved a lot of problems.

I wonder how many of you remember watching Ken Maynard and Bob Steele in those black & white “B” westerns on TV and on the movie screen. One thing for sure, there was going to be a fight in the saloon at the end, and Maynard and Steele were going to save the day.

I sided with my dad that the best cowboys were Randolph Scott and Glenn Ford, but then Clint Eastwood came along and stole my heart. He shot down so many bad guys, I lost count, but that haunting, whistling background music lives on in my mind.

John Wayne and Jack Lemmon were herding cattle to Belle Fourche, South Dakota, in the movie ”The Cowboys.” If you want to visit a real cowboy town, take a trip to Belle Fourche someday. I did last month. A number of the best professional rodeo cowboys in America come from this town.

While I studied at Dickinson State College in 1982-84, bronc rider Brad Gjermundsen was our hero. Not long later, he earned a million dollars on the rodeo circuit. We were just proud to shake his hand.

And how could I forget Gary Cooper in “High Noon,” with Frankie Laine singing, “Do not forsake my oh my darlin’ on this our wedding day.”

It all lives in my mind like it was yesterday — Richard Boone as Palladin in “Have Gun, Will Travel,” Chuck Connor as “The Rifleman,” Alan Ladd in “Shane,” Gil Favor in “Rawhide,” Hoss and Little Joe in “Bonanza;” James Arness in “Gunsmoke,” Clayton Moore as The Lone Ranger, Tom Mix, terrific character actors such as Gabby Hayes, Slim Pickens, Andy Devine, Jack Elam and Smiley Burnett, and even Cowboy Bob and Howdy Doody.

The country music of that time also became fixed in my head, none more so than Bob Wills, so when the Ski-Hi Stampede brought Asleep at the Wheel to Monte Vista to do Bob Wills songs, I was in heaven.

This weekend we have cowboys all over the place. Don’t miss them, because come Sunday night, they’ll be back on the road.

But you could give them your best wishes as in the classic Roy Rogers song, “Happy trails to you, until we meet again.”