You Re On Cowboy

Jerry Hodge has two passions in life: baseball and pharmacy. It didn’t take long before he realized he wasn’t going to have a career as Major League Baseball player, so he focused his efforts on pharmacy by working in local drug stores in high school and college. After graduating college and becoming a pharmacist in 1965, Jerry cobbled together $20,000 in loans to purchase Maxor, an Amarillo, Texas, drug store and become a business owner at the age of 23. But soon after he made the deal, he lost 95 percent of his prescription business when three local physicians either died, retired or moved their office. At the same time, he and his wife were expecting their first child and he was summoned to appear before the draft board for possible deployment to Vietnam. Let Me Tell Ya chronicles how Hodge recovered from business and personal setbacks to become a successful business and family man who turned Maxor into a multi-million dollar national business. Jerry also chronicles how he dealt with personal challenges including two divorces, a diagnosis of terminal cancer and the death of a grandson. He may be the only person to go toe-to-toe with Oprah Winfrey and Boone Pickens ... and survive. Let Me Tell Ya shares the life and business lessons Jerry’s learned along the way in what has been an incredible life.

A young cowboy says good night to the things in his world, from his boots and his dog to the sunset and stars.

In this romantic, humorous and harrowing novel, the acclaimed author of Make Believe Love returns to the epic skies and straight roads of Broken Head, Saskatchewan, and takes us into a very modern Western. Sam McMahon can’t understand why his banker colleagues in Toronto keep calling him “cowboy,” when he prefers opera to C&W and fine wine to beer. Sam’s wife is in love with his brother Vern, who has followed the family tradition and works their parents’ farm, a mixed cattle and crop operation inherited from his grandfather, Old Sam. When his wife leaves him stranded by the side of a Saskatchewan highway, Sam is rescued by a woman, Ai Lee, in a rented Toyota. Ai is a film location scout who’s searching for the perfect cliff for legendary director James Aspen’s new film, The Last Cowboy. Thirty years previously, Old Sam dreams of better days in an older West, mending fences, riding horses, raising cattle. To save young Sam, then 10 years old, from what he considers the malaise of the late-20th century, Old Sam drags him off into a blizzard on horseback. His goal is to save a lost cow and her new calf, which may or may not exist. Sam’s parents fear he’ll only manage to kill his grandson. When, only days later, the old cowboy wanders out of doors without his parka in the freezing cold, muttering about a lost boy, he’s rescued by a Native couple out in a “borrowed” car, who run afoul of the police and end up driving into their final sunset. When Ai hears their story from Sam, she thinks she’s found her perfect location. The Last Cowboy does much more than update the Western; it weaves together stories and generations and unveils, with beauty and compassion, the leap or fall that awaits us all. So I stretch back in permanent recline and do my best to travel off to a better day, a summer day back fifty years past, a few days after a big rain, so that everything was green except for the cuts in the draws where the runoff had chewed right through the grass. There was a glow to the world back then that has long since been lost. It is painfully elusive, that particular luminescence, but I sit here stubbornly trying to restore the shine of it. I begin with a sky that was as blue as the better skies now, and work my way down to the green, only a breath of a line of white dividing the earth from the heavens. -- from The Last Cowboy

"Funny, complicated, and irresistible. Sometimes a cowboy isn't perfect but you got to love him anyway."—JODI THOMAS, New York Times bestselling author for Caught Up in a Cowboy This cowboy is falling hard Mason James is the responsible one who stayed behind to run the ranch while his brother, Rock, took off to play professional hockey. Women have used him before to get to his brother—and Mason intends never to get burned again. But after he meets quirky Tessa Kane at his brother's wedding, Mason discovers he's ready to take a chance on love. Tessa Kane is a reporter on the verge of losing a job she desperately needs—unless she's clever enough to snag a story on the famous Rockford James. But when she falls for her subject's brother, she's caught between a rock and a hard-muscled cowboy. What will happen when Mason finds out who she really is? Cowboys of Creedence Series: Caught Up in a Cowboy (Book 1) You Had Me at Cowboy (Book 2) It Started With a Cowboy (Book 3) What People Are Saying About Caught Up in a Cowboy: "Chemistry so electric it flies off the page."—RT Book Reviews for Caught Up in a Cowboy, 4 stars "Full of exquisite heat and passion...wonderful."—Harlequin Junkie "An appealing story of love rediscovered...enjoy this tender tale."—Publishers Weekly

“Thompson-Hernández's portrayal of Compton's black cowboys broadens our perception of Compton's young black residents, and connects the Compton Cowboys to the historical legacy of African Americans in the west. An eye-opening, moving book.”—Margot Lee Shetterly, New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Figures “Walter Thompson-Hernández has written a book for the ages: a profound and moving account of what it means to be black in America that is awe inspiring in its truth-telling and limitless in its empathy. Here is an American epic of black survival and creativity, of terrible misfortune and everyday resilience, of grace, redemption and, yes, cowboys.”— Junot Díaz, Pulitzer prize-winning author of This is How You Lose Her A rising New York Times reporter tells the compelling story of The Compton Cowboys, a group of African-American men and women who defy stereotypes and continue the proud, centuries-old tradition of black cowboys in the heart of one of America’s most notorious cities. In Compton, California, ten black riders on horseback cut an unusual profile, their cowboy hats tilted against the hot Los Angeles sun. They are the Compton Cowboys, their small ranch one of the very last in a formerly semirural area of the city that has been home to African-American horse riders for decades. To most people, Compton is known only as the home of rap greats NWA and Kendrick Lamar, hyped in the media for its seemingly intractable gang violence. But in 1988 Mayisha Akbar founded The Compton Jr. Posse to provide local youth with a safe alternative to the streets, one that connected them with the rich legacy of black cowboys in American culture. From Mayisha’s youth organization came the Cowboys of today: black men and women from Compton for whom the ranch and the horses provide camaraderie, respite from violence, healing from trauma, and recovery from incarceration. The Cowboys include Randy, Mayisha’s nephew, faced with the daunting task of remaking the Cowboys for a new generation; Anthony, former drug dealer and inmate, now a family man and mentor, Keiara, a single mother pursuing her dream of winning a national rodeo championship, and a tight clan of twentysomethings--Kenneth, Keenan, Charles, and Tre--for whom horses bring the freedom, protection, and status that often elude the young black men of Compton. The Compton Cowboys is a story about trauma and transformation, race and identity, compassion, and ultimately, belonging. Walter Thompson-Hernández paints a unique and unexpected portrait of this city, pushing back against stereotypes to reveal an urban community in all its complexity, tragedy, and triumph. The Compton Cowboys is illustrated with 10-15 photographs.

A street-smart tale about a displaced teen who learns to defend what's right-the Cowboy Way. When Cole’s mom dumps him in the mean streets of Philadelphia to live with the dad he’s never met, the last thing Cole expects to see is a horse, let alone a stable full of them. He may not know much about cowboys, but what he knows for sure is that cowboys aren’t black, and they don’t live in the inner city. But in his dad’s ’hood, horses are a way of life, and soon Cole’s days of skipping school and getting in trouble in Detroit have been replaced by shoveling muck and trying not to get stomped on. At first, all Cole can think about is how to ditch these ghetto cowboys and get home. But when the City threatens to shut down the stables-- and take away the horse Cole has come to think of as his own-- he knows that it’s time to step up and fight back. Inspired by the little-known urban riders of Philly and Brooklyn, this compelling tale of latter -day cowboy justice champions a world where your friends always have your back, especially when the chips are down.

This book explores wanderlust, the price of gritty, hard work and the simple beauty of working outdoors and with horses. Hagen pulls readers into his poignant realisation of his dreams of being a cowboy, at a time when the frontiers of BC and the West were still in their infancy and the rodeo was an extension of the daily life of the cowhand. This portrait of a Canadian cowboy is a window into the one of the last of the living ranch hands in this country. The myth of the cowboy is revealed by a real person who lived, struggled and helped to build the West one herd, one fence, one horse at a time.

Follows the life of Bill, a cowboy on the open range of Texas in the 1830s and continues with his son and grandson as they witness the ever-changing landscape, the expansion of the cattle business, growth of railroads, and the end of the frontier.