Number 667


I wanna be a cowboy...and you can be muh cowgirl...


On a summer day in 1950 my friend David Ross and I were coming home from the next block in our suburban neighborhood where we'd been shooting it out with the Dalton Gang. We were climbing under a neighbor's rail fence. "Hey, boys," said a blonde girl dressed as a cowgirl, sitting on the fence.

David and I were both wearing our cowboy hats and Hopalong Cassidy six-shooter cap pistols at our sides.

I remember that moment as having a transcendent quality. On a hot summer day, shimmering heat around her, a vision of a girl in a red cowboy hat and matching boots, with a brown, fringed skirt and matching vest over a white blouse. She was an older woman, at least 7 or 8.

"How old are you two cowboys?" she asked. David and I held up three fingers each. My capacity for speech had been blocked by the vision on the fence. I remember nothing else about the incident, but to this day cowgirls loom large to me.

That's probably why I enjoy this story from Suzie #60, 1947.