I want to be a cowboy’s sweetheart

Patsy Montana and the Prairie Ramblers, 1935

I don’t know how she got the name Putszy, but, what with her being Catholic and all, it wasn’t pronounced the way you might think, more like “POOT-zie.” Something tells me it was a “y” on the end, not an “ie,” and I’m pretty sure about that “sz” combo, but I’m not sure I ever asked anyone. And I have no idea how she ever got such an odd moniker. She was just one of the gang of girlfriends my mother palled around with, women with names like Eileen and Mary Margaret and Thelma and Marcella. When they all got together and had a few highballs, they loved to sing. Like, campfire singing, but in living rooms, with cigarettes.

I try to imagine myself with my friends, sitting in my living room and singing songs, and it’s not something I can imagine I would ever want to do. But for my mother and her friends, learning how to amuse oneself cheaply had always been a part of life: dancing, cards, Monopoly games. Singlaongs were part of that Depression-era ethos, and that willingness to make one’s own fun instead of to demand entertainment.

I haven’t thought about those singalongs in a long time, but yesterday I was in a core class, of all places, and the ghost of Putszy Wyland came right up and touched me on the shoulder. The teacher, whose taste in music is wonderfully eccentric, had passed over her usual mix of merengue, bluegrass, African drumming and 80s hair bands. Instead she’d picked an all-country set. And there the song was, spinning into my ears as I struggled to remain upright on a fitball: “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart,” the one song Putzy could reliably be called upon to sing at any gathering. (Here's a link, so you can hear experience its grandeur for yourself.)

I thought about Putszy, and my mom, and I tried to remember some of the other songs they sang together, but I drew a blank. As I listened to Patsy Montana and the Prairie Ramblers, I wondered in anyone in that group of friends could yodel. After enough highballs, I suppose everyone can yodel. Once again, I found myself wishing I’d paid attention back then, but my mind was always on other more interesting topics, like myself.

Then, that afternoon, I received a beautiful reprieve from the singalong gods. I was in my office, clicking away, when a bit of song came floating up to my window.

You're a grand old flag, You're a high flying flag, 

and forever in peace may you wave.
You're the emblem of the land I love, 

the home of the free and the brave.
Ev'ry heart beats true 'neath the Red, White and Blue, 

where there's never a boast or brag.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, 

keep your eye on the grand old flag

For a moment, I could hear my mom, gathered with her daffy girlfriends and their agreeable husbands, raising their highballs for this rouser. Here it was, a number one hit on the singalong hit parade, and people were boisterously singing it, right in my neighborhood. Either that, or I was having a major hallucination. I shook my head for a moment, then realized the voices I was hearing were not the Costellos and the Rothers and the Kelleys. It was the kids next door, hanging from their jungle gym and belting out a George M. Cohan tune, for reasons mysteriously unknown. I wondered if they had highballs and little candy cigarettes in their hands. Determined find out what was going on, I hit “send” on an email and headed outside, just as they were launching into “America.”  

“Kids!” I said, trying hard not to be the crazy old neighbor lady, but suspecting that’s exactly how I sounded. They looked up, startled into silence. I steamrolled on: “I LOVE your songs! You are great singers! WHERE did you learn them?” I was secretly hoping there was an old highball-sipping granny tucked away upstairs, someone I could bond with and maybe bum cigarettes from, while she patted my hand and called me “hon.” But it was not to be; as the mom-in-charge reported: “They have a new music teacher at school, and they’re doing a unit on patriotic songs.” Hmmm, I thought, I’ll bet that music teacher is the one with the granny.

I briefly flirted with the idea of teaching the kids “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart,” but didn’t want to freak them out completely. So I wrapped things up with another compliment on their fabulous pipes, and headed back home. As I pulled on my gardening gloves and started weeding, I reached for my earbuds and my nightly NPR fix, then stopped.

Encouraged by the knowledge that they had an actual fan, the kids had kicked it into overdrive, and were belting out “Grand Old Flag” to the top of their tiny lungs, relishing their reception by an appreciative audience. I kept the earbuds in my pocket and let their voices be the soundtrack of my evening, laid over that cracking vinyl sidetrack in my head of the way my mother’s voice sounded, especially when she sang with her friends.

Putszy is riding out through the plains and desert now, as her favorite song says, out west of the great divide. There are so many things I don’t know about her, or about my own mother for that matter, but sometimes, I realized, it’s just not important to remember every detail. We hold on to what we can, even if it’s nothing more than a scrap of song on a summer night.

I want to be a cowboy's sweetheart, 

I want to learn to rope and ride

I want to ride through the plains and the desert, 

out west of the Great Divide

I want to hear the coyotes singing as the sun sets in the west

I want to be a cowboy's sweetheart, 

that's the life I love the best

I want to ride Old Paint moving at a run, 

I want to feel the wind in my face

A thousand miles away from all, movin' at a cowhand's pace

I want to pillow my head beneath the open sky 

as the sun sets in the west

I want to strum my guitar and yodel-le-hee-hee, 

that's the life I love the best