the cowboy way

On Thanksgiving Day last year - which also happened to be my father's birthday - my family gave Dad tickets to accompany us to see Riders in the Sky perform with the Nashville Symphony. Tonight the big night at Nashville's Schermerhorn Symphony Center finally arrived. My family has been fans of Riders in the Sky - Ranger Doug, Woody Paul, Too Slim, and Joey the Cowpolka King - for years and have seen them perform in various venues in the Nashville area, including the Opryland Hotel, the National Guard Armory, and Vanderbilt University. Their music reminds me of the two-week road trips my family used to take each summer, because my Dad had amassed quite a collection of cassette tapes featuring the best in western music. Consequently, I developed a fondness for classics like "Tumbling Tumbleweeds," "Cool Water," "Rawhide," "Don't Fence Me In," "Happy Trails to You," and - my personal favorite - "Ghost Riders in the Sky."

Tonight I happily reminisced about those good old days from my childhood as Riders in the Sky sang several of these classics, and I also fondly recalled a Riders in the Sky-related memory from Chaney's childhood. Nearly every day when Chaney was in kindergarten, as we pulled out of the driveway we would pop a cassette of the Riders' 1991 album "Harmony Ranch" into the player and sing the song of the same name together as we made the drive to Norman Binkley Elementary School. The song is only two minutes and twenty-five seconds long, and the drive only took about two minutes and fifteen seconds, so as we pulled up in front the school, Chaney would belt out the last line or two before hopping out of the car and heading inside to Mrs. Huggins's class. What a sweet memory! Now I'm compelled to go dig out his official Riders in the Sky lasso. Happy trails!