Cowboy Time

Texas Standard commentator W.F. Strong reminds us of a time you’ll find particularly in rural Texas – Cowboy Time. The full transcript of this episode of Stories from Texas is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Cowboy time isn't fast or
slow. It isn't tied to a clock
at all.
It's tied to the sun,
the herd, and the work.
On cattle drives of long ago, the
day began with first light.
At dawn, men were in the saddle,
driving cattle north to Abilene or
Dodge.
They worked till sundown.

(00:22):
No whistle blew.
No shift horn called them home.
The only time that mattered was
daylight.
And whether the herd was settled for
the night.
Even so, cowboys had their own kind
of clock. It was the cook's
bell.
Charles Goodnight invented the
chuckwagon, and with it came
the sound that structured cowboy

(00:42):
life.
When the cook struck his triangle
of iron, that was dinnertime.
Cowboys joked that the cook had
the only watch that mattered.
At night, men took turns watching
the cattle. Time wasn't measured in
minutes.
But in watches, three shifts
through the night, there was the
first guard, the midnight guard,

(01:04):
and the morning guard.
A cowboy might sing the herd to
sleep, humming trail songs or
gospel tunes under the stars.
The cattle calmed to the music,
and time passed by melody more
than clock.
Even distance was measured
differently. Cowboys spoke of horse
time. They'd say, that's a two-horse

(01:25):
ride from here.
Some cowboys did carry watches,
tough old Elgin or Waltham
pocket watches, often bought
when railroads made timetables
important.
But plenty of the cowboys would tell
you, the only watch I need
is the sun.
Writers caught on to this too.
Andy Adams, in the log of a

(01:45):
cowboy, described trailmen
rising with the dawn, eating
when the cook said so, and
changing guard by the stars.
J. Frank Doby wrote that a cow
puncher eats when the cook's ready,
he sleeps when the guard lets
him.
Larry McMurtry gave us cowboys
singing their cattle through the
night, timing their lives by

(02:07):
starlight and dust.
So cowboy time was different.
It was steady, it ran
sunup to sundown with a
few hours stolen under the stars.
It was measured by horses,
by bells, by songs,
by the needs of the herd, not
by the clock on the wall.
And maybe that's why cowboy time

(02:27):
still has a hold on us here in
Texas, even if we don't
ride herd anymore, there's something
in us that remembers.
We work till the sun goes down, we
eat when the food's ready, we
measure time by what matters,
not by what buzzes on our phones or
at least we'd like to.
In a world of atomic clocks,

(02:48):
digital seconds and meetings
scheduled down to the minute,
cowboy time whispers.
Different wisdom.
Don't count every minute.
Just do the work until
the day is done.
I'm W.F Strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are true.