(COWBOY THEME)
Sue Scott: THE LIVES OF THE COWBOYS.... Brought to you by A-1 Antibacterial Harmonica Wipes. (HARMONICA NOTE) You're sitting around the campfire, feeling lonely, and somebody lends you their harmonica. And it feels good. (HARMONICA) Next thing you know you have pneumonia and die. (HARMONICA DEATH NOTE) That's why you should carry A-1 antibacterial harmonica wipes. And now. The Lives of the Cowboys.
(THEME, COWS, GIDDYUP)
Tim Russell: Minneapolis.
Garrison Keillor: Yessir, Dusty. University of Minnesota, up ahead. (HORSES, COWS)
TR: I still think that letter was a joke, Lefty.
GK: It came on the official University letterhead. Offered me a job teaching for the fall semester. Cowboy Studies.
TR: Yeah, well -- Harvard Medical School wants me, you know. --Not right away, but eventually.
GK: Right. --To me, this is the opportunity of a lifetime. A chance to mold young minds--
TR: My mind molded a long time ago.
GK: A new generation, gazing up at me in breathless wonder --young women, their pens trembling in sheer anticipation--
TR: Their pens trembling with suppressed laughter--
GK: Joke all you like -- I think this could be the start of something big for me. (STRUM GUITAR)
TR: Oh no. Not a song.
GK: I feel as if I just started off down a different trail, pardner. (HE SINGS)
I'm riding the trail off to the U
In Cowboy Studies, a professor, it's true
For the cowboy life can prepare you to be
Heroic in the midst of great misery.
WHOOPitiyiyo git along, little students.
TR: Would you mind not whooping so loud? I got a hangover.
GK: (SINGS)
Oh the cowboy's a hero of the Great Plains
He lives on courage and humor and brains.
He thinks as he pleases and says what he means,
And he's happy on coffee and a plateful of beans
WHOOPItiyiyo git along, little students.
TR: Perhaps you did not hear me the first time. Thank you for not whooping.
GK: (SINGS)
I come to the U and my spirit rejoices
To see their young faces and hear their young voices
College was something I'm sorry I missed
But the cowboy life made me a great humanist.
WHOOPitiyiyo, git along little students.
TR: You may not be aware of it, caught up in your reverie of song, but people are staring at you right now--
GK: Exactly what a professor hopes for -- eye contact.
TR: They are whispering and edging away as if you were potentially dangerous.
GK: Ideas are powerful, Dusty. People are right to be fearful. Cowboy Studies is going to change their lives and they don't know it. Change their lives just like it changed ours.
TR: Maybe we better warn em, then.
GK: Hey-- there's some pasture down by the river (COWS) Hee-ya! Git!
TR: Hee-yaw. This is crazy. Why did we ever bring a herd of a hundred cattle to a University campus, Lefty?
GK: How would they know I'm a cowboy if I don't have cows? Huh? (BRIDGE)
GK: So-- Professor Steele, I'm Lefty, and this here is Dusty. My partner.
Jearlyn Steele: Nice hats. Those ten-gallon?
GK: Mine is a one-liter. Ten gallon'd be a pretty big head.
JS: Why a one-liter?
GK: Cause I'm the leader.
JS: Either of you sing and play the guitar?
GK: I also sing lieder.
JS: And those are chaps, right?
TR: Yep.
JS: And where's your lariat?
TR: On my horse.
JS: And your six-guns?
TR: Yep. Got those.
JS: Those boots -- are they comfortable?
TR: Nope.
JS: And you're just as laconic as I imagined.
TR: What's that mean?
GK: It means you don't say much, okay? So shut up. Tell me more about the teaching I'm going to be doing, Dr. Steele--
JS: It's a course in Symbolic Narratives and we'd like you to touch on masculine mythology and the maintenance of the dominant patriarchal hegemony through narratives of loneliness and isolation as a byproduct of the man-against-nature dichotomy.
GK: Fine. I was sort of thinking the same thing myself. Thanks for your help. See ya. Bye. (FOOTSTEPS AWAY)
TR (SOTTO VOCE): So what did all that mean?
GK: Means I'm gonna have to spend the weekend in the library. (BRIDGE)
GK: Okay, class, my name is Lefty. I'm a cowboy. Glad to be here. (STRUMS GUITAR) This is my guitar, LaVerne. Ordinarily I'd be riding my horse down the trail out on the dusty windswept godforsaken plains and herding a few hundred mangy cattle with caked manure on their tails and taking them to their deaths and when I do, I turn to LaVerne for whatever consolation can be found in music--
TK (TEEN): Excuse me.
GK: Yes?
TK (TEEN): Is there a syllabus?
GK: Yes, of course.
TK (TEEN): When will we get that?
GK: The syllabus?
TK (TEEN): Yes.
GK: I hope you don't get it. Be careful who you dance with would be my advice. Dance with the schoolmarm and stay away from dancehall floozies. -- Yes, sir.
