One Cowgirl, Two Cowboys
The village of Peterpan, OH seemed to nearly buzz with activity. It was the first Friday of the month, the biggest day of the month for this small town. On first Friday evenings, unless it fell on a holiday, the village held a dance party and everyone that was anyone in the area attended.
All through the morning and the day, farm trucks and family Fords motored through the village. The post office and the bank were busy enough that impromptu reunions and groups of old folks gathered to talk about the weather, and to talk a little bit about the town gossip. The two diners in town both had crowds and kids gathered in groups as far away from the adults as allowed.
The General Store was busy selling beer and sandwiches out of its deli. All day long there was traffic through the two main roads of town, and then right around the supper hour, cars and families began to appear around the village park. Musicians arrived and claimed the gazebo. Families ate out of picnic baskets and they dotted the lawn of the park like spots on a ladybug.
Small groups of teenagers showed up around the edges of the scene and the musicians tuned and tweaked their instruments sending ragged yelps into the dusk of evening before smoothing their noises into something that sounded like music.
The children were the first to break away from the picnics, and fistfuls of them ran here and there, screaming and laughing. That was the cue for the husbands and old men to crack open their beer cans and gather and stand together in undulating circles, sometimes talking about work and weather, but often times just standing and not talking at all. Mothers and old women collected and packaged picnic scraps and then gathered in their groups that were always full of chatter.
Around dark the band started playing. The band was made up each month by any and all brave enough to show up with an instrument, and on this night it featured no less than six guitarists, two banjo players, three upright bass players, a fiddler and a violinist and one single trombonist. As they began to play and make noise, it was once again the children that were the first to find their places in front of the band and to begin to dance. Some older couples followed and then the teenagers and those of courting age. Then the young married couples were next and on until almost everyone that could stand would dance at least a little on these first Fridays.
Into the band’s third or fourth jam session song, a young woman and two older cowboys found the center of the dance floor and a circle formed as the woman danced between the two men, and the band played and the dance circle collapsed back into a throng of movement and body.
That cowgirl, well known to the community as the best barrel racing cowgirl around, she was married to one of the cowboys, a rancher that was twice her age, and that would be worthy enough of town gossip all on its own, except that the other cowboy, also twice her age, was a busted up bull rider of small legend in these parts, and he’d moved into a trailer out on the ranch with the barrel racer and her husband a year or so back.
The musicians continued to make musical noise and people danced and bugs bumped against the lights above them. Children ran and played and screamed. Young people either tried to find a place to sneak away with someone they were sweet on, or they tried to appear too cool to care about not having anyone sweet on them, yet.
The best barrel racing cowgirl in town danced with her rancher husband, and then with the local busted bull rider, and back to her rancher husband, and it seemed like she danced and laughed all night with one or the other without a break. She kissed both of them and no one said a word about it until they were out of ear shot and then the village women couldn’t talk about it enough and the men did their best to never have to talk about it, that being the number one way men have always chosen to deal with things they don’t understand.
The band played. People had fun. There was food and drink and dance, and late, when the moon leaned towards midnight, families and old folks began to drift out to their farm trucks and family Fords, and the crowd thinned and no one saw them on this night, but they’d been seen this way dozens of times in the village before, the barrel racing cowgirl left in a big truck, sitting snug and cozy between her rancher and her bull rider.
The dance wound down. Musicians loaded away instruments. Volunteers emptied the trash cans, and by 2am on the first Saturday of the month, the village gazebo in Peterpan, OH looked like nothing had ever happened.
Dan Denton is a longtime union autoworker and former UAW chief steward turned poet and writer, which is possibly the most horrific financial decision you can make in the 21st century. He moved into a small camper he dubbed the Scrapes of Wrath, and while he will always call Toledo home, he tries to roam as much as possible.He has subsequently found far more happiness than he ever thought possible. His first poetry collection called Fight Songs for the Underdogs (Luchador Press) is coming soon, and he has a novel due out on Roadside Press in 2026.
