From a distance, at a time of urbanization and connectivity, rodeo and ranching may seem anachronistic notions - quaint and sepia-toned from an America that no longer exists.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
With the Gap Band coming from Oklahoma, other artists would tease us by calling us cowboys. We didn't grow up on a ranch, but we took that style to the stage. We knew that it was corny, but at least it was ours.
In my boyhood, cattle-raising ran almost neck and neck with grain-raising. In my secluded little valley in the Suisun Hills, the rodeo was the most exhilarating spectacle in the round year.
I've got cattle on 4,000 acres about 100 miles east of Dallas, but I've also got another 65-acre ranch where I raise American miniature horses.
My parents moved from ranch to ranch, valley to valley, town to town, but our roots in Fowler never really faded. For me, it's a place of history, stories and songs, not just facts and figures.
I have a ranch in Montana, but it's not a real working ranch. I've always liked the outdoors. I come from Texas. My grandfather was a farmer; that's as close as I come.
I'm South American, and growing up in New York, I had the total stereotypical way of thinking of what Texas was about. I'm like, Texas. Big. Cows. Cowboys. Cowboy hats and cowboy boots. And barbeque.
In a lot of places in the United States and certainly even more places around the world, the image of the cowboy has become, for some people, a negative one. The word 'cowboy' implies a strong, stubborn individual whose individualism depends on pulling down other people's individualism.
We don't have milk cows. People have so many stereotypes of people from where I come from - Oklahoma. We don't ride around in covered wagons, either.
Building houses and mansion ranching is not ranching.
It's just a little ranch. Thirty-five acres. In Texas, if it's not a thousand acres, it's considered a ranchette.