Buckaroo was generally stoved up from sittin' on a horse so damn long. The farmer, he was generally stoved up from goin' over the clods and the dirt followin' the plow. The image outsiders have of cattle ranches populated by tough cowboys on wild ponies wrestling mean longhorn bulls is not altogether correct. Unfortunately for our conceptions of buckarooing in the West, we know little about these men in that large part of their lives spent fussing with balky combine engines or mending endless miles of barbed wire fence, doctoring edgy cows with injection guns filled with vitamins and serums, or working through stacks of government regulations and tax forms. The reality of western ranching life and the buckaroo business was lost in the mythology and legend that began a hundred years ago.
Ranchers customarily paint a dark picture of the future of their business.
Carlo Recanzone and his son Butch, who as a young man hopes to continue operation of their pioneer family ranch, agree that their future is in the government's hands. They can make it, they say, but there will be significant changes. One of the strengths of western ranching families is that they are inheritors and conscious curators of a significant piece of the real and mythic American past. They know that the past of gritty pioneers and greedy exploiters lives visibly and immediately in their present. A family ranch is a living family album, and in its story are lines from every history book about what America is.