Steering New Age Kids to Cowboy Culture

A vast plain of cultural values separates my son’s generation from my own, and on that plain lies the game of Cowboys and Indians. I played it. He doesn’t.

My own experience with the game ended abruptly at age 4 when my friend beaned me with the butt of a toy revolver, sending me to the emergency room for stitches.

No such trauma has befallen my son, since he has never shown the slightest interest in cowboy culture. No big hats, no boots, no lariat, no six-shooters.

He, of course, belongs to a generation raised in an era of vegetarianism, ecological responsibility and multiculturalism. Cowboy mythology, with its herding, shooting and a certain degree of ethnic and male chauvinism, creates too crowded an image in today’s young mind to be a source of relaxed play. (Never mind that the prairies were peopled with cowboys of every race and creed.)

This doesn’t mean he and his pals are out planting petunias or composing odes to nature on handmade flutes. Cowboys and Indians may be un-PC, but there’s plenty of entertainment value in a good round of Mortal Kombat.

While some of the mythology of the Wild West is a bit disturbing, my son is clearly missing out by rejecting it all. Which is why I’m considering taking him to the Santa Clarita Fifth Annual Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival this weekend (see our Centerpiece stories on pages 40 and 41).

“It offers an opportunity for youngsters to reconnect with the emotional appeal of the great open spaces,” said Richard Kahlenberg, who wrote about the festival’s children’s poetry contest. “Kids who have never thought about life before or outside built-up suburban areas will find much to nourish their imaginations.”

It might shock them, for instance, to realize that none of the original settlers arrived in station wagons with children in back, grumbling, “Are we there yet?” There wasn’t a there yet.

So, we are considering going. On horseback.