Wild West

 

Looking through old photographs allow you to remininsce of good times with family and friends.

Pictures stir emotions of the past.  Capturing happy events, people & places of years gone by.

Well, sometimes.

Just the other day I found a photo from a family vacation during my childhood.

I was about eight years old, I figure, when we attended a western-type show at Maggie Valley, North Carolina.

In the picture I was all smiles.  And raising an anxious hand, I was chosen to be an audience volunteer!

Eager at the beginning but by the time the show ended–I would be left with memories of a nightmare I would never forget.

 

 

It all began unexpectedly when a huge dusty tumbleweed knocked me to the ground.

Sure, in the picture it looks like a big, green dish scrungy, but I swear it was a tumbleweed, dammit.  I’m sure of it.

 

 

 

 

Shaken, I decided to climb the nearest tree.

But it wasn’t a tree at all–it was a cactus.

How was I to know?  I was eight…and from Ohio!  We don’t have cactus in Ohio…just tornados!

Covered in pricks & spiny needles, I moved on.

 

 

 

 

What’s a western town without horses, right?

Well, the cowboys failed to tell me these horses liked to stampede.

I learned the hard way.

Guess I’ll never be a stable jockey.

 

 

 

 

“Bull riding!” my bow-legged friends shouted next.

“BULLsh**!” I said in response.

And before I even had a saddle sore they put me on the back of a bull named “Widowmaker.”

 

 

 

 

I barely had time to catch my breath…or get stitches when another shady roustabout had me help him rob the town bank.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Busted by the local sheriff, I was thrown in jail where I got “three hots & a cot.”

I also learned in the slammer not to drop the soap.

 

 

 

 

 

My day ended when the sun set and I found myself caught between two gunslingers in a shootout.

It was not fun.

 

 

 

 

The wild west show at Maggie Valley may have been a popular attraction for most visitors, but for me it was a tramatic experience of my worst fears coming true.

Vivid memories of long ago brought to mind by an old, faded photograph of way back when…

BTW-Who stands like that?  Pretty obvious these roughneck cowboys had no interest in playing “I’m a Little Teapot.”