Well my favorite person that I wished I would have gotten to meet is John Wayne.

I grew up watching several John Wayne movies as a kid. Some of my favorites are Rio Lobo, Rio Bravo, El Dorado, Hatari!, Hellfighters, Chisum and many, many more.

The reason I feel so connected to John Wayne is the compassion he had for horses and preserving the old west on film.

Though I am glad we all are not traveling around on horseback (because it would take all day for me to get to work), and living in houses with dirt floors. I do believe his acting really captured the essence of the west.

Sometimes I wish I could go back in that era just to see what it was like to rely on horses to take you every where and trying to get by on the scare resources of the desert-topped west.

I guess the only touch of that past for someone around here to experience is to participate in the Houston Mull Memorial FFA Scholarship Cattle Drive. I had the pleasure of participating this year and it was fun. Though I did not get to take part in the extended cattle drive, the Saturday drive was well worth the time.

As we drove the cattle for 6-miles from the Mull Farm to the north side of Malta Bend, it made me think of what a wonderful (but hard) life cowboys had in the west. The cattle drive is a remembrance of the past and a remembrance of an extraordinary young man.

I hope more people will get involved in the extended cattle drive. Cowboys and cowgirls get the chance to drive cattle across a blocked U.S. Highway 65 and camp-out on the ground of a night. Though this may not sound like fun to some, I think it would be a blast. I hope next year to participate in the extended drive.

So preserving the past is important because we would not be who we are today without it. Horses were a way of life back then and an important part of many people's lives today. Though they are not used for the same reasons as in the past, they still are needed.

In a way, I believe we are carrying on what John Wayne truly stood for with a rustic cattle drive right here in Saline County.