Opa Gnome makes his first stop at his roots in Fort Worth, Where the West Begins. After our long absence and only brief weekend trips home for the past 40 years, the Amon Carter Museum of (previously Western) American Art and the Cowgirl Museum Hall of Fame in the revitalised downtown were requisite. The museum and coliseum area is named after adopted son Will Rogers, who spent many visits in Cowtown/Panther City.
The Cowgirl Museum was quite a pleasant surprise, appropriately and uniquely honoring an ecclectic collection of intrepid pioneers in ranching, music, film, stunt riders, art, science, and leadership. The stories of the strong-willed ranchers reminded me of my meeting with the county judge in the frontier county of McMullen, an area that was the core of the McMullen land grant and adjacent to the more famous Stephen F. Austin Grant. She took over after her husband passed. I remember the iron-rod straight form of the grey-haired judge in a long dress silhouetted against the setting winter sun, the very image of Texas ranching in her character.
The museum included a fine collection of artifacts from Annie Oakley and Dale Evans, whose tales leave one with the desire to search out black and white movies just the watch the stunts. One real cowgirl stunt rider jumped with the horse off a 50 foot tower into water. Repeatedly. Even the actresses weren't pansies. The honorees include Mary and Laura Ingalls, an autistic scientist who designed better cow chutes, and many famous and less well known amazing persons.
