Class Matters: The Strange Career of an American Delusion by Steve Fraser

Author:Steve Fraser [Fraser, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Non-Fiction, Labor History, Class
ISBN: 9780300221503
Google: c5BNDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 36004722
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2018-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Our Hippie Cowboy”

Jed Briscoe joined the round-up the day following Fraser’s initiation. He took silent note of the Texan’s popularity, of how the boys all called him “Steve” because he had become one of them, and were ready to either lark with him or work with him. He noticed, too, that the ranger did his share of work without a whimper, apparently enjoying the long, hard hours in the saddle. The hill riding was of the roughest, and the cattle were wild as deers and as agile. But there was no breakneck incline too steep for Steve Fraser to follow.

Once Jed chanced upon Steve stripped for a bath beside a creek, and he understood the physical reasons for his perfect poise. The wiry, sinuous muscles packed compactly without obtrusion played beneath the skin like those of a panther. He walked as softly and easily as one, with something of the rippling, unconscious grace of that jungle lord. It was this certainty of himself that vivified the steel-gray eyes which looked forth unafraid, and yet amiably, upon a world primitive enough to demand proof of every man who would hold the respect of his fellows.24

The above is not a subterfuge. Nor is it about me. It is instead a wondrous coincidence if you happen to be me writing about the national love affair with the cowboy. Steve Fraser the ranger appears in a book called A Texas Ranger published in 1911 in a chapter called “The Broncho Busters.” I have never busted broncos nor been confused with a panther. However, I came close enough to smell the coffee.

Long ago I attended a wedding in the borderlands between eastern Colorado and Wyoming. The ceremony was outdoors, by which I mean it took place in the great outdoors in the steep rust- and ochre-colored canyons and boulder-laced plains of that territory. The wedding party was on horseback. It included besides the bride and groom a trio of guitar-strumming cowboys serenading the couple. They rode down a ravine to where the rest of us were sitting on rocky outcroppings that formed a naturally terraced arena. A minister in cowboy garb performed the nuptials. Then we feasted on the better part of a whole steer that had been rotating all day on a spit over an open fire.

I was there to celebrate the marriage of one of my dearest friends. Richard had rented an apartment with me years earlier in Philadelphia when we were both in school, both political activists, and both arrested for a crime we didn’t commit. Richard went to Swarthmore. It didn’t suit him, nor probably would any college. He used to walk around campus in a cowboy hat, chaps, spurs a-jingling. What he really wanted to do is what millions of American boys grew up wanting to do: to become a cowboy. Unlike those millions, he actually did it.

Richard remembers: “I grew up in Vermont and just outside New York City and I went out West in 1972. I have a drawing (crayon) of the ‘Sunny Hollow,’ my mythical horse farm, done at age 8.

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