{"id":76174,"date":"2017-11-06T17:03:10","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T00:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/james-heroes-idols-and-mentors\/"},"modified":"2017-11-07T00:03:10","modified_gmt":"2017-11-07T00:03:10","slug":"james-heroes-idols-and-mentors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/james-heroes-idols-and-mentors\/","title":{"rendered":"James: Heroes, idols and mentors"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the song says, my heroes have always been cowboys. Mine were a bunch of horse trader, beer-drinkin\u2019 \u201cne\u2019r-do-wells.\u201d<\/p>\n

Probably not quite as criminal as Martha Stewart, but running a close second.<\/p>\n

Their favorite activity was to buy or trade for one of those cross-eyed, tip-of-one-ear-gone-from-frostbite horses with the social skills of an alligator with a sore tooth and bring it for me to ride.<\/p>\n

It was a time when \u201cmen\u201d didn\u2019t shrink from a challenge. I wanted to be one, so I didn\u2019t either. It was great!<\/p>\n

They\u2019d get the horse blindfolded or maybe a leg kinda tied up, or just mugged down. All I had to do was get on. They would turn loose and start looking for a safer place to be.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the party would get started pretty quick. You would be amazed at how much you can see in a short period of time \u2013 horse, ground, sky, horse, ground, sky \u2013 all the while trying to make it look natural and pretty so they\u2019d think I knew what I was doing.<\/p>\n

There were some that just bucked me off, others that fell over backwards and some whose front legs would fold up and sent me flyin\u2019 like a \u201cbreaker marble\u201d out of a bear-killing slingshot.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, there were those that didn\u2019t buck me off, fall over backwards or try to bite my shirt off. When it got time to get off one of these, it would be to thunderous applause from a group of men who, with the help of Adolph Coors, could no longer pronounce their own names.<\/p>\n

Today, they call it mentoring: a group of selfless people from all walks of life trying to show young people that it is possible to succeed in life.<\/p>\n

And by doing that, they are helping not only the young people but humanity as a whole.<\/p>\n

While I wouldn\u2019t trade for mine, neither would I recommend it.<\/p>\n

Always check your cinch before you get on \u2026<\/p>\n

Tom James was riding horses before he could walk. He currently hangs his hat in Ignacio. Reach him at outlivedthemallsofar@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

du1-i-syn As the song says, my heroes have always been cowboys. Mine were a bunch of horse trader, beer-drinkin\u2019 \u201cne\u2019r-do-wells.\u201d Probably not quite as criminal as Martha Stewart, but running a close second. Their favorite activity was to buy or trade for one of those cross-eyed, tip-of-one-ear-gone-from-frostbite horses with the social skills of an alligator […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-76174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76174"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=76174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}