I'm kind of a minor celebrity. I don't wear big fancy concho belts. It's a whole lot more comfortable. Levinthal grew up in a small seaside fishing village in Maine. He was a three-sport varsity athlete and the only Jew in his high school.
People think it's unusual to be a Jewish cowboy.
Levinthal's mother put him on a horse at age 3. I talked the foreman into giving me a job. I was a cowboy for the next 41 years. Since then, Levinthal has worked on ranches, led trail rides and pack trips, and shod and doctored horses. For the past decade, he has lived in New Mexico, spending the first three years as a wrangler leading pack trips through the mountainous Gila Wilderness in the southwestern part of the state.