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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

He was a cowboy.

There was no doubt.

He never missed an episode of “Gunsmoke.” He’d seen all 635 episodes at least twice. He thought Marshal Matt Dillon should have been president. He even listened to the singing cowboy, Gene Autry, when his ears had a vacancy.

He tried watching a TV series called “Yellowstone,” but found it resembled “The Godfather” or “The Sopranos” more than “Bonanza.” It wasn’t for him. He preferred watching more reruns of “Gunsmoke.”

He wore cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. He tried wearing a belt with a buckle the size of a satellite dish, but it pinched his belly. He was a sartorial cowpuncher who had never punched a single cow, yet he wasn’t all hat and no cattle. He was all hat and boots, and no cattle.

He’d never taken part in a rodeo, but he’d seen three on TV. He’d line danced once, pulling a hamstring in the process, but still wore cowboy boots. Seeing his boots brought memories of my cowboy ways.

I worked with a genuine cowboy. He wore a shirt, jeans and boots that were well past their prime. They might never have been in their prime. Anything that could stain a hat stained his cowboy hat. All he ever said to me was, “I’ll tell you what.” He never told me what. He reminded me of the Marlboro Man, who had been an effective poster cowboy for the cigarette industry.

I wore cowboy boots for a time. I figured John Wayne had started from the bottom up, and that was where the phrase “cowboy up” came from. I was a little boy eating a hamburger at Ole’s Cafe, where the starting wage was 35 cents an hour, spinning around on a stool between bites when I became ill. I took off my beloved cowboy boots and couldn’t get them back on. My feet had swollen. My parents took me to Doc Olds. He told them to get me to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester ASAP. I spent four months at St. Mary’s Hospital before someone could Columbo my problem.

The cowboy boots weren’t to blame, but I’ve had no urge to put on another pair.

My wife and I walked with a group of birders on a ranch in south Texas.

The ranches in Texas are big. One rancher said, “I can get in my truck in the morning, drive all day, and never leave the ranch.”

A Minnesota farmer replied, “Yeah, I had a truck like that once.”

We strolled along while using binoculars to see feathered treasures when I heard it. It sounded like the blaring horn of a vehicle. That was because it was the sound of a blaring horn of a vehicle.

We watched as a pickup truck with a cowboy-hat-wearing driver drove past. The horn blasted, never once pausing to catch its breath.

It seemed odd. But when you think about it, most things seem odd.

We resumed our moseying.

Then I heard another sound. It sounded like the buffalo stampede I’d heard at The Archway near Kearney, Nebraska. The Archway describes itself “as an enduring tribute to the adventurers who traveled the Great Platte River Road through Nebraska and helped to build America.”

A buffalo (bison) stampede flashes on a big screen there, and each hoofbeat used the earth as a drum. An 1832 quote from John Wyeth is, “We saw the buffalo in frightful droves, as far as the eye could reach, appearing at a distance as if the ground itself was moving like the sea.”

I looked ahead, expecting to see frightful droves, and I did.

It was a herd of long-horned cattle running hard straight at us in an attempt to catch the truck that had been ringing the dinner bell. There was food where that hard-honking truck had headed.

I’d always wanted to be in a cattle drive without being driven over.

I thought to myself, “What would Matt Dillon do other than keep his hat on?”

Then, I did the opposite.

I told everyone to remain calm and to circle the wagons by gathering around me.

Without losing a step, the stampede parted like the Red Sea on hooves.

Much obliged, Marshal Dillon.

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday.