One day while browsing thru the local flea market looking for that perfect western artifact to put in the office to keep me inspired and connected to that period I’m most attached to, I found something special. I was in one of those booths that immediately draw you in because of the type of objects there. That collection of old and retired things that resonates with your idea of what’s cool and represents that era that completes you and satisfied that nostalgia for a way of life that may never even have existed in reality, but sure feels good to think about.

The item found was a pair of old saddle bags. They were stained, the leather so dry and cracked that picking them up risked pieces falling off. The straps were mostly missing and the one that was still attached so brittle that moving it to get the bag open risked its disintegration. Inside was a notebook, the pages lined with those faded blue horizontal lines and the vertical red ones setting the margin. The kind of notebook you practiced your cursive writing in.

Many of the pages were torn out but the ones that were left held treasures more valuable than gold. Sketches drawn with colored pencils and ink faded almost past recognition. Of scenes real or imagined, covered with stories of a life lived long ago. It didn’t matter if they were true or not. A person’s dreams and memories can be whatever they want. Whoever created these pages left a legacy of their own life that were destined to be private but needed to be shared with the world. To take us back to a time that was less complicated, less buffeted by our current events that leave us stressed and disappointed with how life seems to be playing out now. A time when wanting to be a cowboy seemed a pretty noble ideal.