TR (TEEN): How come you wear spurs? I was reading that spurs have no utilitarian meaning -- they're purely symbolic and, like, they're important as a way to establish a visual context that integrates the experience of the cowboy narrative.
GK: We wear spurs because that's what cowboys do.
TR (TEEN): Yeah, but why? Isn't it because they jingle, jangle, jingle?
GK: My spurs don't.
TR (TEEN): If you dance, they do.
GK: Well, I'm not going to dance.
TR (TEEN): Why not? C'mon, dance, let's hear em jingle.
GK: Cowboys don't like to be told what to do. We resist authority. Somebody tells us to dance, right away we don't want to.
TK (TEEN): Yeah. When you say "we," what does that mean? How many of you?
GK: There's just me and the halfwit.
TR (TEEN): Oh. Okay.
GK: He used to be normal but years of sleeping on the ground have sapped his faculties and he isn't quite right in the head.
TR (TEEN): Does this happen a lot to cowboys?
GK: Happens a lot to most people. You get stupider as you get older, wait and see, it's a proven fact.
SS (TEEN): Is there a paper?
GK: Somewhere, yes.
SS (TEEN): I mean, do we have to write a paper?
GK: Yes, you do.
SS (TEEN): Then I'm not gonna do it.
GK: That's the cowboy way. And for that you get an A plus.
(A BEAT)
TK (TEEN): What's going to be on the test?
GK: I was just about to tell you. (STRUMS, SINGS)
The test won't be
About hegemony
Or archetypes of the male myth,
Or patriarchy
Which is pure malarkey
Cause a father's what everyone is born with.
We won't explore
Metaphor,
In the final exam that I give
Or whether spurs
And boots refers
To visual symbols of a cowboy narrative.
No, the final test, in sum total
Is simply how well you can yodel'everybody
(ALL YODEL)
SS: So our grade in the course is based on how well we yodel?
GK: No, you also have to spend the next eight weeks riding the range with me and sleeping on the ground and driving cattle.
TR: But we can't-- we have other courses -- I'm in pre-med.
GK: You have to. Sorry.
SS: Well, I don't give a rip what you say -- I'm not gonna and you can't make me. So here's spit in your eye. (SHE HAWKS AND SPITS)
GK: That was real cowboy. For that you get an A, kid.
(HE SINGS)
We will ride across the plains out to the buttes
With our hats pulled low and smoking our cheroots
And squinting at people who act mighty strange
And it ain't our spurs jingling, that is spare change.
And our lives ain't rational, they're anecdotal.
And the ultimate test is how well you can yodel.
Everybody.
(ALL YODEL) (BRIDGE, AND UNDER)
JS: Lefty? Did you get my e-mail? I sent it yesterday. I'm afraid you're being let go. (STING, A BEAT)
GK: Well, I'm not surprised.
JS: We have academic standards here, Lefty. You can't give people an A for refusing to do the work.
GK: Well, that's what I did and it was right and I don't care what you think.
JS: And then there's what happened in class on Thursday.
GK: You mean Dusty getting a little wild.
JS: He was drunk and dancing on desks and we had to call security and then he got in a big fight and went rolling around on the floor with them, biting and scratching and gouging eyeballs. That just doesn't go here at the University of Minnesota.
GK: You have a rule against biting and scratching and gouging eyeballs?
JS: We do.
GK: Well, that's what Dusty does about everytime he goes to town. I was surprised he waited until Thursday to do it. Anyway, I'm happy to be fired. Been here three weeks, I was getting restless.
JS: Well, I'm sorry, anyway. Where will you go from here?
GK: Oh. South, I suppose. Tulsa. Abilene. Back to the trail. Who's gonna teach my course on cowboys?
JS: Guess.
GK: You?
JS: Yes.
GK: Don't say yes. Say yep.
JS: Yeah.
GK: No. Yep.
JS: That's what I said. Yeah.
GK: Not yeah. Yeah.
JS: Yeah.
GK: Lemme see you spit.
JS: I beg your pardon.
GK: Spit. In cowboy talk, it's a punctuation -- sort of like a colon or a dash. Like this -- Yeah-- (SPIT) I see you brought your gun. Try that.
JS: "Yeah-- (SPIT) -- I see you brought your gun."
GK: That's not bad. I think you can do it. Just remember. Getting fired from a job is a mark of true distinction, Dr. Steele. Don't put it off.
JS: But I'm the head of the department. Not that easy for me to get fired.
GK: You're just going to have to learn how to disappoint yourself then. I know a quick way to do that.
JS: So do I and I'm not going to go there.
(THEME)
SS: The Lives of the Cowboys. Brought to you by A1 Sanitary Harmonica Wipes. The only harmonica cleaner that gets in all the cracks and cleans out those harmonics (HARMONICA). Everybody's happy, sort of, when you use A-A Harmonica Cleaners. Carry one in your saddlebag.