01/12/2026
Betsy Taylor brings to life an old column written by Jerry Wolfrom about Cowboys. Do you remember those good old days or watching cowboy movies? Watch for more stories by Rainy Day Writers on Your Radio Place and in Guernsey News.
Cowboys by Betsy Taylor
Yesterday I was combing through some old newspapers I had saved to wrap my Christmas houses for storage. When I say “old” I mean 1998 when the Jeffersonian featured several separate sections and measured half again the width of today’s narrower editions. Several items drew me to take a closer look. Jerry Wolfrom’s photo was one of those items. Jerry, a long-time columnist/humorist for the newspaper, holds a special place in the hearts of Rainy Day Writers. He was our founder dispensing advice that served him well during his own career as a professional journalist. For that, we as a writing group, are grateful.
Of course, I couldn’t pass up the chance to read one of Jerry’s old columns. The title, Something Majestic About Movie Cowboys, struck a chord because, as a kid, I was caught up in the mystique of cowboys, too.
The column was prompted by the recent death of Gene Autry – the Singing Cowboy. In Jerry’s list of famous 1940s and 1950s cowboy movie heroes, Gene was the last to pass away.
Jerry reminisced about the boys in his neighborhood who banded together to play cowboys. He painted himself as the best of his buddies at staging a dramatic death scene. Jerry claimed, “If I must say so, I was the best in town at getting plugged. I’d grunt several times, drop my six-shooter, stagger, spin, wobble, and finally crumple in a heap in the dust mortally wounded.” It’s hard not to envision that scene.
Kids who were enthralled with movie cowboys bought into the Code of the West. The good guys wore white hats, acted with good manners, and always played fair. Although Western movies showed us sanitized versions of life on the frontier, cowboy heroes fought the good fight and always came out the winners with a minimum of violence.
I confess to never having spent time watching Westerns in a movie theater. By the time I was old enough to go to a theater with friends, the vigorous era of cowboy films was over. But the movies showed up on Saturday morning TV. That’s where I met Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Gabby Hayes, Hopalong Cassidy, and Gene Autry in all their black-and-white splendor.
Trick riding impressed me the most. And, like most kids, I dreamed of having a horse that could respond to my every command, even the unspoken ones. Dale Evans had Buttermilk and I had George. George was the 26-inch used bicycle that my dad found at a yard sale. For several years the bike was too big for me, so I rode standing up. But my valiant George never let me down – or should I say threw me off. George and I had great adventures, but when I became a pre-teen, George transformed from a horse back into a bike. By then the mystique of the Western cowboy hero had dimmed and the popularity of prolific writers of Western movie scripts, including Zane Grey, had faded with it.
Jerry concluded his column by bidding happy trails to Gene Autry and, by extension, to the other larger-than-life cowboy heroes. He said a fond farewell to the many fun-filled Saturday afternoons spent in the Lyceum Theater in Findlay, Ohio. He finally said, “Would to God that we could ever be that excited and entertained again.” Amen to that, Jerry.
