Joe, I did notice that and thought about commenting on it, then I realized that he was thinking of the West as a state of mind, rather than a strictly geographical construct: Wyoming, Montana, Alberta, etc., fit the idea of "the West" better than Sacramento and El Cerrito do. Out here, only truck drivers and country singers wear cowboy hats (my son wore one, with a miniature TV camera taped to it, when he did a story for Channel 2 on rodeo clowns; he got chased by a few bulls and dumped by one). Maybe the San Joaquin valley, but most of the cows there are being fed other cows and road kill in feed lots: cowboys there use cattle prods, not lariats). --seed