Prairie Rednecks

German cowboys get together at the Americana Western Fair in Bavaria. Observations from the saddle.

If the word “cowboy” had ever been translated into German, “Kuhjunge” would probably have never conjured up the image that “cowboy” has over the past decades. In films, books and above all in our imaginations, the cowboy and his horse ride off, alone together, into the vast prairie.

The hallmark of the cowboy is his cowboy hat. 42,000 people donned theirs last week when they attended Americana 2010, the great western fair held at Augsburg in Bavaria (SEE: http://www.americana.eu/). Normally, they wouldn’t dress that way, but here, every two years at least, it fits right in. These leisure cowboys and cowgirls can immerse themselves for five days in breeding western horses, get tips and demonstrations on various riding styles, and get their hands on western saddles, cowboy boots, horse fodder, leather chaps, bridles, fencing equipment and even cowboy hats from different dealers and manufacturers who also attend.

Tens of thousands watched professional equestrian events covering every discipline of western riding, and there was $200,000 in prize money to be won. There was an authentic Western saloon where country and western bands performed and line-dance amateurs showed off their moves. And everywhere there were discussions about western life and what constituted real western horsemanship. I even brought my cowboy hat with me from Berlin and never took it off for days. Yearning for the Wild West is booming — but why?

German author Karl May started it all, and his literary journey began over one hundred years ago with his novel about Chief Winnetou and the good Indians. Then came the “Bonanza” television series that made Germans all guests at America’s most perfect ranch. “Little House on the Prairie” made the whole phenomenon suitable for children. Native American clubs sprang up across communist East Germany, and the classic image of the Western hero was presented to us by the likes of John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster. Women played no part in this world until the lonesome rider finally fell in love one day, bringing a temporary end to the wild life.

There was only one solution for me: Become a cowgirl. I went to live in Wyoming for a year at a working ranch with 800 head of cattle. Ranch owners Suzy Michnevich and her brother Frosty made their living selling 6-month old calves. Ranch work means being constantly outdoors, come heat wave or bitter cold; it means mile after mile of fencing off the rolling prairie; it means constantly getting on and off your horse and cow manure on your boots and your hat on at all times, protecting you from sun as well as rain. It gets into your bones. Riding for a living produces few heroics other than the art of spending as much time as possible in the saddle as comfortably as you can while you drive the herd or cut individual steers away from the rest if they need to be vaccinated or sold. Your horse becomes your best buddy in a way that has very little in common with sport riding.

The first Western riding competitions came about when ranchers got together on Sunday afternoon just to pass the time and show each other what they could do. The origins of that new American sport, one that now awards up to $1 million to the best horse and rider, can be traced back to those pioneering days. But in Germany?

Before anyone here ever even thought of Western riding came the cowboy clubs. The oldest dates back to Munich, founded by Fred Sommer, in 1913. Sommer was a jack-of-all-trades unable to emigrate to America but who, like Karl May, had a deep yearning to do just that. Inspired by the classic image of the cowboy, always looking westward into the setting sun and a new life that had to be better than the old, like-minded Bavarians began getting together to enjoy a new fantasy life on the weekends.

These dreamers still meet at the Americana. Dressed in an authentic southern farmer’s outfit right down to the bandana, John Ritchie, speaking with a broad Swabian accent, discusses the American Civil War with Warren Brown, who is dressed in his cavalry uniform. They get together often to chat around the campfire; for them, it’s pure relaxation. Beyond the last hills of the Swabian Alb there’s no new life possible, so America became their imaginary paradise.

There’s no real contact between cowboy clubs and Western riders. The German pioneers of Western sport riding — Thomas Hoppe, Uwe Roschmann and Ute Holm, one of the few women involved — introduced the riding style that was unknown in Germany up until then. They trained their horses to perform all known gaits on a loose rein without visible help from a rider, doing all the spectacular stops and turns and mastering the most difficult discipline of all, cutting, where one individual steer is separated from the herd. They got American riding instructors to come and began breeding quarter horses from imported stock. Along the way, others became interested and said, “I want to do that, too, and I want a horse that can do that.”

So the pioneers became professionals, each in his or her specialty. Although they were ridiculed by dressage riders at the start, these pioneers have their own stables today. The feeling one gets when horse and rider become partners grabs those who started Western riding and it never lets them go. Of the one million horses in Germany today, 100,000 of them are ridden Western style.

The prairie dream does come true for a few. Uwe Roeschmann, for example, had the feeling he didn’t really belong in Germany. Six foot six Uwe, who looks like he just stepped out of a Marlboro commercial, now has a ranch in Texas and finally found his better life as a professional Western rider.

The Western riding scene, meanwhile, has become a 5 billion euro a year business in Germany. It has also become very popular with our Italian neighbors. What’s often overlooked in the midst of so much freedom and adventure is the fact that the cowboy was the rancher’s hired hand. He was considered a prairie redneck. He may well have ridden ever westward, but he didn’t find a better future, just the same workaday world he left behind. At the end of Peter Fonda’s film “Hired Hand,” two cowboys stand with their horses at ocean’s edge in California and ask themselves what they should do now. They end up turning toward the East and riding back to their small ranch. All that remains is their dream of ever westward. I’m also going to put the cowboy hat Suzy gave me in Wyoming on a shelf in the closet as soon as I’ve cut the first steer from my own herd. But I know the first time I ever put it back on and look into the mirror the longing will immediately come flooding back.