Authors, musicians mark the Day of the Cowboy

There was a time when the image of the American cowboy was seared into the psyche of all Americans, even if most of them didn’t understand what a real cowboy is.

But with the decline in the number of Western movies and TV series that dominated the first half of the 20th century and the increasing urbanization of this country, that may no longer be the case. And many of those who retain a conception of the cowboy probably associate him with John Wayne movies or with Pa Cartwright on TV’s “Bonanza.”

That’s why an effort started back in 2005 to initiate a National Day of the Cowboy to celebrate the real cowboy, working men and women who labor in the beef cattle industry, who are pitched by horses, stepped on by steers, and get mud, blood and manure on their boots.

New Mexico is one of more than a dozen states that recognize the National Day of the Cowboy. The New Mexico chapter of the International Western Music Association is celebrating the day through story and song at 7 p.m. Saturday, July 22, at the Best Western Rio Grande Inn, 1015 Rio Grande Blvd. NW.

Most cowboys love their work, but that’s probably because they’ve been kicked in the head a few times too many, not because it pays well and is glamorous — now or ever.

“It was not a romantic job in the 1800s,” said author Johnny D. Boggs, who lives in Santa Fe’s Eldorado community. Boggs’ Western fiction has earned him a record nine Spur Awards, presented by the Western Writers of America for excellence in writing about the American West. He will be among the writers and musicians participating in Albuquerque’s Day of the Cowboy event.

Boggs will talk about cowboys, horses and cattle drives, a topic for which he is well-suited because he has known some cowboys, horses and cows and because he has done research on each for his writing. He received a Spur Award for “A Thousand Texas Longhorns,” a novel he wrote about an 1866 cattle drive from Texas to Montana. Now, he is working on a novel based on an actual 1854 cattle drive to New York City.

“They had stockyards all over New York,” Boggs said. “The cattleman making this drive was an Englishman who lived in Illinois. He drove cattle from Texas to his home place in Illinois. He wintered them there and in the spring, he drove them to Muncie, Indiana. He put them on trains in Muncie and shipped them to New Jersey. Then he swam the cattle, 150 head, across the Hudson and herded them into the (New York) stockyards.”

Besides Boggs, those taking part in the Day of the Cowboy celebration are authors Melody Groves and Don Bullis of Albuquerque and Rio Rancho respectively, singer-songwriter and novelist Jim Jones of Rio Rancho and musician Mariam Funke of Santa Fe.

Groves, who writes fiction and nonfiction, is president of WWA, a national organization of 700 people who write about the American West. She won her first Spur Award this year for the nonfiction work “Before Billy the Kid: The Boy Behind the Legendary Outlaw.” The title of her Day of the Cowboy talk is “Billy Was a Nice Guy.”

“I’m going to talk about some of the misconceptions around him,” she said.

The Kid worked as a cowboy and also stole cattle — unless that’s a misconception. John Kinney, who, like the Kid, operated in New Mexico in the late 1870s and early 1880s, mostly stole cattle.

“He is said to have stolen so many cattle in the southwest part of the state that the economy of the region was threatened,” said Bullis, who will focus on Kinney during his Day of the Cowboy presentation. “He was also rustling oxen from farmers, so they couldn’t do their job.” Bullis was named New Mexico’s nonfiction centennial author in 2012. He often writes about lawmen and outlaws. His latest book is “Badman of the New Mexico Badlands: Gus Raney, Multiple Killer — His Legend and Life.”

Jones, who has won three WWA Spur Awards for songwriting, and Funke, IWMA 2022 instrumentalist of the year, will provide cowboy music for the event. Jones said he has singled out a song to go with each of the authors’ presentations. He’ll do Utah Phillips’ “The Goodnight-Loving Trail” for Boggs’ cattle drive presentation, Dave Stamey’s “The Skies of Lincoln County” for Groves’ Billy the Kid talk and Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho and Lefty” for Bullis’ rustler revelations.