Saturday afternoon for me meant getting my 25 cents allowance and heading for the movie theater in my hometown of Paintsville, Kentucky, to overdose on western movies. The admission for us under 12 grubs was only a dime. That left money for a coke, popcorn and a little box of chocolate covered malted milk balls. If we got there early enough, we also got to see a newsreel, previews, serial, color cartoon and not one but TWO black and white western movies.

Of course, these "westerns" bore no resemblance at all to the reality of life in the American west in the 1800's. If anyone had ridden his white stallion into Laramie or Dodge City dressed like Roy Rogers, he would probably have been hanged. But back in the era of the singing cowboys, we were not interested in historic reality. We wanted to be entertained.

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Here are my choice for the top wild western cowboys from the golden era. Do you remember these?

Big Bill Love's Top 5 Western Movie Cowboys

 

Let's take a three minute look at what the REAL world of the cowboy looked like with Willie Nelson:

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